Page 3 of Kings of Desire
Echo City. My new city. Weird name for a place where no one hears your screams, no one feels your pain.
They said the sun shines there and I believed them. I believed them until I saw how the toxic vapors coming from the junkyard at the outskirts of the city formed an aurora borealis covering the whole sky.
That was their sun.
Death was their sun!
I had no choice but to remain here since the next city was too far and the transportation would either use my rent,or my college fees monies. Besides, this was proclaimed to be the richest city in the area- the only location where I had a chance of finding a job.
Everywhere was the same anyway. The rich live in luxury while the poor are left to pick up the scraps.
Every day is a struggle for survival. Everyone acts like a predator, not even waiting for your corpse to get cold so that they can strip you of your possessions.
This is what poverty does to people. The lack of a defined middle class sets a bottomless chasm between these two types of inhabitants. The wealthy stay in their ivory towers while we collapse in the street.
How can they live so large and leave so little for the rest of us you may ask?It’s human nature. The evolution of the species. The competitiveness of always being on top helps you easily forget what you have to do to get there -and I was about to learn this the hard way.
I registered in Echo Millennium Academy and luckily managed to pay the first installment and find a shoebox apartment where they didn’t ask for a few months’ rent in advance.
At first, I had hope, things seemed to finally be going my way. I even got a night job at a packaging company. It wasn’t much. I could barely cover the rent, but it was a start. The chance I never got anywhere else. Things, for the first time, seemed to be going in the right direction, but with each moment that passed, Nat and Sebastian were running out of time.
My first day at the academy was two weeks after arriving in town. Day one of the senior year. I knew the rules from my old college. Don’t talk to anyone. Most of the students were representatives of the elite class, with minor exceptions of one or two that were here on Meritum scholarships. The lower class couldn’t afford to go here, and with all honesty, I couldn’t afford to be here either. But I was a fighter, I never gave up, and this wasn’t going to make an exception. I just needed an extra job...or ten.
I walked down the hall trying to figure out my schedule of seminars, lectures, and laboratories, and at the same time feeling the need to hide in the shadows of every corner so that no one would see me. A failed plan since it seemed I was the newest attraction, though not in a good way, more like in a freak show manner. My clothes were selling me out from the second I set foot in the building, and this, along with the fact that everyone knew each other from the previous years, was turning me into an intruder. All eyes were staring at me with a disgust I was already accustomed to.
‘Come, they don’t want you here.’ A freckled redhead took my hand and guided me towards the other end of the hallway.
‘What’s going on here?’ I asked, confused that she was so desperate to get me out of everyone’s sight.
A worried look emerged all over her face, as she was getting ready to explain how things really function around here ‘You’re breaking the hierarchy.’
A hierarchy wasn’t an unfamiliar notion to me. We used to have one at my old college where for certain people you needed to have permission to address them. Though I couldn’t figure out the hierarchy in this place.
‘What are the hierarchy rules around here?’ I asked, letting her in that I already had an idea of what she was talking about.
‘The main lobby,’ she answered in a short sentence, clearing everything out for me.
It all made sense since with each step I took further towards the end of it, the more pairs of consternated eyes seemed to be gazing at me.
The girl continued ‘You’re allowed to walk through there only if you need to get to classes, andonlyif there’s no way around it. The higher echelons stay at the entrance and it all descends from there on.’
I knew this was no joke, but was this place’s normality, and let’s face it, our world’s normality. What went on in here was just a reflection of the rankings used out in the streets.
‘We have to use this back door,’ she pointed to the double glass door behind us which seemed constantly on the move with all the students going in and out. I guess we weren’t the only ones that were categorized as rock bottom.
I rolled my eyes, though honestly, I didn’t have different expectations. I knew my place, or at least, the position where they all thought my place should be.
‘I’m sorry, I’m Jenna. That was rude of me,’ she giggled slapping her forehead with the tip of her fingers as a result of herkidnappinga stranger without even introducing herself.
‘It’s ok. I’m starting to believe you saved my life,’ I laughed at the irony of the situation. ‘I’m Bea.’
‘Scholarship?’ the freckled girl asked.
Don’t tell me my luxury clothes gave me away...
‘Not really, more like work my ass off type of scholarship.’ I arranged my jacket a little so I could cover up a stitched-up hole in my shirt. My thoughts still remained at how oblivious my financial condition should have been, and it wasn’t like it really affect me, but indirectly, I knew it would. The poorer they think I am, the more they’re going to feed on my misery.
‘The hardest one,’ she giggled again searching for something in her overworn bag.
