"The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing." - Herodotus
It grew to be the very late afternoon once Juliet had put the final touches on the story about Prescott and the Internationale. It took many hours filled with frustration, writing, fact-checking, then fact-checking again. The tedious nature of citations and references were bothersome, those measured by meticulous footnotes placed within the work, yet when it all came together Juliet smiled to herself, content with what they got.
AP, ACS, CBE, CSE, APA, MLA—only real journalists use Chicago style, end of. Totally not a biased assumption there.
With a click of the save and print icon, Juliet's printer geared to life, just as a knocking came from her door.
"Come in!"
The door swung open, and Dana quickly clambered into the room.
"Alright, how'd it go, Dana—!?" and Ward swooped Juliet into a bear hug, her smile shining bright.
"We're set, Jules!" the cheerleader let Watson go, "But we gotta leave, like, right now. Wells isn't happy we threw his afternoon schedule in the fray."
Juliet nodded and counted the pages that were being spat out of the machine. Dana had booked that "emergency" appointment with Wells once they'd gotten to the final touches of her article. While Juliet was eager to get the green light, there existed a bad feeling in her gut with talking to Wells about their findings. Memories of a past excursion many months ago with the principal fluttered to the forefront of her thoughts, but Watson dissuaded them. She wanted to be optimistic, even despite her suspicions of the head admin of Blackwell.
It's alright, it's fine. Maybe it was just a fluke. Don't stress about it.
The printer finished printing the multi-page draft, and with practiced ease Juliet swiped the papers off the tray. A single staple to the top left corner later, and they were rushing to Blackwell's main building. Passing the students still meandering after the last class of the day, they blitzed through the red entrance doors and made their way into the secretary's office.
The principal's secretary, an old woman sitting at the desk reading the newest edition of The Oregonian, glances up at the two girls, and grunts in the direction of the principal's office, a lacquered wooden door on their left. Needing not to be told twice, the two knocked and barged into the office, catching Principal Wells in the middle of signing documents. With a hurried stroke of the pen, Wells edged the papers off to the side, and directed his attention to the newcomers.
"Ms. Watson," he gave a fake smile to show them how, to put it nicely, displeased he was at their sudden interruption, "Ms. Ward, what can I help you two with?"
They both took their seats in front of the man's thick mahogany desk, and Juliet wasted no time with setting the article on his desk and pushing it toward him. He eyed the papers with a cautious curiosity, that which morphed to a deep-set frown as he began to read. The two girls watched his expression change rapidly, before ending up as a blank slate and slightly trembling.
"What is this?" he coldly asked.
Juliet and Dana glanced at each other. Juliet took her chance.
"It's an article about the party last Friday, sir."
"And how exactly did you…obtain all of this?"
"I had some reliable informants, sir. They choose to remain anonymous for personal reasons. They approached me with information regarding Prescott's means to funneling drugs into the parties he hosts. I rolled with it, and they gave me those pictures," she gestured to the article in the older man's hands, on the page were several images incorporated into the text.
"I checked the pictures, and I couldn't find any copies of them on the web, meaning that they didn't pull them out from nowhere, sir. I inspected them for hours and found no signs of them being photoshopped. By all means, sir, they can't be fakes."
Wells looked spooked, already was he building a sheen on his bald head. The sunlight from the window behind him lit the gleam of perspiration atop.
"Have you, uhm, checked that these informants of yours have not made this up entirely?" he stuttered at first, before adopting a hollow monotone of a voice. Juliet was almost entirely certain that this concern was from Wells dealing with Nathan throwing one of his hissy fits and forcing his father to step in and strong-arm the school in the boy's favor. If that meant Wells was not interested in handling something like that, then it was already a cause for concern on Juliet's part.
He's not going to help you—
"Yes, I have, Principal Wells. I've fact-checked the article three times now, I'll do it a fourth if I have to. If you want, I can have the English teacher, Ms. Hoida, review the draft and help make sure it's to standard."
