The Arena - The Moon Trilogy - Book #2

Chapter three:

Clarity opened her eyes. There was a dull headache thrumming in the back of her head, and although she had only just woken up, she felt strangely nauseous. She resisted the urge to throw up as she sat up in bed and swung her feet over the side. A quick look around told her that Jessie was, once again, missing.

Clarity rose unsteadily to her feet. She was starting to reconsider her decision to go into Glenrail.

She hardly ever got sick, and never so suddenly like this. The closest she could remember to feeling like this was when August had used her to communicate something to the rest of the group, using telepathy. She shuddered at the memory. She still hated the feeling of not being in control of her own body, even though she almost certainly would be dead if it hadn't happened.

She stumbled into the bathroom. Although small, the bathroom thankfully did have a shower. She stripped off her clothes, which were slightly damp, as if she had been sweating during the night. Strange, I don't remember having any bad dreams last night...

Just as soon as the thought occurred to her, she remembered the odd dream about August. However, she soon forgot again as she scrubbed herself clean, almost as if the memory was attached to the sticky, hot feeling that she'd woken up with.

After the shower, she was feeling a lot better. She would be going shopping after all.

She pulled on some jeans, a shirt, and her warmest sweater. She grabbed her purse and slipped her feet into some boots, and made sure to grab her umbrella on the way out the door.

Although the sky was overcast and there was a biting chill in the air, there was thankfully no rain. Clarity threw the unused umbrella in the back seat of the hovercar as she buckled her seatbelt. Hopefully she wouldn't have to use it.

It was about an hour to her destination. She glanced at the digital clock on the radio. 11:37. She had slept later than she had first thought. She would have to eat some lunch as her breakfast when she arrived.

She started the car and headed north towards Glenrail. There were several cities in the area, and all of them were in close proximity to each other. The only reason she went out of her way to go to Glenrail was the fact that the food prices were a lot cheaper, and there were more stores to choose from as well.

She turned the radio on and skimmed through a few different stations. She understood that the colony that they had finally managed to get on mars was a big deal and everything, but it was still annoying when every single news station was talking about the mundane details of farming and population numbers. It had been a couple months already, so she was shocked that the hubbub hadn't died down by now. She was almost sick of hearing about it by this point.

She switched the channel a few more times, but found nothing that interested her, so she turned it off again and just resigned herself to a silent ride.

For a little while, she was driving through a grassland, but then she reached the housing district.

As far as she could see, there was nothing but shiny, multi-story buildings that held hundreds of thousands of people. These kinds of things had become common over the past few years, so they had cropped up everywhere, seemingly overnight. Until she'd come to Oakridge for college, she had never had any contact with them, but now she had to drive through them pretty much no matter where she went.

There had once been a brief period where people tried making hovering city things above oceans or other bodies of water to stop the forests and other natural areas from being completely annihilated, but nothing had really come of it.

She tuned out her surroundings and focused on driving. She didn't want to think about overpopulation.

It seemed a short time before she reached Glenrail, most likely due to the fact that she was zoning out half the time.

Her first stop was the clothing store. She needed new pants after ruining her best ones, some better shoes, and a raincoat so that she didn't have to bring her umbrella everywhere she went during the rainy season.

She parked in front of a tall building and went in.

A short time later, she was loading her purchases into the trunk of the hovercar. She didn't have much money, so she had to buy discounted shoes that were a very strange shade of pink, but they were better than nothing.

She also wanted to stock up on food after Jesse took most of it to make food for a party or something like that. Clarity didn't really remember exactly the reason, only that they barely had any food left.

She navigated the traffic-ridden streets until she caught sight of a grocery store that wasn't twenty stories up and exclusive to pass-holders.

She almost couldn't find a parking spot, but then a car pulled out of a place on the second story, so she was able to park without searching forever in all the nearby lots.

She wrapped her arms around herself as she made her way through the jungle of cars.

The store was pleasantly warm, and she lingered a second in the doorway, where the heaters were turned on a higher setting than in the rest of the store.

Clarity didn't go to town very often, and Jesse only ever bought things that had no nutritional value at all, like clothes or makeup, so she wanted to get mostly long-lasting food. Dehydrated noodles, canned goods, freeze-dried maybe...

She rolled her eyes as she walked past the produce section. They had raised the prices again. Lettuce was almost 40 dollars a head if you wanted it fresh and authentic. With so little farmlands, it was ridiculous if you wanted to eat natural unless you were a millionaire. There were clone fruits, but those had less than a fraction of the nutrients.

She picked out a few cans of soup, some other canned items, and a couple of packages of pasta. After grabbing some bread, peanut butter, and jelly, she was satisfied with her load. Although the wheat famine had ended the year previous, prices were still recovering, and she almost just grabbed the faux-wheat bread, even though it tasted like sawdust.

She got in line, but of course, she was shopping in an all-access store, so there were at least seven people at every open register. She sighed and found the least busy one, waiting her turn for what felt like hours before she could check out.

She scurried across the parking lot and stashed her food alongside the clothes from earlier. Her stomach growled. She'd completely forgotten about getting lunch when she got into town.

She had a sudden craving for pizza, and she just so happened to know a good pizza place in Glenrail. She got back in the car and headed that way.

The shop was small and barely had any customers. In the fashion of an old-timey pizza parlor, the floors were checked black and white. Old posters hung on the walls, advertising old brands of soda or cars from when the newest models still had wheels.

The shop was going out of business in favor of newer eateries, but she liked the vibe of the place.

There was no line, even though it was still early enough for the last lunch rush patrons to be there—a testament to how little business the place got—so Clarity was able to walk right up to the register. She ordered two slices of three meat pizza and settled down in a corner booth to eat.