Undone: A Dystopian Fiction Novel (2 page)

Her friends became my friends, and the five of us - Tyrsa, myself, Beth, Lawrence, and Rick - moved into a suite together my sophomore year. By the end of that year, our money situation had deteriorated, and Tyrsa lead the charge in changing our environment.

              “Hey, why aren’t the lights turning on?”

              It was 8am and I was standing in the kitchen flicking the light switch on and off.

             
Maybe the bulb is out?

Tyrsa, who stood at the counter cutting up a banana, answered me without turning.

“The electricity is out.”

“Huh? Like a blown fuse or something?”

Tyrsa carried her bowl to the table. She leaned her head against her fist and stared down at her banana.              

“It’s ‘cause we didn’t pay our bill on time.”

Her voice sounded depressed. It was unusual for Tyrsa to sound so down, and it troubled me. I took the seat opposite her and sat quietly for a moment, trying to think of a way to cheer her up.

“We’re only a few days off. Maybe it’ll kick back in soon. We can call when we send in the check.”

“Yeah…” Tyrsa replied.

She pierced one of the banana pieces with her fork, but didn’t eat it. Instead she just cut it up into smaller pieces, mushing it against the edge of her bowl.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

“Stressed,” she replied bluntly.

She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It immediately fell back down across her face. She ignored it.

“Work?”

Tyrsa nodded. “And just....life. It’s been a rough month. I got offered more hours at the restaurant, which is great, but I’d have to drop a class. It’s a tough call. Well, it’s an easy call, but it’s tough thinking that it’s come to this.”

When we had moved in three months before, Tyrsa and Beth both landed jobs as servers in a local restaurant. It was a pretty busy place and kept them on their feet. The tips were good, though, and the owner liked both of them, so the girls made a lot of sacrifices to keep the job. Beth was already down to taking just one class and worked or painted in her free time. Tyrsa hated having to choose between work and school because she truly believed the only way to become financially stable was to get a good education in order to get a good job. But there were bills to be paid and a long line of unemployed folk just waiting to pounce on her restaurant gig. Tyrsa finally began to eat her banana, rubbing her temple with her other hand. I stood to get my breakfast, squeezing her shoulder as I passed by.

“I guess it’s cereal this morning,” I remarked, opening the fridge door. “Gotta eat whatever will go bad in here pretty quick.”

Beth entered the kitchen, wearing a Boston University T-shirt and short shorts. Her hair was askew and she looked grumpy.

“Is the power out?” she asked.

“Electricity bill,” Tyrsa replied.

“Damn it,” Beth mumbled.

She shuffled off to the bathroom, where we could hear her turn on the shower.

“At least the water’s on!” she called.

Having finished her banana, Tyrsa took her bowl to the sink. I reached across her for a spoon for my cereal.

“Are the boys up yet?” Tyrsa asked.

“Not when I got up,” I answered. “They don’t have class until later today.”

“Hmm, ok. I’ll have to wake them before I leave. They need to get their money in for the electric bill so we can write the check.”

Rick and Lawrence were on a different pay schedule than the rest of us; Lawrence had found a job as a bike messenger and Rick made a sporadic living doing odd jobs like fixing cars or yard work.

Being hard-working and muscular, Rick could clear out an area of buckthorn by himself in the morning and go to his class showered and shaved in the early afternoon. He made good money, but he was concerned about how many jobs he would be able to find when autumn and then eventually winter came around. We all felt his anxiety and wondered ourselves where we would get that extra two-hundred a month if he came up empty.

Another perk of our living location was its proximity to school. I walked to and from class every morning, getting in my exercise of the day. It took about twenty minutes one way and I sometimes had to jog to make it in time to my eight-forty-five Web Programming class. I would arrive sweaty and slightly light-headed, which only served to remind me of my typically meager breakfasts. At least I could get my fill of water at the school. I often carried empty plastic bottles with me and filled them in the bathroom to take back home to the gang. I wasn’t alone. Lots of students had started hoarding water, and the school was starting to take notice.

“Do not fill more than one water bottle at a time at the water fountain,” the administration said. “Do not take more than one item out of the cafeteria, i.e. one apple or one cookie.”

Students just started to get smarter and sneakier. We’d go to the bathroom - the method of hoarding I had chosen - or simply travel from water fountain to water fountain in all the different buildings so no one would notice we were actually carrying five or more bottles in their backpacks. We’d wait till the cafeteria workers were busy and then casually gather around the fruit baskets, stuffing food under our shirts. Girls would purposely wear baggy T-shirts and hide apples in their bras.

So far, the school hadn’t caught on.

The morning the electricity went out, it was difficult to pay attention in class. I kept thinking about Tyrsa and the electric bill. She usually stayed pretty positive about hiccups in our bills and what not, and was able to convince the companies we owed to give us a few more days. We may have not paid on time, but we did always pay. I was quiet in class, distracted. I doodled donuts in the corner of my notebook.

Hungry,
I thought.

I was always hungry. I had planned on eating on campus that day and using one of the few meal swipes at the cafeteria, but decided to grab something to go and track down Rick and Lawrence to make sure they got the cash for their cut. There were a lot of people in the student center where both the cafeteria and campus grill were located. The day was warm, at least in the 70’s, and being packed in the way we were didn’t help with the sweating situation. I was counting the bills in my wallet and doing some quick math in my head when I heard some kind of ruckus at the card counter.

“You need to stand back!” a woman’s voice shouted. “One at a time!”

I stood on my tip-toes, craning my neck, and saw that the cafeteria worker who swiped our IDs was being herded by students. They had begun to push their way in, shoulder to shoulder.

“Security is on its way!” she cried.

