Creaking gears filled Alexa's ears along with the grumblings of her mother.
"Alexandra, I give you one simple task!" Mrs. Erose whirled on her fourteen-year-old daughter and scowled. Her hand was propped up on her hip and she held an oil can in the other. "That ugly scar on your cheek is proof that you never listen!"
Alexa's large brown eyes narrowed and she untucked her dark, dark hair from behind her ear to cover the hideous and jagged mark that swooped across her left cheek.
Keynan used to say that it made her look like a pirate. Alexa wasn't so sure about that, and the only reason she knew what a pirate was was because she had read every single book in the Oleander Library. So had Keynan. They'd read them together.
But here in the now, Alexa was well aware that books wouldn't help her. They weren't important to the people of steampunk Oleander. The only reason there even was a library was because the old librarian who had a bad habit of disappearing every once in a while offered to pay a large sum of money to keep it open.
"Are you listening to me?" Mrs. Erose demanded.
"Ma'am?" Alexa snapped her head up.
The can of oil was shoved roughly into Alexa's hand and she stared at it for a moment. Her mother pointed firmly to the shiny copper-colored front door. All the houses in Oleander were set in a row, each looking identical expect for the nameplates on each doorframe, bearing the last name of whatever family lived there. Each house had the same coppery sheen and cogs and gears covering the rest of the building. In every garden, there were small pink oleanders, which were the only thing that grew. And the air was so polluted that no one even knew why.
"Alexandra! You know you're supposed to grease the gears before they get this bad."
Sighing, Alexa nodded. Though if she had it her way, she'd be inside reading instead of doing stuffy chores and having to stare at all the cookie-cutter houses. Each identical. Each the same. And all of it bland, bland, bland.
Her mother cast a glance at the mostly empty street. "You need to do your chores. Your Classing depends on it. You know that."
Alexa hung her head. She did, in fact, very well know that. In Oleander, the custom was that on your fifteenth birthday, you received your Class. Your Class was your future. And there weren't very many. The Classes included Engineer, Machinist, Factory Worker, Air Cleaner, Trash Collector, and the worst of the worst. The most loathed Class of all time. Only two other people had gotten it before because they committed unspeakable crimes.
Outcast.
And Alexa really didn't want that. If she got Classed as an Outcast she would be exiled from Oleander and never see her family, or her best friend Keynan, or his family, ever again.
Fortunately, the Oleander Council spared you some of the humiliation. If you were chosen to be an Outcast, you got your Class ahead of time so that you could prepare to leave. Of course, a lot of good it did, because Oleander was such a small town that news travelled faster than the speed of light.
But as much as she tried to believe her big brother, Paul, when he told her that she would never in a million years be Outcasted, she always felt a small prickle of apprehension anytime someone mentioned the Classing. The only person who didn't seem to mind was Keynan Mooring.
"Aren't you nervous?" Alexa would ask him.
He'd give her a look and muss his cocoa-colored curly hair. "About what? The Classing? Aw, come on, Lexi, you know I don't care about that."
"But why? Why don't you?"
"Because I'm gonna leave this dumpy ol' town anyway. I want to go places. There's so much more out there for us, Lex. I feel it." And then he'd get that glimmer in his eyes, the one that told Alexa that he wasn't kidding and it was only a matter of time before he packed up and left.
"Oleander's not dumpy," Alexa would tell him.
He'd roll his brown eyes and shrug, but wouldn't answer. Keynan Mooring truly was going places.
But as hard as Alexa tried to be like him and act all carefree about her Classing, it never worked. All it did was make her more nervous.
So she sighed again and began to oil the gears on their front door. They clinked and jerked and all at once began to spin. Alexa tossed the can aside and nodded at her mother. "There. May I go now?"
"Where, might I ask?"
Alexa reached to her collarbone where her necklace pendant rested. It was a simple, silver flower shaped pendant tied onto a leather cord. Keynan's grandmother had given it to her when she was little. "Keynan's house."
Mrs. Erose nodded with a quick request for Alexa to be back by dinner. Hurriedly, Alexa raced into her house and rummaged around her messy room for her satchel. Into the bag, she placed her quills, ink, and journal–all of which were hidden under a compartment Paul had helped her build under her bed, lest her mother find out and be very angry–and her latest library book.
"Bye, Mom!" she called, sprinting out the door and hopping on her homemade bicycle, pedaling as fast and as hard as she could. It wasn't that Alexa was disrespectful. She usually stayed on task and did everything her parents told her to–well, nearly everything. But Alexa was a daydreamer. And daydreaming didn't fly with Mrs. Erose. She agreed with the people of Oleander when it came to books and writing stories. It wasn't right, it wasn't useful, and it wasn't appreciated. And reading and writing being Alexa's favorite things, she and her mother had little in common, which made her sad. The two of them were like the kinds of neighbors that you just wish a Merry Christmas to on Christmas, and then try to avoid for the rest of the time.
But truth be told, Alexa wasn't terribly bothered by this relationship with her mother. Why be upset over something when you have something just as good? Like, for instance, the Moorings.
Alexa's second family.
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