To begin with I must say that I have been in love countless times and they all ended the same-with a last page. It is not the characters with whom I have fallen in love but the worlds of the books and the magic that lies within those worlds.
This story begins with a sixteen year old girl named Alex. Her full name was Alexandria Bergov, but she would sooner die than answer to it. For as long as she could remember she had had the feeling she was being watched. It was as if she could feel pairs of eyes scrutinising her every move, watching her from underneath the lids of dustbins, around every corner and even from the skies above her. In truth, she was being watched, had been since the day she was born. After all, the whole world wanted to know every detail of the life of Innese and Henrii Bergov's baby girl. That was the reason she couldn't go out with her friends, the reason she had to have elocution lessons from the age of five, why she had never had a proper boyfriend, one she'd picked herself because she liked him not because of his currant celebrity status.
So, as we have established, her parents were the reason her life was as lonely as it was. Not that they could even really be considered her parents, really. They spent so much time selling themselves to the media that she hardly ever saw them. There were only two occasions in the year that she could count on seeing her parents.
The first was Christmas when the whole household and all the help would sit down to a delicious roast turkey dinner on Christmas Day. Her parents would spend most of their time talking to each other, breaking off now and then to exchange pleasantries with their respective assistants. Only once or twice throughout the entire dinner would they address her, and even then it was to correct some aspect of her behaviour. Alex was used to this by now. It was more difficult when she was younger and wanted Mommy and Daddy to watch her open the vast array of presents some nurse or other had purchased only days beforehand on her parents orders. Alex can only recall three Christmases in her lifetime where one or both of her parents had watched her open her presents.
The only other occasion on which she would be guaranteed to see her parents was for a week in Summer. This was the family holiday where her parents would decide to go somewhere exotic and she would get to go with them. She knew she was only there because there were sure to be photos taken by some magazine or other and her absence would call into question the state of her parents marriage or their parenting. Nevertheless, she really did love those holidays. It gave her the illusion of the happy family to cling onto when she was feeling down.
Alex was an only child. A lot of speculation surrounds this. Some say her mother could have no more children after Alex was born, others say that Innese and Henrii felt that one child had been enough to complete the fairy-tale life they led, and then there are those closest to the family that say that perhaps Innese and Henrii should never have had Alex, that they were so engrossed in their love for one another that they do not notice the child. As much as it pained her to admit it, the latter, Alex truly believed, was the reason. Her parents could not see past their love for each other to realise that she even existed. She felt as if she were only used as a publicity prop for the media to feed on when her parents began to tire of the spotlight, which was rare indeed.
Alex attended Madame DuClair's Institute for young ladies. It was a boarding school but also catered to day students. Unfortunately for Alex, she was a day student. There were very little day students attending the school, the days of all the village girls attending each day and returning home in the evenings were long past, so it was very difficult for Alex to make friends as all the girls in her class were borders who had their own little cliques. Also, Alex had a kind of sullen look on her face most of the time that seemed to warn people away from her. This was something she had perfected over time and now worked so well that one or two people have even crossed the street to avoid her. It was a method of power for Alex. Other people controlled every aspect of her life but this was hers.
She thought she should like to have a best friend, someone to tell all her secrets to, someone she could just look at and they both would know exactly what the other's thinking, someone she could discuss boys with, and one boy in particular.