I sit at the kitchen table, hungry. I’ve already eaten my meager snack of carrots and an apple. It’s all I can eat until dinner if I’m to keep within the body-mass guidelines recommended by our fascist surgeon general.

I could eat more food. I know where the Dunkeroos are. But I can’t disappoint my parents. In only five years’ time will come the Sorting, when I’ll complete the Common App and learn whether I’ll be chosen for the Ivy League, or be sent to a State School in a Capital City, or be cast into a Safety School.

No one knows, really, how the Sorting works. It’s conducted mysteriously, behind closed doors. But it’s rumored that participation in school athletics makes your name more likely to be drawn, so I will run. I will run track. Maybe cross-country. All I know is, I have to run, or mediocrity will overtake me.

But now, I read. I read this book, this assigned book about people in a future dystopia. Young people. Like me. There are metaphors here, parallels. I will have to analyze them in a 3-5 page essay before this term has ended. I must prepare. I must be ready.

In the next room, I can hear my sister watching The New Girl. My sister is the only person in this world who I know I love, though I will say otherwise in my college application essay about my relationship with my grandmother who taught me to paint egg shells in traditional Ukrainian style.

My phone vibrates. It’s a text from Brock, asking about the Homework. Brock and I grew up together, but there’s never been anything romantic between us, despite my clumsy attempt this summer in the woods. Next time, I will not fail. I will be stronger. Sexier. I have a lacy bra, which I hide from my mother. She’s such a bitch about that stuff.

But all that will come in time. The Writing. The Sorting. The Sexing. Now, I read. God, this book sucks.

– Jay Gabler

Photo by Makena Zayle Gadient (Creative Commons)