Workers mill around outside, waiting for the day to start. A huge gust of wind blows, sending the stench of smoke towards us. People cough. Someone’s hat flies off and floats down the street. 

“I’ll get it!” I yell, running towards it. Another gust of wind blows, and flings it out of my reach. The work bell rings, but the hat pulls me further from the factory. 

When I finally retrieve it, I run back to the factory, and run inside to the locker room, depositing my knapsack, and running into the Rust workroom. I return the hat to its owner, a man of 22 or so, then walk to my station. A booming voice behind me makes me groan audibly. 

“Ferrum. You’re late,” The warden says, looking at my windswept hair which I am attempting to pull back in a ponytail. The elastic hair tie snaps, and my hair falls down onto my shoulders. “And your hair needs to be up. That’s out of uniform,” He hisses. 

“Someone lost their hat,” I mutter, my hands behind my back. “I was going to retrieve it.” The warden glares at me. 

“Up here,” He hisses, and I walk past all of my gawking coworkers to the stairs, my chest heaving. He grabs my shoulder and pulls me up a second staircase that says “authorized personnel only” in yellow paint on the wall. 

“Please, no,” I mumble, my face going pale. “Please, I only-” The warden gets to the top door, a locked one. “You’re only wasting time. I should be working,” I mumble. The warden holds onto my arm as he starts to unlock the door to the Discipline room. “Please,” He turns and pushes me against the wall, glaring. I shrink down. 

“You had your chance to get on my good side years ago, Ferrum,” He growls. I don’t even know your name. 

“I was fourteen, and you were twenty-five. I’d rather be in Discipline than let you do that to me,” I argue. The warden glares, and shoves me through the door. 

“Then you get your wish,” He says, walking through. The worker, a middle-aged man named Warren, looks up. 

“Kye,” He says, nodding to the warden. That’s his name?

“She’s late, out of uniform, and disrespectful,” Kye says, shoving me forwards. Warren nods, and takes my arm in his fist. Please, no. “Ferrum. Learn your lesson,” He tugs my hair, and disappears. I turn back to Warren, who knows me well. I’ve been in here several times. 

The room is designed to look like a medieval torture chamber. And really, there isn’t any difference. 

“Again, Miss Ferrum?” Warren asks, pulling a blanket off of a chair, and gesturing over. I go over, and sit down, my teeth gritted. “At this point, you should really just follow the rules.” He says, using the leather straps to tie my arms and wrists down to the chair arms, my palms face up. I tried. I tried to be a good worker. 

The burn scars on my right forearm are in fifteen neat parallel lines. Even Discipline must be organized.

Warren grabs the hot poker from his fire, walking over with the tip superheated red. I close my eyes, taking deep breaths through my nose, and try to stay silent while he adds a sixteenth mark. It doesn’t work, so I whimper, my chest rising and falling quickly.  

“Get here on time,” He threatens, putting the brand away. I take an ice cube from him, and rub it along my new mark, as I walk out of the Discipline room. 

Kye smiles cruelly at my injured hand as I scrub a metal plate, biting my lip because of the sting of the soap against the burn. 

“I heard you were late today,” The Supervisor says, walking over to my station. I stare up at him in surprise, just like everyone else in the factory. Silvers would never willingly visit a Rust workplace. The Rusts have to do the work to come to him. “My office. Now.” 

“Sir, I’ve already been Disciplined,” I stammer, keeping my head down. The Supervisor grabs my chin, and moves my head so it looks up at him, then pulls back and slaps me across the face. 

“My. Office,” He growls, as I rub my stinging cheek. I put down my sponge, and dry my hands before following him up the stairs to the Supervisor’s office. 

I sit down in the chair he offers. Why would a Silver offer a Rust a chair? I sit on the edge of the seat, ready to jump up and run if I need to. “Get comfortable, Ferrum. You’ll be here a while.” 

“I have to get back to work.” 

“If you cared about work, you would have gotten here on time.” 

“I was getting another worker’s hat. It blew away in the wind.” 

“I don’t want excuses,” He says, leaning towards me. The rich, dark wood of his desk could feed my neighborhood for a year. The grandfather clock, two years. The entire room, a lifetime. 

