First day of school.

Who owns the right to name an orphan? Sadie has been pondering on that question all her life, ever since she was rescued as a crying toddler from a dumpster bag.

Her unorthodox rescue came at the hands of a nun named Zahya, whom thinking cats are once again rummaging through her trash, rushed to the alley with her broom, intent on chasing them away for good this time. She hit the crinkling plastic bag with the wooden edge, and the meowing sounds turned to a child's full fledged cry.

Upon hearing the wails, she realised her deed and frantically scrambled to open the bag, inside was an undernourished toddler, blood and tears pooling in its small mouth as it cried its heart out.

The nun tried to calm it down with a soft nervous voice, then reached for her napkin to wipe Its front. The baby slightly opened its eyes to observe what she was doing before closing them again to intensify her crying.

Zahya became her caretaker ever since, and she called her Sadie. It was an unusual name, not unusual enough to make Sadie pester a woman of the Lord about it, but a long and solitary trip to school was enough to trigger Sadie's interest in the most mundane subjects.

She wondered if she was named Sadie because of the sadistic tendencies she displayed towards the other kids at the orphanage, or was it perhaps inspired by her constant sad demeanor as a child?

Whatever it was, now is too late to hear the answer from the adoptive mother. The lips that were once dedicated to prayer have since bestowed their final kiss upon the sacred cross on the 28th of June 2022, during the summer of this year.

As a result, all that remains is an adolescent, twice orphaned now, walking the sixteenth street by herself for the first time.

As Sadie passed by Les confiseries' bakery, her gaze involuntarily gravitated towards the worn-out wooden bench where Zahya would often sit and rest during their short school trip, especially in her final days, when she could no longer conceal her illness from Sadie.

Sadie then descended from the elevated curb of the high pavement with a habitual slowness, mirroring the times when she used to lend her arm for her adoptive mother to cling on whenever curbs posed a challenge.

But no one reached to hold her hand this time, Sadie stopped in her tracks, swallowing back tears at the flood of memories.

Her actual name was Sarah, but the nickname Sadie stuck. She knew the meaning behind her name, but she hated it.

"Religious people are something else," she thought while cupping her hand around a cigarette, lighting it before resuming her walk to school.

Zahya was convinced that God has something great in store for Sadie, but much like Sarah, she was the definition of doubt. "You think I lived on that day because of some divine intervention, that I was merely spared to fulfill god's promise... If that were so, why did he take you away so early from me. Where's your purpose then?"

"My life's purpose was to save you." A gentle wind caressed her cheek, Sadie became embarrassed at the thoughts in her head.

"Now I am hearing voices," she mumbled churlishly. "If the value of your life was based on rescuing me, then it was a life gone to waste." She declared as she threw her cigarette bud to the ground, extinguishing it beneath her sneaker.

She harbored a mild hatred towards her former religious tutor, in part because she was the reason that she has to experience the overrated "gift" we call life. But also because in her final will, the nun specified that she bequeathed her small fortune (around 140 000$ give or take) to Sadie on the condition that she graduates from Lincoln's high school.

"Damn heartless woman leaving me penniless, might as well write them off to your orphanage, it'll take me an eternity to graduate." Sadie was not exaggerating, this elitist school had a reputation of being the hardest in their district, welcoming only the most accomplished and prestigious students, and Sadie.

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She was a slow learner, with the attention span of a goldfish. She blamed it on the godsent head-smack she received as a baby. "It's also the cause I can't remember my parents' appearance." She complained to herself while rubbing the indented wound on her front.

She only remembers that her mother had brown hair, she remembers that she hated them. Can you hate people you've barely met? Sadie answers yes, yes you can. Sadie was a racist, she discriminated against all the women with brown hair.

She was also the victim of reverse discrimination, a pious nun having so many great expectations of her that she rolled the carpet of Sadie's success on her stairway to heaven. Sadie can imagine her shock as the carpet is drawn from right under her, sending her diving straight into hell. At least they'll both be suffering.