He looked terrified, almost. Her answer about the legitimacy of the article did anything but placate him. Having laid the piece atop his desk, the principal slumped back into his chair, noticeably disturbed. With a sigh, he reached down behind his desk, and opened a drawer the two couldn't see. Whatever it held, he didn't take it out, and instead Wells leaned forward in his chair and let another sigh punctuate his sour mood.
"I understand that you've been our best reporter for the past year or so, Ms. Watson. However, for the sake of your credibility and this school's reputation, I'd advise you refrain from posting this article to the public. I will not allow the potential slander of any student, including Mr. Prescott, be tolerated here at Blackwell. I am willing to overlook this perversion of school privileges with a warning. If you go forth with this," and he lowered his voice the slightest, commanding, "I will have no choice but to administer a punishment as determined by the Blackwell Code of Academic Conduct."
It was blindsiding to them indeed, to be threatened by the principal, no less than a Prescott.
Dana was visibly distraught, but Juliet was unafraid, sparking with agitation. She didn't want to use the nuclear option she'd thought about in the event the conversation went south, and she'd be really testing her luck, but Watson wasn't going to let a prime story like this from being silenced. She had hoped Wells would be decent enough to understand the situation, but Juliet concluded he had his head too far up his ass to care about the truth. The price one must pay to see the truth come to light, after all, is never cheap.
"Sir, with all due respect, there has never been a more concrete story I've worked with up until now. Since I first heard about it, I've done the reports, I have multiple witness testimonies, and I'm even sure you've seen the many videos of what happened at that party," she jabbed, clenching the armrests of the chair to keep from standing up, she needed to be calculated about this part, "so you know as much as I do how badly this could go down for Blackwell if we—if you—decide to lie to the public. I know it doesn't seem like it will help, but if the people don't know the truth about what's going on, there will be far worse repercussions than there is now."
Yet Wells looked entirely unconvinced, and opened his mouth to shut Juliet down with his platitudes and half-veiled threats, and adrenaline seized the reporter so suddenly; she jumped out her seat, and gestured pointedly to the article lying between them—
"Sir, I am asking you out of the goodness of my heart! I couldn't care about my reputation if it meant I'd be lying to people. I don't care what you throw at me, I will not let this one go—"
"Miss Watson, I am not going to entertain this fallacy of yours any longer—"
Fuck this.
"Oh, right, like as if a fallacy like this would be the most you've dealt with. Tell me, Mister Wells, do you remember the girl that disappeared at that Internationale party six months ago, who happened to be a student at your school? I remember. I had written three separate pieces on that one incident alone," Juliet slowly leaned in, forgone was the desire to be professional, "and I found a lot of evidence, sir, that indicated her disappearance to be foul play, and what did you tell me when I had all the dots lined up and all the evidence ready to hand off to the police, and to the courts, on my own?"
Juliet watched the wrinkles around his brow tense even more, and she relished the feeling of sticking it to the rat bastard.
"You told me you would save me the trouble of going through the process of it all and do it on my behalf, and four weeks later, the investigation was closed. They cited it as due to a lack of sufficient evidence, as matter of fact."
He knew. She knew that he knew. He knew that she was aware of what he'd done.
"Miss Watson, that is enough—"
"Tell me, sir, what exactly happened to make a solid case like that go up in ash and smoke? All that evidence, all the testimonies of the previous victims—all of them Blackwell students, I might add—were indicating that they were abused in some way beyond physical, and including the one disappearance, they have all happened in or around the Blackwell campus."
Wells was sweating bullets. For what reason, it didn't matter to Juliet anymore.
"So now as I find out there's been another incident last week, along with a dump of information, reliable information that I am certain is real, I have no choice but to go forward with this. I had hoped that you would be for supporting the truth and wanting to bring your former students justice, but instead I see that you do not give a damn about the truth," Juliet seethed, pointing her finger menacingly at Wells, who shot up from his chair to his full height, towering over her by a good foot and a half.
