Unchosen Academy: Monster Games by Buffy Brown

Author:Buffy Brown [Brown, Buffy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storybook Publishing
Published: 2020-01-21T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

The audience’s hearts stop…

The rain stops…

The crocodiles are suddenly locked behind bars in the pool.

The crowd is not looking at us anymore. They are all looking at the boy who claims he loves Pepper on the iScreens, and on the iAms, in front of more than five million viewers.

“You love her?” Timmy raises an eyebrow. “Her?” The camera closes in on Pepper, tangled in the net, with her once-stiff-and-dirty hair clinging to her temples. With her bad teeth, braces, and missing eyebrow. “Her?” Timmy repeats his question. “Don’t you see what she looks like? She is bad. She is useless. What could you possibly love about her?” Timmy shakes his head.

“I love her!” the boy insists.

“Mmm. That is an awfully bad-looking Monster you love,” says Timmy.

I adjust myself on the net, lay on my back, and catch my breath. Looking at an iScreen from down here, I see all the Nines, Eights, Sevens, Sixes, and Fives; they all seem human for a second. Something glows in their eyes. An invisible aura — I convince myself that I can see it — surrounds everyone. Imagine Faustina and her Teen-Gene friends. They have never experienced a moment like this: a boy from the ranked side of the world declaring his love to an outranked, a Monster, in public, on TV, and after such a heart-wrenching moment during the games.

The Wheel of Fortune turns back to normal, and summer shines through again. Real summer, artificial-free. The sun warms my wet face from the rain. Even Dame Fortune has a single tear rolling down her ugly cheeks.

Imagine all of the Teen-Genes, the Nines, the Eights, and even the Sevens, watching this precious moment belonging to Pepper, in her honor. It doesn’t matter that the boy is a Five, bad-looking, or low-status according to the shallow rules of Faya. All that matters are the precious, ethereal emotions of this moment.

Whatever Timmy and the Summit will do to the boy, they can never erase this incident from the mind of the public, or from the books of history — I hope they won’t change Pepper’s name to Zepper. But if they do alter the truth in history books, how will they erase it from every ranked young girl’s memory, heart, and soul? One day, they will be grandmas, and they will tell it to their children’s children.

“Did I ever tell you about the story of the boy who gave up his rank for the love of a Monster?”

Boy, this makes a better story than Cinderella.

The camera shows Prophet Xitler in distress, smoking his pipe, fidgeting on his throne impatiently. Timmy feels the tinge. He will crush the boy as punishment and revenge. I know it. It is the only way to keep his job. The only way the audience will not wake up tomorrow questioning the system.

“Well, I guess love carrots — I mean conquers all,” says Timmy sarcastically, biting on one of his carrots. “I say if you love a Monster that much, you might need to join her.

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