The soft grass felt so comfortable. As she was laying on the ground, sunbathing, she could feel a cool breeze. She felt like she could lay there forever. Not a care in the world.

But all dreams must end.

“…eth…” There was a noise. It sounded human. “Elizabeth!”

“Yes, I’m awake, sorry.” She answered on instinct. She looked around and she was back in the dusty old classroom learning quadratic equations. Daydreaming was a bad habit of hers, but what else could she do when reality was so boring and unfair. The others in the class chuckled a bit as she rubbed her eyes.

“I know you’re doing well on tests, but that’s no reason to slack off during class.” The teacher asked with a stern look. But he wasn’t angry. He seemed more worried if anything. “You should pay attention in class so you don’t have to study as much at home, and you can sleep more. Not the other way around. So, what’s the answer?”

Without skipping a beat, she gave her answer. “Eight and negative three.” There was a bit of silence. “You multiply them, it's negative twenty-four, you add them and it’s five. Like there. The formula isn’t all that necessary if you know the answers are integers.” She pointed at the numbers on the blackboard.

“Correct. Unfortunately, she won’t say the solutions on the test out loud, so try to solve it for yourselves as well. You need to practice so you can do it just as fast or even faster. It’s all a question of how much effort you put in.” The teacher decided to turn it into a lecture which caused a few students to roll their eyes. Elizabeth wasn’t a genius, but she did have both the aptitude and the diligence to learn. She also read ahead in the textbooks mainly because she did not have anything better to do.

“Study hard enough and you too can be a freak.” One boy muttered loud enough for Elizabeth to hear, but not the teacher. She did not really care what others thought of her. Maybe that was one of the many reasons they thought of her what they did. She did not care for conversation or standing out or fitting in. She did what she needed to get good grades and continue her education, but that was it. Not that many people wanted to talk to her. She wasn’t ugly, although not a beauty either, but she made sure to look as unapproachable as possible. And when she was approached, she just ignored others. Unless they were a teacher, in which case she gave them some hollow respect to sate their egos.

The bell rang and the class was over, students began pouring out of the classrooms and into the hallways. They were racing out of the building to go home. All except Elizabeth. She had no reason to be happy about going ‘home’.

“You don’t sleep enough.” There was worry in his voice. She thought about it a bit. Was he worried for her? No, unlikely. He must’ve just wanted to send her to competitions.

“I just had a bad night.” That was a lie she said while looking him in the eye. And he could not tell.

“Alright, just make sure to take care of yourself.”

She nodded and left the classroom, beginning her long walk ‘home’. Turn left on the hallway, take the stairs to the right, and head to the exit. But she was stopped again. This time it wasn’t a teacher. Just some classmates. Three girls, all wearing different vibrant blouses, contrasting against her own dull and slightly torn grey clothes. They also had piercings in their nose, ears, around their mouths. They were supposed to be the “bad girls” in class, but they just reminded Elizabeth of pincushions. She had seen bad people before, and these were not it. These were just pups. All bark, no bite.

“Hey, Lizzy, mind if I call you Lizzy?” Elizabeth looked her in the eye impassively. “I’m gonna call you Lizzy. We’re having a little meetup with some friends, why don’t you come with us, you can teach us some of that math, we can teach you how to relax a little. Deal?”

“No thanks.” She gave a curt reply and continued walking but was blocked again.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” The girl who looked like the leader did her best to look intimidating, but Elizabeth was already too busy daydreaming about angry hedgehogs. So cute. Maybe she should pet them. Well, if they stung her though…

The girl grabbed her arm and gripped it. “So, how about it?”

…she’d smash them with a rock.

She gave no reply as she quickly struck the girl's elbow with her free hand. As she was let go of, she dashed to the nearest window and jumped. It was on the ground floor, so it was only around a meter up. She continued walking casually after that, joining into the flow of students leaving the school. No one really noticed her. She was quite good at not being noticed when people weren’t looking specifically for her. And usually, they had no reason to do so.

She continued walking for a few hours after that. She had no reason to hurry but made no stops to rest. She was used to this already. Her legs feeling tired, her soles feeling numb, her toes hurting. Her mind just shut it all out after a while. After walking through several alleyways, she arrived. ‘Home’. Oh, how she hated that word. She had no good memories of it.

Her first home was where she learned never to get attached. Her mother was always caring, always smiling. She died of cancer because she couldn’t pay for treatments, nor was she willing to undergo them, she was far too busy trying to be there for her little Liz. She wanted to be there for her, and so fate forced them apart.

