❝Nevertheless, no matter how much they killed themselves with work, no matter how much money they eked out, and no matter how many schemes they thought of, their guardian angels were asleep with fatigue while they put in coins and took them out trying to get just enough to live with.❞

19 || you might be poor

time || night

I smell something burning.

Like kerosene mixed in with charcoal.

Oh right, someone started a bonfire. Even though it's warm out, the night breeze is making everyone feel slightly cold.

Everything's getting a bit out of hand; people screaming their lungs off, threats of calling the police being thrown our way, and the rowdiness one would expect from a crowd of revolutionaries. What started off as a little protest turned into something more.

I'm not as scared as I'd felt in the beginning.

Hearing the loud voices protesting, sends a warm feeling up my spine. One of exhilaration, importance, safety, courage, and fierceness. Everyone's together as a family wanting to show these big bad wolves of Havendust who we really are.

It's kind of as if everyone's leaning on each other.

In a different setting you'd think we all are a couple of concert attendees standing in a mosh pit feeling the soul of whatever music's coming from within the stage. But this is different. Way different.

Instead, we're the music coming from within the stage. We want to be heard and we're not going to stop until we are.

Everyone's close to everyone. Each person's arm wrapped around one another's shoulder as if we've known each other forever. Mary, the girl with the pink hair, is standing beside me while Brolin's on the other side of me. He looks to be much into the protest as well. His brown eyes filled with the glow of the lights burning in front of him is enough to convince me.

I feel cozy.

This isn't me basking in a midst of chaos and confusion. This is me, Karen Nicole Rice, finally being part of something that holds promise.

"Are the cops comin'?" I ask Mary, who merely shrugs. I don't ask this in a paranoid way, more objectively than anything. The police usually show up to these sort of things, right? "Who knows," she says with a roll of her brown eyes. "At this point we're not doing anything bad. We're on public property. We're not hurting anybody."

She has a point. Standing in the middle of the road that splits between the working class neighborhood and the city isn't loitering.

Eventually I go along with everyone who's chanting lyrics from a song that goes something like: All you wanna do is *shoot! shoot! shoot!* and take our money! and some other lyrics that follow.

We keep shouting these words until the police cruisers start coming. And a black SUV comes rolling in with them. When the SUV stops, an old-skinny man wearing a business suit gets out along with two able-bodied men who I'm guessing are his bodyguards. At first the old man tries to address us protesters in this informative and charismatic fashion, but stops when he sees that he's not getting through to us.

"We want our money!" someone shouts.

That's when everything goes crazy.

Things quickly unfold.

The crowd is now spread out.

I'm not next to Brolin and Mary anymore. Amongst the commotion I was pushed farther away from them. I'm now standing beside a guy who has his phone out. "What's your name?" he says facing me.

He's talking to me.

I smile, unsure of what to do. "K-Karen Rice," I say stuttering a little. I feel alone with Brolin not by my side. I try searching for him by standing on my tippy-toes—my eyes scanning the crowd.

I turn my attention back to the guy.

The guy doesn't look sketchy, he's a protester hence the badge (the same one I saw Mary wearing) that he's wearing on his jacket. And he doesn't look much older than me.

"Ah... okay." He nods his head as if me telling him the right answer to a question. "What do you have to say to the city." I look at his iphone clad in it's wooden case.

Fuck 'em? That's not a nice thing to say, but what's them taking our money?

I laugh. "What I have to say to the city?" From the way I'm laughing, you'd assume I was at my boiling point. It isn't a a crazy laugh but you can tell I'm fed up. Not with this guy, or the people around me acting like a bunch of monkeys (though they have a good reason to). It was everything in general; Mom, Dad, money, and the unknown.

"Fuck you!" I tell the city. "Having people lose their jobs is pretty pathetic. You greedy men! You grinches. You nasty vultures. You don't care about us!"

The guy quirks his mouth up into a grin. I think he wants me to keep going.

I don't stop.

"You guys don't care!" I catcall. Someone has music playing in the background, and that has me pumped. I start to kind of dance... the cool nightly air I'd been feeling awhile ago is gone and the freedom riling in my chest is enough to warm me up on my own. "Fuck the city!"

"Yeah!" a guy shouts.

Following with other shouts of agreement from different directions.

"Whoo!" I throw my hands up in the air. "Fuck the city!" All around me I see people mimicking my words and moves.

All while I'm doing this, I think the normal Karen wouldn't be doing this. She wouldn't have joined a crowd of protesters and start shouting obscenities at the city. The normal Karen would've balked and ran away from this situation. But this isn't normal Karen, this is the Karen who feels as if she's finally serving some sort of purpose.

I'm too into it, that I don't see the police rounding people up.

"Karen!"

Someone grabs my arm.

It's Brolin.

I smile at him and I go in for a hug, but his face is etched with worry.

I put my hands down. "Is everything okay—"

He pulls me with him and we start running. I go along with him as I'm still unsure of what's really going on. I don't see the guy with the iPhone anymore. Where did he go?

"Stop it, right there!"

I don't get to see what happens. I end up falling back, and I close my eyes.

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