Chapter 1
July 7th, Brewer Boulevard, 8:01
If she didn't let her mother know where she was, she'd lose her weave. And everything else attached.
Wayside: Leaving da library now.
Mama: You said eight o clock. It's eight o' one.
Wayside: dmn, mama dats jus a min...
Mama: I don't want you out on the streets!
Mama: I'm looking at the news now and they just found a little girl near West Route. Where are you again?
Wyleisha pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. She let her mother know precisely where she was going, she even made a note to take the kitchen knife before she left. The library was a few blocks from the house. She doubted any goons, as her mother called them, would prowl on the eastside of the Brawn. Though, Wyleisha feared that one had gotten clever enough to travel further. She pushed the terrifying imagination aside. Staring at the phone, she could give her a heart attack and not text her back for three minutes or she could be a wholesome girl and reply. She rubbed the screen with her thumb, 'Damn. She's so strict'. Don't text that! --she thought.
Mama: Wyleisha P. Gaines, Answer me back! I need to know where you are!
'Maybe I'm adopted...' An assumption that often crossed her mind. Her mother was dark skin with light brown caramel eyes. Sadly, she was one of those kids that didn't know her father. Something about jail? Oh wait--he visited but the last time was truly the last.
Wayside: Mama! I'm coming hom, I sed I jus left da library!
Mama: Stop texting like that I can't understand a damn thing!
Wayside: u bugging da hll outa me!
Wyleisha groaned and put her phone in her back pocket. For a minute she pondered breaking the phone. However, her job paid 8 dollars an hour and there were no empty positions. It was taking forever to get promoted. Even with the fact she was the third person at work that actually did something. Coming in on time? Fuck that. Cleaning the floor? Fuck that. Snitching on coworkers that stole? Forget all that. She wasn't getting a promotion.
The new phone that was buzzing on BRAIN SOCIETY cost around $750. Plus she had to pay the first bill that was 35 dollars. She did the math, working at The Royal Grill got her eight dollars an hour. She woke up on the weekend around eight and stayed at work till twelve. She was supposed to clock out at seven but working five extra hours got her extra. Her boss, Orlena, was gracious enough to put five dollars on her paycheck. Whoopie...
Working ten hours plus got her a check containing the price of dog food. If she owned a dog--rest in peace little Sable-- she would be broke. Dog food in the Brawn sold for 60 dollars to 75 dollars. Her mother got paid working the club for the Breeches. A country club paid her fucking ten times more than she made. Thinking back to the conversation two weeks ago. Her mother was a fully trained bitch.
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Lumber Street 1301, Myleisha's House
Untying the bag of bread and reaching past three slices. Laying the bread on the counter and grabbing the relish, pickles, and ketchup from the cabinets. "I hope to God you did not reach inside the bread bag." Immediately she rolled her eyes. "No--" she knew better than to lie. Knowing all too well it would earn her a bullet in the back for doing it. Better yet, she might lose her ears. "Goddamn, it Wyleisha...," her mother stepped towards the sink, sighing and turned on the faucet. "One day, you will listen to me."
At the age of seventeen, she highly doubted it. Many of her friends--pause--already moved out and owned apartments. Keeping silent as to not aggravate an argument, she continued making her sandwich. Relish, ketchup, and pickles--and that off-brand dressing. An invention conspired by pure theory, Dazzemonkh Sauce. She liked it, plain and simple. Her mother didn't and research dozens of articles online, meaning she clicked two links that said something dangerous. One Article: Dazzemonkh Sauce being recalled for minor herpes outbreak. Alarming but she knew articles online held a bunch of text with no fact tied to them.
"Do we have any ham left?" she asked. Her mother's lips contorted, "Ham?"
"Yes," she said matter-a-factly. "No, we don't have ham. You know why?" She didn't ask for this. What was another type of meat she could use? Falchion meat was ok, but chewy and stuck on the roof of your mouth. Then there was llama, but her mother bought a pack of llama from a butcher, and it was pure poison. Wyleisha never thought her second bed would be the toilet. The last type of meat in the Brawn was Penguyn, it wasn't actually Penguin meat, but it came from a specially bred bull. The Penguyn bull resided in the mountains, and unlike other bulls, it ate from bushes created by the scientist that lived in the slums.
