Between the Lines

(Part I) One - Oliver

"We can try but..."

My home is suffocating. No one would even call it home at this point. I don't think I can leave, even if that sounds cliché. Although I don't mind clichés. God, what I would pay to have a cliché love story to change my mind on the world right now. But that's not why I left the house this morning. I left to go to school. I left to drag myself out of the little pile of books I hid myself under two long years ago, just to crawl right back under it when I get home.

I pick the speed up walking past a graveyard of cars. Some people live like that, instead of keeping the mess on the inside, they let literal cars melt outside in the summer sun. This is why Lower-class sucks. It's the government's solution to keeping people to their 'achievable' financial class, but I don't believe I know a single person that can give me an answer to what its solving. We have Lower-class, the under-paid and typically broke or broken families like mine; then there's Upper-class, the overpaid rich-ass bastards. But this whole system is stupid, all it does is makes the poor and desperate poorer and the rich and arrogant richer.

The school bell rings in the distance as I veer left out of my street. Being late is easy when you live a street away. I flick my book open. It's not a story that I would usually read, a darker book about love that turned into psychopathy. It's no niche, but it's not horribly oversaturated either. The shelves at my library are slowly running out of content so I've had to broaden my horizons, from romance to fantasy and comedy to thriller.

Its a good thing my family only owns one car. I would drive it 500m down the road everyday, I slide over the waist high fence along the edge of the school. My main options for commuting anywhere are Dad or walking. I sneak up along the school, tucking the book away and bite my lip. I'm late every day for a reason.

Lower-class State High, the dodgiest and only high school in the Lower-zone of Highland. The single heaviest burden on people my age is this school's poor attempt at education. Most teens just come here for scandal, drugs and socialising soeducation isn't exactly a popular choice. I'm one of few that actually care about graduating, I care about getting out of here.

I slowly drag myself through the doors. I keep my head down as I make my way through the halls. I don't have any friends to look out for, at least not since a few months ago. But there's people I would rather avoid, people that are kind of like salt, supposedly harmless, until they come into contact with a wound that is.

My form doesn't fuss when students come in late. Anyone who actually made it to school is usually looked at funny anyway. I sit down in my corner and pull my book from my bag and get lost in the story. The one thing that makes this place bearable is the lack of students in most of my classes. Most students don't make it to Grade 12. Almost all Lower-class high school students drop out at Grade 10, or if they happen to make it past then, they finish school and don't go to university. Of course, that's a different story if you're Upper-class, most of them graduate both high school and university. But when it's the economy you're fighting every day, most kids need to start helping with bills and have no other choice.

There's a tap at my desk, and I look up to see my form teacher standing in front of me.

"Mr. Night, is that another book?" he asks.

"Yes," I replied.

"It must be good, you completely zoned out during roll call and the notices... again."

I let out a sigh. I've been doing that a lot recently, not the best thing to do, but I've never done anything to help it, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he chuckles, "I've been a teacher long enough to understand how boring this place is for some people and I've been your teacher long enough to know that if I call out your name during roll, I probably won't get a response. I've taught myself to just look to see if you're in the room instead."

I laugh quietly at his comment, and he turns around to go back to his desk.

Then I'm back to my page. I've been a quick reader since I was little. Reading was and is still the best way to escape reality, hence the pile postulation. I never had many books back then, so I read the same ones over and over again, making up new stories in my head. But now that I can kind of do things freely, most of my books come from a small library I found. The only problem is that it's in the Middle.

The Middle is exactly what it sounds like, it's the common ground situated in between the Upper and Lower zones-north of Upper-class, east of Lower-class-but it isn't treated as a common ground. I think it more closely resembles a battle ground. Upper-class owns all the businesses and Lower-class makes it everyone's problem.

No one of different classes are meant to interact, that's just what all of society agreed on. Class Law and Regulation, however, states we cannot be in a zone that we don't belong to. Lower-class citizens live in Lower-class and can't enter the Upper-class zone, and vice versa. If they do, it's considered a violation. People took that too seriously, I guess.

The only bad thing about form ending, is the fact that I have Maths directly after, the last thing anyone wants to do on a Monday morning. Maths is the only subject I'm not good at, and I can easily blame the teacher. Every time I ask him for help on a topic or equation, he always brushes me off. "Oliver, you're a top student, you surely can't need help on this," he'll say. That's why when people ask me who my Maths teacher is, I say Google.

The end of the day crawls closer and closer until I only have two lessons left, double English. English is the reason I've gotten through my 12 years of school. It's the one thing I can do amazingly without trying, it doesn't matter what work I'm given or who teaches, I still manage top marks or close to. It could be because of how much and how quickly I can read, but also because I enjoy English. It's the only school related thing I'm motivated to do, especially if it involves creative writing.

As soon as the bell rings to announce the end of the day, my entire class starts to pack up and leave. Getting to school is hard but leaving is harder. I don't want to be here when I'm at home, and I don't want to be at home when I'm here. It's so hard to be stuck between two places, not wanting to be at either. I take my time, finishing off the last page of my book, before I finally head out.

I dodge everyone in the hallway. Being able to do that is the only positive about being this small, even at seventeen. I never let my eyes come up from the floor or the shoes of the people around me, I don't want to find people I don't want to see. Not now. I push through the doors and cross the school yard coming to the road.

When I know it's clear, I finally look up, then head down the stretch of road that I like to see as my only form of freedom. I turn to go back down the path I took this morning. Lazily, I shift my bag off one shoulder so I can reach my phone and earphones in the back pocket, before shrugging it back into a comfortable position. I skim through my playlist until I find a song to get lost in, then put my earphones in and slip my phone away into the pocket of my jeans. I let the music drown out everything around as I walk and let my shoulders and neck relax. Final destination: the Middle.

I find myself staring at the sky, scattered with clouds. Sunlight streams across the blue sky and touches the edges of the clouds making them look like they're from a picture, before stretching down and shining on my freckled skin. The only thing I appreciate about this area is that the pollution is on the ground, not in the air, so the sky is always clear.

I continue to scrape my shoes across the road until I reach the gate, the largest entry to the Lower zone. Alongside the gate is the Lower-class station, the quickest way around if you don't have a car. I walk up to the station and merge with the crowd. A train is already waiting at the station, so I get on. I find a clean seat and sit down, holding my bag on my lap and turning up my music to wait the ride out.