HUNTER

C H A P T E R O N E

My name is Aaliyah Cyrus.

I am a hunter.

We hunt Regulators.

Confused? Ok let's start from the beginning.

I sit in the cold and polished wooden table, wondering why on earth I always land myself in detention. It wasn't my fault. Who knew Coke could explode so high, it could reach the ceiling. I only shook it like a dozen times. Plus, Alison and Mo dared me.

Ms Dolls sat on the small desk opposite eyeing me as though I would come up with an epic plan to escape detentions. It's already 4 pm. There's the largest slice of cake I have ever seen on her desk. The cake is coco brown and drowned with chocolate sauce and frosted with chocolate flakes. Who knew a teacher could handle chocolate. It's like my own skin, milk chocolate. One strawberry lays right on top of the slice. The strawberry is red, the green roots perfectly in place...so perfect. Almost too perfect, almost cartoony. She catches me eyeing it and smiles wickedly before pushing her gold rimmed glasses higher up her wrinkled face.

Suddenly, the janitor Mr K,( no one knows what the K stands for) comes in with his dusty hoover and multiple multi-coloured mops, smiling meekly at Ms Dolls. Can't the school not hire cleaners, I mean our janitor is also a PE teacher and a cleaner. Sometimes I feel sorry for him but when he gives me a scowl every time I see him it pretty much clears up any sympathy I have for him.

He is quite young but looks older due to his receding hairline. Mr dolls hands him over the plate of cake, smiling at him in a passive aggressive way. I never of thought Ms Dolls as the generous type; the only things she gave out was a whole load of F's and detentions. Mr K's eyes seem as though he would rather be anywhere else than here.. He takes a bite almost in slow motion, chewing it so slowly,  that's surprising, I would have swallowed the whole thing, forget chewing.

Ok...this is too weird.

I walk out of the classroom wondering what the hell just happened. I stalk past the multiple classrooms and head home. Well, not home home but a care home, Ebony Care home. It takes one bus to get there from school. Ever since my mum and dad went missing when I was 4 years old I had been transferred into many care homes. None of them feel right; none of them feel like home. Like a place where I belong. And to be honest, at this stage of my life, at 16 where I belong isn't really the issue, it's really who I am as a person. What I will be. My future. But then it still seems so far away. And I might as well admit that the future is a concept I'm scared of. Like OMG right?

I walk past Mrs Lightwood, my social worker who  smiles at me through the clear window of the office, I run up the stairs to my room, glancing at Eric and Fedi chasing each other with plastic dinosaurs, the twins bring a smile to my mouth. As i sit on my bed, a feeling of dread sits over my stomach. I really don't know why. This Is usually how I feel when Ms Dolls is reading out our grades. (Which are mainly F's, on good days a D-),not when I am comfortably laying on my bed. Ms Dolls didn't stop me when I was leaving the classroom and she randomly gave cake to a janitor.

There was no other way to say it.

My life was fucked up.

So were my teachers.