Chapter One
Chapter One
2018
Eric squinted in the bright afternoon light. The darkened corners of the library, while good for studying, took their toll on the eyes of the students who used them. He tucked his books under his arm and headed back toward his apartment. The gloomy library matched his mood.
Two more weeks, he reminded himself. Two more weeks until I graduate and have to figure out how I’m going to eat with no job. Not to mention how he was going to start paying back the massive amounts of student debt he had incurred. He ran his free hand through his hair and sighed. Maybe he should have spent more time studying biology and less time protesting the government in the Quad. Raising the minimum wage didn’t seem so important when weighed against having no job. Banking reform and getting money out of politics also took a backseat to his current situation. Protesting made him feel good about himself, and he knew that the causes he supported were just, but it didn’t help pay any of his bills.
The irony that he had been able to attend school because of the very government he hated so much didn’t escape him. He considered it one more jab at a corrupt system designed to benefit only a few of its people. He had too much integrity to default on the obligations, but pretending that he could made him feel a little better. Eric always tried to pay his bills.
He stopped halfway across campus.
Bills.
His power had been turned off yesterday. Although it was only early May, it was early May in Georgia. The temperatures were already well into the nineties. He could already feel the sweat trickling down his back. His tiny apartment would feel like one of those cramped little solitary confinement boxes they put prisoners in on the big screen and in Mississippi. Maybe he should just head back to the library.
He sat down on one of the benches lining the walkway. How had things come to this? Graduating from college was supposed to be a momentous occasion, a happy time. He was terrified. In two weeks he’d have to start living in the real world. And he had no idea how he was going to make that happen.
He pulled the letter from his backpack and read it again. We’re sorry to inform you that we’ve decided to move in a different direction… The typical rejection letter. And the last one he’d receive. The interview with Biosystems Diversified had gone well. At least he thought it had. He had been his usually charming and entertaining self. Maybe that was the problem.
Eric sometimes had an over-inflated sense of self. This coming feeling of helplessness was alien to him. Like someone had tied his hands behind his back and then asked him to type a term paper. He shoved the letter back into his pack.
“What the fuck am I going to do?” he asked the empty bench.
Other kids would just call their parents and ask them to put some money in their account. Eric didn’t have that luxury. The anniversary of their deaths had just passed. A drunk driver had taken them from him. They never even caught the guy.
He tugged his phone out of his pocket and opened up his banking app. Thirty-seven cents. He laughed, a little louder than he had intended.
“Thirty-seven cents. Awesome.” No unknown rich family member had died since he’d checked his account last night. He hadn’t won some obscure contest which resulted in a deposit of a bunch of money. Eric Lawson was on his own. He had been for a while now.
He looked up to see one of the more attractive girls from his Calculus class watching him from across the Quad. He waved when he saw her. She smiled, waved back, and kept walking. Maybe I should take a run at her, he thought. Maybe she has some food. He followed her across campus, paying special attention to the way her hips swayed back and forth. Her long brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, bounced with every step she took.
“Pretty girl,” a voice said behind him.
Eric jumped at the sound. He turned to find a middle-aged man standing just behind the bench. “Yeah, she’s okay,” he replied, a little thrown off by the man’s close proximity and embarrassed that he’d most-likely been caught staring at her.
“Oh to be young and in school again,” the man continued. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Help yourself.” He moved over to make room.
“It’s a free country, right?” The man gauged Eric’s response with care.
Eric smiled. He could almost smell a political debate on the horizon. His worries over money and the future momentarily vanished.
“That depends on who you ask,” he answered. “The way things are going in this country; I’d argue that freedom took a shit years ago.”
The man broke into a huge grin and extended his hand. “My name is Davis Stafford,” he explained, “and I couldn’t agree more, Eric.”