Young Writers Society

Chapter 1: The Dormant One

         “It’s a Monday in mid-July. The sun beats upon the poor citizens below, no amount of industrial grade air conditioning able to stop the heat. The streets are abuzz with the pittering and pattering of pedestrians, each one with their own little rhythm, the friends talking, the phone conversations held leaned on the sides of buildings. Cars roll calmly down the freshly paved street, the sound of the tires rubbing against the few loose pebbles and sediment left by crossing children and businessmen smooth and serene. Restaurants lined the sidewalks: a bakery here, a noodle bar there, all of them filling the air with seducing smells that entice the mind and incite the wallet to seek self-deprivation. A casual stroll down such a street as this couldn’t hope to account for the sheer variety of experience one could award themselves on any other. It’s said about Detroit that one could grab a bag of cash and hop from store to store in R.Detroit and never buy the same thing twice for over a year. However, the surreal experience is only bolstered by a gaze at the gates of that from which the splendors you’ve grown so accustomed to have come to be. Those gates lead to the center of the crown jewel of the city, its pride and joy, Waterbrook High School.

          Waterbrook High is, by the strictest definition, a high school; kids walk between classes, teachers prepare classes and monitor the halls, the lunches are sub-par, and the end of the day presents the highest noise level on campus at any moment. It boasts a 100% graduation rate with 90% of its students earning millions in scholarships by junior year. The requirements to get in are remarkably few, giving as many families as possible the opportunity for equal and high education to reduce the overall poverty rate, which in turn creates more finances that lead to more production and more jobs created to lead that production, which leads to more homes bought and taxes successfully payed, which leads to a wide variety of other fiscal benefits for the city. The school’s secret lies in its ability to adequately teach students a range of practical topics while leaving out anything without a direct application to the life they intend to live.

          This school has been the primary force behind the growth and reconstruction of Detroit since its establishment in 2035, providing equal education to everyone of every race, gender identity, and sometimes, even species. It’s for this reason that I nominated Waterbrook High as my candidate for the “Sprouting Detroit’s Youth: Recognizing the World Around Them” prize of national recognition.

Uh...any questions?”

           The classroom sits attentively in their seats, a few with their hands up, a few with their heads propped up by their binders. The presenter points at one young lady’s hand, prompting her to speak.

“Okay, why exactly is the method of teaching only what we need to know and nothing else a good idea?”

“Simple as I can put it considering how under-qualified I am to answer that, I’d say that, in theory, it stems from the idea that clouding a person’s mind with lessons in concrete techniques like the solving of a quadratic equation or the memorization of your previous presidents’ names without an explanation as to the development and application of their metacognition to a real life situation is counterintuitive to the overall goal of school - to teach that which must then be used to thrive in a world where survival isn’t a supported format anymore.”

          Mr. Nicholson, the economics teacher, tilts back his office chair as yawns deeply, his thin frame providing no cover for his ribcage that pokes through his striped button-up every time he does that. It’s a sight that disgusts most, and intrigues Carlos, who was dozing off during the reading as usual.

“Thank you. Anymore questions?”

          Mr. Nicholson leans back up and looks at the class, whose hands simultaneously descend in an almost unanimous discouragement; they’re all afraid to have their dreams crushed before them by Andrew, the class search engine.

“I believe I have a question, but it’s not addressed to the living members of the class. Hey! Carlos! How’d you like to explain to the class what Mr. Stevens here just presented?!”

          The classroom turns to face Carlos, whom they’d forgotten even existed prior to the teacher pointing him out. In a partial haze from being called out in the middle of a nap, he drowsily mumbled, “Some economical flib-flab, something about cars driving down a street or something, I don’t know, man.” before falling right back asleep, or, at least trying to.

“Mr. Davidson! I am severely disappointed in your performance in this class, and your behavior does not help at all! You sleep all the time...”

After all, it’s rather hard to sleep when your teacher is griping at you for about the millionth time about your shortcomings, as if to some avail.

“...and you’re always late...and, and...you never pay attention...and you, you…”

          On second thought, maybe it is easier to fall asleep with background noise assisting, huh? Not that Chelsea’s snickering in her respective corner of the classroom would actually let that plan come to fruition, above all else. One snicker to another, the whole class attempts to stifle laughter as to not look blatantly against the prospect of effective learning. Carlos simply blinked his eyes about once every few minutes, or so it felt.

“Mr. Davidson! Are you even listening?!!”

“Huh?”

By now, the whole class had erupted into an uproar of laughing and joking; somebody fell out of their desk, which did nothing to help, a few kids had their phones out while a couple others played it up just to annoy the teacher further.

“Hey, Mr. Nicholson. You’re doing that cherry thing again.”

          Amidst the chaos, or perhaps as a result of it, Mr. Nicholson began to throw one of his legendary fits consisting of stomping the floor violently, breaking one of his many wooden pencils with his teeth, and screaming in an unprofessional manner before running out of the room to an administrator. The laughter increased exponentially in volume as one more person fell out of their chair and one group of friends was literally crying. Carlos simply took this as an opportunity to go back to what he was doing before, now that he had nothing in his way.

          About five hours later, Carlos woke up to a classroom empty of all except his mother and Mr. Nicholson, who was having one of those nigh-inaudible conversations instructors tend to have with parents. His mother occasionally looked back at him with a face of concern and disappointment, one Carlos had become accustomed to in recent times. About five or so minutes passed in Carlos’ sleepy haze before his mother walked over to him and shook him back into reality enough to stand.

