"No..!" She protested when he seemed to have understood her words as rejection. Oh, how she wanted to explain to him, to make him understand everything that she had at stake. Alexandria hesitated for a moment, slightly pained by the situation she had been put in, but then attempted to explain. "I would love to go on a date with you, Keith. I never meant to reject you. Well, maybe I did, I'm not sure how to explain it... but by dating me you're stepping into such an ugly world, with people who have horrible intentions. I'm scared that someone will go against us. That's one reason. And I've managed to build all this with careful planning, careful timing and carefully placed words. I don't want to let go of the clique. It's the one thing in the world that makes me feel like I've accomplished something."<br/><br/>The girl sighed and pushed a smile on her face. "But all this came with a cost. At school I spend time with terrible, superficial people who wouldn't understand me if they looked any deeper than what they saw tonight. I dated guys that were..." She paused, thinking of the right words. "... so obvious, so predictable. And I accepted that as natural, as the truth. I'm not rejecting you, I'm just... not understanding you, because I've lived and still keep living in a world where what I think is natural is completely unacceptable for anyone coming from outside that world." This was probably the most she had ever opened up about her feelings concerning her own popularity and the royal entourage. She was well aware of everything that "peasants" thought and said about them.<br/><br/>"You don't want to know what I believe in." She smiled, holding back tears. "It's not a pretty place. I don't want to bring you there, because you are so good, so much better than all that. I'm stuck in there because of the things I've built there, the things that I've created. Without them, I wonder what I'd be."