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"Keep a smile on your face, darling. You can't afford to be a sore loser right now."
The words sting more than the last time my father deemed me a loser. I have a habit of recalling moments like that far more vividly than any positivity I've managed to earn from my parents, so I replay various "loser" moments throughout my education as the two of them walk me toward the graduation afterparty. They're behaving as if I'm just as sad as the gray-badged abandoned citizens we pass along the way. I probably am, in their eyes. I just can't let myself look like the disappointment they see me as, or else the rest of the world will see it too.
It was one thing when I returned home second in my class; it was a dreadful disappointment when my final landed me in the eleventh spot, right beneath the cutoff for Imperium Policies. I don't see how the graders didn't like my writing, my presentation, my intelligence. Nonetheless, it happened; I was pushed down to eleventh, and while I've accepted it, I'm having enough trouble trying to get over what's out of my control with my parents now looking down on me like this.
We head through the open doors into the reception. Fingers wrap tightly around my wrist, and I glance up, Dad's face tight in his suppression of anger I know he feels toward me. The smile I pull my lips into feels as if it's using every muscle in my face, weakly tugging at my cheeks but having no impact on my eyes that are likely screaming for help to anyone who looks closely.
He lets go of my arm, and I clasp my hands gently in front of me. As I turn my focus forward again, a burst of color in a sea of gray and other dark, muted colors catches my eye. A teenage girl in a yellow dress stands with a drink in hand, alone off to the side of a table. Mom notices someone she knows and wanders off toward them, and Dad continues on in another direction. I stop walking, glimpsing back at the girl to see her eyes observing me thoughtfully.
Yellow. What an odd color for a day like this. My hand moves to my hip to touch the red ribbon tucked slightly beneath my shirt; it would have been deemed inappropriate for the ceremony, so I had to swallow my pride and hide it before my parents took it as another excuse to express their disappointment.
I search the crowd for a face I can trust won't shame me. Almost instantly, I find Reb standing by the drinks, talking to another from our class. I wrap my arms around myself as a slight chill rolls through the room, and I prepare to put on a smile that will likely get easier once I talk to him. I'm sure he, of all people, wouldn't treat me as less than I am because of my rank. Neither of us could ever outright share our true feelings about Imperium, but in the few conversations we've had, I've noticed a certain discomfort that settles over him in school. In the same sense that I observed the professors, leaders, and policies of Imperium, I observed the people through my time at the Academy. I yearned for subtle hints that someone else was seeing the inconsistencies and injustices of our country, and I never noticed it from anyone but him.
I'm just a few more strides away from Reb when a hand grasps my wrist.
I whip around and yank my hand back, holding it to my chest. The girl in the yellow dress stands before me, her eyes studying me the same curious way they had been moments before.
"Congratulations," she says, and smiles in such a genuine way that I'm certain this isn't some pitied attempt at making me feel better for being so close to the cutoff...so close to perfection.
"Thank you." I'm at a loss for words, so I just let a breath of a laugh out and shake my head. "Thank you. I'm Ellie."
"Oh, I know." She holds her hand out. "Ya Ling."
YOU ARE READING
The Rejects
General FictionThere's order to everything. Everything has a pattern, a set of rules that keeps it functioning. Without it, organisms die, governments fail, civilization collapses. There's a reason we're the only ones left. We had order, while the rest of the worl...
