• Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

    ‘Stay in line, don’t look at the boys, sit on the right side of the room facing the left side of the room where the boys will sit.’

    That’s all we know. That’s all we’re taught for common sense ever since we were small children. We’re not to have any sort of contact with the male species, they were forbidden to do the same with us females.

    We have heard of one male and female who made physical contact in secrecy but apparently no one ever heard of them again. Some say they ran away, some say they were sent to eternal prison and eventually died, and some say they were executed. No one knows for sure, it was so long ago.

    But this isn’t about them, it’s about me. And all the other girls and all the boys we aren’t allowed to even glance at.

    It’s about a revolution, the start of a new Era; one where a man and a woman can make contact with each other as much as they wanted, whether it to be just friends or romantic partners.

    Most of us have been in this city for as long as we can remember, and it’s not like a city at all, it’s more like a prison. Most of us haven’t seen our parents or have known what it’s like outside the ‘city’ and anyone who transfers here are not permitted to speak of the outside; otherwise it could result in severe punishment.

    Everyday, we go to school and come back to our dormitories where you live with one other person of the same gender. The city is divided into divisions, The Elders, who run everything and teach us in school; reside in the north, The Innocent, known as the elementary and the middle school division which are grades 1-8 in the east, The Educated, or the university students in the south, and my division, the Youth, whom are the high school students that reside in the West.

    But, as some might assume, I’m not one of the transfer students, in fact, I was raised here, and I was an innocent just like everyone else. And I’ve been a Youth for a year now; just like everyone else in my grade.

    And so my story begins on the first day of school in the lunchroom.