"That is enough—!" he shouted over her.
"No, sir!" she shouted back, "I will not stand by and see one of your students get away with his crimes because of your inaction! Maybe if you actually cared you'd have done something about it long ago, but the way I see it, you'd let your own students die if it meant you could save face!"
"SILENCE!"
A slam of the desk punctuated the guttural, baritone command, as Wells outright glared her down; the sudden roar was shrill on her eardrums, and shocked Juliet out of her tirade. She took a step back, away from the visibly seething principal, yet stood ramrod straight. She wouldn't dare show her fear to the real coward in the room, especially now.
"The both of you will forget about this and return to your dorms. If I hear anything about this slander being displayed, by paper or otherwise," he had his eyes locked on Watson, promising her his threats were not hollow this time, "then there will be immediate consequences. You both are smart enough to know what happens should you not heed my warning," and he coldly hammered his authority into every syllable and jammed it down their throats, leaving them to stew in bristling tension.
Dana, having been still as stone during the whole exchange, now silently got up from her seat, and coaxed Juliet with a nod to the door, as she silently walked out. Juliet glared at Wells for a few seconds longer, before turning and following her friend, signifying her departure by slamming the door shut.
Wells sighed, and sat down in his luxurious chair. A moment passed, before he reached for his desk phone.
"Ms. Burlough? Defer my calls and postpone the rest of my appointments for today," he rasped, frustrated and tired.
The principal then rummaged through the still open drawer beside him, pulling out a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass and setting them on the desk.
As soon as Dana clicked the door shut, she turned around to face her best friend now leaning on the back of her desk chair, heaving away an anxiety attack. Immediately was Dana enveloping Watson in a hug, loose around the shoulders so that Juliet could latch onto her and ride out the emotional torrent with someone to keep her grounded. Dana didn't say a word as the harsh, choked gasps wracked her friend's frame, and Juliet tensed as her muscles twinged in rapid succession, before the feeling of being anchored down held her still and the anxiety-ridden reporter slumped into her friend's embrace, now tired from the sudden exertion.
They stayed like that for a good few minutes, listening to the sound of the sparrows chirp from the pine trees outside, or the slight droning of the air conditioner unit on the dorm's roof. Dana thinks back to the time this happened before, when Juliet had moved in many years back, having overstressed herself on the first day and ending up with Ward as her first friend in the academy.
"I gotta delete it," Juliet mumbled into the cheerleader's shoulder, "I—I have to delete it."
"No, you don't."
"I hav'to!" and Juliet fell out of the embrace, landing in the chair and turning her laptop on, "I knew I fucked up when I shouted at him, I fucked up so bad—!"
"You didn't do anything outside of what you shouldn't, you know that—we both know that," retorted Dana, placing a hand on her friend; yet Juliet was shivering with anxious fervor again.
The computer pulled up File Explorer, and the article laid before the girls in a single bar, placed between all the other renditions of it and other projects Juliet had typed previous. The cursor moved very hesitantly up to the item, right-clicking and scrolling down the options list to the delete button.
The final notification that she'd be trashing her work forever gave Juliet pause.
"You shouldn't do it, Jules," whispered Dana, tugging slightly at the reporter's shoulder, "Jules, look at me."
Bloodshot eyes looked up to Ward, looking on as if she'd be pleading to the brunette for another path to take, another option other than this.
Dana continued, "You remember what you said to him, about not giving up on this, no matter the consequences?"
Juliet nodded.
"Then you know as much as I do that there's no reason to back out now. Wells not helping us out sucks alright, but we don't need to listen to him if all he's gonna do is threaten us for exposing Prescott."
Juliet glared pensively at the notification, lost to her thoughts over the conversation with their principal. Truly, it had been a bit of a risk, considering that the man had a shoddy record of laying down the hammer on the resident prince of Blackwell, but they'd hoped that with enough damning evidence, they'd swing Wells into their favor.
