Exile

-Chapter One-

When I was a child, I had always suffered from severe poverty. I tried to ignore the clawing pain in the pit of my belly. I did everything--dug up plants and chewed on the roots, rummaged around in the garbage, even stole. My parents were never at home; they were always in the coal mines. My great-grandmother had always been the maternal figure I had never gotten the luxury of having. She was the one who told me that there used to be a better life that you could lead, even if you didn't pass the Test.

The day of her funeral was the day I thought that I had hit rock bottom. I tried to cry. I tried so hard. Nothing would come out. The only things that could be heard from my corner of our tiny one room shack were dry sobs. Hacks and coughs, but no tears. My mother slapped me. She said it was disrespectful to pretend to be sad. I wasn't pretending.

Then, two months after that, my father died. They told us that a gun accidentally went off in the mines and ricocheted off of the cave walls and shot him. But I knew the truth. His death was no mistake. They didn't see him fit enough to keep on living. The Society didn't believe that a man that was sick from ash inhalation, could continue to work. They soon replaced him with a much younger boy, who had no experience in the mines whatsoever, eventually causing an explosion, killing nearly everyone at his post.

My mother and father were paid by the Society's government, who did not care for destitute people like us, so their pay was negligible. We were almost never able to make ends meet; we could never turn on the heating or electricity. The town hall had electricity, so I used to go there to do my homework before school ended. Before I was forced out because the Society did not believe that education was as important as training for the Test.

I had always been told that life would be like the lives people led in the stories my grandmother told me. Stories full of happily ever after's and romances and happiness. You know the sickest part? I believed them. I believed all of their blant-faced lies.

When I was a little girl, I would wander among the wildflowers that grew in patches beside our shack. I would pick the never ending array of gorgeous blues and pinks and yellows and reds. I would smile and think to my blind young self: "One day, a real boy will bring me these. He'll kiss me and tell me he loves me. I'll swat him away and tell him I have to work to supply for our family. He'll kiss my temples again and walk off. I'll finally be happy."

I'd better begin with the day of the Test. It was frantic in our shack. Mother used up all of our food rations for that month to make sure we ate breakfast. She fed us bread, cheese, milk and eggs. Real eggs. My brother, Liam and my sister, Harmony were thrilled.

"You should take the Test everyday, Ivory!" He smiled. Mother slapped him. Hard.

Maybe my mother was once beautiful. Now, the bags under her eyes protrude, her cheeks are sunken in, her skin sallow. She looks pitiful. Her blonde hair still hangs in ringlets down her back, nothing unlike my own. Her eyes as blue as the ocean we learned about in Education, her smile, though somewhat yellow, used to beam when we were small. It stays in it's pursed position now.

"Mother. He is a child," I said, trying to stick up for Liam. He is only seven after all. Mother's eyes bore into me as if looking in to the very depths of my soul.

"Hush, Ivory Elise. I am the mother of this household. What I say goes." She turned back to the fire pit and began to stoke it.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go see if you can talk some sense into Harmony Rose over there." Mother said, pointing to Harmony. Harmony has never spoken a word into her lifetime. She is six.

"Mother. I've told you. She has so much sense. She just chooses not to speak. There is an old saying that the wise never speak and the dumb never seem to stop--" Mother harshly cut me off.

She threw her hands up in the air. "Well then you must be the stupidest of them all!"

I grimaced and walked over to Harmony.

Her wide gray eyes looked to me with fear as I approached her spot in the corner. Her spindly knees were hugged up to her flat chest.

"Harmony." I said quietly. I didn't want to frighten her. She squeezed her eyes shut as I bent down to stroke her skinny arm. "Come on, baby girl. I know you can speak. I know you have so much sense up there," I said, tapping her greasy head full of dark brown hair. She smelled of ash, coal, dirt and the faintest waft of flea soap. "That it would overwhelm even the Professors." Harmony's chapped, plump pink little lips curved upward into a smile. "See. You're not stupid. They are."

I ruffled the hair on Harmony's head. Motioning towards Mother, I gave Harmony a be good look. It was like our inside joke. We both know she would be fine.

Near the door was a switch blade, a knife and a rifle. I took a peek out the window that rested above the fire place of our one bedroom shack. Guards scattered the dirt roads like the pebbles that lined the sides, making way for the carriages of the rich that arrived every so often.

Maybe the rich came to brag about their own wealth. When they did, people followed the carts, hoping, praying that the rider's would throw coins, silver, gold, anything of monetary value out the window.

I chose the knife and waved a goodbye. It was met by a bear hug from Liam and a small muttering if intelligible words from Mother. Harmony smirked at me. I was then harshly pushed me out the door. That was the beginning.