Tumblr prompt from quiquikalikala:
"Flashback into Felicity's Vegas life. The last time she cleaned out a casino the only big 1. Her goodbye 2 the city, her old life, & the expectation 2 follow in her mother's footsteps. That day she cashed her chips & drove 2 MIT never looking back."
She grows up accustomed to neon lights. Their dingy apartment wasn't anywhere near either the strip or glitter gulch but there always seemed to be neon everywhere. Later, when she visits on a short vacation from QC, she realizes that there really weren't that many lights. The street is darker than she remembers and she wonders how her memory got it so wrong.
She learned to count cards early and her school friends stopped letting her play before she turned nine. It's such a cliche, kids from Sin City playing five card stud instead of patticake, but they did it anyway. They all learned early that the people who made real money sat on the other side of the table from the dealer. Everyone wanted a better deal than their parents had.
Aces high.
She practices her waterfall shuffles until they fall perfectly but she never wants to be paid for them. She's not doing this for anyone other than herself.
There's a lot of empty evenings and night shifts when your mom works in a 24 hour city. Felicity discovered the internet at seven - it was her friend when she was lonely, her elder sister when she needed help with her homework, her teacher when the public school funding was cut. Again.
She first went online in the school library and then the public one. Breaking through the archaic child-safe firewall was her first hack. It didn't take her long to learn her way around.
By the time she was 11 she was working weekends, legally and illegally, busing tables for her mom, walking dogs, babysitting, doing homework assignments for cash.
She learned quietly, sitting by herself, bathed in the blue light of the screen. Her first computer was a battered PC with a fat screen that the diner owner didn't want anymore, but the money she made with her myriad jobs was enough for more RAM and better components.
She never changed the box, but by the time she's 13 the inside of the machine has been entirely replaced. A fast sleek MPU inside a battered plastic shell.
She likes the metaphor. She thinks it's apt.
She gets her first Clark County work permit on her 14th birthday and works her first legal shift the same day. She can't work the bar with Mom but the diner down the road will take her. Tips are good and Mom drops by between shifts to give her a cupcake with a candle in it when her eight hours (of the legal 18 she's allowed in a week - she already knows the diner will ignore that part of the law) were up.
She makes a wish as she blows out the candle.
This will not be her life.
High school starts at 7:05 and ends at 1:21. She's at the library by 1:45 every day, spending precious seconds on homework or online. She's at the diner by 3:00 and she works an eight hour shift until 11. She's in bed by 11:30 and up at 6:00 to start the day over.
She saves all her tip money. She knows she'll need it.
The first scholarship letter arrives when she's 16. It's not MIT, but it's an offer.
She's holding out for the best. She knows she deserves it.
She works in the diner all the way up until the day she leaves for college. She said goodbye to Mom that morning, brushing her lips over her mother's cheek as she slept off a double shift followed by double drinks.
Her battered car should make it to Massachusetts, but it won't last much longer after that. The journey will kill it. She doesn't care. She doesn't expect to come back much.
It will be colder in the north she thinks as she follows the road out of Vegas. She likes the thought. She never liked the desert anyway.
There should be four seasons in a year. She looks forward to experiencing her first Fall.