~O~

Alice walked to the closet in her room and removed a purple dress from the hanger. She inspected the dress and poked her finger through a hole that had formed in the fabric and sighed; that was the last of her good dresses. She glanced back at the closet and the rest of the tattered clothes that hung before her. All of them had visible wear, and those that had been salvaged had patches in the cloth in order to extend the article's life.

It wasn't always like this. At one point, she had had plenty of nice clothes. They didn't have holes in them, or poorly-done patch jobs. That had changed when the economy bottomed out and sent the country into the largest Depression it had ever seen. Her parents had lost their jobs and all of their money, and because of this, they were unable to take care of her.

So, they had sent her off to live with her grandfather in hopes that she could at least have food on her plate. It had been difficult to adjust to this type of lifestyle; counting pennies, wearing clothes till they fell apart, and having to deal without dinner every now and again. The Depression hadn't hit her grandfather all that bad. In fact, he probably had more money than her parents.

The only reason he escaped with any money was because he worked for the banks and had been able to pull aside some of his money before the Rush hit. Alice knew that money wouldn't last forever, though. Nothing lasted forever. She sighed again and slipped on the dress and made her way to the kitchen. Her grandfather wasn't there, like usual. Since everything changed, he had been doing odd-jobs for anyone who would pay him, even if the pay was a few pennies.

To him, those few pennies could eventually buy things they needed. Alice didn't see how, but she knew there was no reason to bother arguing with her grandfather's logic. She was used to the lifestyle of getting extravagant paydays, the right afterwards going out and buying anything they wanted. Sadly, it had been that lifestyle that had caused these hard times.

People had been buying things with money they didn't have, and the economy had suffered as a result. Alice strode across the kitchen to the small icebox to find something to eat. When she opened the heavy door, she wasn't hit with the usual coolness. It then occurred to her that there was no ice in the bottom of the contraption, and she could see that the food was starting to spoil. That was when she noticed the note from her grandfather on top of the icebox. Ice ran out last night. Take this money and go pick up a block today.

Beside the note was about fifty cents, and Alice had a feeling that her grandfather had struggled to gather up all that money. She scooped up the money and tucked it away in the small pocket of her dress skirt. With the money in tow, she left out of the house and started up the road to the main heart of the city. She walked along the sidewalk, which had begun to fall apart from lack of maintenance.

However, the streets in which cars drove along were in worse shape than the sidewalks. The streets were nothing more than mud puddles now, making it to where most cars couldn't even drive through them without getting their tires stuck. So, to avoid dirtying up her shoes and dress, Alice stuck with the sidewalk, stepping over cracks and weeds that had popped through the concrete.

When she reached the city, she was met with a portrait of what everyone's lives had become. There were people sitting outside of buildings, obviously homeless, begging for any change people would spare. Except, nobody had the change to spare.

It tugged at Alice's heart to see people who were worse off than her, so as she passed by beggars, she didn't make eye-contact. The store that sold ice was only a block or so away, so she wouldn't have to encounter that many beggars, which she was thankful for. To Alice, beggars were what she could become if things continued to go like they were, and she didn't want to be on the sidewalk, pleading for money.

Alice stopped at the edge of the street and stared across at the store that sold the ice she needed. Traffic was heavier than usual that day, so she had no choice but the wait for it to clear up. Despite the Depression, people who had the money to put fuel in their cars still drove around.

Albeit, they didn't drive very often, but they didn't have to scrap their cars like many others had to just to get a few extra dollars. As she waited for a gap in traffic, Alice allowed her eyes to wander around. As she did, her eyes caught a young man selling newspapers on the corner of the street. He was shouting out the headlines, trying to gain people's attention and get them to buy a paper.

Alice noted that the young man appeared around her age, maybe a few years older. He also was fairly easy on the eyes, she noted. The paperboy shouted the headlines at a man that walked by, and the man stopped and slapped the paper out of the teen's hands. "I don't need some damn paper to tell me the world's gone to Hell!" the passerby yelled, "Quit trying to haggle me out of money, brat!"

The man then stormed off, leaving the paperboy to pick up the pieces of parchment. Alice felt bad for the teen, so she walked over to him and knelt down. "Here, let me help," she said as she picked up several pages. Alice noticed that the paper had landed in a puddle, causing the pages to fall apart and the ink to run. The paperboy ran a hand through his hair and said, "My boss isn't going to like this…..He'll definitely take it out of my pay…."

Alice shook newspaper ink from her hands and said, "It's just one paper." The boy looked at her as if she had insulted him. "That's ten cents that I need to make a living!" he snapped. Alice flinched back, surprised at the sudden outburst.

She then stood up, brushed the dirt from her dress, and said, "I'm sorry. I'll be on my way now." She then hurried back down the sidewalk, and much to her relief, the traffic had let up. Alice then quickly hurried across the street to get her grandfather's ice, never once glancing back at the paperboy.

~O~

Shun swore under his breath as he stared down at the ruined newspaper. His boss would know if a paper was missing and if there was no money for it. Shun knew his boss would be angry, and he didn't want the paper to be taken out of his paycheck. He needed the money just to put something into his stomach that night.

Shun sighed. His shift didn't end until sundown, so he had several more hours till he returned to the publishing office to turn in all the papers he didn't sell that day. He glanced down at the stack he had been given that morning; the only paper missing was the one the man had knocked down. He reached down and picked up another paper and waved it around, shouting the headlines in an attempt to gain anyone's attention.

By the end of the day, he had sold three papers, and was left with a stack of about sixteen. His boss wouldn't be happy. Shun picked up the remaining papers and made his way back to the publishing office. As he walked inside, he saw the other employees that sold papers in different sections of the city had sold more papers than him. While they had five or six papers left from the morning's stack, Shun had twice as many left.

