Revenge was on Colin’s mind the day of Annie’s eviction. Goldcrest had just about settled down in the wake of Daryl’s eviction. People were starting to cautiously greet each other on the streets again, and life was starting to somewhat return back to normal. However, tensions were obviously still bubbling as a result of Daryl’s eviction, which led to the third eviction in the span of three months.
Annie was one of the younger citizens of Goldcrest; Colin hadn’t known her personally, nor did he know what had caused her to be evicted. He became largely disconnected from the rest of the Goldcrest community after D-Day, but he was surprised to hear that she’d been evicted. For some reason, that was what made Colin finally snap.
At Nathan’s weekly gathering, of which attendance had been drastically reduced after D-Day, Colin casually addressed his friends with a sly smile on his face. “You know, we’ve been sending anonymous notes to Mac a lot lately, but I think we should do something to get back at everybody.”
“You’re right. We need to somehow send anonymous messages to everybody. I think that would be the most effective way to give everybody a piece of our mind,” Nathan mused, taking a sip of his Bloody Mary. The sun’s bright rays shone through the beams of the backyard overhang, creating an inappropriately cheerful mood for what Colin and his friends were about to plan.
The brightness subdued gradually as the sun slowly set. During the time, the group of friends crafted their plan, building all the important parts of the project in the safety of Nathan’s garage, basking in the fact that, even though the world had turned against them, they still had each other and could find a way to crawl out of the hole they’d fallen into from grace. Though some of Nathan’s friends left early, exhausted from painting the van completely white, Colin and Kayden stayed later than the rest to help Nathan put in the finishing touches on the masterpiece.
In fact, they stayed until the sun began peeking out from the horizon, at which point they drove their creation out next to the very heart of Goldcrest: the golden statue in the town square. Kayden half-heartedly watched as Colin and Nathan fiddled with the microphone linked to the speakers attached to the top of the van, and she glanced out the heavily tinted window to see that the creation was drawing the attention of the people as the town began to wake up.
“Are we all set to go? Are you sure the voice modulator works?” Kayden worriedly inquired.
Colin offered a confident thumbs-up as Nathan finished fixing the microphone. “We’re all set! I’m pretty sure the voice modulator works. Don’t worry. Nobody will be able to tell it’s us.”
Unbeknownst to him, Colin would be proven wrong for the moment he began speaking into the microphone, Mac and his friends knew who was inside the van. Who else would go through such tremendous effort just to try to garner the town’s attention?
“Citizens of Goldcrest! This is Nora. We are an anonymous group of people who will be exposing the dark secrets of the evil people who live here. If you have any specific requests or people you want to call out, leave us a note in the box located on the back of the van.”
Colin glanced out the tinted window to see that a crowd of people had started to gather around the front of the van, a mix of curiosity and shock on their faces. He knew that none of them could tell exactly who was speaking since the voice modulator distorted his voice, but the fact that there were so many eyes on him spurred Colin to continue his speech.
“First of all, I’d like to call out Richard.” Colin grinned when he spotted Richard, who seemed confused and terrified, in the crowd. Richard was one of the first people I — we — hated when I first arrived at Goldcrest. He’s annoying and he openly opposes Slumber!”
For those who have not seen Terra Corporation ads or learned about the history of Earth 102, Slumber is the nickname of the first person to have ever inhabited a town on Earth 102, and she became the spokesperson for Terra Corporation, often appearing in advertisements to talk about how much she enjoyed staying on the new planet and how everybody should move to Earth 102. She was universally loved, so much so that hating her would be the equivalent of hating an adorable puppy.
Gasps echoed throughout the crowd in the town square as all eyes turned to Richard, who held his hands up defensively. “I have a good reason. I just think —”
“Get him!” Somebody shouted, and several people began chasing Richard, who realized it was pointless to try to get people to hear him out and began fearfully running out of the town square. As those people broke away from the crowd, more people entered the crowd, curious to see why there was a van painted entirely white with only the word “Nora” scrawled on the front of it in big red letters.
Nathan pressed his face against the window, gleefully watching as the crowd grew to the point where at least three-fourths of the town was gathered in front of the van. “It’s working!”
For the first time since D-Day, something similar to hope swelled in Colin’s chest, urging him to continue chasing this feeling. Colin brought the microphone closer to his mouth and started speaking with more conviction. “Next, I want to call out Teddy, who’s one of the worst people here. He’s so annoying and I can’t stand him! And also Warren, who should honestly be shut up because nobody wants to hear him talk about anything at all.”
