Field of Daisies

Chapter 8

Instead of finishing out high school with the rest of their peers, those with a Steward Assignment, including myself, begin their year of training elsewhere.

At the start of the school year, I said goodbye to my parents and good luck to my then first year sister. My name had been carried around town with the summer breeze before my departure, so I was ready to go if only to escape the misplaced congratulations and jealousy. Upon boarding the train for the facility I would call home for the next year, I gave one last wave and found my seat. I ready to be anywhere but there.

The Stewards are taught the importance of appearance from the beginning, starting by wearing designated uniforms. As training continues, so does our transformation into carbon copies of each other. Our hair must be colored "caramel" or "chestnut" and straightened every day, if not chemically treated, the first step in taking away our former identity. The next step is learning how to paint our faces efficiently to cover our freckles and any other blemish that may appear, while maintaining a natural look. Bonus points to those with moles—I mean beauty marks, of course.

After completing the first week of introduction seminars, we were awarded compacts for our pills, round gold or silver disks, adorned with an emerald in the middle. Each month we were to refill the interior with another punchout packet, and always take the pills upon waking up. The compacts were the nicest thing most of us had ever owned, and the promise of accentuated beauty was appealing to most. I didn't care for improved looks, but my heart still hurt and what the round white pills did was far from a priority for me. The fact that the pills made me feel less pain, really less of anything, made me want to keep taking them, trapping me into the life I initially dreaded.

We were told that we must take our pills every day to maintain shiny hair, strong nails, smooth skin, and a pleasant attitude. They would even work as birth control, stopping our menstrual cycles from bothering us each month. They worked similarly in the guys, messing with their hormones too, so we were never allowed to trade between the sexes. We were banned from trading at all due to the individual composition of our pills in general. It was partially a ploy to make us feel special and otherwise a complex scheme where each packet was designed specifically for its user.

The pill's real purpose, which I realize now, is to reinforce the training and remolding of our new selves; to keep us quiet, submissive, and numb to both emotion and pain down to a chemical level based on the results of our genetic testing. They say becoming a Steward is a great honor, allowing up to be in the constant presence of the greatest Leaders of our time. In reality, it's a silent prison within our own bodies.

Our new names were given to us halfway through the training. Based on our performance and newly acquired personalities, the girls got monikers of flowers and the boys of trees. "To showcase your innocence and beauty," they told the girls. "To exemplify your strength and fortitude," they told the boys. It was a small ceremony where they gifted us charms adorned with jewels or metals as symbols of our new self. I received a pseudanthium of porcelain petals surrounded by a gold outline which met to form a round pistil in the center. I knew this flower from a haunting memory, but I took my new name, Daisy, with grace.

The first classes we took taught proper makeup techniques and hairstyling basics. After beginning our pills, we perfected our manner quickly. How to walk in a series of footwear, appropriate responses to the commands we would receive, and how to manipulate our voices to be more "pleasant sounding", were all lessons taught to us under the semblance of becoming proper ladies. Table manners, event planning, housekeeping, and cooking also filled our weeks. If we were deemed satisfactory in one task, we are moved onto the next until we had proven our worth amongst our peers.