So much for that.
"And hey, uhm—what was up with that thing you said, about Rachel Amber? Why was Wells so upset about that?"
Juliet's features darkened, recalling with perfect clarity the series of events that unfolded from that clusterfuck.
"I had all the evidence and testimonies the police could ever need in a court trial. It all pointed to Prescott—it would've taken that little bastard's whole family fortune to keep him out of jail, if they'd fight it. I was naïve, I thought this school cared enough about justice to be on my side. Wells had asked me if I'd let him handle the evidence on my behalf, told me he'd deal with the whole process of admitting it to the courts for me—" a sniff, Juliet brushed a hand down the left side of her face, shrouded in self-disappointment.
"He didn't do a goddamn thing."
Dana watched frustration cross her friend's face, watched her fists, clenching and unclenching, she watched Watson tremble with terrible anger. The cheerleader took one of her hands and rolled circles on the bronze-blonde's back, and Juliet slightly relaxed.
"I was stupid enough to forget to make a copy of my notes and interviews, an' next thing I know, my old computer gets swiped by someone and I find it shattered in two out in the parking lot. You remember that?"
Dana nodded, pulling her hand away as Juliet shifted in her seat, turning to the silver computer and eyeing the article before her, "Think about it, D. If the principal is able to bury a girl like Rachel without any remorse, just like that, what do you think he could do with the rest of us?"
Ward frowned, not of anger, but of worry over where Juliet was taking this.
"To think, not only do we hav'to deal with that rat bastard, Nathan, we also gotta deal with a principal who'd sweep us under the rug if given the chance. I'd bet he's no better than a puppet of the Prescotts, just like too many people are in this town."
The thought of being unable to trust the very person that held control over her future education terrified Juliet; she looked over to the photo resting on the desk and felt her insides twist in dreadful knots. It wouldn't take much to ruin her and all her friends, if Wells was daring enough. All he had to do was find a decent enough excuse to boot them out and weather the public backlash, before Big Brother came in and funneled thousands to keep him settled.
"Then we fight him, too."
There were a few seconds of hesitation, then Juliet looked to Dana, utterly perplexed at the cheerleader's notion, "Wait, what?"
"We can't trust him; therefore, we take the fight to him just like with Prescott," Ward was muttering to herself, but piqued Juliet's attention as the reporter watched her friend pace in a loose circle around her room.
"Dana, I don't think—"
"It's perfect, we'll be swinging a curveball at him, and he won't ever see it coming."
"Dana, wait."
"With you getting the deets, and me and everyone else throwin' the yeets, anything's possible."
"...what the hell are you talking about?"
"Then when everything's set, we catch him with his trousers down, and then—" Dana whacks a fist into the palm of her other hand, as if the problems had been crushed then and there, "Pow! He's toast! And then everything will be alri—"
"Dana!"
Dana turns, and regards Juliet with sudden embarrassment, with a hand on the back of her neck the auburnette mumbles an apology. That is, until she notices that Juliet isn't looking in her direction anymore, her gaze now fixed to the group photo sitting forlornly upon the wooden desktop.
"Jules?"
"I'm not dragging any of you into this, that's final. If I hav'to take the fall, then it'll be just me, and only me."
Dana frowned, "Since when did you decide what's best for us? What if we want to go along with this?"
"Since when did you speak for them?"
"I don't."
Dana pulled out her iPhone, and after flicking the screen a couple times, she placed it on the desk, in front of Juliet to see. Noticing a text conversation, Juliet tucked the phone closer, and silently read the messages. After a minute of this silence, Juliet sighed and leveled the phone back on the desk, looking visibly distraught as she peered up to Dana.
"All of you?"
Dana crossed her arms, looking hopefully defiant at her friend, as if daring her to dissuade the inevitable. To her credit, Watson knew when she'd been beat, and slumped in her chair, sniffling, wiping a single tear from her right eye.
