There are cobwebs all over the window. When was the last time I cleaned them? Well when was the last time I was here, what 10 years? Stupid. Why did I have to be assigned my old house of all places?
I opened the closet in the corner of the room. I took out the broom, I'm not surprised it's still there. Nobody's lived in the place in forever, maybe not even been in this place in forever. I started swatting at the window clumsily, knocking a few things off the sill in the process. I kept my distance, I like spiders and all, I mean they're awesome… But the webs, yuck.
They call us the Renewers. Every city has it's job, and our's in renewing the old so we don't have to tear things down and make new ones, so that we don't have to waste needed resources. There are several groups inside of The Renewer's main group, the group I'm is the houses group. My group "renews" houses that have been destroyed by the Fire Age. The Renewers are one of the few groups that are never in their home... Unless they are sick, or too elderly to continue work. We make our way through the cities fixing what needs to be fixed, so people can continue their lives.
Every week, my group, the houses group, gets assigned to a new house. We get a week to fix up each house, and there are ten of us per house. After that week we get a certain amount of money, the amount we get depends on how much of the house we fix in that week. You following?
It didn't happen all at once, the Fire Age is what most people refer to it as. The actual fire part only lasted a week or less. So after the Fire Age's 7 days of burning America finished, it had practically become a pile of charred ruins. The aftermath was the worst. People were attacking their own government, blaming them for what happened to their friends, and family. It surely was the government's fault, but the government was the only structure we had left! So, the remaining political leaders (the ones that weren't killed already) decided to form a system. The system revolved around "renewing" America, but we needed food also, and a place to learn, so the government created two more groups to attempt in making America whole again. These groups were the Agriculturists, the Illumination, and the Renewers.
Us Renewers became one of the most important jobs, yet one of the worst. Everything we had had been damaged somehow, not always a lot, but enough. The farms, where we grew food and raised animals, almost all of them burned to ashes, the schools, where we taught our children to read and write, gone. So we took on the responsibility to renew houses, and schools, and farms, and factories. Many things were burned past recognition in the fire, and can't be salvaged, but the things that can, we must fix.
It's Monday, demo day. I get to wham a sledgehammer into my old house, and my memories for a week. Great. I wiped my face in attempt to rid the tears welling in my eyes. I rest my cold, shaking, hands on my eyelids. About a month before The Fire Age began I had to move out of my house. This was when I was 13, about two years ago now. I'm at the same boarding school I was at then, but the last class I had was at least two years ago, when the debates and the fire began. I likely won't be having another class anytime soon.
The door opens and I whirl around with my broom in hand. Lyn stands in the doorway. I let out a sigh, relieved it wasn't my boss deciding he'd try a surprise visit.
"What's up?" I ask pausing my not-very-effective broom-swatting technique.
She looks at me weird and raises her eyebrow, "Just checkin' in on you guys." she said, slowly backing out of the room and pretending to look scared of me. Well maybe she wasn't pretending, I mean I was just whacking a window with a broom covered in spiders.
"Shut up." I say and I throw my broom across the bedroom in attempt to hit her in the face with my spider entanglement.
She watches the broom fall about a yard in front of her and she laughs.
"Hey! It's not easy throwing a broom!" Fail.
"For some people, people like you." she grins, "So you're doin' fine then?"
"Yeah, and your heart-warming checkup made this even more enjoyable." I say and she walks out of the room closing the door behind her.
That night we slept in the hallways of my house. I mean the house. The hallways were in good shape so we didn't have to wreck them, therefore they were sleep-worthy… I guess, you know if you forget about the hard, wooden, back killing floors, and the windows without glass. But other than that perfect!
"Okay, role call people!" Yelled Reese. "Sam!" He called.
Sam's hand shot into the air.
"Heeere!" She practically screams.
"Okay um, Lyn!"
"Here." She says sounding bored.
"Arris?"
"Here!"
Then he calls Parker, Eason, Nyx, Arial, Abbi, and last but certainly not least, me, Nova White.
"Okay, now that that's over with, lights off everyone!" I said. It was funny though 'cause there were no lights in the hallway. Okay maybe it wasn't funny, but it was supposed to be.
Nyx blurted out, "Night everyone!"
and the rest of us all replied "Night" in unison.
It took me forever to get to sleep. Like I said before, there is no work being done in the hallways so that's good, but it still smells like saw dust and wet concrete, and my back feels sore, like the after effect of being pierced with thousands of needles sore, you know what I'm getting at? Well, anyways once I was finally asleep I was out, like out cold. Demo day is always the most tiring they say... Or I say at least.