The blankets on her body had become heavy and seemed to want to suffocate her. No matter where she tried to settle down, she couldn't close his eyes.
Every time she fell asleep, a green glow flashed behind her eyelids and shone in the dark. It troubled her and, at the same time, it was as if it asked to be discovered instantly, as if her mind begged her to look for more, to analyze the facts, to understand.
The main problem was the time.
The alarm clock placed on the bedside table showed an hour more and more late every time she looked at you; the silence in the house seemed so deafening that she seemed to hear the seconds that snapped between the small mechanisms of that clock. The faint, white moonlight that often, entering through the window, illuminated part of the room that night decided not to enter. Everything around her begged her to sleep, nothing distracted her and ironically this made her even more awake.
Only after realizing that she had stared at the ceiling, still, for almost an hour without falling asleep she realized how, perhaps, satisfying her thirst for curiosity she would finally be able to rest.
She lifted her back from the mattress by sitting down, she had never felt as awake as at that moment.
She had to be careful not to wake up her sister, the little blond-haired wreath who slept in the bed placed on the opposite side of the room.
As much as she hated to admit it, she didn't mind that Charlie chose, or rather demanded, to sleep in her room.
Aunt May, on the day she decided to welcome them with open arms and open heart, did everything she could to provide them with furniture and decorations so that both nieces would feel at ease in their new rooms.
But the only thing Charlie missed was his big sister, she said that without Maeve the dark would take her and he wouldn't let her go.
The minute hand of the clock had completed more than one turn since Maeve had decided to do research.
The computer, resting on his legs, was more than warm and begged that at least half of the dozens open search pages would be closed.
The fault was not, however, entirely the girl. For every link that this opened an extra page popped up.
The publicity with the perfect graphics of a new candidate in the presidential election had appeared on screen more times than she could count.
She had heard that the candidate was very charismatic and possessed a strong and authoritarian voice; despite this Maeve had never shown an interest in doing more in-depth research.
She could not find much, most newspapers linked the masked figure to crimes from the smallest to the most incredible ones; in the body of the news, however, there was not enough evidence for a conviction: only volatile assumptions created thanks to the weirdest links.
A newspaper company had admitted that a source, which would have preferred to remain anonymous, had revealed how the masked figure responded to the name of Metamer.
The source did not open to more details.
"Metamer" whispered Maeve in a slightly hilarious tone. It sounded like the name of a cartoon antagonist.
She closed her laptop and, after placing it on her desk, walked slowly towards the bed trying to make as little noise as possible.
The streets outside the city, beyond the glass of his window were deserted. People could hardly convince themselves to go out on a midweek night.
She didn't live downtown anymore.
Maeve lifted the soft blanket and slipped under it, unable to hold a smile. She thought of how, when she was little, used to visit her father at work and ran to the wall windows of the office; crushing the potato nose inherited from her mother against the cold glass, she looked down. She saw small people as ants and was always stunned. She always felt like a puppeteer: she invented the stories of the people who wore the most colorful clothes and who, therefore, from up there, was better identifiable among the masses. Sometimes he would take her backpack and squeeze it tightly from happiness, thus crushing the snack inside.
When her sister was born, then Maeve no longer kept the stories to herself and told them to her whenever she could. Charlie, for his part, could not understand most of the words and those she knew could not understand them because his older sister spoke too quickly. But she understood one thing: when Maeve smiled, she talked about something happy and funny and Charlie, as a result, clapped his hands laughing.
Then everything changed: dad had to move out for work and mom a week later decided to follow him.
Birthday gifts came from different European capitals every year, just those. She leaned her head on the pillow and put her cold hands on her face.
Either they lost their phone number or the new job stopped them from rewriting their daughters. She knew it was just excuses that had been popping up in her mind for years.
The days passed with an unusual slowness. She seemed to live in a parenthesis of her life.
Step by step she reached the city center with thoughts that clouded her mind.
She went to the most famous trade routes in the world without even having the temptation to look up.
Shortly thereafter, she was supposed to meet with Chloe in an Italian café, one of the passions of the redhead.
She pushed the wooden door and the bell at its top announced her entrance.
The Last Hideaway Café was extremely cozy: on the huge amount of colored carpets laid on the ground were placed round tables, from the largest to those suitable for a person. On all were spread homemade-styled tablecloth on the shades of red; light bulbs hanging from the ceiling thanks to braids of rope illuminated the room with a warm and welcoming light.
Maeve sat at a table between two chairs with wooden inlays. To its right a light heavy-looking curtain covered part of the view from the large window.
