Nightfall

   1 -Prelude-

“…you should be happy. You get to escape this hell hole.” I stared at the ceiling, not needing to look down to know exactly how far my thin ankles protruded from under the itchy wool blanket I had called mine since I was ten. The bottom edge of the bed pressing into them was enough to tell me.

“The programs getting cut next year, so you’re gonna be the last one.” Bitterness dripped from the accented voice of my long time roommate, who up to now had done a pretty good job of suppressing it. Eva, known as Papi to all of us, sat up on her tiny bed next to me, observing her chewed up fingernails as if they were the most interesting things she’d ever seen. She was 17, I was a week away from being 18, and we’d both been here at the Kiddie Haven Home for most of our lives that we could remember.

“I could just say no. I’m almost an adult.” I pointed out, my hoarse voice cracking a little. I kept my gaze on the primary color finger-painted tile hovering above us. Papi exhaled and flopped over, looking out the window quickly. It wasn’t fast enough to hide the water collecting at the corners of her eyes, illuminated by the moonlight slipping in from under the window sill with the summer heat.

“And waste all the publicity?” She scoffed in what would’ve been a dismissive tone if it hadn’t been thickened by the coming tears. I thought back to a few days ago, when my now bare wooden shelf was filled with all of my belongings, instead of the ratty suitcases the Home had provided for their star pupil. Every year that one of us came of age they forced us to take all the typical end of high school type tests, the SAT’s, CST’s, and the rest. Anyone who consistently scored advanced got to finish their last year of school at Solomon Spellman, the ritzy private boarding school up in the hills of Adonis, CA, far away from the part of Los Angeles that we currently resided in. It was the one you’d never see in all those bright commercials of plastic, happy people begging you to “come on down” and visit like it was a god damned supermarket. They’d taken my picture, and put me up in the newspapers, faking a smile next to the Governor and last years winner. So far the Second Chance Scholars program had spawned three UCLA grads, a Stanford nerd, and a kid who went to USC. Papi and I had both scored about the same as the orphan who was now at Stanford, but I was older than her, so they chose me.