Captain Machiatto and the Princess of Canada

Alecia was a wily little girl with turquoise eyes and long red hair. On the morning where our story begins, her hair was sticking up in a million different directions, and her mother was pounding on the bedroom door to tell her that it was time to get ready for school.
The pounding stopped after a few minutes and she could hear her mother downstairs clattering the dishes and preparing breakfast.
Alecia could tell by the clatter that her mother was not in a good mood. It would be unwise to delay the morning ritual of hunting for her favorite pair of black and yellow striped socks and her favorite old shirt with the stars on it.
Alecia found her shirt draped over a stack of her favorite stories. One sock was in her lunchbox, and the other was under her pillow. She decided to wear a pair of orange pants today with one green shoe and one blue one. After she carefully tied her hair up into four ponytails, she gathered a couple of books from the stack by her bed (none of which were textbooks), and shoved them into her backpack.
When Alecia came into the dining room, her mother took one look at her and turned red with anger. She had learned long ago that getting her daughter to even wear shoes was a miracle in itself without trying to get her to have a matching ensemble. Sometimes, however, she suspected that Alecia tried to get under her skin with her outlandish way of dressing. She wanted to believe this was a phase that would pass, but it had been two years now, and her patience was wearing thin. 1

"Alecia, wouldn't you rather wear something more..." her voice trailed off as she struggled to think of the word to use. She gave up, turned around and hastily scraped bacon off of the frying pan.2

Alecia was silent as she chewed her toast and drank her orange juice. She was always thinking deeply about something, and before she knew it, her plates were being cleared away and it was time for her to catch the bus.3

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The ride to school was always long, and this gave Alecia time to absorb herself in her favorite books. They were books that you wouldn't imagine any other eight-year-old reading, but they somehow didn't look out of place with her as her bright eyes dashed back and forth across the page. Her bus had an assigned seating arrangement, and there was a girl named Gennifer that sat next to her in the very back seat. Every now and then, Gennufer would ask Alecia what she was reading because she found her to be exceedingly interesting. ..5