When I was young, I loved sitting in front of the bright glowing TV me and my dad once had. In our small one bedroom apartment two blocks from town center. Watching whatever was on that night. The way I had to get up from my crisscrossed position four feet from the TV to hit it, not too hard but hard enough that the screen would stop making that terrible static sound and flashy graphics that it would make if the city's signals were low which it was often.

  I loved that old TV.

  But then Dad took a baseball bat to it after a seemingly hard day at his corporate job where he worked from 3am to 8pm just like everyone else with an office job. Slamming as hard as I’d ever seen him hit something. Until it had been smashed to bits, with one large blade of glass landing just under my eye as

  I was screaming “DAD STOP, STOP”

  trying to pull him away. Dad saw what he had done and rushed 8 year old me to the ugly old dark green couch with mold stains seeping out the creases as he got down to my eye level and sat me down while he repeated the all too familiar words

  “Oh I’m so sorry baby, dad’s sorry”

  I just looked past him at our now broken TV that I loved so much.

  Just from that information my dad sounded very flawed and he was but we all are and at least after all his mistakes he apologized and that was more than a lot of other people can say.

  I miss my dad now walking into that empty apartment now 8 years later, same ugly dark green couch except now almost fully covered in mold. But of course no landlords cared, a 17 year old girl was probably slowly being killed with mold. And the government most definitely did not care, they only cared about their people being devoted subjects ready to work themselves to death. Most people really did work themselves to death too, which was unfortunate knowing that I could see my future from 7 years away.

  All kids under 18 went to schools which all taught us to stay in line and you would be fine. Most kids of course went along with everything school taught because why would they lie? But I always felt different, I never knew why nobody questioned anything. My mind was always stuck on the question of

  “Is this the true purpose of the human race?”.

  At 7am Monday, I open my eyes after a long night of deep sleep. I sit up from my bed which has two pillows without pillowcases and a thin blanket. I never touch the left pillow as it was dads and when he comes back he will want things exactly how he left them.

  I step onto the cold concrete floor and walk to my window, I open the curtains to let in the sunlight. All the windows have bars so no one on the top floors of the apartments can try to jump out, but people just got creative with how they would try to end it. It's not very common though due to how good the few doctors are so you would most likely be saved. I look down into town as I'm on the 5th floor. I see officers patrol the streets, there's nobody out right now, all the adults are at work. I can see the sidewalk from my apartment end and a crosswalk that leads to another sidewalk that goes to my school Dansel High.

  I walk away from my window as an officer shouts at me

  “What?!”

  I walk out of my tiny bedroom into my even smaller kitchen. I grab a cup from one of my metal cabinets. I go to fill it up with sink water but as I turn it on I remember, the plumbing is under reconstruction so the water is a murky brown. It's been that way for 3 weeks now. I throw the cup in the sink, giving up on quenching my morning thirst.

  I walk into my bathroom that consists of a tiny shower with clear curtains, a toilet next to it, and a sink with no mirror.

  I get into the cold shower after undressing. When I'm done I go back to my room to put on my uniform. A white long-sleeved shirt, over that a black blazer, and a red plaid skirt, with a red tie over my neck.

  As I head out the apartment I grab my small black backpack and throw it around my shoulder.

  I walk out of my apartment locking the door behind me. Walking down the long slim hall with dim light to the elevator always made me a little uneasy. I hate the way the red carpet lined the floor and how the lights swung with every breeze of air. I step on to the elevator and just as the doors start to close a thin hand shoots in the middle of the closing doors, stopping them from closing.

  “Sorry Adira I gotta get to work” says Will,

  The boy who lives a few doors down from me, I’ve known him since I was 7

  “Shouldn't you have been there already?” I say

  in a worried tone not knowing the punishment for being late but knowing it's bad, especially 4 hours late. Will is 2 years older than me so he started work 2 years before me while I'm still stuck in school.

  “Yea but we work every day for hours on end, I think being a little late is fine” Will says in a joking tone.

  I press the 1st floor button, I then step back and turn to face Will.

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  “William, you look so proper with your hair all done and in this suit” I say touching up his tight curls, looking at his black suit.

  “Yea well, I can't be late and look like a bum”

  Just then the elevator doors open and we both walk out and head to the front door of the building. At the exit two officers are standing guard. I walk a little ahead of Will to make it look like we weren't talking. As I pass one of the officers I hear a sharp whistle, I look back at one if the office who's looking me up and down

  “What? Keep walking”

  says the officer smirking at me

  I feel my hands tighten into a fist, but before I can say anything.

  “Watch your mouth pig” Will shouts

  I realize what he just did and luckily just then a loud BOOM comes from downtown. Most likely an act of the rebellion.

  The officers sprint away from the apartment building toward the noise.

  Me and Will speed off in the direction of the school. As we run off I look over into an abandoned store window we pass by, and see my curly hair in two braids touch my butt and my dark brown eyes looking back at me.

