05-02-2023, 08:28 PM
South Grapevale Young Adult Alternative Education Facility
Carolyn Greenwood sat primly on the bed that Leonie Bennett had once slept in. If Leonie had been shocked and horrified to end up here, her reaction paled in comparison to that of Carolyn. Carolyn was shocked also, but the emotion that defined her present experience could only be described as outrage. She was utterly furious with her mother for allowing this.
The cell door opened and another young woman was shoved roughly inside. The other woman had numerous bruises and turned around to growl at the door as it was slammed shut and locked. Then the woman stood up straight, stuck her tongue out at the door and folded her arms, leaning back against the wall. She noticed Carolyn and nodded at her. “First time?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your first time in Alt-Ed?” she asked. “Only, you look terrified, and you’re clasping your hands together like you’re about to start praying.”
Carolyn looked down at where her hands were indeed clasped together. “One should not ever need to attend alternative education more than once,” Carolyn responded, to which the woman burst out laughing.
“Yeah, definitely your first time. How’d you even end up here with an attitude like that? Anyway, I’m Cass. This is my third time; the first two were in the Juvenile ones though. When I was eight, and again when I was fourteen. I’m eighteen now, so here I am!”
“Your third time!?” Carolyn was horrified.
“Yup, so when I was eight I used to like pretending to be a boy and sneaking around; and then when I was fourteen I went to an anti-torture protest. This time all I did was go on Lauchenoirian social media site. What’s your name?”
“Carolyn,” she said primly. “Why would you wish to go on there?”
“I suspect you would not understand,” Cass said, mocking Carolyn’s upper-class accent. Her own accent was that of a working-class eastern Kerlian who lived near the Kvaskm border. “Anyway, when I was eight I was there thirteen months, and then when I was fourteen it was two-and-a-half years, and now I expect I’ll be here the whole five. You, on the other hand… well. You seem like you’re gonna cooperate with them.”
“Of course I will,” Carolyn replied, turning away slightly. “Why would one wish to remain a secret servant of patriarchy? I do not understand.”
Cass laughed again, rolling her eyes. “Goddess, you’re gonna be fun. I bet three months, personally, before you’re out.”
“Three months!?” Carolyn looked over, horrified.
“Well, yeah. The minimum.”
“The minimum is three months!?”
“Oh girl,” Cass laughed, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor and grinning in Carolyn’s direction. “You’ve got a lot of things to learn.”
*
Jia Chiu and Camille Pierre had seen each other in the processing room of Iletina Girls’ Juvenile Alternative Education Centre. Jia was crying her eyes out in the queue when Camille was dragged in, looking more bemused than frightened. The two exchanged a glance and Camille gave Jia a reassuring look. Neither dared to speak, not with all the signs threatening punishment for talking.
Upon seeing Jia, Camille started to understand what was going on. Olivia and Xia were hiding in Zongongia; she was already aware of their flight there. It was obvious, then, that she and Jia were either hostages or bait. It didn’t bother her as much as it should have; Olivia had taught her well as a child to trust nobody, always look over her shoulder, and assume the worst of every situation. How to Survive as a Reformist in the Pierre Family.
In turn, the pair were both taken into a room, ordered to change into a scratchy uniform, handed a pack containing a towel and a toothbrush, and each was given a wristband on which was printed a letter and number. Jia’s was K-08. Camille’s was X-12. They were then marched in two separate directions to the residential areas (aka large dorm-like cells). Jia was taken to the east of the building, housing the 8 to 11-year-olds; while Camille was taken west with some other 12 to 15-year-olds.
The eastern wing of the building was brighter. Despite the purpose of the building, clearly someone had decided that it was beneficial to try and put the younger girls at a bit of ease, and thus decorated the place in the colours of a primary school. Except instead of poor-quality art projects and posters about basic arithmetic, the walls were covered in pro-matriarchy propaganda. And there were bars across all the windows. It was, Jia noted with interest, much brighter than the Maytown Academy.