"We all know how much this means to you. Now you know how much you mean to us. It may not seem like it, but everyone is also worried about another case like Rachel happening again," so Dana crouched to Juliet's level, looping an arm around in support, "They see you as the only one who can make a stand, and they're willing to follow you, regardless of what Wells does."
Another tear, this time from her left eye, trails down Juliet's cheek and is wiped with the subtle flick of the wrist, a sniffle is all Juliet has to say.
They'd put their whole lives, everything they worked for at risk, just because they trusted her—
"What happens if he expels them, if he kicks them out?" Juliet whispered, fearing to hear the truth be spoken so loudly.
"They already have backup plans for this, they prepared for something like this to happen long ago, before we even met them. You're not gonna ruin anything, Jules."
"But what if I fuck up? What if I fuck up again, Dana? What if it all goes wrong?"
Dana pulled her closer, and looked on to the computer, idle since they first started talking, "Tell me, Jules, you love your parents, don't you?"
Another sniffle, "Of corsh'."
"Then tell me; what did they tell you, when you first came here, to this place, to Blackwell?"
The birds sung a high string of notes outside, a grand finale to some melody never to be understood. Eventually, the birds flew away, out beyond the view of the window. Juliet gently shrugged off the arm around her, sitting up and scooting closer to the laptop, taking hold of the mouse.
The cursor edged away, hovering over the cancel button and with a single click, the death of her effort was avoided.
"I remember my parents telling me that I was gonna be the best reporter this school ever had, and I didn't think it to be true," the cursor now moved to the save and print option, a click brought up the preview screen, "but now, I'm starting to think they were onto something."
And Dana smiled, bright and luminous, "Yeah, I think so too."
"And for three whole days, despite the lack of food and with barely enough water to keep them afloat, they had sprung on the British holding the small town nearest to them and forced them from the area by the dawn of the third day. But it wasn't like the Germans had it easy—it took them four tries under heavy machine gun fire before they pushed the South Africans back, and even then, it wasn't a decisive defeat for the British forces. They pulled out most their soldiers by the time the Askari and the Germans came."
"So, you can imagine the kind of things that my great-grandfather saw, when he was one of the Schutztruppe," the narration steadied itself once more, "that he would come face-to-face with death, would witness the flies stewing in the blown-out guts of horses, that he would see men chopped to pieces by machine guns, and the fires that would consume entire swathes of the brush!"
"That's brutal," murmured Alyssa with a morbid curiosity, "and all this was from the word of your father?"
"Yes," Stella asserted triumphantly, "It's been a story that's carried from each generation of my family. My great-grandfather told my grandfather of what he'd seen, and he told my father the same after coming over to the States. It's been a sort of tradition in my family since. My mom and my sister don't like it that much, but I think it's cool—it's like I'm keeping my great-grandfather alive there, somewhere in my heart."
"Didn't know you were poetic, Stella," came a suggestive deadpan of a voice. It's owner, Brooke, was laxing on the couch, texting someone on her phone.
"See? This is what I mean Alyssa, it's just like I told you—Brooke's the kind to sit there in silence, and then blindside you with a quip like that," came the retort, but a cheeky smile already made itself clear on Stella's face, "Remember this well: Brooke is a classic tsundere, meaning she shows how much she cares about you by being as prickly as a porcupine."
"Fuck off."
"See what I mean?"
Alyssa took all this in with a quiet enthusiasm unbefitting the stocky girl, her blue eyes alight with curiosity, "That's...interesting. I've never heard that word before."
"Wait, you're telling me that you've never seen any anime or stuff like that?" came the incredulous inquiry.
"...what's anime?"
Stella's features morphed to apprehension, and she drawled, "Ah, never mind. I'll just make sure to tone down any references to stuff, better tell Juliet too once she gets back."
Alyssa said nothing, choosing instead to marvel at the intricate décor of Juliet's room. Here was the first time she found herself in the room of another, as Stella took no pride in her own room and Brooke was very selective of who was allowed into her dorm. It was a nice change of pace to Anderson's own room, which was sparse and without any personal touches.
