Her parents saved up credits for her. Scrimped and practically begged their superiors for more credits. Enough to pay for a skirt, a blazer, the entrance fee to Cornet High, the House of Selection. They practically bled for her to attend.
She won’t let them down.
She can’t.
A bleeding rose adorns her blazer’s left lapel, white stitching against royal blue. It is a reminder of the high school’s motto: From nature comes nobility.
According to the pamphlets, that motto holds another meaning. But they will not tell the students what it is.
She counts the looms as the double-decker bus trundles over a pothole, and the tall, metal buildings of the city’s centre throw the vehicle in shadow. Gets to five, and then she takes a deep breath in and glances around the bus.
Students on their phones, sitting together yet separate in their disinterest, all seemingly unaffected by their impending arrival at Cornet High. Normal people, all in customary black and blue, all at ease. The smell of perfume and nail polish scratch at her nose.
Dimly, she realizes that she is crumpling the pamphlet handed out to her when she first toured the school, a keepsake she’s kept close to herself. Dog-eared, glossy and near-plastic, it’s been leafed through a hundred times. She leafs through it one last time, well aware that they’re nearing their destination.
Her eyes fall on the small section about the rose emblem on her blazer.
The rose is designed to be what is called a ‘double rose’. Its original design, if the bleeding was not there, would have twenty petals in total.
In the back of her mind, she does the math. Eight-hundred students are easily divisible by twenty, then twenty again, then another twenty, leaving just two. A double rose, of sorts. That’s what she assumes the rose symbolizes, anyway.
Her bitten nails are brushing against the icon. It’s made of silken embroidery, and she feels expensive just wearing it, even though it’s a hand-me-down from her brother, two sizes too big.
Her brother…
Sweat pricks at her brow, at her underarms, as she thinks of his fate even now.
He is a failure, according to their parents. Only her and her mother’s sympathy connects him to the family anymore, a thin thread that her father is keen to snap.
The boy has been drained of social credit. She will pick up where he left off. Thankfully, negative credit doesn’t affect family members. He might be confined to a dead-end job in a factory, but she has promise. She has made sure of it.
After-class studies. Gruelling timetables and intense focus on her studies, even through the school breaks. Her lack of knowledge has been overcome by her sheer will to study and understand. Her family is riding on this; she has no cousins, and, as of a few months ago, no brother, if her father has anything to say about it.
The bus slides to a stop, but it is not quite at the high school’s gates. Phones to their faces, students look down and tap, focused elsewhere.
How can they stand it? She thinks. Even now, she’s nervous, and her thoughts are flurrying. Yet they look so calm.
Adjusting her thick-rimmed glasses, she looks at the opening doors, which loose in petrol and dirt. A well-kempt girl with perfectly-brushed dark hair and a sleek, dark handbag that must cost at least a few hundred credits hops up the steps effortlessly, swiping her phone against the scanner as she enters the threshold.
43
That makes Annalise pause. That amount of credits isn’t much. Yet the girl looks perfectly made-up.
The girl turns to face the aisle, and quickly, Annalise glances out the window, taking in the harsh ray of the sun, the sharp shadows cast by the buildings around them. Right now, they are almost foreign to her, but by the time she finishes, she supposes she will know them like the back of her hand.
When I pass.
Passing. Something her brother didn’t achieve. Her heart aches as she thinks of him—
“Your credits.”
She blinks; the bus rocks slightly as it turns a bend. Taking her hand away from her lapel, she looks up—and sees blond hair and sharp blue eyes and a bored expression.
Didn’t even see him board the bus, but she doesn’t recognize his face.
The boy is looking straight at her.
“Sorry?” she murmurs, still in a daze, all the anxiety still in her mind. Then, waking up a little, she grabs her backpack and dumps it on her lap. “Yeah, the seat’s free.” The lower section of the bus is crowded. Silent, but crowded.
“No,” the boy says, putting his hands in the pockets of his black slacks. “Your credits. Can I see them?”
Annalise pauses—and then she procures her phone. Flashes it up to him.
But he doesn’t look at the phone. His eyes are still digging into her.
“That’s how I know you’re a target,” he says to her.
Then he walks off.
Hips brush at her shoulder. Sharply, Annalise turns and glances up.
The perfectly-primped girl flashes her a smile that is clearly fake. “Sorry,” the girl says. “The aisle’s small.”
She doesn’t stop to ask Annalise if she can sit there. Instead, she’s making her way to the steps towards the top half of the bus.
Annalise blinks. She’s pretty sure that the top half of the bus is barred off by a credit wall.
Yet the girl scans her phone, and there is a tell-tale ping, and the girl climbs the stairs, and they let her pass.
Frowning, Annalise turns back to the front as the bus begins its travels again. Only those with huge amounts of credit can afford the luxuries this girl is spending.
