Mason's POV
Garbage litters the streets everywhere I look. Families are freezing, nowhere to call their home but the sidewalk where they sit. Some of these people have nothing to love but the high they keep to forget.
Soon, this may be me.
The smell of downtown is anything but pleasant, filling my lungs with air that smells of lost hopes and dreams.
What do lost hopes and dreams smell like? Well let me tell you... It smells of dirt and alcohol. It smells of death and sewage. The smell makes you want to vomit, like curdled milk.
Mold.
If hatred had a smell, this would be it.
None of the downtown people can afford to shower, to buy food every day for their children.
Any food you see is well past the due date, so green and fuzzy it seems as though it may eat you. But they eat it.
It disgusts me. How they can live like this, how nobody cares.
These people don't seem to matter.
The government pretends they help them, putting up homeless shelters, handing out a small amount of edible food.
That doesn't do anything. They're only helping themselves, pretending they're saving lives while spending all their money on roads too bumpy for the spoiled rich people.
I used to be one of those people, the spoiled ones.
I used to think my life sucked, because my mother wouldn't let me stay out passed 10 pm, because there were occasional potholes.
Any problem I had the government would rush to fix, my school didn't have enough money for another sports team? Money. I hit a bump in the road and didn't like it? Money.
Now though, I could be starving. And they won't even look twice.
Because I am no longer of importance to them. My life no longer matters.
"I haven't seen you around here. You new?" I jump at the voice, too lost in my own thoughts to notice the man standing in front of me.
The man looks to be around my age, 17, average height but still much shorter than me. He has short, dirty blonde hair. And light blue eyes. His clothing isn't ripped and dirty, meaning he has some money. But the look in his eyes tells me he's gone through some stuff. He obviously lives downtown, considering what he just said, but he must be better off than most of the people I've seen down here so far.
"Well??" He presses.
"M-my name is Mason... Mason Montoya." I respond, I'm suddenly aware of how shy and lost my voice sounds. I sound weak, maybe my father wasn't wrong about that.
"Mason huh? Well you couldn't be from around here, your clothing seems new and intact, your eyes still give a look of hope. So tell me, why are you here?"
"I-I... I don't f-feel comfortable t-telling you a-about m-me... Besides I d-don't even know y-your name." I can't help the stutter, but it surprises me. I never stutter. I guess this place has really changed me already, I haven't even been down here a day.
