Chapter 1

Alice

Whispers, glances and comments.

It was the first time that I arrived five minutes late from the exact time. Normally I was always on time, preferring to go unnoticed, sinking into my chair and letting time pass by, while keeping my eyes straight ahead and pretending to listen to the teacher's monotonous dialogue.

That day, however, all my colleagues were surprised by the fact that I was a little late. I felt as if my body was filled with an immense shame when I knocked at the door and walked to my seat in front of everyone. All those looks were on me, judging me.

"How strange, the cold is late. Has she found something interesting to do?" I heard my classmate, Claudia, whisper in the ear of the girl she was sitting with, making her laugh at his comment and responded with something ingenious that I could not hear.

If at some point I wanted to kill someone, the victim would have been Claudia without a doubt. I did not understand how her boyfriends and friends could stand her. Although I only had to see his impressive physique or the credit card that his parents had given her to know that those were the main reasons why she triumphed so much among young people.

Her skin resembled the purest porcelain and his hair was so dark, smooth, straight and long that many stopped to admire it or asked her about the shampoo she used. In addition, her eyes were green and bright. Anyway, she was the girl everybody wanted to be friends with and all the boys secretly desired. She was something that I would never be and I envied her deeply, since my personal problems went beyond the brand of shampoo I used. In the next life I would love to be like her and have a simple and easy life.

Comments like the one I had just heard, made me feel worse every day. Not having anyone in high school who considered me a normal person and who wanted to be my friend, was frustrating, more than frustrating was outrageous and although I did not want to admit it, I felt a permanent pain in my chest that sometimes did not let me breathe and was killing me slowly inside.

I did not know who my father was and my mother never mentioned him. If I had at least met him, maybe I could find myself, know if he was also like me. To know if he had the same disease as me. A disease that doctors swore to know nothing about it.

I sighed and sat in the chair at the end of the class, as fast as I could so that I could return to feel unnoticed and safe from those prying eyes.

Who invented the institute? I would shout at them, since for me every second inside it was a nightmare.

"It is a pleasure that today we are honored with your presence, Miss Alícia. Could you solve the problem of the blackboard?" told me my math teacher, Ignacio, making my whole security vanish at the same moment I got to my seat and I wanted to protest that my name was not Alícia, but Alice. That would not kill me, but staying blank in front of everyone present could.

I looked at the blackboard and then at the teacher, who held a white chalk and waited impatiently for me to say something or get up from my seat to solve what he was saying.

I swallowed and read the problem, trying to understand it. Equations of second degree, those that could have two results and that I did not remember how to do. I was always out in class, absorbed in my own thoughts, angry at the world for making me sick that way.

I tried not to break into tears and got up slowly from the chair, as if they were taking me to the slaughterhouse, I walked to the front of the class. All eyes were on me and I could imagine the hateful look and the satisfied smile of Claudia behind me.

I picked up the chalk that Ignacio tended me with little patience. I closed my eyes and pinned it on the board to start writing. Then, I thought about the problem, about how the second degree equations were solved, but I could not concentrate, those voices were in my head, torturing me:

"She's a freak"

"This problem is easy peasy! How can't she solve it?!"

"COLD, her disease is sure to be contagious"

"COLD"

"COLD AS ICE"