• “This is getting ridiculous. I’m leaving,” stated the boy, getting up.
    “No, no! Wait and see!” exclaimed the girl beside him, tugging on his hand that was loosely dangling by his side. With a loud reluctant sigh, he sat back down again on a soft patch of grass. The girl stared, wide-eyed at the shimmering lake with the full moon dangling above. “There she is,” she whispered in awe. “The fairy queen of the lake.”

    ~


    “Where were you?!!” screamed Alisha’s mother as she entered the house with her bag slung on one shoulder. Alisha ignored her. It wasn’t that hard anymore. “You left me here to do all the housework … ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?” Alisha looked coldly at her drunken mother. “No.” Her mother, Elise, stumbled back, eyes widening in shock at her daughter’s blunt and cold reply. Alisha grabbed two chilled bottles of water from the fridge, a bar of Cadbury milk chocolate and an apple from a Tupperware-turned-into fruit bowl. With that, she turned and left her mother staring at her back as she headed towards her room at the other end of the small house.

    On her way there, she could see that the house was as dirty as ever and her mother had not done the cleaning she had claimed to do. In fact, it was even dirtier than usual. As another wave of disappointment crashed through her body, she scolded herself. You should have known better than to have expected Mother to have done it. After all, has she ever kept her promises? She thought bitterly to herself as she slammed the door behind her, the sign on it swinging violently to and fro. Do not Enter, it stated. Then below it in childishly scrawled handwriting, Alisha’s hide-away.
    No one ever entered her room since she wrote those words. No one except him.


    Her room was cosy. It had a wooden bed tucked in the right corner with a light blue mattress and dark blue duvet with white stripes like tic-tack-toe and a dark blue pillow with black stripes. To the far left was a desk with a bright lamplight hanging over it. The desk was cluttered with things, pencils, wood carvings, carving knives and half shaped blocks of wood. Several sheets of paper were strewn across it as well with shapes drawn upon them. The rubbish basket below the desk was overflowing with crumpled paper. The connecting bathroom was on the left of the room door. On the right was her closet, filled with neatly folded and hung clothing. Unlike other teenagers, she didn’t have posters of musicians or actors on her walls but shelves or pinned up drawings. There were two shelves in her room across each other. Both were made and nailed in by her. Displayed on them were numerous beautifully detailed carvings, all made by her.

    Alisha threw her bag across the room and it slammed into the rubbish basket, knocking over all of paper. Alisha sighed, ran her fingers through her hair and kneeled down, picking up the crumpled papers one by one. Once all of them were safely in the basket, she grabbed the apple from where she had out it on the desk and sat at the foot of her bed. Biting into the ripe and juicy flesh of the apple, she stared out of her window which offered her an amazing view of the forest in their backyard. Their house was on the edge of a slight hill that sloped down gently into a forest of pine trees. In a distance, she could spot the glimmer of the lake that she had just visited.

    She had visited that lake every full moon since that fateful night almost 5 years ago. The same thing happened every night that calmed her down and soothed away all of her sorrow and fears. Sometimes, she just visited that lake even though it wasn’t full moon just to be calmed down. Alisha looked longingly at the tempting beauty of the lake and all of a sudden bit into the core of her apple. She looked at it. Without realising, she had just finished eating the apple. Creeping out of her room to throw the core into the food bin in the kitchen, she spotted her mother passed out on the couch, well drunk. She threw it away and then grabbed the blanket from one of the chairs. She tucked the blanket gently around her snoring mother who twitched and mumbled incoherently.

    Alisha turned off the light switch in the living room and went back into her room, making sure to shut the door silently. Picking up an unfinished carving from her desk, she analysed it, noticing the corrections she had to make and more things she could do to it. Carefully handling a carving knife, she quickly handled the carving with her 14 year old skilful fingers. Whenever she carved, she felt at peace and all alone in the world. Holding up the final copy in the light, she smiled smugly. “Perfect,” she whispered. Gently laying it on one of her shelves, she washed up and went to sleep.

    The next morning had her waking up to a loud banging on her room door. She sat straight up, eyes struggling to keep wide open as she yelled out “Yeah, yeah, I’m awake.” She got ready for school and took a bite out of her chocolate bar to give her some energy to face the day. The day passed away as normal, uninteresting and dull. She had absolutely no friends as she didn’t talk to anyone unless asked. She knew people talked about her, gossiped behind her back about Alisha the Shell but little did she know about the good things that were said about her. Her grades were always average, she fancied herself to be a wallpaper but in reality, wasn’t. She never noticed it when boys sometimes faltered around her, or when girls suddenly called out hello from the other end of the hallway and run back to their friends jumping up and down with the victory at greeting Princess Alisha.

    She returned back home for lunch and waited till evening. That night was a half moon. She made her way down to the lake as usual with her bag slung across her right shoulder and waited behind the bushes.
    “I knew you’d be here,” said a voice suddenly, startling her into a jump.
    Swearing, she turned around to see him. The only boy to ever step in her room. The only one to know of her secret, to see it.
    “Jared,” she whispered in shock.
    “Hi Alisha,” he said with his hands in his pockets. He had dark hair that wasn’t that messy but still was and green eyes and was the guy in the school that all girls went after. “Long time no talk.”
    “Yeah.”
    They stared at each other for a while and then he said, “Have you been carving lately?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Good.” They both stared at their shoes.
    “Why did you come here, Jared?” Alisha whispered, still looking at the ground.