Chloe arrived several minutes later, when Maeve was already holding a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
"You never wait for me," complained the redhead, removing the checked scarf from around her white neck.
"I waited too long, you're half an hour late," Maeve said, dropping a vanilla biscuit into the hot cup.
"I had an audition and.. - she stopped to wave to the waiter - handsome, would you bring a macchiato coffee? Big cup, if you please. "
Maeve shook her head with a smile. Chloe had always been like that.
During the previous months she was convinced she could become, in her own words, the new red Angelina Jolie. Chloe had a lot of talent, but one of them was definitely getting excluded from any audition.
She was very good at reciting and memorizing the most complex lines of the script but whatever character she was playing was too little 'Chloe-ized' for her, or at least, it was the word with which Grace and Maeve had coined the disappointment of the neo-actress for any character she had to play.
In the middle of the audition she was able to interrupt the director by asking to change milestones in her character's life.
"How did it go at that news trap?" Chloe asked after receiving her coffee.
"Actually very well, I think I'm at good point with the article, Harry gave me a hand." answered Maeve smiling while the redhead risked choking with the hot drink.
"And when were you going to tell me? I want to know all the details, how is he?"
The brunette put her chin on one hand and couldn't stop smiling.
"He's very nice, he offered to help me."
"It's a shame he decided to cut his hair - Chloe interrupted by making a hand gesture towards the entrance of the cafe - the cut he had before characterized him."
Maeve turned around and risked falling miserably from her chair.
At the bar there was a boy turned from behind; the dark curly hair was shorter on the sides leaving the curls messy only on the top of the head.
"He's perfectly fine," whispered the brunette.
"He can't hear you from here, you can talk normally. In fact, go talk to him." answered Chloe giving a slight push to the chair of the brunette.
"No! I mean yes, no, I don't want to go."
"Either you go or I'll have to carry you," Chloe whispered smiling.
Maeve suddenly got up and grabbed the chair for the padded armrest before it crashed to the ground.
Chloe was really capable of making a scene like that.
When she finally decided to walk towards him she concentrated so much on not falling to the ground and make one of her usual appearances that the moment she looked up the boy was already outside the door of the club.
Maeve turned to Chloe that immediately signed her to follow and go talk to him.
There was a silent conversation between the two girls: Chloe looked at Maeve badly for every step she took towards the table, the other tried to explain that she did not want to follow the boy.
Her resoluteness disappeared when Chloe stood up looking at her with the worst of her sight.
Maeve ran out of the club looking around. He was quietly walking on the sidewalk to her right.
The girl made room between people.
She was repeating the sentence in her head, she was measuring the words, punctuation and tone of voice so many times that she learned that little speech completely by heart.
The high figure wearing the flashy sweatshirt stood in front of her.
She leaned forward and rising slightly on the tip of her toes put a hand on his shoulder: the boy stopped his walk.
"Hello, hi, I didn't want to bother you just that-" and suddenly stopped talking.
The boy who had just turned and was now in front of her had his face covered with freckles and his dark brown eyes stared confused.
He held in his hand the paper glass of the cafe from which they had just come out and, between his lips, he held the end of the straw that probably was given him along with the drink.
He remained silent and found amusing how the girl panicked as soon as he decided to turn around.
The more she looked at him, the more she wanted to run away, he was not at all like Harry: he was tall, yes, but not as much as the boy she was expecting; the shape of the face and the physicality were completely different between the two and, although they were the reason for the misunderstanding, even the hair was different.
Harry's curls were wider and longer, and those of the boy in front of him were narrow and thick. Not even a long session at the hairdresser would have been able to change the hair of the schoolmate so drastically.
During all of this, Maeve was still trying to think about how to explain the misunderstanding. The boy raised a corner of his mouth in a hint of a smile.
"I'm always happy to stop in the middle of the street and stare at one person, really -he said trying not to laugh and taking a long sip of the drink - but I should go."
Only at that moment the brunette, overcome with the most complete embarrassment, realized how she had left her hand on the boy's shoulder; she immediately removed it and let him go away.
Chloe joins her, laughing, taking a lock of her hair and placing it next to Maeve's cheek.
"Look, your face matches my hair."
The brunette crossed her arms looking at her with the worst of looks.
"If it turns out that way for a guy you met on the street, I don't want to imagine how it went with Harry yesterday, are you sure you could at least talk?"
Chloe laughed and the brunette gave her a slight slap on the arm.
"You're not funny," she snorted on his way back to the coffee shop.