chapter 3

Terror choked the air from Iris’s lungs as she slowly moved through the hallway to her locker. The morning sun was shining lowly through the windows, casting shadows on the ground; pitch black and ready to swallow her down if she stepped on it. A part of her wish it would. Then she would not have to be here. Consequences be damned and all that.

It was still very early, earlier than Iris was used to. The sun was only barely peeping over the horizon, painting the colour of the sky a faint mixture of pink and orange. Normally, she would have at least stopped and admired nature’s artistic skills but she just could not find anything beautiful today. She had purposely arrived at this time so to intercept anyone’s chance of getting in to her locker.

The hallway wasn’t as loud as Iris was used to, with it being nearly devoid of students this early in the morning. The emptiness clawed at her mind, their soft snickers sounded like loud rain against a roof and her footsteps were the thunder applauding in her ears. While there may not have been many students loitering around, the sight of them had almost frozen Iris in her path. She had hoped to be the first person on campus, denying anyone from slipping the nightmarish red card into her locker. She did not see anyone from the elusive R5.

Their eyes clung to her but exchanged sly looks amongst themselves as she walked past them. Iris was an estranged antelope calf wandering into the lion’s hunting ground whose carcass would be thrown to these hyena’s after the lions had their fill. The bloody image of a carcass being chewed was bone chilling.

Was it her or was it cold in here?

A shiver slithered down her spine.

Never the less, Iris did not waver in her stride. She kept her eyes forward, her neck and shoulders stiff from the effort to keep her head up. Her spine tingled from the stares and cracked from the effort to keep walking. She did not know what to do, what they wanted her to do but she was certain that she would not react the way they wanted her to. She had casted a spotlight on herself and she would rock the stage like any prima donna does: with perfect posture, a brilliant voice, and with such confidence you would never have known her knees were still shaking. Her top arm burned a phantom sensation in the form of her mother’s palm, reminding Iris of the conversation she had with her mother last night.

Happiness is fleeting, capitalism is forever.

Her mother was right, Iris knew. There was nothing wrong about standing up for your friend and money made the world go round. The only way Iris was going to be in a position of financial power was through shining with her academic prowess and obtaining a sponsor or scholarship to put her through university.

With that in mind, Iris walked past the creeping shadows and peeping eyes, refusing to crumble, to give in. These people got everything they wanted in life on a silver platter and Iris was not going to be one of those things they got presented with.

She approached her locker, adverting her eyes from her white hands, stubbornly denying that they were shaking. The lock was still intact to her surprisingly clean locker, no badly spray-painted ‘gold digger’ or ‘whore’ to be found. Iris was honestly shocked to have found graffiti in Crawford in her first week of attendance, however, she wasn’t surprised to find it on her locker. One would have thought that having to attend cotillion classes as children would teach Iris’s peers concepts such as class and manner but, alas, just like how money cannot buy class, it clearly couldn’t even afford creative ways to bully people either.

Iris fiddled with the lock, nervously rolling the dials to reveal the passcode. She hears the students loudly tiptoe closer as she briefly closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Exhales, trying to relieve the stiffness in her posture and the tension in her heart. With tightly squeezed eyes she rips the locker door open.

Iris opens her eyes and sees -.

Nothing.

No red anywhere to be seen.

No red card!

Her body sags, her legs nearly crumbling beneath her, under the sudden lack of coiled muscles. She hears her audience groan as they disperse, clicking their tongue and whispering their disappointment amongst themselves. Bunch of sheep, Iris thinks as she ignores their unpleasant rumbling.

“Thank you, thank you,” Iris whispered, on the verge of tears, to the ceiling, to whoever sat in heaven looking out for her. She needed to send them a fruit basket. She could’ve cried from the sheer euphoria burning through her veins. No Red Card meant no R5 coming after her. And that meant that the majority of people, outside of those who already bothering her, would leave her alone for now.

Were those angels singing from above and birds chirping from their tree branches?

Suddenly, it was a very beautiful day.

Iris smiled brightly, her nose scrunching slightly from the sheer happiness she was feeling. She could’ve danced where she stood if where she stood wasn’t in a public setting. Quickly, she grabbed the textbooks she needed for her first four classes of the day – double maths, history, and then English – closed her locker, and walked to class, barely resisting the urge to skip to her destination. She might have been floating on a cloud with the way happiness shined from her.

She ignored the heavy feeling on her back as she went.

Completely unaware of a specific pair of eyes following her every move.