Artemisia High

2 | Bad Luck

Cinder had already gotten her materials out by the time class started. Her Engineering & Mechanics IV teacher, Ms. Walton, walked in and started writing names on the board. After writing all of the names, she wrote "PROJECT GROUPS" at the top of the board above the names.

"Hello class. I'm sure you're wondering what the project is. At the beginning of every year, I have my students complete a pre-assessment to see where everyone is. By now, I expect you to be advanced, so I know you will meet my challenge. Find your partner as I hand out the project directions and syllabus."

Cinder sighed and looked at the board. Most of the names were of senior boys, as there was only one other junior in the class besides Cinder. Cinder scanned the board for her name. The name written beside hers was Kaito.

She'd never really spoken with Kai, but she very well knew who he was. His father was a wealthy businessman and his mother passed away 7 years ago. He was every girl's dream. Though he did fairly well in school overall, he was one of the worst students in the Engineering & Mechanics pathway. He flunked E&M I his freshman year and had to retake it over the summer but lied about it to those in the E&M II class the next year. Cinder, being the top student in the pathway, had found out the truth. Knowing he was her partner made her stomach flip, not because of his status or looks, but because she didn't want to start the year off on the wrong foot.

And she only had one foot.

See, Cinder had a complicated past. At the age of three, her parents died and she was left on the streets, eventually taken into an orphanage. From there, she entered foster care and constantly cycled through homes until she was in a fatal car crash at the age of 11. Both of her foster parents at the time died and she was left in a coma. During that time, doctors had to amputate her left leg and hand. They fitted her with prosthetics and performed surgery on the parts of her body that could be saved. She was then adopted by the Linhs from the foster family that took her in during her hospitalization.

Cinder had no recollection of any of this. Her brain had been damaged in the accident and left her with no memory of her past. Her adoptive father, Garan Linh, told her about her past the day he brought her home. A month and a half later, he died of cancer.

Since then, Cinder's life had only become rockier. Her adoptive mother mistreated her, her adoptive older sister cared little for her, and her adoptive younger sister was manipulated by her blood family into pretending not to love the girl who "killed" her father. Cinder wished she could go back to the last foster family she had, but they lived in a remote part of California. The state was so vast that she wouldn't know where to look.

Cinder looked down at her hand and saw the metal plating of her prosthetic peeking out from beneath her glove. It was a fairly nice prosthetic hand, but her prosthetic foot was another story. She had the same prosthetics from when she was 11 because her adoptive mother wouldn't buy her new ones. Her hands hadn't gotten much larger, but her foot had. It made it hard to walk on the left side when the prosthetics were a little too small and a little too short.

Cinder fidgeted with the hem of her glove as her partner approached her. She kept her head down as he slid into the seat next to her.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi," she replied.

The sat for a moment in awkward silence.

"So...partners, huh?" Kai said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Yeah," she said. She grabbed a piece of metal that had been put on her desk and began to examine it. Unknowingly, her glove had shifted when she lifted her hand from the desk. Soon enough, she felt Kai's eyes trailing down her hand to the metal that lay beneath.

Self-consciously, Cinder dropped the metal and placed her hand under the desk.

"Why don't we start reading over the project directions?" she suggested.

Kai looked away with embarrassment and stared at the paper on the desk. Cinder flipped through the papers with her right hand and made a mental note of what she wanted to do to fit the project.

By the time they had awkwardly gotten through all of it, class was almost over.

"Hey, um, why don't we exchange numbers so we can talk about what we want to do?"

"Oh. Um, okay. I have a flip phone, though, so..."

"That's fine."

Cinder took out a sticky note and wrote down her number. She hastily gave it to Kai just as the bell rang.

With that, Cinder faded into the crowd as best as she could. She walked the halls until she spotted a redheaded girl pushing past the crowd.

"Hey, Cinder...what's up?"

Cinder opened her mouth to answer, but Scarlet stopped her.

"Don't answer that. I don't think I can take your sarcasm at this hour."

"Let me guess. Someone said something crude to you and now you have to watch your back."

"No, actually. I did something right for once. Well, I always do the right thing, but this was justified and well thought-out."

Cinder sighed. The first experience she had with Scarlet doing something "justified" was when she helped Cinder up after tripping and falling. The events that led up to that including a girl and her friend bullying Cinder over her prosthetics, cornering her until she quite literally couldn't stand her ground. Scarlet stood up for her and sent the bullies running.

"Okay, what is it?" Cinder said, pulling on her gloves as she walked beside Scarlet.

"So, you know that guy Roland?"

"Mm...yeah, I think so."

"Well, he was being his typical jerk self and was beating up this new girl. Obviously, I stepped in and got her out of there. Ugh, I hate him so much! Next time I see him, I'm gonna kick his— Oh, look, there's the girl!"

Scarlet whistled and began waving her hands in the air like a maniac. The girl noticed and started walking towards them, making herself as small as possible. She was so small and pale that she was almost invisible. That seemed to be her goal, and hanging around Scarlet was not going to help her with that.

"Hey, I don't think you ever told me your name," Scarlet said to the girl as they walked down the hall.

"It's Cress."

"Oh, I have a weird name too," Cinder said. "It's Cinder. At least, that's the name they gave me."

Cress looked up at her with a curious expression.

"I'm adopted," Cinder said. "My real parents died and I was orphaned. Then I went into foster care and my foster parents died in a crash. I was with another family for...reasons, and then I was adopted. And then my adoptive father died."

"Oh. Are the prosthetics from the car crash?"

Cinder stopped walking and bumped into someone. Her eyes went wide and she pulled down the hem of her glove as much as she could.

"How'd you know?"

"I saw the metal plating on your hand. I'm sort of a tech person, I guess. Sorry about that."

Cinder didn't say anything but made a mental note to refit her gloves. She just chewed on the inside of her cheek and waited for Scarlet to break the tension.

Cress was the one who spoke up. "If it makes you feel any better, I was in an orphanage for a while. My mom died, but it turns out my dad didn't, so here I am."

"My mom," Scarlet interjected, "left us. And my dad died from alcohol poisoning, so now I've just got my grand-mère. We all got the short end of the stick that is life, I guess. It sucks, but it doesn't hold me back, and it shouldn't hold you back either."

Scarlet smiled confidently, walking proudly down the hall with two people very different from her, but all with one thing in common: bad luck.