il ballo della vita ; Victoria de Angelis

PROLOGUE

It was September 2015 when Marlena Rossi arrived at her exchange-school in Rome.

...

The fifteen year old girl rose her fist to knock on the door but before she had the opportunity to, it already opened.

"Speaking of the devil!" an old man with glasses smiled at her.

"Good Morning, my name is Mr. Beneventi, I'm your class teacher!" he introduced himself in English.

The man stepped aside and mimicked the daintily built girl to enter the classroom.

"Thank you." she mumbled.

Her heartbeat rose and she felt nervous as she entered the class room. A bit over 20 pairs of eyes were fixed on the young girl.

"Don't panic" she tried to calm herself.

A forced smile made its way onto the brunette's lips. The teacher walked past and looked expectingly.

"Hi, mi chiamo Marlena e sono la studentessa di scambiano di Inghilterra " Marlena introduced herself with the sentence she had practiced the whole ride to school.

"It's nice to meet you Marlena. Thank you for introducing yourself in Italian. Look over there is a spare seat beside Thomas."

Mr Beneventi gestured Marlena to sit down at a table where a blonde boy looked up from a piece of paper he recently had been writing on. He smiled at Marlena kindly which made the girl feel a bit safer as she passed all the tables to get to the last one.

She sat down, happy to not have made a fool out of herself and unpacked her backpack.

"First lesson: English." Marlena remembered

"I'm Thomas." she got torn out of her thoughts.

The guy on her left introduced himself. The exchange student's corners of the mouth lifted slightly at the friendly gesture. Thomas looked at his sheet of paper again.

Marlena, the curious person she is, glanced over to the boy's paper. She noticed he wrote on music paper. Because of that Marlena's attention now belonged to the class teacher, again who checked whether all students are present.

Mr Beneventi spoke Italian but the vocabulary wasn't too hard, that's why she was able to follow.

"Thomas Raggi."

"Si." the boy on Marlena's left confirmed.

"And can you tell me where Victoria is?"

"She texted that the traffic is bad but she'll come!"

Mr Beneventi shook his head as he continued with the list.

"Marlena Rossi..." he smiled.

After the actual lesson had started Marlena had a weird feeling in her pants. It was sort of wet in her area, that's when she realised what the case was.

"Fuck"

"Excuse me Mr. Beneventi!" she rose her hand.

"Yes?"

"Could I please go to the toilet?"

"Yes of course!" he allowed it.

Marlena quickly got outside while making sure to somehow cover her butt, in case blood stains were on her new jeans.

The toilets smelled like a mixture of urine and smoke. Apparently a few students actually smoked there. She closed the door of the cabin, she had entered.