Suddenly, Colin spotted Mac standing in the corner of the crowd. Mac’s gaze was directly on Colin, as if he could see through the windows of the van and wanted to pierce into Colin’s soul with his judgemental bullshit. There were so many insults, so many words that Colin wanted to hurl at Mac like a dagger, but he’d already said everything he wanted Mac to hear through the anonymous messages he and his friends had left on Mac’s doorstep. So, he took a deep breath and simply stated, “Mac is unfunny and tries too hard.”
Kayden and Nathan both clapped hands over their mouths to try to stifle their giggles, and Colin’s grin widened, excited that he was making his friends laugh. As Colin continued to say name after name of irksome people in Goldcrest, the crowd’s general reaction turned from confused and curious to bitter and belligerent as people became defensive after hearing Nora slander their names or the names of their friends.
By the time Colin passed the microphone over to Nathan to let him say a few words, the townspeople began throwing rocks and other objects they could find at the van, booing loudly in hopes of drowning out the words coming out of the speaker. The hostility grew to the point where Kayden had to drive the van out of the town square past the hollering people while Nathan and Colin both continued to hurl insults at people through the microphone.
The crowd hadn’t been able to follow Nora for long as the van quickly sped deeper into the town and into Nathan’s garage, where they were finally safe from the rage of the townspeople.
“That was amazing! That was the most alive I’ve felt in forever,” Nathan quipped as he walked out of the van and turned on the lights inside the garage.
“It was! It was so fun,” nodded Kayden, and Colin spotted an unfamiliar glint of greed in Kayden’s eyes that he hadn’t seen before.
“Let’s do this again tomorrow,” Colin agreed, patting the side of the van. “Thanks to our trusty pal, Nora, we’re going to make this town great again.”
It was hard to tell what Colin meant by how having Nora would “make this town great again” as Nora had inadvertently been responsible for the murder of Richard. That night, as Colin went to sleep peacefully in the comfort and safety of his home, Richard’s home was bombarded with rocks as people angrily vocally attacked Richard for having an opinion different from theirs. While Colin dreamt of his home movies and characters in his colored pencil drawings, Richard was begging for people to leave him alone as a rock smashed through the window and hit him in the head so hard that it cracked his skull open.
Of course, the crowd didn’t hear when Richard’s body hit the ground and they certainly couldn’t hear the blood oozing through the open wound as Richard lay on the floor, the life leaving his open eyes that faced the ceiling. They continued calling him a coward and a liar until somebody finally decided to scale the side of his house and crawl into his room to see why he wasn’t responding to the jeers only to find his dead body.
There hadn’t ever been a single murder in any Earth 102 town, so, of course, Terra Corporations sent an officer over to investigate. The town suddenly fell quiet as everybody receded into their homes, hoping that by doing so, they could wash their hands of ever having participated in any of it. That’s why Colin had been the only person who was walking around town on the morning that the officer arrived. He’d heard of what happened to Richard but simply blamed it on mob mentality, nothing more than a mere product of human psychology.
When the officer had spotted Colin, he walked over to the seemingly unsuspecting boy and inquired, “Hi, I’m Officer Stan. You’re the first person I’ve seen out today. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the town.”
“Hi, Officer Stan, I’m Colin. Nice to meet you.” Colin flashed a charming smile, hoping that he could at least win over this officer even if almost everybody else in the town hated him. “And I’d be more than happy to answer whatever questions you have.”
“Great!” The officer took out his notepad and a pen, poising it above a blank page as he questioned, “So, has there been anything unusual going on in this town that might have caused the behavior that resulted in Richard’s death?”
Colin shrugged casually, keeping the tone of his voice light as he replied, “Well, there have been a lot of evictions, but my friends and I started an anonymous service where we called people that we didn’t like out and —”
As he realized how absurd that sounded out loud, he paused for a moment and rephrased, “Sorry, I meant that my friends and I just have been helping get rid of some bad people. There have been a lot of evictions, but they’re all justified, and I— me and my friends have been working to restore peace.”
Officer Stan scribbled something down on his notepad and closed it. A tense moment of silence hung between the two of them as Colin waited to see what the officer had to say, watching as a look of contemplation crossed Officer Stan’s face. “You’re doing good work, kid.”
“Oh, thank you! It’s nice to have somebody finally recognize my efforts,” Colin sighed in relief, trying to brush off his worry with a chuckle.
The officer’s smile diminished slightly as he placed a hand on Colin’s shoulder and asked, “You know you can always leave this town if it’s getting too much for you, right?”
“I know that. It’ll never be too much for me. If anything, this town’s too small for me. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ve outgrown it,” Colin joked, and Officer Stan gave him a firm on the shoulder before walking away, leaving Colin alone in the middle of the town with nothing but echoes of his words to keep him company.