  “Don't ever do that again, you know what will happen” I say

  “Sorry I guess, but hey at least gods got our back, the timing of that noise was perfect,” he says enthusiastically

  “I don't believe in God, that was pure luck” I say rolling my eyes

  I actually enjoy the walk to school. Looking at the many halfway-destroyed buildings, they were a consequence of the war but the government doesn't see the need to fix them. I like the smell of the gas coming from the production factory. The smell is soothing to me even though I know that it is killing the earth. I can't help but like it oddly. But the gas smell is overtaken by the smell of death when me and Will reach the bridge.

  A row of people hanging off the bridge on nooses has an awful smell and an even worse sight.

  Those people were in the rebellion. I looked at each of the 10 corpses, their bodies were covered by black bags to save their clothes for resources, while their heads were uncovered.

  I gag at the smell and look away. Will moves to the side of me facing the bridge obscuring my view. We then speed up to get away from the smell.

  “It's so sad isn't it” Will remarks

  “Yea..but” I hesitate “they were dumb enough to join the rebellion, they had to expect that” I reply

  Will looks at me with a confused expression

  “I'm not saying I don't feel bad, it's just so stupid, ya know?” I say trying to explain what I mean

  “Yea I guess but they were just fighting against this horrendous system” Will replies

  “They were fighting a losing war is what they were doing” I comment looking at the ground. When I look at Will he looks deep in thought.

  “Aren't we just losing a battle by not fighting at all though?” he says after a minute of thought.

  Before I can reply I realize school is a few feet away so I turn to Will and say

  “I've got to go, see you tomorrow ok”

  I then ran into school without looking back. I hate this system too, probably more than Will but a rebellion has never worked so I don't understand why people think it would now, especially with so few joining because they have the same thought as me.

  As I walk into school I get into line behind the other few early kids. One being a 6-year-old. Schools aren't separated by age; there are kids from 5 years old to 17 years old. I look past the little girl to the front and see the school officers taking their sweet old-time checking our bags. We can't have any connection to the rebellion in our bags. Last year a guy had a poster that read “Join the resistance or burn”.

  That kid was beaten so badly that he had bruises for weeks after.

  Just then the little girl in front of me walks forward towards the officers. She skips a little, and the officer grabs her bag out of her hands and looks through it. He pulls out a little sticky note. The little girl happily says

  “My mom wrote that for-” she gets interrupted

  “Shut up,” the officer says,

  crumbling her note and throwing it back in her bag.

  He then shoves the bag into her arms and she walks away no longer happy or skipping.

  When it's my turn I walk up and hand over my bag. The officer looks through it then throws it back. I walk past them and into the halls of school. The halls are lined with lockers with the floor painted a dark blue. When I find my classroom, room B18, I walk in seeing my teacher Ms Blake.

  “Good day Ms. Blake”

  “Good day Adira”

  I took my seat all the way in the back, the front was for kids who wanted to be seen and heard, I wanted neither. After 15 minutes the other kids in my class rush in and start taking seats.

  “Hey mother”

  I look up and see Sylvia, my closest friend.

  “Hey kid”

  She called me mother because when we were 10 I would always do what a mother would do for their kid for her; clean her cuts, cook for her, feed her. I did it all, her mother was dead, so was mine but I always just felt an urge to protect her and she knew that.

  She sat next to me and took her bookbag off and set it on the ground. Her long black hair covering her shoulders and her light brown eyes staring at me.

  “How's the bridge today?” Sylvia says

  “Full” I reply

  “That's unfortunate, I'm so glad my house is on the other side of the bridge”

  Sylvia exclaims.

  “I feel terrible for those people” she continues

  She was a little more well off than me. Not much but enough that she had a house and not an apartment. There were levels to your money, but there was an obvious huge difference between this side of the divide and the other side. All the extremely rich live in huge mansions and don't have to work unless they wanted to become a head officer. Only those whose family was rich before the war had that privilege. Sylvia's dad just had worked for longer than most, so he was a boss at one of the office jobs. So, she lived on the other side of the bridge not being able to see the bodies. But even then, they still lived on this side of the divide dealing with the same things everyone else was.

  “Class listen up” Mrs. Blake yells

  “for today's lesson each one if you will learn about our dutifully officers” Mrs. Blake continues

  “All officers are our strong protectors, but you already know that, but did you know to become an officer you must first have caught and executed a traitor or turn them into the already established officers who will execute them. Then you have to get accepted into the military training program. And lastly you have to do a full 5 years of training to then finally be a full-time officer. A pillar of this great world.”

  A guy named Sel anders raises his hand

  “Yes Sel?” Mrs. Blake says

  “If there are no traitors how do they get in?” Sel askes

  “There will always be vile humans like rebels” Mr Blake replied

  “But-” Sels interrupted

  “Moving on class” Mrs. Blake exclaims

  Mrs. Blake is very dismissive and rarely answers our questions. That's just what she was told to do though I assume. No teacher will speak ill of the T.G.U.D, they can't or else they will go missing and come back lobotomized.