Sometimes she had to sit and reflect that half the shit in the city was experimented on. Artificial foods were made because people could leave well alone.
"While you standing in the kitchen making death. Take the trash out, you aren't doing anything. Also, clean these dishes, I was going to but then I had--what do you call it? A theory?"
"Mama!" Wyleisha swished around, gritting her teeth. "I am going to school in thirty minutes! I'm making myself something to eat! Then I'm going upstairs to get my damn clothes, brush my teeth, try and do my hair--"
"Did you take a bath?" her eyes bulged out the sockets at the mere question. "You'll be later than you think."
"No!" She gave up around the seventh grade. She didn't like the soap she bought. Wyleisha suffered from Raunelyere. Her mother just so happened to buy the one specific brand of soap containing her minute away from hives and loss of breath.
Fucking blue caramel.
"Why do you keep doing this to me!" Around fourth grade, she fell out of love with her mother. She didn't care, nothing on Mother's Day, nothing on her birthday; maybe something for her funeral. Bitches love flowers, right? In the Traph, you had military and science--minus that other thing that kept millions in the hospital. "I'm telling you one day; I can do and that's got my ass up and go to school! You want me to take out the trash and do multiple things, hear me out, THAT I CANNOT DO IN THIRTY GODDAMN MINUTES."
Her mother, Chalise Gaines, set her hands on her hips. As a slim-figured woman compared to her pear-shaped daughter. Wyleisha contemplated multiple things. One being, how long do you get for hitting old people? She had to consider the fact; she had a scholarship to one of the biggest colleges in the Traph. She didn't get fucking praise for that. No, wow, my daughter is going to college. She might get a job at a big company.
Because her fucking mother was a complete and honest working bitch. "Taking out the trash takes twice minutes," Chalise argued. "No, it doesn't. Today is fucking Tuesday and Tuesday and when Larry drives by to pick up the heap. Why in the hell did you wait until I walk my ass in the kitchen to eat to tell me about the trash?"
"Waylonde--"
"Stop! I'm irritated as shit as it is!"
"Girl shut up and listen!" Chalise began stepping towards her, waggling her finger. As Wayleisha started to move to the door, her mother caught her arm and twisted her around. "Get off me!"
"I'm sick of this attitude. I'm tired of battling with you every time I say something!"
"I'm sick of yo' prissy ass treatin' me like a damn slave!" she snatched her arm away and darted up the stairs adjacent to the kitchen. "There you go talking like one of those goons! You been fucking with that boy again."
She hustled into the peaceful bedroom, attempting to block her mother's flat voice. It wasn't always like this, but she found herself wailing through her door, "And there you go talking just like me so I wonder who I got it from!" Following by the echo of the door slamming.
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Before she left the house, she definitely made positive to tell her. THAT EXACT FOLLOWING WORDS: I'm going to the library so I can finish my science project. What she didn't tell her: I have a project tied to my scholarship that I have to complete or I won't get the scholarship money!
Not to mention she had to send four links to her email so she could use them later. And at home, she couldn't work on the project in peace. She already visualized a conversation that would without a fucking doubt become an argument. "I don't have to go home...," a theory or emancipation.
Unquestionably emancipation. Freeing herself from the shackles of the wicked mother. Mind your blood pressure.... you the thing your mother isn't concerned about because 'You aren't really sick... just lazy.' Or maybe she's a vampire... that was always on the table. If she had BD disorder... in retrospect
Well... lunch is served at home.
That was beside the point, where could she stay until tomorrow? A work? There was a basement to the Royal Grill, and being the only good employee, she could sleep down there. With creeps as she called them aka roaches--the red big ones about the size of a palm.
Science... fuck science.
Wyleisha was a hard-working student. Always studying, she even researched the roaches in the Royal Grill, the slang term is The Thug roach, the scientific terminology Crepitus Foetor Rutilus. The Thug Roach was genetically crafted, supposedly made for the militia. If she told her mother, she wouldn't give a fuck.
Now, where can she stay the night--and forever?
//
So, this was an idea of the waorshippers at the time but was called ROSES AND BULLETS.