"Uhm, Stella?"
"Hm?"
"Do you think, that uh—that she'll like me?" Alyssa stuttered, nervously rubbing a thumb over knuckles.
"Who, Juliet? Yeah, she'll like you. She's prolly gonna ask you a lot of questions, 'cause that's how she is, but I think you'll be fine."
The door to the room was suddenly opened, and the three looked to the newcomers, who trudged in as if coming back from a midday run.
"Dana, Juliet, what's good?" chirped Stella, rising from her spot on the floor and giving the former a swift welcoming hug.
"We're doing alright, thanks to you guys," Dana reciprocated, "and thanks for helping us put up the printouts today."
"Don't mention it, we don't got much to do around here anyways."
"Seriously, don't mention it," Brooke quipped sarcastically, "I'd appreciate staying around for a little longer before my parents decide to yank me out of here."
Dana chuckled at the jest, and looked to Juliet, who had sat herself in front of her computer and was pulling up the school's website, specifically to her student account. The reporter hastily pulled up the News Club's portal, set about to the editorial section, and frantically opened up the article. Looking at Watson was like watching a roadrunner be held still for five minutes, and so intensely was Juliet wound with tension that it seemed like she was possessed.
Noticing the lack of noise, Dana looked to the others also watching Watson, all with varying states of worry and in some cases looking to her for a hopeful explanation. Dana could only shrug.
"Uh, Jules? You good?"
"Gimme a sec."
A staccato of keyboard clicking, before a dramatic clack of the enter key signaled the finishing of whatever Watson was working on. She shifted in her seat, looking tired beyond the measure sleep can fix.
"It's done."
"What do you mean?" asked Stella.
"The article's on the website, anyone who goes on there will see it, and I know Wells doesn't check until his receptionist lets him know."
"Wait, doesn't she wake up real early?" the ebony brunette inquired, concerned.
"Nah, not on Thursdays. They stopped doing early hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays to save money."
Dana smirked, "Well, damn, the world's turning in our favor this time."
"Yeah, huh." Juliet slumped in her chair, now taking notice of the unfamiliar face in her dorm.
"Wait, do I know you?"
Brooke looked up from her phone, watching Juliet eye Alyssa with curiosity, and the stockier girl in question stuttered her greeting, "Well u-uhm, no."
"Oh yeah, shit—Juliet, this is Alyssa, Alyssa Anderson," interjected Stella, having claimed her spot on the foldable chair in a corner close to the couch, "I met her this semester, she's pretty cool."
"Nice to meet you," Anderson nodded her head, which was reciprocated by Juliet, "Nice to meet you too, Alyssa."
"So, you're one of the new ones, huh?" Juliet inquired.
"Yeah."
"Where you from, then?"
"Renton, Seattle."
Juliet's eyebrows raise slightly.
"Wait a minute, you were there when the Riots happened, weren't you?"
Alyssa visibly tensed. Beside her, Stella and Brooke took a curious interest in Anderson's fidgeting.
"Y-yeah, it's the reason my family moved here," the raven-haired girl fidgeted slightly on the couch, "my father had to sell his gym in Seattle to get the money for us. The highways were blocked with traffic for miles, but we got through it."
A pause. Then, "…what about your mother?" asked Juliet.
Alyssa answered with nothing. She stared down at her hands. The atmosphere dimmed in the room and weighed upon the shoulders of all of the girls.
"Shit, uh—I'm sorry, Alyssa."
"It's fine," Anderson softly spoke, "she wouldn't want me to dwell on it."
Another prolonged silence reigned over them, until Dana audibly cleared her throat, directing the attention towards her.
"Y'know, I still have both my parents. They live in the motel down on Main Street, the one right next to that grocery store by the roundabout. Every once in a while, they come up and visit me, y'know, and always try to make me happy, always wanting to do things with me. I don't mind it much, but I keep thinking about what I'd do, if I were them. I don't wanna take them for granted, 'cause what happens if they just, poof—" and with a flayed motion of hands, Dana continues, "what if they're gone all of a sudden, and then what?"
