Welcome to the not-so-distant future, in a city of structure and comfort. In a place where maturity and peace reigns. This is a story of one boy's fall into the chaotic pit of learning what it means to become of age.
After breaking his city's curfe...
A new school. My bags were packed and at my side. At the end of the day, I wasn't going home. I would stay locked up in the school, night after night.
I heard the giant doors of the school's gates seal shut behind me. Mom's face was already fuzzy in my mind. The good-bye seemed like a distant memory, as if she didn't ever exist. I worried that it would be like my life hadn't existed. My family and friends were gone.
The metal walls of the boarding school's courtyard rose tall above and I couldn't see over them into the horizon. I turned around and in front of me was a looming black skyscraper with the main administration office right inside the tall front doors. The rest of the building widened behind, with classrooms spreading to the back of the building. To the right and left were the long, rectangular, industrial dorms attached to the sides of the school. The school yard was symmetrical.
A bell tolled and a mob of people swept me into the black hole of the open front door. The number of kids was overwhelming. Their faces were a blur as the crowd pushed past and swung me around in circles. I didn't know where I was going and was surprised, despite how little the community talked about the school, by how many kids forcefully pushed me through the halls. Weren't they supposed to learn manners here?
"Mr. Gibson!" An authoritative voice came through the crowd, which quickly dispersed leaving me standing alone in the middle of the hallway. I turned around to face a tall, slender man with broad shoulders in a suit and tie, standing with his hands behind his back. "Pull yourself together and come with me."
The man walked quickly in front of me, almost leaving me behind. I felt like a little kid again following my parents. I still had my suitcase and bags in hand and, the more we walked, the heavier they felt. Eventually, we came to a door that he shoved open and proceeded to shove me inside. A class full of seated teens kept their heads down filling out work. Notes covered the entire board at the front of the room. I took all of my bags over to the one empty seat left in the room. No one looked up as I walked. A worksheet was already pulled up on an electronic pad ready to go on my desk.
The first day at the boarding school passed uneventfully with the current of students carrying me through my day until I ended up in the dining hall again that evening. At dinner that evening, I sat at the table assigned to me. The first thing I noticed was that it didn't have the festive placemats that Mom had set out the night before. Instead, the tabletops here were colorless.
I looked up to see a dark-haired, expressionless boy looking down at me with a metal tray in his hand. The boy let the tray fall with a clang onto the table. The fork and spoon rattled beside it.
I quickly looked down at his tray and kept my eyes on the bowl of pea soup. For a while, we ate in silence.
A few more students arrived and sat at our table. There were six in total.
Peering up from my tray I saw that none of the students looked at each other as they ate. None of them spoke to each other either. Instead, they looked down and synchronously spooned their brownish peas and squishy gray fish into their mouths.
The silence weighed on me to the point where I had to cast it from my shoulders, so I spoke, "Hi. I've just got here today. I'm not sure what to do."
"Repent for whatever brought you here," It was the dark-haired boy.
I said under my breath, mildly grumpily, "I didn't do anything that bad," then continued: "Why are you here?"
The first boy at the table, the dark-haired boy, looked at me with a scowl. "I've always gone to school here."
My eyes widened in shock. I hadn't known that there were any children that started school here. I always thought that rotten kids were sent away. Of course, most of what I knew was from Weston, and even those were only rumors that he exaggerated, more to amuse us than to inform.
I felt sad thinking of Weston. If he was here, I'd at least have someone to talk to while I was cooped up. I wonder where they have gone? I slunk down into the dining chair. My shoulders hunched forward to shield me from everyone at the table. That was alright with the dark-haired boy as he quickly became quiet and went back to his food.
By the end of the day, I found out that most of the students at the School Yard had started their education here from the beginning. They had never known the outside world; it was just as much of a mystery and myth to them as the School Yard and the Shadow Council were to me. I found out there were actually very few of us that were sent here from the Community. I had more questions than answers piling up, but I also felt that the Community was becoming a distant memory and, throughout the day, my eagerness to figure out answers was dwindling.
I was hardly talked to. Instead, I was talked at by teachers. I couldn't tell you anything that I was supposed to learn that first day. After the unfriendly welcome from the adults and my tablemates, I went through the next few days in a cold fog.