Elizabeth was then sent to her father she hadn’t seen in years due to her parents having had a divorce. This was her second home. Her father was an abusive alcoholic she had no attachments to after only a week. The things he did would've made most kids scared or sad, but Elizabeth? She was angry. She was a smart and angry kid, who quickly learned to be a light sleeper and flee the house at night through a window and go for a walk whenever her drunk father got home. She learned a lot thanks to him. How to walk quietly, how to climb, how to avoid trouble at night. She learned that bad people weren’t weighed down by morals, so she discarded all her loving mother had taught her. She needed to grow up fast, she needed to survive. Her father was a heavy sleeper. Such a heavy sleeper that he did not notice the house burning down around him. She was on one of her walks when this happened. The police had suspected foul play, but they never would’ve thought it was a scared nine year old girl, crying that she had now lost both parents. That was the first time she scared herself with how well she had lied to everyone. It was also the last.

Her third home was an orphanage. She had no other living relatives. There she learnt another important lesson. To be invisible. If you stick your neck out, the lawnmower will cut it. The people running it were horrible, and any child who would break even the most minor rule got punished hard. And any child that they chose arbitrarily also got punished. She did not know who, but someone was backing them. They wouldn’t have had the money to operate it in such a poor part of the city with such high quality equipment otherwise. It would also explain all the different 'vitamin pills' they were given during dinner, and why children kept getting sick. And it would explain why some of the kids kept disappearing before reaching adulthood. It took her a while to connect things, but after she did, she made sure to never take a pill again. She would sometimes hide it, other times she would throw it in someone else’s drink. Once she even hid it under her tongue when one of the overseers was too close for her to do anything else. This one took longer to escape. She made sure to read newspapers to see who could maybe be reliable, who would seem like the kind of person to investigate, but not be the stupid hero who got themselves killed. She left anonymous letters at multiple news reporter's front doors with a few pills as well. After that, she just had to wait. She wasn’t informed of the reasons she was simply told that she would be sent to a different orphanage.

Her fourth home. Her most important lesson. There are two types of people. Idiots, and people who prey on idiots. But she wasn’t either, not anymore. She was a shadow. Most people there didn’t even know her name. Her class only noticed her when the teacher pointed her existence out. If the teacher pointed it out. Then, for a few days, people would look at her, acknowledge her being there. And soon enough, she would be forgotten once more.

She walked inside the large crumbling building. The once brightly colored walls were dulled, cracked, and painted over by spray paint, blending in perfectly with the rest of the rundown buildings. Inside, she was greeted by no one as she made her way to her shared room.

“Good afternoon, Elizabeth! How was your day?”

It was one of the volunteers who ran the place. If it weren’t for them, there’d be no money to run it on. But still, they helped, which surprised Elizabeth. Not that some people could be good, she knew that, but that they were both idiots and somehow successful. At least successful enough to keep the crumbling walls together.

“Nothing special.” She answered, hoping that would be enough. She hated talking with this woman. The lady at least knew the basics about psychology but wasn’t certified from what she could piece together and was the only person who could make her lose her temper. Always smiling, as if life were easy, but Elizabeth could see the bags under those smiling eyes. Always caring, chatting, cooking, cleaning. Trying to help. The only person who could reliably notice her. The worst part was, she did not know how or why this woman made her so angry. She just did.

“Alright. Dinner will be pasta with tomato sauce. I know you like it spicy, so I got a bit of ground hot pepper that will be distributed. Most likely, it will only be you and a few others who choose it though.” The woman beamed.

Elizabeth nodded and went to her room. After doing her homework and reading ahead in her textbooks during the afternoon she had dinner in the main dining area. She enjoyed some spicy pasta before she went back to take a short nap. Once it was lights out, she changed to her black tracksuit. All her roommates were heavy sleepers. She climbed down quietly through the window, effortlessly descending two floors as if she had done it a hundred times already. Because she had. She walked for twenty minutes before she met a man. A tall, muscular man who could even be called handsome, although it was quite dark out.

“So, ready to deliver some more shipments?” He asked with a smirk. Instead of answering, she just stared at him. “Nice glare. When you grow up, you’ll be able to scare off any guy at a bar. Here.” He gave her a backpack and showed a note. After she looked at the note for a few seconds, she nodded. “Off you go then.”

She did not need to be told that. She could climb, she could sneak, she was practically invisible in the night, she had a good memory and no morals. She had her job and knew what to do.