She was taken up a set of stairs to a door with a large “K” on it. One of the women escorting her took a set of keys, unlocked the door, and then pushed Jia inside. “Bed eight,” she said to Jia, then slammed the door and locked it. Jia slowly turned around, wiping the tears from her eyes as she glanced around the room. There were six sets of bunk-beds, twelve in total, each numbered on the end. Jia slowly made her way to number eight as seven other girls watched her silently.
Meanwhile, Camille’s half of the building was much drearier, and the guards were better-armed. There was no such reassurance granted to the young teenagers as there was the children. There was propaganda on the walls here, too, but interspersed with warnings about how disobedience would be punished. As Camille was marched up a set of stairs – a mirror image of those on the other half of the building, she heard someone scream, and jumped. In response, the guard escorting her grabbed her arm tighter, making her wince.
She was held in place as another woman unlocked the door with the giant X. “Bed twelve,” the woman holding her said, and then she shoved Camille inside, hard enough to cause her to stumble and drop her bundle as the door was slammed and locked behind her. All the other beds were already taken in this room, and two girls were standing in the middle of the room having an argument.
“You think because you’ve been here before that you’re better than us!” one of the girls was saying. She looked about Camille’s age. Her partner in the argument looked older.
“If you reach the age of ten without being arrested, that makes you complacent,” the older girl declared, folding her arms. “This is my seventh time. They say if there’s an eighth they’ll send me to adult prison. I hope they do. Prison is the only place in Kerlile you can find good people!”
“New kid,” someone sitting on one of the upper bunks said, pointing at Camille. The two arguing stopped and turned around.
“Hey, what’d you do?” the younger girl said.
“I…” Camille began. Don’t tell them who you are. It won’t end well, she thought to herself. “I was at a Teenagers Against Torture meeting that got raided.”
“How many times have you been arrested?” the older one demanded.
“Three,” Camille replied, half-lying. It was true… if you counted the two times her mother had locked her in their family’s private cells (which, at least, were not decorated in the fashion of a medieval dungeon).
“How old were you the first time?” the girl demanded.
“Dana, stop,” the younger one groaned, rolling her eyes. “You’re acting worse than the intake interrogators. Hey, I’m Melody.”
“Camille,” she whispered in response. The older girl, Dana, rolled her eyes and stomped off to bunk six, lying down and staring at the bottom of the mattress above her.
“Ignore her,” the girl who’d spoken from the bunk said, swinging her legs around and dropping down, ignoring the ladder fastened to the side. “I’m June; short for Juniper Lee, because my mum was insane. Here, we’ll show you how to make your bunk properly; otherwise you’ll get punished.”
While June and Melody assisted Camille – who’d spent her whole life with servants and knew nothing of making a bed, to strict specifications or otherwise – with ensuring that she didn’t get punished for a lack of order and discipline, the girls of Jia’s cell were all sitting silent and wide eyed, still afraid they weren’t allowed to talk. Until, that is, the ninth girl arrived.
The door opened and two guards walked in, holding a girl of about eleven, who was kicking out and using language that was not appropriate for an eleven-year-old. They took her all the way to bed nine, lifted her up onto the bunk, and handcuffed one of her wrists to the edge of it. She swore at them. The other girls’ eyes widened even further. “You will be restrained until you stop attempting to escape,” one of the adults informed the new girl, before they left.
The new girl continued to swear after the adults until the key turned in the lock. Then she groaned and lay back, yanking the handcuff so it clanked. Then she turned her head to look at the girl sitting on number seven, above Jia. “So, what’s your deal then?” The other girls all looked at each other. “Oh, come on,” number nine said. “They’re not gonna do anything to us for talking.”
“My mother is a reformist and wrote a thing for the newspaper which called Councillor Patel rude things,” the girl on bed five offered.
“My dad called my mum a rude word during an argument,” said number two, “now he’s in prison and I’m here so they can check he didn’t make me evil.”
“I don’t understand what I did!” said number six. “I got arrested for ‘anti-matriarchal activity’ when I went to school this morning. But they didn’t tell me what I actually did!”
“I don’t understand what I did either,” Jia said softly. Number six smiled a little at her.
“What’s your name?” the girl on bed six said to Jia. “I’m Isabelle.”
“Jia,” she offered.
“How old are you?”
“I’m eight,” Jia said.