He got in the line that led to where the leftover papers were dropped off to be counted and disposed off. Standing in front of the drop-off was the boss. His hawk-like eyes glanced at each stack of papers dropped off before him, counting and calculating how much money he had lost. When Shun's turn came, he dropped off the massive stack of papers and was about to hurry from the office, but the boss stopped him. Mr. Wade, or Boss Wade, as he liked to be called, took the cigar out of his mouth and asked harshly, "What the hell is this?"

Shun turned around and said quietly, "My leftovers…." Boss Wade knocked ash off the end of his cigar and asked, "You only sold four papers today?" Shun adverted his eyes away from his superior and said, "Well…..I actually sold three….Somebody knocked one paper out of my hand and it was ruined…." Wade took a hit from his cigar, then blew the smoke into Shun's face.

The raven-haired teen tried desperately not to cough and gasp for air. "You always come up short in sales compared to the others. This is the second week in a row that you've returned with over ten papers. That's money I've lost, and in this economy, I can't afford to lose money," Wade said harshly.

Shun clenched his hands into fists and said, "Well, I'm sorry that people in my part of town don't want to buy your damn papers." The boss reached out and grabbed Shun by the collar of his shirt. "You don't backtalk me, kid!" He then pushed Shun, and the raven-haired teen fell back on the stacks of leftover papers.

Pain shot through his back from where he landed wrong on a stack of papers. Boss Wade now loomed over Shun and said, "You're worthless. I'm signing your paycheck while you cost me profit, and with the way things are now, I don't have money to waste on worthless employees. Get out of here, and don't come back." Shun felt his eyes go wide.

He scrambled to his feet and said, "No, please! I need this job! Please don't fire me!" Shun felt tears starting to sting at his eyes. He was barely getting by with the paycheck from this job. If he were to lose this, then he'd be out in the streets begging before sunrise. "I swear, I can increase my quota! Just give me a chance! Please, Mr. Wade!" he pleaded.

His boss glared at him, then took the hot end of his cigar and stuck it on one of the stacks of leftover papers. Shun watched as the embers burned the headlines. "Why the hell should I give you a second chance? You've shown me the past two weeks that you're incapable of selling on the same level as the others," the boss said bitterly, "I don't want to waste anymore of my profit on you."

Shun shook his head, not wanting to believe that this was happening. "No, please don't do this! My grandfather's health is bad! We need the money for food and his medicine! Please, give me a second chance!" Shun begged. He had never groveled like this before, but times were different now. Money and jobs were scarce, so in order to hold onto those two things, people had to stoop to lows they had never gone to before.

Wade looked down at Shun for a moment, then finally said with an indignant huff, "Fine, but you have one week to get your sale levels to where the others are. If that doesn't happen, then you're out of here. Now, get out of my sight before I change my mind." Shun was flooded with relief. He bowed his head and said with a smile, "Thank you, thank you so much, Mr. Wade. You won't regret it, I promise."

The boss simply scuffed and vanished in his office. Shun, relieved that he still had his job, hurried out of the publishing office and headed home. It didn't take him long to reach the ramshackle home he shared with his grandfather and another family. The house was located in a community of other houses that were built by homeless people that had lost their homes during the Crash.

Many of them were crudely built, but the one Shun and his grandfather stayed in was of a slightly better quality than most; at least their's didn't lean and threaten to fall over. Shun walked into the house and hung his hat on the hook. "I'm home," he said.

The house had two rooms; one room where everyone slept that was connected to a makeshift kitchen, and the bathroom, which wasn't much more than a bowl and an old bathtub. In the main room, Shun found his grandfather sleeping on the mattress that they had found just for him. "He's been sleeping most of the day," a voice said from the other side of the room.

Shun turned around and was faced with his childhood friend, Dan. Their families had both lost everything after the Crash, but they had stuck together in an effort to survive. It was a good thing they did. Between what little income Shun got from selling papers, and the little money Dan's parents made, they made enough to put food on the table and get his grandfather his medicine.

"Has his cough gotten any better?" Shun asked. Dan shook his head and told him, "No, it's about the same." Shun sighed heavily. "Living in these kind of conditions isn't helping him either, I'm sure," he said sadly. Dan nodded and said, "Well, dinner's cooked, so fix you a plate." Shun nodded and walked over to the cast iron pot that rested on the table. He removed the lid and saw a soup had been made out of food that was about to spoil; this was a common staple for them.

Shun fixed himself a bowl and sat down on the floor to eat. Dan joined him and the two of them sat and ate their meal in silence. After they were done, Shun asked, "Your folks have to work late again?" Dan nodded but didn't add in any input. Shun didn't blame him.

Dan's father worked in the industry, which wasn't booming by anyone's standards. As for his mother. Well…..She did what she had to in order to make money. It wasn't uncommon for Dan's father to work multiple shifts at the factory, or for his mother to be gone a couple of days, only to return home for a few hours.

Things were just that way, now. Shun stared down at the empty bowl in his hands, wishing he could have more food to fill the hollowness that had settled in his stomach, but he knew he couldn't do that. There just wasn't enough food for him to get seconds.

As he stared into the bowl, he said quietly, "I wonder how much longer this will last….." Beside him, Dan shook his head and told him, "I don't think anyone knows that answer to that."

A little idea I came up with yesterday. I probably won't update this regularly, since I'm still working on Vampire's Call, but I figured it'd be nice for me to change up my pace and put something else on the site, since I've been working on one story for a while now. Just a change of pace. I might update this one when I'm having a writer's block on my other story, so don't expect this to be updated everyday. I also figured I'd let this story steep in the site for a while and see how it does. Anywho, I hope you all like this new idea, so please read and leave a review on the way out. ~Copperpelt~