“Come on, Carly. You can sleep on the way home.”

“Ma...I told you not to call me that...It’s a...girl’s name…”

          Carlos could barely mutter his words between yawns while his mother simply held him up and walked him out of the class smiling apologetically. As they proceeded to the parking lot, Carlos took note of the world around him, as one who just woke up likely would; he noticed a small hole burrowed into one of the walls in Red Brick:

“Huh. Bug must’ve done that.”

          The school’s famous trophy cabinet, one that stretches from Mrs. Johnson’s science class in Yellow Brick to Mr. Grade’s math class in Blue Brick down the hall. The gold, bronze, and silver statues inside reflected the sunlight coming through the glass doors in Norm, casting a multi-color glow across the walls:

“Pretty cool. Maybe they should make a Concrete or Dirt Hall.”

          The front office is a relatively small glass block of space surrounded by stained-glass windows with depictions of children’s faces of all ethnicities and features; one face had freckles, another face had heterochromia, and another, the most interesting to Carlos, was the one with cat ears extending from the sides of it, with literally no aesthetic difference to the others around it with similar complexion. After all, Waterbrook High is Detroit’s first multi-species integrated school since the implementation of public-use genetic modification. People of all sorts were paying ridiculous amounts of money to have themselves and their posterity blessed with thick tails for balance while walking, sharp claws to assist in martial arts training, and all kinds of extracurricular additions for optimal sensory to reduce the effects of loud noises, nauseating odors, etc. It was only a matter of time before children became able to purchase these modifications themselves, and thus a trend was born.

“You know, Ma, I’ve never seen anyone with any sort of body mods beyond tattoos. I wonder where all of ‘em are hiding.”

“They’re not hiding, dear. You’re just too unaware of your surroundings to know. I honestly-”

          Mrs. Davidson and Carlos step through the large glass front doors outside into brightness and burning pain before retreating back into the shady coolness of the vestibule almost instantly. They share a quick chuckle at the rapidity of their movements, and Mrs. Davidson starts to talk while reaching into her pocket to reveal a couple of quarters and balled-up tissues. Panicking, she pats herself down frantically, every port subject to a search and potential seizure of life, and throws her hands up in a huff, inciting Carlos to ask her what the matter was.

“Carlos, I- uh… left my sunglasses in Mr. Nicholson’s room. Would you mind going to get them, please?”

“Sure thing, Ma.”

          Carlos trudged his way down the hallway back to Mr. Nicholson’s room, only to stop at his locked door to look through the window for the pink floral-patterned sunglasses his mother wore all the time. He eventually located them on the teacher’s desk next to his open laptop, and decided that perhaps Mr. Nicholson had simply gone to the bathroom or something to that effect, but standing around for about 3 minutes proved that was not the case. Another couple of minutes later, Mrs. Davidson became a bit worried and ventured down the hall to find her son expectedly asleep standing in Mr. Nicholson’s window. She sighed and picked up her 5 foot 8 son, carrying him to the car to buckle him in.

          The red SUV rolls peacefully down the sunset streets of Detroit, the sun bringing out their radiance moreso than usual. Mrs. Davidson plugs her smartphone up to the auxiliary cable and turns on relaxing classical music to assist Carlos’ sleep. Eventually, they roll into the newly paved driveway of their ranch style house and sit still, not a door opening. Mrs. Davidson looks back to a sleeping Carlos, bundled up under one of the blankets they kept in the trunk, his head of blonde, wavy hair resting on a small green pillow. She sighs contently and leans back in her chair, her eyes locked on no particular spot on the ceiling.

“I sincerely hope these side effects wear off soon. I suppose another doctor’s visit is in order.”

A doctor holds a syringe of a bioluminescent blue liquid in his hands, steadily injecting it into a sedated Carlos while two nurses prepare another in a separate portion of the room. His mother paces frantically outside of the operating room, her brooding eyes affixed to the floor. Hours pass. Mrs. Davidson sits in a chair in the waiting room, her hands cupped over her face as a tear drops onto her lap. Another hour passes, and Mrs. Davidson was on the verge of falling asleep when the operation room door opens, the clicking of heels against the ground snapping her out of her haze and announcing the arrival of the nurses before they even exited the threshold. One is a frilly-haired blonde lady, slender and lanky, about her 30s from Mrs. Davidson’s perspective, her scrubs lightly stained with the liquid she handled prior. The other is a mature, upstanding woman in roughly her 40s or 50s with red braids woven behind natural brown dreadlocks tightly clasping a clipboard to her chest. The solemness in her eyes, her pursed lips, and the pitiful manner in which she extended the clipboard to Mrs. Davidson spoke volumes to her in terms of what she had to do.

“Mrs. Davidson. He’s...not going to make it unless you pursue-”

Interrupting with a tear-filled sigh, she replies,

“It’s...It’s alright. I fully understand, and...I’ll go along with it. I’m sure that’s what his father would do.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Davidson. I’ve highlighted the areas you need to sign.”

“Okay...but just...give me a moment, alright?”

“Understood, Mrs. Davidson. We’ll check on you in a moment.”

The mature nurse sets the clipboard down on the wooden table in front of her, the slight tap of the top hitting the surface resonating throughout the room, a weight too much for Mrs. Davidson’s conscience to bear, thus the flow of tears resume. Both nurses shy away from Mrs. Davidson back into the operation room, the clicking of their heels against the ground echoing and shattering the remedial silence of the room.

“Here we go, Carly...don’t hate me for this…”