The others beheld the story with rapt attention, taking every word to heart.
"I just...I want to make them feel like what they did was worthwhile, that they didn't waste their lives on me."
Dana fell quiet and looked to Juliet, silently asking her to take up the figurative torch. With a sigh, Juliet obliged, "Even with the Riots, my family and I were pretty lucky. We never had to move from our home over on the north side of Arkadia, it just meant we had a lot less food on the table. But I saw how stressed my parents were, and it made me want to never be a burden to them. So, I did as best I could, which wasn't that great to be honest, but it was enough to get into this place here," laying back in her chair, Juliet pensively eyed the off-white ceiling above, "I don't see them often, but I hope the next time I do, I get to tell them how much they mean to me."
Like a driving force, the eyes of everyone shifted to the person to Juliet's left, Brooke, who didn't pay heed until a good few seconds after the sudden silence. Glancing up, she did a double take, coughed, then started in her monotone pitch, "I guess I'd miss my parents, if they ever appreciated what I wanted to do," Brooke placed her phone off to the side and sat up, "they constantly harp on me about what I'd do wrong, what I wasn't doing right. I never felt good enough to them, so when I got accepted into Blackwell I opted to live in the dorms, to stay the hell away from them."
Forlorn looks crossed the faces of the others as Brooke deadpanned, "I had picked being a mechanical engineer out of spite because of my mother, since she was the one getting on my case the most. Turns out I'm actually pretty good at it. So I stuck with it. I hardly ever see my parents, and frankly I don't think I want to see them."
The spectacled girl rested her head upon the upper edge of the couch, looking torn between ending her spiel then and there, or going further. In the end, before everyone decided she'd said all she wanted, Brooke spoke, "I hate it, having to keep away from them even though I know they care for me. I just want them to accept me for who I am, and not for what I could be."
The momentum pushed on to Stella, who had adopted a sympathetic look, "I feel you about that, Brooke. I don't got the best of memories with my parents either," she looked to her water bottle to avoid the gazes of the others, "my older sister was always their favorite, mostly 'cause she was the only one who'd been planned for."
Stella heard the individual apologies spill forth and it filled her with a sudden guilt, for even if she was to pour her heart out, she felt it to be not out of pity. So, she promptly cackled and with a dismissive wave of the hand Stella brushed aside their pity-words.
"Guys, it's fine, don't worry 'bout it," the ebony brunette chuckled, "it's not tearing me up or anything—I mean, yeah it hurts sometimes, but it's whatever. It's not like my parents give me the cold shoulder; they still care. If there's one thing they taught me well, it's that life is unforgiving, and you need all the help you can get. Ah—I grew up in the south residential area, y'know, near the middle school on Third Street. You all've seen that place, right?"
With the affirmation of nodding heads, Stella continued, "Well, that's where a lot of people got hit really hard after the crash, most ended up moving out within the first two months. There was this small span of time where you could walk out onto the street, and it'd be as quiet as ever. The cars were gone, the grass lawns were full of weeds—it was like everyone was swept away by some freak storm or something like that."
A chuckle, then, "It was alright though, since I met Brooke around that time. Her family settled a couple houses down the street, so it was all worth it," with a cheeky smile Stella recalled to memories the two shared, "'Ey, Brooke, you remember how the neighborhood would get together, and have those big barbecues every week down by the field?"
Brooke thought about it, and said, "Not really. I didn't get out much when we arrived. I do remember the bums that turned up during the night to steal stuff. Dad had to spend nights outside on the porch with the shotgun to keep them away."
It was a solemn reminder to the others listening, that the crash of '08 had touched everyone, one way or another. No one was spared from the effects of the interdependent world surrounding them.