“Figured you must be, they don’t put younger girls in here. But you’re so tiny you look about six. No offence,” Isabelle said. “I’m ten.”
Jia just shrugged. During the five months she lived in Lauchenoiria while her mother gave birth to her brother Cheung, she’d been used to the kids at the school there commenting on her small size. And bullying her for being a Kerlian. At least that wouldn’t happen here.
The door opened again, and number nine began to yell insults at the door again as three more girls were led inside. They each looked around ten. One of them had been crying, and the other two looked frightened as well. They were sent over to beds ten, eleven and twelve, and then the door was locked on the assorted girls once again. The new trio, upon being left alone, all clutched each other.
“What did you three do, then?” number nine called out to them.
“We were…” the crying one started, sniffing. “We were…”
“We tried to run away to Lauchenoiria,” one of the others said. “We all go to school near the border and we thought that we should try and escape together. But, well. We got caught.”
Jia had calmed down now that she had an opportunity to talk to others in the same situation. She wasn’t alone, and that made her feel a little better. It transpired over the course of the conversation that followed, however, that she was the youngest of the group by a year-and-a-half. Apparently, just-turned-eight was an oddity in the alt-ed system. The others, upon learning how young she was, all reassured her that they wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. She doubted they would be able to stop it, but she appreciated the sentiment.
At quarter-to-nine, an announcement came over a tannoy instructing them that lights-out was in fifteen minutes, and to prepare for bed. They hurriedly took turns brushing their teeth at the pair of sinks on the side, and using the toilet in a little cubicle off to the side. All except Suzie (number nine), who was still handcuffed to her bed, and not happy about it. Neither was number ten, below her, worried she’d wet herself in the night. But no adult came to do anything about it.
In the other wing of the building, Camille’s group was also getting ready for bed. They, it turned out, had a much stricter routine. Fortunately for Camille, some of the others had been there a couple of days, and had already learned the rules. She managed to follow instructions without getting in any trouble, and when the lights obediently switched off automatically at nine o’clock, she closed her eyes and tried her best to sleep, knowing that whatever happened tomorrow, she was going to need it.
Carolyn Greenwood sat primly on the bed that Leonie Bennett had once slept in. If Leonie had been shocked and horrified to end up here, her reaction paled in comparison to that of Carolyn. Carolyn was shocked also, but the emotion that defined her present experience could only be described as outrage. She was utterly furious with her mother for allowing this.
The cell door opened and another young woman was shoved roughly inside. The other woman had numerous bruises and turned around to growl at the door as it was slammed shut and locked. Then the woman stood up straight, stuck her tongue out at the door and folded her arms, leaning back against the wall. She noticed Carolyn and nodded at her. “First time?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your first time in Alt-Ed?” she asked. “Only, you look terrified, and you’re clasping your hands together like you’re about to start praying.”
Carolyn looked down at where her hands were indeed clasped together. “One should not ever need to attend alternative education more than once,” Carolyn responded, to which the woman burst out laughing.
“Yeah, definitely your first time. How’d you even end up here with an attitude like that? Anyway, I’m Cass. This is my third time; the first two were in the Juvenile ones though. When I was eight, and again when I was fourteen. I’m eighteen now, so here I am!”
“Your third time!?” Carolyn was horrified.
“Yup, so when I was eight I used to like pretending to be a boy and sneaking around; and then when I was fourteen I went to an anti-torture protest. This time all I did was go on Lauchenoirian social media site. What’s your name?”
“Carolyn,” she said primly. “Why would you wish to go on there?”
“I suspect you would not understand,” Cass said, mocking Carolyn’s upper-class accent. Her own accent was that of a working-class eastern Kerlian who lived near the Kvaskm border. “Anyway, when I was eight I was there thirteen months, and then when I was fourteen it was two-and-a-half years, and now I expect I’ll be here the whole five. You, on the other hand… well. You seem like you’re gonna cooperate with them.”
“Of course I will,” Carolyn replied, turning away slightly. “Why would one wish to remain a secret servant of patriarchy? I do not understand.”
Cass laughed again, rolling her eyes. “Goddess, you’re gonna be fun. I bet three months, personally, before you’re out.”
“Three months!?” Carolyn looked over, horrified.
