It is time for the Choosing. My callous hands, rough from work and play in the dirt, are clumsy and rigid as I attempt to pin my hair up. I am wearing my best dress and have my mother’s thick, light colored powder clogging my pores. I feel like a pig compared to the woman who is fixing me.
“Ten minutes.” Mother says sharply from behind me. I am still trying to wrestle my hair up onto my head when she takes the clip and fastens it up in one fell swoop. It’s immaculate, all of the curly black strands perfectly in place. It looks like she spent hours on it.
I smile at her in the mirror. Her lips curl upward in response, but her eyes remain bleak. My eyes find my shoes.
Mother spins me around and tilts my chin up. She licks her fingers and wipes under my eyes, but she pushes too hard and my vision blurs. She drags me to the door, opening and practically shoving me out. A bus is waiting to take me to the Choosing.
“I love you,” I tell her. There is no response.
The bus is crowded. It smells like unwashed bodies and a mixture of excitement and anxiety. At each stop, more people push onto the packed vehicle. I cannot believe this is my first bus ride, and it is so unpleasant.
“Move,” yells a big boy from behind me. He looks like he burns ants for fun. I press my body against a dirty plastic window. I am amazed at how fat he is until I see him scream at a short, skinny girl to give him her food.
“Stop!” I intervene. His eyes scan my body, giving me a once over. He smiles a little, and it is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.
“What are you gonna do bout’ it, huh, sweetie pie?” he breathes in my face. I lean away. The girl has scampered to the back of the bus.
“N-n-nothing.” I try to squirm away, but he holds my shoulders to the wall. He has light brown hair and an expression that could make milk go sour.
“It better be nothing.” He says, but it sounds like he has just told me he’s going to rip off my arms. I nod, and the bus comes to an abrupt stop. The eighteen-year-old riders seem to let out a collective breath as they rush out.
The dome is made of glass and steel, and I wonder how it has not been brutally violated and vandalized by the occupants of the Poor Borough. It seems sterile and refined, a great contrast from the rickety shacks of my hometown.
I walk in with a horde of girls and boys. Two giddy teenagers whisper to each other. I know them from school. They are Ash and Bella, Bella and Ash, and you wouldn’t be able to fit a coin between them if you tried. They have been inseparable since preschool. A pang of jealousy hits me like a punch.
I enter the windowed metal door of the dome.
“Wow,” I tell no one in particular. My voice echoes slightly. Rows of metal seats line the floor, but what really catches my eye is the enormous stage.
I am shoved along by the group until I break free and take a seat. After about half an hour, the audience hushes as a man with gray hair occupies the stage. The President. He seems like a nervous person, always fidgeting and straightening his tie.
We go up to receive a notecard with the information about our lives in alphabetical order.
Time passes, and my name is called. I am lucky it starts with “A”.
“Dear-“ says the President, glancing at the paper with my name printed on the back. “Astrid Brand, I present you with your life!” The crowd cheers, although he has said this exact same thing about two hundred times already.
I open the notecard, traditionally going to read my title. I blink and swallow.
“Rich.” I yell to the waiting group.
Away from my family, my sister. My tears fall to the floor silently as I run from the stage, from the calculating eyes of the audience.
They bring me home in a car.
