The Summer Job ~ Andy Biersack *Completed

--Baylie's POV--

My fingers wrapped around the end of my necklace, bored. I sighed to myself quietly. I'd sold my phone today, and I was seriously beginning to regret it. But there was no room for that, I'd gotten us some shampoo and conditioner and even snuck in a bar of candy for my own self-pity. Now was my favorite time of the day, the time I can just sit back and think. The house has been falling apart at the edges, and mother hasn't felt well lately. So it's been up to me to attempt and screw things back together. However, I'm no mechanic. Our back door is still swinging at the hinges, and the glass of our kitchen window still has an awful shatter running from corner to corner. It let in an awful draft when the wind blew. Not to mention how dirty everything was; we even had a little pivet of weeds springing up from under one of the floorboards. Atleast I'd managed to rip those out, but I had no doubt that's they'd grow back within the week.

"Baylie?" My mother's voice called from her room
.
"Yes mother?" I replied, getting up from the duct-taped chair and heading into her room. I peeked inside. "You called?"

"Can you please get me a glass of water?" She asked frailly. I nodded and grabbed her empty glass from the nightstand. We'd stopped paying for plumbing months ago, so the only way we got water was our neighbor's hose. They didn't seem to mind. About once a week I filled up a big jug for water. We still had electricity, but only in small bits. The fridge, an occasional light, stuff like that.

I know it sounds taboo, but it's not so different from everyone else's life. Just with a little more stealing, scavenging, coughing, and...flexibility, I guess you could say. And fortunately for us, we're in the best place for scavenging.

Avery Hills is the place for the wealthy. It's home to numerous celebrities, and we even have several millionaires. Each neighborhood has 200-250 houses, each of them quite nice. Except for ours. And in each neighborhood, there is one Manor. Ours is the Biersack Manor, but we never see the man who lives there. We only here rumors. He used to come out very frequently, I remember when he was a child he was always doing things to help out the neighborhood. Something happened one day, and nobody's quite sure what, but he rarely comes out anymore. Perhaps he just got old, or perhaps someone was cruel to him. But his house is still kept in tiptop condition, some even say it is the best Manor of all 13 neighborhoods.

So how did we afford a house here?

Well, to start, our house is one of the smallest in Avery Hills. It came with lifted side walks from trees, severely broken pipes, no flooring in two rooms, twelve holes in the roof, and no grass or plants. Nobody had lived in it for years, and there was still trash in it from the last owner. The retailers didn't want to be responsible for all the damage, so they cut the price way low and gave us the first 16 payments. That's what I've heard from my mother, atleast. The 16 payments are long gone by now, but we're scraping by. Sometimes, our house becomes so ragged, a worker from the Manor comes to scold us or make sure we're alive.

Oh yes, the manor workers.

The people living in the manors, we call them Manor Kings. They aren't really kings, but they are the richest people in the neighborhood and payed for their spot. In my opinion, it's absolutely medieval. They have workers from the city that help manage their paperwork and clean their home. The Manor in the other neighborhood even has workers that come just to entertain the Manor Kings, although I'm quite sure by entertain they mean prostitution services.

We are the opposite of Manor Kings. My house is in the middle of the street, all broken and draggled, and hidden by weeds and bushes. There is constantly the smell of must and the sound of coughing and weezing, and awful black bugs crawl from the lifted shingles on our rooftop. We were almost evicted for having such a disorderly living space, but our bank account was proof there was nothing we could do.
But it's the lifestyle I was born and raised on, and it doesn't bother me a whole lot. There are often nights I go hungry, or times I sell something I'd rather keep, but you learn to live with it and let things be. Provided you never get attatched to one thing for too long, you'll survive.

Notes

I know it's a little slow, but hold on }:) It will get better and things will start happening soon.