“Well, yeah. The minimum.”
“The minimum is three months!?”
“Oh girl,” Cass laughed, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor and grinning in Carolyn’s direction. “You’ve got a lot of things to learn.”
*
Jia Chiu and Camille Pierre had seen each other in the processing room of Iletina Girls’ Juvenile Alternative Education Centre. Jia was crying her eyes out in the queue when Camille was dragged in, looking more bemused than frightened. The two exchanged a glance and Camille gave Jia a reassuring look. Neither dared to speak, not with all the signs threatening punishment for talking.
Upon seeing Jia, Camille started to understand what was going on. Olivia and Xia were hiding in Zongongia; she was already aware of their flight there. It was obvious, then, that she and Jia were either hostages or bait. It didn’t bother her as much as it should have; Olivia had taught her well as a child to trust nobody, always look over her shoulder, and assume the worst of every situation. How to Survive as a Reformist in the Pierre Family.
In turn, the pair were both taken into a room, ordered to change into a scratchy uniform, handed a pack containing a towel and a toothbrush, and each was given a wristband on which was printed a letter and number. Jia’s was K-08. Camille’s was X-12. They were then marched in two separate directions to the residential areas (aka large dorm-like cells). Jia was taken to the east of the building, housing the 8 to 11-year-olds; while Camille was taken west with some other 12 to 15-year-olds.
The eastern wing of the building was brighter. Despite the purpose of the building, clearly someone had decided that it was beneficial to try and put the younger girls at a bit of ease, and thus decorated the place in the colours of a primary school. Except instead of poor-quality art projects and posters about basic arithmetic, the walls were covered in pro-matriarchy propaganda. And there were bars across all the windows. It was, Jia noted with interest, much brighter than the Maytown Academy.
She was taken up a set of stairs to a door with a large “K” on it. One of the women escorting her took a set of keys, unlocked the door, and then pushed Jia inside. “Bed eight,” she said to Jia, then slammed the door and locked it. Jia slowly turned around, wiping the tears from her eyes as she glanced around the room. There were six sets of bunk-beds, twelve in total, each numbered on the end. Jia slowly made her way to number eight as seven other girls watched her silently.
Meanwhile, Camille’s half of the building was much drearier, and the guards were better-armed. There was no such reassurance granted to the young teenagers as there was the children. There was propaganda on the walls here, too, but interspersed with warnings about how disobedience would be punished. As Camille was marched up a set of stairs – a mirror image of those on the other half of the building, she heard someone scream, and jumped. In response, the guard escorting her grabbed her arm tighter, making her wince.
She was held in place as another woman unlocked the door with the giant X. “Bed twelve,” the woman holding her said, and then she shoved Camille inside, hard enough to cause her to stumble and drop her bundle as the door was slammed and locked behind her. All the other beds were already taken in this room, and two girls were standing in the middle of the room having an argument.
“You think because you’ve been here before that you’re better than us!” one of the girls was saying. She looked about Camille’s age. Her partner in the argument looked older.
“If you reach the age of ten without being arrested, that makes you complacent,” the older girl declared, folding her arms. “This is my seventh time. They say if there’s an eighth they’ll send me to adult prison. I hope they do. Prison is the only place in Kerlile you can find good people!”
“New kid,” someone sitting on one of the upper bunks said, pointing at Camille. The two arguing stopped and turned around.
“Hey, what’d you do?” the younger girl said.
“I…” Camille began. Don’t tell them who you are. It won’t end well, she thought to herself. “I was at a Teenagers Against Torture meeting that got raided.”
“How many times have you been arrested?” the older one demanded.
“Three,” Camille replied, half-lying. It was true… if you counted the two times her mother had locked her in their family’s private cells (which, at least, were not decorated in the fashion of a medieval dungeon).
“How old were you the first time?” the girl demanded.
“Dana, stop,” the younger one groaned, rolling her eyes. “You’re acting worse than the intake interrogators. Hey, I’m Melody.”
“Camille,” she whispered in response. The older girl, Dana, rolled her eyes and stomped off to bunk six, lying down and staring at the bottom of the mattress above her.
