Black and Blue

Chapter One

“We may venture and settle into the unknown, my tramp, but we will never conquer it.”

*Black and Blue*

*One*

“Who am I? Who am I? Well, I’m the bad-ass teenager who’ll gladly steal your car and pickpocket all you’ve got in a single swipe if you’re not watching out for me. Yeah, I’m a bitch; just tell me something I don’t know.”

            Well, at least that’s what I would’ve liked to have said to the fat lady behind the desk. But my parole officer, who’s standing next to me in Family Homes Apartments AKA Homes-for-decrepit-old-people-who-smelled-like-dirty-laundry-and-musty-cheese, probably won’t let me do that. Just a wild guess, though; he might have let me if I hadn’t just been napped for destruction of school property. I agreed to come and work community hours here, I guess. Little did I know at the time what I was actually getting myself into!

The Lobby of the sad, off white building is small and smells strong of antiseptic. The more and more people that they put into this place, I think as I wrinkle my nose, the worse and worse it starts to smell. I’ve been here before; my grandmother used to live here, until she’d died (may her soul rest in peace *does cross over heart*). That was when I was eight and the building had just been built. That was also when it smelled nicely of flowers and coconut shampoo, since back then they bothered giving the patients a bath. Now workers are paid to just be there; why do anything else? Anyway, I would have given the lady my usual answer, but don’t. Instead, Mr. Williams says: “Your newest addition, ma’am.”

            “Oh, the troubled child whose come to make amends?”

            “Oh yeah, that’s me.” I snap sarcastically.

            “Sign here then,” she looks at me through her enormous spectacles, rather mockingly, I think. “Miss…?”

            “Kori.”

            “Kori what, may I ask?”

            “You may not ask,” I snap again, “and it’s just Kori.”

            “Well,” she smirks, “aren’t you a charmer?”

            “But of course,” I drawl, sarcasm dripping easily as water. She turns away for a moment, and I murmur to the back of her head, “as charming as my fist when I shove it up your –”

            “Her name’s Korianne Smith, ma’am.” Jack sighs, rubbing his eyes and smiling that plastic smile of his, “Sorry for the trouble.”    

            “No problem; you,” she points at me, and then to a few lines that are mixed up in the big paragraph I haven’t even bothered to read, “sign here, here, and there. When will our guest be starting?”

            “Soon as ma’am; she’ll be here Saturday and Sunday for the next twenty weeks.”

            “Whoa,” I take my pen from the paper where I’m signing the last line. “Twenty friggin’ weeks? A teenager actually has a life, believe it or not.”

            “If you had a life, Kori, you wouldn’t have been praying for it a couple hours ago after we busted you for destroying the school’s gate statues.”