(
Action Tiem)
There was nothing that represented emptiness more than miles of empty road, flanked by corn rows that marched drearily into the distance. Up above the sky opened to a milky blackness as the sun barely crested the horizon. Barely there to kiss the wispy tops of miles of corn. No doubt out there machines were beginning to roll out of empty barns to till through the day's monotony.
The lifestyle was dreary and dead. It was almost surprising that amid this ocean of corn and fields that a community could survive. But despite merely two-stop lights and a school large enough to accommodate fourteen classes, it existed. No one could probably recall whether they know the name, and the farmers that owned these fields could probably only recall the county. The town was a secret. It was the right place to hide. And it was empty.
And there wasn't anything that was so much its antithesis than a marble-white Lambo convertible. Burning down the road at thirty over the speed limit, the top drawn down so as to allow the red hair of its pampered pilot to fly in the wind behind her. Purple nails drummed the luxury steering wheel to the low slow beats of one Rick Ross. With the ear-rings and the look of a smart-ass, she was something more akin to the look of a bitch from Southern California than that of someone who would be in a fourteen-class selection school district. But if anyone had wished to go to St. Louis, they had not to go far: it had come to them, in some strange, alienating, and twisted form.
For as fast as the Italian mustang broke through the still morning light it was no surprise that it had left the Empire of Corn as quick a time as it had. Coming up to the town's one singular stop light. The light that marked the edge of Mainstreet, where the lowly cracked up state highway passed through, long forgotten with the inclusion of the Freeway that bypassed the town at a much shorter twenty miles. The only real traffic being from the semis, who only went as far as the town silo before speeding off. Trains stopped coming to town long before she arrived.
Idling at the red-light she waited. Impatiently thrumming the steering wheel as she sat listening to her music. She grumpily waited, starting down the main road of the truest one-horse town she had ever seen with an expression of contempt. All store fronts were dark, and all catering to the down-home conservatives that lived here. The tallest visible structures the steeple of the town's single Methodist church, itself having seen better days, and the red-brick prison that was the town's single Highschool. Somewhere off on the edge of town was where the first two stages of public education sat in one single building, she had never been there.
With a light flicker, the traffic light changed to green, and she was off to an impatient roll to her classes.
The drive through to the school's parking lot wasn't very long. She pulled in as a battered van pulled out, coughing out a film of black smoke as it passed. Everything about this town was in a wreck. Her car and her daddy was perhaps the only thing of any significant value around. Even the unofficial beaner guards that lurked out front of the school looked to be easily paid off if it came to it, and nothing to worry.
After all, she was the only Lambo in this state clear to Oklahoma City. Would be hard to hide the fact if it went missing. And as they watched her up it wasn't hard to know that they knew. But she couldn't help but suspect they wanted to.
She rolled in and killed the car just as the principle gave her announcement. To be frank, she didn't care. It sounded to her like the dying attempt of someone to save something that was already dead. And she only had one more year, and what little pride she had left was basically useless. She didn't care how good the school's football team was.
Hiking her bag up her back, she stepped out. Hicks and Hillbillies, Norlandia North was on the premises.
White chic cowboy boots hit the tired pavement with a confident smack. The leather riding up her shin to half-way between her ankles and her knees. From there on up skinny blue jeans took over for framing her long tight legs. A dark purple pull over sweater hugged tight to her curvy body, as her familiar white scarf hung from her shoulders. Running her fingers through her short crimson hair she passed the Braceros and their used refuse that littered the grounds, and into the musty halls beyond.
The school wasn't hard to navigate, and it only took a brief minute before she came to her first assignment for the day: Math. And hanging outside was a familiar face.
“Aye, laad.” Norlandia grinned amused, throwing on her best, terrible impersonation of her friend. “What's good?” she asked.