Yet not all was bleak, as Stella sat up from her laxed pose, grinning something fierce, "Hey, you remember that story you told me, about when those hobos were runnin' out in the street in their underwear after they tried stealing some prototype of yours?"
"Wasn't mine. It was my dad's second attempt at an improvised firework mortar," Brooke chuckled fondly at the memory, "yeah, I remember. Some of the neighbors had those heavy fireworks that needed a mortar tube to work, but they didn't have the time nor the money. Dad thought he'd earn some respect by making one for the upcoming 4th of July festival. We—my family and I—were watching a movie in our living room one night, and my dad looks over to the window out back and started sputtering."
"Oh shit, yeah—" Stella cackled something fierce, being shushed by the others who're now interested in what came next.
"So my mom starts asking him what's wrong, and he points over to the shed in the back of the yard, and we could see them trying to lug the entire thing, all eighty pounds of it, to the outside gate—" Brooke's grin widened, "one of them tripped I guess, they dropped it right on the mortar's plate, right on the charge that my Dad had forgotten to take out, and then next thing we know, the whole thing just blows up in their faces."
"BOOM—!" echoed Stella, "The poor bastards, they were running down the street when I went outside to look, they looked like a couple of those wendigos or something scary like that, they were screaming their heads off and everything!"
A chorus of snickers rung in the quiet abode. Outside, the light dimmed to its evening glow.
A/N - The Great Riots, otherwise known as the Housing Riots or simply "The Riots," was a period of unrest in the United States, and to an extent the European Union, that lasted from the early Spring of 2008 until the mid-summer of 2010. Its conception began with the domino-effect of factors that ultimately led to a general decline in the U.S. economy and by extension, the world economy as a whole. Following the steep decrease of housing prices, this led to a loss of trust in the mortgage-backed securities held by investment banks across America, and this in turn led to a lack of funds available to homeowners and businesses alike. What once was a flow of money and capital turned into a coagulation of paying down debts, and this in turn led to civil unrest in almost all fifty state capitals. As the decline grew sharper and more prominent on the life of the average citizen, civil unrest turned to protesting and ultimately, rioting.
Large, dependent metropolitan cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Austin, Houston, New York, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. and many other state capitals not listed all fell into a state of emergency within the first two weeks of the recession. It came to be, that once the cities' police departments were effectively repulsed by the sheer number of rioters within these cities, that many attempts of secession or autonomous zones outside of federal jurisdiction were attempted by the rioters. Looting of all forms of businesses, especially the offices of many high-ranking companies and their subsidiaries was the subject of the media spanning the entirety of the disaster.
The President, with a divided legislative government and no judicial authority beyond the order to requisite the states' National Guard, was mostly ineffective in their response to stem the severity of the recession, and instead looked to the sudden influx of violence across the country as something that was inevitable. State governments, by variation of their ideology, either quickly suppressed the lawless communes forming in their cities or did nothing to curb the intentions of the people in said communes. The last of the extreme effects of the recession and by extension, the Riots, waned following policies eventually passed by Congress and the President in the early months of 2010, with recovery showing signs in the summertime that same year. That present administration and party would be extensively voted out of office in the proceeding election of 2012.
The separation of this recession when compared to the Great Depression of the 1920-30's, was not the severity of the crash, despite it having the potential to be as debilitating if not more so than the crash of 1929; it was the reaction of the government and the people that make it one of the most devastating. Upwards of $3 billion dollars' worth of damage to property, to businesses, and to citizens that had their homes damaged or whose lives were taken in the violence, was the greatest toll that the United States had ever faced since the L.A. riots in 1992. While not an exact amount, estimates in 2010 placed the total number of those killed during The Riots to at least 130 people. After the dust had settled, all the public had attained beyond a semblance of their previous lives was an unshakable cynicism for the government, at both federal and state level. Not only that, but it also spurred a need to look for more effective countermeasures of government inaction, and thus, the adoption of radical political solutions by many who blamed the government for the destruction.