Collision

Chapter 1

Mariana’s POV

I looked at the mirror which stood in front of me. I glanced at the image that stared back. My long brown hair was curled and my brown eyes were dull looking, not the best color but I’ve learned to live with them. My tan skin looked a little paler maybe because I wasn’t going out as much.

My thoughts wandered off of what life used to be like, not that I remember much of it. I am not from here, no nowhere near it. I was born and raised in Harlem, New York. I lived in a small apartment with my mom and dad, both loving, both endearing; until my father found a new job. Back then we weren’t exaggeratedly poor but we weren’t living by a flamboyant lifestyle either. I remember my father would come home every morning from his night-time shift as a factory worker and he’d kiss my mother goodbye as she would go off to work as a house cleaner. Then, he’d kiss me on the forehead as I headed off to school.

He never envisioned that for himself, he always dragged on and on about a better life, a brighter tomorrow. He went to college but he never really had anything waiting for him in the outside world. His biggest dream was to become rich and successful. He always aspired to own his own company.

 All of his hard work finally pulled off in my 6th grade year when he opened his own small loan firm, ‘Richards’ Loans’. It wasn’t that successful until suddenly people started to fawn over it, they loved the welcoming air, the friendly workers and the genuinely honest service my father’s company provided. In less than a year, business was booming. What was once a small company in New York, became a big business all over the United States. Soon, it traveled across the seas making it to places like Asia, Australia and all over Europe. In my mid 8th grade year, I was told I had to move across the world because my father’s biggest company corporation was in London and he had to be present at all times.

I am no longer in what people here call, year 8, I had just graduated a while ago and now I’m 18, but boy was it weird coming here. See, over here they had social class divisions. Much like society had all over the world but this was a little different. It reminded me a bit of old 80’s movies where teens would brawl and hurl at each other because they believed their classification in society was superior against the other. I was literally living in an 80’s movie.

In my town, we were all divided into groups; two to be exact, the brats and the roadies. I suppose you can assume which one I was on. The brats were seen as superior to the middle-class people. Nothing less than elite snobs who would be too busy comparing money and social status rather than try to contribute to help out with a big issue in the world today like I don’t know, world hunger?

The roadies were seen as nothing more than scum or dirt on someone’s shoes. They were nobodies; no one accepted them as real people, just criminals. They were dressed in too casual manners, sometimes in rags, looking like they need new clothes, and they didn’t care about anything. I guess you could say they were bad. But how should I know? I’ve never been too close to them to actually get to know one. I am only going by what society has taught me as a brat, and what I was taught was that neither group were ever to associate kindly with each other. Not unless you wanted to end up in jail or dead, because that’s how far people would take it.

I did not choose this lifestyle, I never wanted this lifestyle. Who wants to live their entire life living by what society deemed them to be? Who wanted to be just another stereotype to the world? Oh, my parents, because that’s why I am here, because of them.

After a while, the love left, the kind words that would fill our home fleeted away and took all the beautiful memories with it. My parents became cruel, cold people who were too greedy to know that they were hurting people, hurting me. The worst part about it is, it’s like we were all strangers, living under the same roof, breathing the same air, seeing the same surroundings. And we could walk right past each other for hours on end without acknowledging the other.