Chapter 1

As I hear the sound of water dripping from myself onto the cold tile floor, and feel cold water trickling down my legs. I step out of the shower, grab my towel from the rack and wrap myself in it. Then I stare at myself at the silver full body mirror. My short raven-black hair, the ends tickle the tops of my shoulders. My small round nose, thin almost hidden away from sight lips, and my large gray eyes. I don’t believe I am attractive. Unique or interesting or maybe even a tad boyish, yes. But not beautiful. Someone then raps at the door startling me, I turn toward it, and say,
“Yes?”

A young shrill voice, one you might expect a 7-year-old and not a 12-year-old to have, answers through the door,
“Nat? It’s my turn now, you’ve been in the shower for almost an hour!”

I don’t reply and so she knocks again, harder. I sighed. It was my sister, Christina. I usually call her Tina, but she hates it.
“Give me 15 more minutes, Tina.”

She let out her breath, loudly, to show me that she was annoyed,
“Uh-huh, fine. But I’ll be back.. In fifteen minutes!”

I smiled to myself, I could imagine her skipping back to her room, happy for an excuse to go use her new gel pens. The ones I bought for her on her 12th birthday a few days ago. They came with 24 colors, metallic and glittery ones included. It was only five dollars, and she loves to draw, so it was an affordable and perfect gift. I turned back toward the mirror and stroked my left ear, it was a habit I had gotten over the years, after an accident a few years back. I disliked thinking about it so I just dried myself off and put on some comfortable clothing, a gray sleeveless sweatshirt, and some dark green shorts. Then I tidied up the bathroom a bit by drying the floor, folding my towel, and putting dirty clothes into the laundry basket next to the sink. I brushed my hair, and then opened the door to leave the bathroom.

~

The next morning I wake up early - 5 am- to get prepared for the Counting. It is a celebration of our being alive, while we also get counted and get a file updated/created in the government computer so we can be tracked, and stopped from having, I guess you could say; a population overload, which is roughly around 500 families. When that happens they restore an old ruined city, create a new Community Unit there and throw 100 families -newly created ones preferably- into there regardless of if they want to or not. If that doesn’t happen, we just celebrate out of relief honestly. I’ve never been alive for a population overload, but my mother was. That’s why our Unit is so small in population size. Every Community Unit celebrates once a year, and each Unit has a different month from the other, it‘s convenient for the government, so they can prepare resources for the Counting. Since there are only 8 Units, there are only eight months used for these Countings. But none of them are on the season starters like December, March, June and September. The Community Units are called by their Counting months. Ours is in November, so our Unit gets called “November,” which I like better than the other names. I guess that’s because it’s the name of my home Unit, so it feels familiar. I sometimes wonder what will happen if we run out of months to name Units after. I decide to believe that they might just expand the Units. Or so I hope.

I kneel next to my bed and look underneath it. The box where we put celebration clothes is neatly stored under there. I pull it out and wipe the dust from the top of it with my hand. The box is made of oak wood, and it is quite antique looking, as it was passed down through my family for almost 2 centuries. I open it and take out the clothes and lay them out on the floor. There are only 2 dresses, and 2 pairs of shoes. They give us new clothes a week before the Counting. But they make us return the clothes from the past Counting so they can repair -if needed- and reuse them. One of the combinations -Tina’s- is a light yellow linen dress that will fall down to her knees, with bright yellow shoes to match. My dress, which is also made of linen, is white, and it also will fall down to my knees. It came with cream shoes. I close the empty wooden box and return it to its place under my bed.

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People of the community; tell me what you all think about this please. ^-^/