Caged

4 - Manor

I wake up the next morning laying on top of my covers.  I fell asleep so fast last night I didn’t even have time to put on pajamas.  Glara is curled up in a cocoon of blankets.  I notice she’s taken some of the pillows off my bed and put them on hers.

Glara’s eyes flutter open and she yawns.

“So,” I say to the air, really.  “What did everyone do last night?”

Glara glares at me.  “You’d know that if you had friends.”

I scoff.  “Okay.  I guess you’re right.  But since I have no one to tell, why can’t you tell me?”

“It’s classified,” Glara groans.  “And you’re pushing my buttons and it’s too early for this.  What time is it anyway?”

I glance at the clock.  “It’s nine.”

She starts complaining about how the Projection, the list of people proceeding on to Phase 1, won’t be up until four and that she can’t believe I got her up so early, and I grow tired of it and walk out of our room.

I make myself some coffee and sit in the circular window just outside my father’s study.  It’s by far the most interesting architecture in the whole house.  Every house in our part of Ecritica seems to have something like this, something unique to it.  Otherwise, each house would be a carbon copy of one another.

It’s not very comfortable to sit in either.  I have to awkwardly curve my back and if I don’t want to strain my neck, and lay back and bunch my legs in.  There’s barely enough room to hold a coffee cup, but I manage.

The view, however, is fascinating.  Since the window is on the ground floor and literally touching the ground, I can only see people’s shoes, their pants.  If a man is wearing a blue tie, I wouldn’t be able to tell.  I can wonder about people, guess where they’re going based on the shoes they’re wearing.  Glara tells me I’m a borderline stalker for doing this, but I’m not looking for anyone particular.  The same person could pass that window that just looks like a mirror from the outside, and I would never know.  I just like wondering about people, thinking about how everyone’s legs are taking them somewhere, somewhere where they have their everyday problems and struggles and people they smile at when they see.

I sit in my window for a long while until Copious passes me and tells me to quit it.

The rest of the morning drags on.  I pace the halls, looking for something to do but find nothing.  I take a shower and let my hair air dry, because I’m too impatient and my arm gets too tired holding the heavy dryer.  Glara refuses to do my hair, telling me there’s no way I’ll be going to the Preside Building today because there’s no way my name will be on the Projection.  I give up and put it in a frizzy ponytail at the side of my neck.  I throw on a red sweater and a pair of denim pants so old and handed down that the once belonged to my grandmother, and the knees are worn and faded.

My family is tense and perturbed with each other, on edge even.  Copious paces the halls, the most nervous I’ve ever seen him.  The magnitude of this Task, if one is chose for it, is still unknown, so he shouldn’t be worrying this much.  And yet, he avoids the rooms our father would be in, as if Copious is worried that he already knows that he let a Yellow get everything done in Testing.

Glara passes her time by making herself look like a model in those old tattered photographs richer cities sometimes use in their magazine ads.  Ruby red lips, black and gold flecked eyes, a simple white sundress hugging her skinny waist.  I pass our bathroom multiple times over the course of two hours and Glara stands in front of the mirror, brushing her hair for the entire duration of those hours.