“Ignore her,” the girl who’d spoken from the bunk said, swinging her legs around and dropping down, ignoring the ladder fastened to the side. “I’m June; short for Juniper Lee, because my mum was insane. Here, we’ll show you how to make your bunk properly; otherwise you’ll get punished.”
While June and Melody assisted Camille – who’d spent her whole life with servants and knew nothing of making a bed, to strict specifications or otherwise – with ensuring that she didn’t get punished for a lack of order and discipline, the girls of Jia’s cell were all sitting silent and wide eyed, still afraid they weren’t allowed to talk. Until, that is, the ninth girl arrived.
The door opened and two guards walked in, holding a girl of about eleven, who was kicking out and using language that was not appropriate for an eleven-year-old. They took her all the way to bed nine, lifted her up onto the bunk, and handcuffed one of her wrists to the edge of it. She swore at them. The other girls’ eyes widened even further. “You will be restrained until you stop attempting to escape,” one of the adults informed the new girl, before they left.
The new girl continued to swear after the adults until the key turned in the lock. Then she groaned and lay back, yanking the handcuff so it clanked. Then she turned her head to look at the girl sitting on number seven, above Jia. “So, what’s your deal then?” The other girls all looked at each other. “Oh, come on,” number nine said. “They’re not gonna do anything to us for talking.”
“My mother is a reformist and wrote a thing for the newspaper which called Councillor Patel rude things,” the girl on bed five offered.
“My dad called my mum a rude word during an argument,” said number two, “now he’s in prison and I’m here so they can check he didn’t make me evil.”
“I don’t understand what I did!” said number six. “I got arrested for ‘anti-matriarchal activity’ when I went to school this morning. But they didn’t tell me what I actually did!”
“I don’t understand what I did either,” Jia said softly. Number six smiled a little at her.
“What’s your name?” the girl on bed six said to Jia. “I’m Isabelle.”
“Jia,” she offered.
“How old are you?”
“I’m eight,” Jia said.
“Figured you must be, they don’t put younger girls in here. But you’re so tiny you look about six. No offence,” Isabelle said. “I’m ten.”
Jia just shrugged. During the five months she lived in Lauchenoiria while her mother gave birth to her brother Cheung, she’d been used to the kids at the school there commenting on her small size. And bullying her for being a Kerlian. At least that wouldn’t happen here.
The door opened again, and number nine began to yell insults at the door again as three more girls were led inside. They each looked around ten. One of them had been crying, and the other two looked frightened as well. They were sent over to beds ten, eleven and twelve, and then the door was locked on the assorted girls once again. The new trio, upon being left alone, all clutched each other.
“What did you three do, then?” number nine called out to them.
“We were…” the crying one started, sniffing. “We were…”
“We tried to run away to Lauchenoiria,” one of the others said. “We all go to school near the border and we thought that we should try and escape together. But, well. We got caught.”
Jia had calmed down now that she had an opportunity to talk to others in the same situation. She wasn’t alone, and that made her feel a little better. It transpired over the course of the conversation that followed, however, that she was the youngest of the group by a year-and-a-half. Apparently, just-turned-eight was an oddity in the alt-ed system. The others, upon learning how young she was, all reassured her that they wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. She doubted they would be able to stop it, but she appreciated the sentiment.
At quarter-to-nine, an announcement came over a tannoy instructing them that lights-out was in fifteen minutes, and to prepare for bed. They hurriedly took turns brushing their teeth at the pair of sinks on the side, and using the toilet in a little cubicle off to the side. All except Suzie (number nine), who was still handcuffed to her bed, and not happy about it. Neither was number ten, below her, worried she’d wet herself in the night. But no adult came to do anything about it.
In the other wing of the building, Camille’s group was also getting ready for bed. They, it turned out, had a much stricter routine. Fortunately for Camille, some of the others had been there a couple of days, and had already learned the rules. She managed to follow instructions without getting in any trouble, and when the lights obediently switched off automatically at nine o’clock, she closed her eyes and tried her best to sleep, knowing that whatever happened tomorrow, she was going to need it.
LIDUN President 2024 | she/her | Puppets: Kerlile, Glanainn, Yesteria, Zongongia, Zargothrax