The Future with Poverty

6

"How was your first week?" Julia says to me as she enters the room, still as beautiful as ever. She sits down again right in front of me and pulls out her pen and paper. I look up at her and start talking.

"It's been hell, I got into a fight on the second day almost getting shot and for a punishment of being involved in the fight I have been drafted into the fights." I turned away and stared out the window shedding a tear.

"So how do you feel about that?"

I turned to her and said with a stupid voice. "Man you are blond."

She dropped her pen and yelled, "I beg your pardon?"

"Sorry I'm just a little upset." She stood up and sat next to me. She smelt sweet like one of those perfume shops in the mall. I look up and she is right in my face starring at me with a worried look. Her beauty just stands out. "Listen Neil, we don't have much time to talk so we have to stay focused, so stop drooling over me and lets talk about what needs to happen."

When I looked up she had a worry look on her face. Had I gone too far with being Mc-dreamy over her? Can't be, if I was being creepy I wouldn't have a councilor anymore. This was a different worried look. This was a look like she was thinking of a plan but not sure weather to go through with it or not.

"Alright, I have a plan for you to escape the fights." Julie says. "If you're up to it."

I hesitate before speaking. "I just want to get through the fights with no difficulty." Before Julie said anything else the bell rang.

They gave us the rest of the day off. The main badge opened four big double doors that used to be the gym's of the school. When the construction workers changed the school into the training arena they must have fixed up the gym too.

The floors are carpets now and they removed all the basketball hoops. However they left the mini gym next to the big gym alone for people who do want to play basketball. In the main gym their is a huge flat screen television, a couple of nice expensive foosball tables, a few snack and drink machines, and a couple long wooden boxes that look like tables about ten feet long that I never seen before but it's pretty popular.

I went over to check it out and on my way Patrick bombards me. He grabs my arm and pulls me to the game.

"Come on, I'm next and I need a partner."

"Next for what?"

"The game with the long wooden box."

"What game is it?"

"I don't know but it's FUN!"

At the box table there is a huge crowd of people. Two people are at opposite ends of the table with pool balls. I guess the objective of the game is to knock the other teams balls into the the square whole at the end of the table with your ball.

After a couple rounds of playing the game Patrick and I were the best people and nobody could beat us. The others ended up throwing us off the game after we won about fifteen times 'cause others wanted a chance to win.

After lunch the badges decided to open up the pool, that was the big hit for us to choose. Myself, Patrick, and two other guys decided to play water polo, The life guard said it was the most intense game of water polo he has ever seen, luckily Patrick and I won with a score of 10-8. All seemed to go well, until a alarm went off and dozens of badges came running to the gym and the people at the pool were told to stay where we are.

I had no idea what was going on. I thought it was another fight and the badges went to execute the scene. Over the badges walkie-talkie I overheard other badges saying there was an intruder. We couldn't hear much of what's going on until someone said over the intercom "This is your one and only warning, leave now or we will be forced to use unnecessary action. Few moments later I heard about ten gun shots fire simultaneously.

After the shots were fired the alarm went off and everyone went back to what they were doing. However I was curious to what was actually happening. I know the badges are hiding something from us, but I just don't know what exactly.

After we finished in the pool it was time for a big game of dims.

A badge stood on a box in front of all of us. "The objective of the game is like bad-mitten, but on scooters. The winning team gets a free pass to do what ever they want. Other than leave, your stuck here."

Patrick and I both look at each other. We both were thinking the same thing, we would be on the same team. That is until the badge said he will be picking our teams.

After a few teams were picked the badge finally got to my name.

"Neil Hunkleson and Susan Thompson."

There isn't much to say about Susan, she is seven-teen and has short black hair; she came into the fights because she disrespected a badge by talking back to him.

I never thought that she was good at sports until we went into the championship rounds.

We didn't win the championship rounds, but since we did go to the championship game and came in second we got a free snack pass in the badge room. I'm pretty happy about that, they have really good food in the badge hall. So I've heard.