hi! My name is Alika. I'm from Serbia and I'm 18 years old. My room is my fortress and my workshop. Other girls have posters of actors on their walls; I have sketches plastered over every free space: intricate geometric patterns I dreamed up at night, realistic roses that need to look alive, ancient dragons in old-school style. On my shelves—not makeup and trinkets, but pots of ink, sheets of practice skin, and dozens, hundreds of sharpened pencils. My hands are always stained with ink; under my nails, a faint, almost erasable blackness. My secret sign. My second skin.