Things started to escalate. People began to push harder, throw elbows, and raise their voices. I was jostled back and forth like I was in the mosh pit of a concert.

I gotta get out of this,
I thought, frantically searching for an exit.

I made a break for an opening and took shelter against the wall, where some benches were. I stood on one to see better, still holding my wallet. The crowd had moved like a swarm into the cafeteria, bypassing the card scanner, and intimidating the cafeteria worker into silence. Security was nowhere to be seen. From where I stood, I could see that the crowd had begun to raid the food stations. They jumped over the grill counter for packaged salads, sandwiches in plastic wrap, and takeout boxes which they threw to the crowd like rich men in olden days threw gold.

In the cafeteria, these boxes were piled with pasta, crammed with pizza slices, or torn apart in the chaos by shouting, spitting twenty-year-olds. Campus security guards stormed through the doors and immediately looked powerless and overwhelmed. There were only six of them, armed with tasers. They faced a wall of students, who -though moments earlier had been fighting amongst themselves for food- now united against a common enemy. The few of us who had joined in the fray but stood against the wall watching with bated breath glanced at each other, unsure of what to expect. A bullhorn appeared and the lead security guard shouted into it.

“Everyone needs to clear the area now! If you do not disperse, we will use force!”

He said something else, but the noise swelled to a deafening chorus. It took me a few seconds to realize they were all shouting a chant.

“We want food! We want water! You can’t stop us, we are stronger!”

Their voices rose louder and louder, drowning out the bullhorn. There was stomping and clapping. It seemed this was organized.

Hesitant, the security guards looked at each other, unsure of what to do. One of the students near to me, who wasn’t involved, made a move to try and leave. He startled one of the guards. Out of fear and heightened adrenaline, the guard struck out with his fist and sprayed a shot of pepper spray straight into the student’s face. The crowd erupted. The wall surged forward, sending the guards back, flailing their arms, zapping tasers at anything that moved.

Holy shit!
I thought, looking for an exit that wasn’t crammed with punching, screaming bodies.
They’re going to tear each other to pieces.

I remembered there was an emergency exit at the back of the cafeteria. I just had to find a way to reach it through the swarm. Everyone was moving forward, pushing towards the front doors. I jumped from the bench and climbed over the grill counter. In my focus on getting out, I didn’t even think about grabbing food, a decision I later regretted. Instead, I crossed to the other side of the grill, hopped the counter there, and maneuvered my way through the crowd towards the exit. I wasn’t alone in my thinking. People were already filtering out that way, arms full of take-out containers, eyes flickering around like raccoon’s.

Outside, the sun was blinding. I raised my arm to shield my face and heard police sirens fast approaching. We all took off, scattering, eager to avoid whatever bloodbath was in store. I ran towards home, passing other students, and saw that groups had broken off from campus and were sieging stores. The artisan cheese shop was overrun. It looked like there were older people there, too, non-students. Still, the majority were young people, running from the store carrying blocks of expensive cheese and wine bottles. There were police everywhere, but they were overwhelmed, as if unsure where to go first. The cheese shop, market, and pharmacy were all under attack. Within mere moments, a relatively quiet late summer day had transformed into a riot zone. When I heard the gunshots, I ran faster, my feet pounding on the pavement. I didn’t dare look behind me.

              My lungs burned when I finally stopped running outside the apartment. My backpack was heavier due to the water bottles I had filled, and my head spun from hunger. I leaned over to catch my breath, heart pounding, and felt relieved. It appeared all the chaos was limited to where the businesses were. I didn’t even see anyone out in the more suburban-area; everyone was either at work or school or out rioting, I guessed.

As I caught my breath, I examined the outside of the apartment building. It was old and had once been a large, mansion-type house that the current manager/owner had converted into apartments. Besides our suite, which was the largest available unit, there were only four other tenants: two students who shared a one-bedroom unit (we assumed one of them slept on the couch), an elderly woman who had lived in her unit for twenty-five years, and a single woman, probably in her early thirties, who we rarely saw. We were the only unit on the first floor, which we shared with the manager office. We were pretty vulnerable. I thought about the fierce eyes and manic, grabbing hands I had seen in the campus cafeteria. That fervor was bound to spread out to the suburbs in some form or another.

              Rick and Lawrence were the only ones home when I entered the apartment. Because there was no electricity, they had opened all the blinds to take advantage of the natural light. Rick was sitting on the floor in a lotus position, laying out thin piles of bills and coins. Lawrence, whose hair looked like he had just woken up, was lying on the couch with his arms crossed, dozing.

              “Hey, Morgan,” Rick said when I came in. “I’m just trying to get the cash together for the electric bill.”

              “We might have bigger problems, guys,” I said, letting my backpack slide off my shoulders and hit the floor.

              I tapped Lawrence’s legs. He sat up, giving me space, and rubbed his eyes.

              “Why? What’s up?” he mumbled, coherent enough to have heard me.

              “There was some kind of organized riot at school,” I explained. “Everyone started looting the cafeteria, and then all the shops. The police were totally surprised. I even heard shots.”

              “Holy shit!’ Lawrence exclaimed, widening his eyes.

              “I heard something like that might happen,” Rick said darkly.

              Lawrence and I both looked at him. With a swipe of his hand, Rick gathered up his bills and put them into an envelope he had lying next to him.

              “I was at the school gym like a week ago and some guys there were complaining about the price of the meal plans. One of them got real quiet and said something about a group that was organizing a protest.”

              “And by ‘protest,’ they meant ‘overthrowing the administration,’ Morgan, yeah?” Lawrence asked me sarcastically.

              “I don’t know what was planned,” I replied, “But it clearly got out of control.”

              “God, I hope the girls are ok!” Rick said suddenly, raising his voice.