ENTRY ONE
The rejection letters all said the same thing, only with different letterheads.
Exceptional aptitude.
Impressive academic record.
Unfortunately…
None of them said the real reason. They didn’t have to. The return address on my application said enough: Torn City. An orphanage on the wrong side of Torn City, at that. I had the grades. I had the test scores. I even had a scholarship lined up—one of those charitable programs rich people fund so they can pose for photographs beside poor kids with promising futures. Apparently, I was promising right up until somebody looked into where I came from.
They didn’t see a student. They saw a liability. The orphanage turned me out when I was old enough to become somebody else’s problem. They handed me a garbage bag containing two shirts, a pair of jeans, and a few books I’d stolen from the public library. No ceremony. No speech about making something of myself. Just a reminder that the sheets on my bed belonged to them.
Fair enough. I’d taken things that belonged to other people too. Nothing serious. Food, mostly. A few packs of cigarettes I could sell. Spray paint when I had something to say and nowhere respectable to say it. The police called it vandalism. The shopkeepers called it theft. At the orphanage, they called it proof that I was going to end up exactly where everyone expected.
Maybe they were right.
I found a room with a lock that works if you lift the door while turning the key. The pipes knock all night, and the man in the apartment above me coughs like he’s trying to bring up a lung. It isn’t much, but nobody counts the silverware after I leave the kitchen.
The casino hired me as a dealer. They liked that I could calculate payouts without staring at the table. They liked my clean hands, quick memory, and the fact that I knew how to keep my mouth shut. Mostly, they liked that I needed the job badly enough not to ask questions.
Every night, I watch people gamble away more money than I have ever owned. They arrive wearing watches worth a year of my rent and leave screaming over losses they chose to make. Some blame the cards. Some blame me. A few look at me as if I’m furniture.
I smile anyway. I deal the next hand.
The casino thinks I’m there because it was the best I could do. They’re only half right. The money keeps a roof over me, but the tables teach me things—how people lie, what desperation looks like, and how quickly confidence collapses when the numbers turn against you.
People are easier to read when they think they’re reading the cards.
Yesterday, I enrolled at West Side University.
It isn’t the university I imagined attending. There are no ivy-covered walls, no proud parents unloading boxes from cars, and nobody cares what promise they saw in my test scores. West Side took my borrowed money and gave me a place.
That’s more than the others did.
So this is the arrangement: I work nights beneath casino lights, sleep when the pipes allow it, and study whenever I can keep my eyes open. I’ll build the future they decided I wasn’t fit to have. I used to think intelligence was a way out of Torn City. Now I know better. Nothing gets you out of this city.
But if I learn enough, earn enough, and pay attention to the right people, maybe one day I’ll be able to make the city work for me.
Until then, I’ll keep dealing.