Paragon Exordium

Chapter One: Sarah Young

Chapter 1: Sarah Young

Focus on your task at hand, Sarah. It's like Dad always says, 'You can't reach tomorrow until you've finished with today.' Sarah Young glanced at her reflection in the scooter's mirrors. She missed wearing make-up; her thin, almond-shaped eyes could have used some eyeshadow.

Looking tired as usual, but it could be worse. I could look tired when I don't feel tired, she thought sarcastically, smiled at herself a second, and then clambered onto the small blue scooter.

Sarah tucked her wavy, dark brown hair up into her helmet so it wouldn't fly in her face as she drove — another on the list of minor inconveniences. Sarah liked to take the time to straighten out those waves in the mornings before she went anywhere. Straightening them made her look more like her mother, and that gave her just a hint of her mother's confidence. But these days, that was impossible.

No time to worry about that, Sarah thought as she glanced down at her list of assignments for the day. I have to get to work. Still a dozen interviews I need to get through. Her finger traced the list of names and locations until it found the first one without a checkmark. Out by the bypass. Cool, I know where that is.

The scooter's engine coming to life could barely be classified as a purr. It was so quiet. Here, outside her dorm, was quiet. She couldn't see a soul. It felt like she'd been left behind on campus during school break. This changed quickly as she drove. Even if the campus somehow still slept, the rest of the town and its inhabitants were wide awake.

By the time she'd pulled off campus, rolling mostly unopposed down the road, the buzz of the city, beeps of construction vehicles, the frantic barking of dogs, and instructions hollered over the din of tools drowned out the purr of her scooter.

She caught herself about to take a turn towards a grocery store and corrected her turn signal to off. Not that there was anyone behind her to signal to. Still, she checked both ways before speeding back up from her slow-down. Keeping an eye on the road, she avoided one of a dozen large potholes big enough to ruin her borrowed vehicle.

Sarah came to a stop at a four-way light at the turn of a sign by an orange-vested man standing in the middle of the lanes. She looked longingly at a closed coffee shop on a corner as a series of battered vehicles passed by on her left. Around the corner, she spied a pair of moving trucks being loaded down with heavy furniture from the offices they were parked outside of.

The movers made little effort to preserve the finish of the furniture as they loaded it quickly and haphazardly into the backs of the trucks. They're probably amateurs, she thought, recalling how many moving companies her mother had her research before finally choosing one to help them move out of the suburbs and into the city when she was in high school.

But that city was states away, in Pennsylvania. She was here in Georgia, at her father's alma mater, and there was no telling what was happening to the north. Or farther south, east, or west, for that matter. Sarah sighed when the traffic director signaled for her to keep waiting as he gave a row of smelly trucks priority. The trucks trundled by, one by one, beds filled with lumpy cargo.

Stink molested the air around her. She brought a hand up, covering her nose. The smell was not unfamiliar; the whole city lingered with it. It'd been getting better, sure, but these trucks were transporting the source, so they did little to make it more palpable.

For some reason, they slowed. The truck in front of Sarah that had been following the other a bit too closely slammed on the brakes. She heard both the driver and the traffic director curse as the truck lurched to a halt. The sudden braking caused a five-foot-long piece of cargo wrapped in a dirty sheet to fall out the back and strike the concrete with a sickening squelch.