She walked down the halls of the school, some boys were cracking jokes at her expense, she couldn't care less. She went by the red lockers to the left of principal's office, one of the boys got too audacious and tried to bother her directly, alterating between giggles and dumb words, something about her resembling a scarecrow savaged by dogs.

She didn't have time for this, so she shoved her fingers in his nostrils and dragged him by the nose backwards, shoving his face in an open locker before shutting it with a surprising force.

The bells tolled, and she was glad to finally reach her class, she passed by the rows of empty desks towards the one in the very end of the class. Emily, the high school's special charm, charged her as she was trying to sit down.

"Uhm excuse me, yes hi... whatever your name is, we were here first." Emily said, an obnoxious smile animating her face.

Sadie stared at her for a few seconds before lazily sitting down. "The race is only won when the finish line is crossed." She said with a dispassionate tone.

"Look, I'm trying to be nice here. I know you've failed this class for three years in a row, I get that you isolate yourself at the very end because everyone despises your guts, but this is important, our friend was dumped and we want to try and cheer her up in a more remote corner."

Sadie wasn't paying attention to her, which got on Emily's nerves so she half screamed. "Just beat it already! It's not like it has your name's written on it."

"No? My name is literally carved on it." Sadie pointed a middle finger out of her sleeve towards a carving on the desk seemingly made by a large knife "And if you don't leave me alone, I'll test my carving skills on a softer surface."

Emily didn't feel like risking getting stabbed by a sociopath, so she collected her peppy group to tell them to scatter. "Let's go girls, it isn't worth our time, let the freak rot in this chair."

And rot she did. Sadie laid back, always with a sense that her spirit is leaving her body. The teacher talked for what felt like hours, but when she looked at the wall clock, only five minutes elapsed, time must've been broken.

She put her arm on the desk and buried her face in the sleeve to rest her sight for a moment, but what started off as a way to decompress had turned her looking as if she was a corpse in a state of decomposing.

A corpse in class that no one paid attention to. Students listened attentively to the lecture. Sir Waltson, their teacher, was a stern and eccentric man, he spoke with a tenor voice and moved his arms with hypnotic precision when teaching.

Their subject of the day was about literature in the 18th century and the development of the modern novel as a literary genre, many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period.

The students had been assigned a project due to be presented for today, it was to write a ten thousand word document discussing Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel "Robinson Crusoe".

When Sir Waltson was passing through the rows to collect the homeworks, he saw a shipwreck in between the lines of a student's notebook, and that wasn't a metaphor. Ralph literally drew the ship of Robinson Crusoe with few words written.

When Ralph saw the expression on the teacher's face, he stood up automatically, fearing for the worst. Sir Walton started lambasting him in a pentametric tone. " Indolence and apathy, your generation's obvious inane attitude is the blight of our society and spells a grimdark future for our nascent civilisation. You disappoint me to no end with your blatant disregard to school duties.

More so, you did not consider peculiarities of the ship, since you are well aware, Mister Ralph, that it was written during the 17th and 18th centuries at height of the transatlantic slave trade, and since it is mentioned in the novel that the merchantile ship was bound for the coast of Guinea in West Africa, all of these indications suggest that it was likely a trading vessel involved in the transatlantic slave trade while you, mister Ralph, have drawn a pirate ship!"

He continued scolding the seemingly remorseful student, Ralph kept his head lowered, his conjoined hands at the level of his loin.

The noise awoke Sadie, finally witnessing this scene, and she remembered she hasn't done her homework either, so she stood up dizzily, interrupting the teacher. "Waltson mister I didn't do the assignment either." Throwing that out there before falling back in her chair and resting her face between her arms.

Sir Waltson turned wordless, just staring with spite and disdain at the slumbering girl as the entire class was erupting in wild laughter. He felt he was Robinson Crusoe in this moment, castaway in a hopeless class and surrounded by loud, dumb animals.