Rhode Dena

      I was born in a jail cell. 4113 Rockabee, Way. Cell 13B. I don’t know where I came from, nor do I know who birthed me. I don’t know much about anything, except that I’ve been in this jail cell for as long as I can remember, and I don’t know how to get out. Okay, maybe I don’t exactly want to, but still, I’d like to have the option.

 

 

      Anyway, my name’s Diago, make sure you say it right. That’s one thing Oklahoma hates. When people pronounce my name wrong. Sir. Ark says that she was the one who named me, but if you ever ask her she’ll deny it. Of the little amount of people I’ve ever met, Oklah is probably the only one who actually cares about me. Ark says that I’m the daughter she was never able to conceive. Sometimes it bothered me when he’d say that, but most times I’d ignore him.

 

 

      That’s what most people do around Ark anyway. They ignore him. He never really has anything good to say, so he’s kind of an easy guy to ignore. Though sometimes he may surprise you... or so I’ve heard. I mean he’s the guy who mistakes me for a female. With the amount of facial hair I have, it’s apparent that I’m not.

 

 

      When we were younger, I remember Meadow coming back from The Out. She’d been crying you can tell. Whenever Dow would cry you can smell the tears on her. I asked Oklah one day if tears were suppose to smell, but she never answered. She does that sometimes. You’d ask her something and she just wouldn’t answer. You’d think that she didn’t hear you, but damn right she did. She just wouldn’t answer you. I hated that.

 

 

      Anyway, Meadow told us about her experience in The Out, and I can’t remember much of what she said, because her tears stunk up the whole place and I couldn’t concentrate, but I do remember one part of her story.

 

 

      “... and then they turned around and pointed at me. They were laughing and one boy said, ‘Look at that Skivv,’. Then another kid -- she was a girl, she said ‘Yeah look at that Skivv’. I didn’t know what a Skivv was so I asked Dover, and he said that that was what people called us castaways.” By this point Dow’s cheeks were redder than they normally were. I looked over at Israel to see his reaction, but his face was a blank mask. We did that often. Us kids. Whenever we didn’t know how to take something or how to react, we’d look over at Israel. Israel somehow, he always knew the proper way to react, or so I used to think.

 

 

      “A-a-and then...” Dow was a stutterer from the time she was delivered here. She took a deep breath, in hopes that a steady breath would stop the stuttering, but it didn’t. “And th-then another boy walked closer towards us and screamed at me. He said, ‘Hey Skivvy why don’t you go back to your dark hole and wait for your mommy?’” After that Dow had a good crying session. Once that girl started crying you couldn’t get her to stop, you just had to wait it out.

 

 

      Meadow was the last of us to ever go to The Out. It’s not like we weren’t offered to, because trust me we were. I think we all just refused, because it was easier for us that way. We knew that there were other kids our age in The Out, but we’re not part of their world, their rules didn’t apply to us. In our jail cells we’re safe and we can do whatever we want. No one’s here to call us foreign names like skivvs or bogans.

 

 

      That was a new one. Bogan. Dover called Jude that last year. I don’t think any of us could forget that day. That was probably the last day Jude opened his mouth. Ever since that day he stopped speaking to everyone, even me. Jude is Oklahomas’ son, but no one will confirm that for you. Apparently, Jude is Sir. Ark’s bastard, but he’ll never admit it to anyone, but everyone knows. Sir. Ark is a bastard himself, who was raised in a similar fashion. His biological father’s, wife was killed and he finally took ownership of him. That’s why he’s a sir now, instead of being in The Ghetto with all the other Skivvys and Bogans, who didn’t get their reciprocity necklet activated.

 

 

      They tell you -- the commercials do, that everyone’s necklet is to be activated, but it’s all a lie. What they don’t tell you, not even in the small, white, barely-visible print at the bottom of the end of the commercial is that, if you're a skivv, there’s a good chance -- no, there’s a definite chance that your necklet won’t be activated. Who wants their child to match with a skivv? I’ll tell you who, no one. And so those big guns in the Balanchine's Inc. building at the capitol, are ordered by the main headquarters in Provectus to activate all the Seventeens necklet, except for those who live in shelters.

 

 

      Supposedly this year things are changing. Provectus’s activation policies have finally started an uprising of Antiqua’s skivvs. You’d be surprised at how many skivvs there are in Antiqua. They’re the orphans, the servants, those whose necklets never feel the glow of light, the ones who never find their match. They go to The Ghetto, or return to The Ghetto, and stay there. After a while they add up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2014 by Rhode Dena.