Not that it matters, Annalise tells herself. She’ll focus on herself. Save up as many credits as she can. Again, her eyes fall to the front of the brochure—glazes over the words that have been instilled in every young child since they entered primary school.
Credits can be accrued by school-age children via academical points distributed via a system (i.e. tests), extra-curricular activities and services, and scholarships, which are awarded at every end of the year to deserving students.
Credits that are ‘in the green’—credits that accumulate above a minimum of fifteen (15)—are considered positive, and are a mark of a student who is doing well. A total of less than fifteen (15) credits is known as ‘in the red’, meaning that the student is in trouble and will be barred from luxuries and can be removed from the school system, according to the school’s board. If you are in the red and require assistance…
Annalise’s eyes glaze over the printed blue words, and she looks out the window again. In the red…she’d hate to be there. It’s a fear of hers. It never scared her brother, but she is sure it does now.
Ending up in a factory, toiling for a minimum of credits…She shivers, and despite the light that flicks through the sparkly clean windows, she feels cold.
Study. That is all she has to do.
Again, her fingers brush against the embroidered patch. A bleeding rose; she wonders why it isn’t a mountain, what Cornet High is known for.
As if in response to her thoughts, she feels an incline. Rests her head against the back of her chair and imagines climbing this hill on foot. She isn’t sporty, so that thought leaves a sour taste in her mouth.
Finally, the bus plateaus, and they are on flat ground. The school gate looms high, silver with ornate metal coiling through each straight bar, forming a dizzying pattern Annalise still cannot quite make sense of, even as she exits the bus and finds herself standing on the concrete platform.
Ice-cold wind whips at her hair, nearly loosing it from her bun. People mill about the school gates, a whole sea of black and blue, looking like bruises against the dull fire of the deciduous trees scattered about.
No one is entering the school.
Wiping her clammy hands on her skirt, Annalise glances around, trying to see if there’s the same confusion etched on the others’ faces as it is hers.
A few have congregated together, talking and laughing. The majority are still at ease—or bored.
Maybe some of them don’t have the same expectations put upon them as Annalise.
Be our shining star, Annalise.
This star needs to study closely, or else she’ll fall behind.
No pressure.
Someone bumps into her, and she turns to find the girl who’d boarded the bus last sauntering past her. The girl throws her another fake smile.
“Sorry,” the girl purrs. “You keep getting in my way.”
Feeling out of her depth, desperate for a connection, Annalise says, “No one seems to be fussed that we’re still waiting for the gates to open. Shouldn’t we be inside already?”
A strange expression makes its way onto the girl’s face.
“Let me guess,” the girl says. “You’re trying to make friends?”
The way she says it makes Annalise’s cheeks heat. “I just thought…”
“They’ll eat you up,” the girl says breezily. Then she adjusts her hold on her expensive-looking bag and weaves her way into the thick of the crowd.
Eat her…up?
Murmuring breaks out from the rest of the students, and Annalise turns to see that two people are walking into view, both with scanners in their hands.
The students who got off the bus are now arranging themselves in two messy lines. She fits in at the middle of the right line and waits for her points to be scanned in, her details to be recorded.
Credits are plentiful for her—years of good work. Her parents consider her clever, yet they’ve underestimated how much she’s had to study.
Be good. Study. That is her mantra.
In no time at all, almost too fast, she is at the front of the line, and a girl with wavy blonde hair and candy-pink lips presses a scanner to her phone. There is a beep, and the girl draws it away, glances at the screen. A slanted brow raises.
“Is this your credit?” the girl asks her. “Annalise Haddox?”
A strange sense of pride wells in Annalise. “Yes, it is.”
The girl tilts her head. “You’re close to being in the red,” she says, voice suddenly full of judgement.
Time freezes.
She has to be joking.
“That can’t be right,” Annalise says. She has hundreds of credits. Worked her way up from nothing. “You can’t be serio—”
Brandishing the scanner, the girl holds it out to Annalise.
24
Twenty-four points. Barely anything.
All the wind is taken out of her lungs. “That can’t be right,” Annalise chokes out. “I’m not—I had hundreds!”
Clearly uncaring, the girl looks at her with one last flicker of judgement, and then she turns to the next person. “Please step up here,” she says.
“How did I lose my credits?” Annalise whispers.
The girl doesn’t answer her, too busy scanning in the next student.
Others are watching her. Some snicker; others look at her like she’s grown two heads.
Near the red. You’re near the red.
Something must be wrong with the system.
She takes a step back, head reeling. All those hard-earned credits…they’ve been taken from her.
The bleeding rose on her left lapel scratches against the pads of her fingers as she turns towards the school.
The iron gates suddenly look a lot like teeth.
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