“Yes, sir,” I squeak, remembering to hold my temper. Breathe. Breathe. I think, clenching my fists. 

“Then you understand that you need to get to work on time tomorrow?” He questions, and I nod. 

“Yes.” 

“Yes, what?” 

“Yes, sir,” I murmur, my cheeks flaming. 

“Good,” He says, then stands up. “You need to learn to behave, Ferrum. Or you could get yourself, and your little sister, deeper in trouble.” I nod. “You wouldn’t want her to go home with more injuries, would you?” 

“No, sir,” I answer, ducking my head.

When I get home at around eight, the end of my usual Thursday shifts, Casey sits at the dinner table, poking her canned corn and chicken with a fork. It’s been cold a while. Our parents are asleep.

“What happened? You look sad. The corn’s the least disgusting,” I mumble, after I finish my rations on a flimsy foil tray, and she’s barely touched hers even after that. 

“Kids dumped my school books in the gutter,” She mutters, a couple bruises forming around her dark brown eyes. “And we don’t have enough money to buy more.” 

“I can get them secondhand when I go out for the groceries Mom forgot to get,” I say, getting up, and grabbing the shopping list from the fridge. 

“There won’t be enough money,” She says sadly, poking the corn with her plastic fork. 

“I’ll find a way.” I say, sighing. “Do you want to come with me?” I ask, grabbing some coins from the money jar. Thankfully it hasn’t been depleted today by Mom’s whims. 

“Sure,” Casey says, grabbing her jacket and walking out the door with me. We pass all of our neighbors’ houses, and she sighs. “You have a new mark on your arm.” 

“I know.” I mutter, sighing. “The warden’s a jerk.” We walk down the sidewalk to the corner store. While Casey looks through the secondhand book section, I grab the groceries. “Hi, Casey.” The kid at the front counter says, waving to my sister as she walks up with books in her arms, the most worn ones that will be cheap. His parents probably own this place. He looks like a Copper, with his reddish hair and numerous freckles. 

Casey waves to him at the front counter, as she piles the schoolbooks next to the groceries. I pull out my money, and start to hand it to the kid, but he stops me. 

“It’s free. Casey’s my friend.” I put the money away, as Casey thanks the kid quietly. He puts the books and food into paper bags and helps us carry it to the little wagon. “Don’t you guys have a car?” He asks. Casey flushes as she picks up the wagon’s handle to pull it back home. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I can be so stupid sometimes,” He says, his warm smile a frown. 

“It’s okay, Teddy,” Casey says, zipping up her jacket. Teddy nods and hugs Casey, kind of awkwardly. “Bye,” Teddy waves to me and skips back to the store. 

“So…..” I start, tilting my head at Casey. 

“He’s just a friend from school,” She says, her face as red as Teddy’s hair. I roll my eyes. 

“He gave us everything for free,” I point out. She shrugs.

“How was work today?” She asks, changing the subject. 

“It sucked,” I say succinctly, as we walk up the steps to our house, leaving the wagon under the porch where neighborhood kids won’t steal it. Casey brings her books inside and starts working on homework, her face still flushed. 

I walk into the bedroom and pull out the laundry basket, watching the sun set on the island. I fill a tub with water, and shave some soap off of the block in the bathroom, rubbing the clothes with it. A paper airplane hits me in the side of the head, and lands in the tub of water. 

“Casey, get back on schoolwork,” I say, not looking up. 

“Okay,” Flint says from outside the open window. His gray hair shines silver in the flickering lights of the backyard. 

“You,” I mutter, scrubbing one of Casey’s shirts with a smile. “I’m busy.”

“Remember that really cool coin I found the other day?” He asks. 

“Yeah, the old one?” I ask, leaning out the window and putting the shirt on the clothesline. I see Flint start to pull something out of his pocket. “Oh, no. Please tell me you didn’t make another necklace.” Flint smiles and puts the object in my hand. A thin iron chain holds the little coin in place. It’s been polished several times, and shines like new. “You know I hate jewelry,” I say, setting the necklace on the windowsill, and going back to the washing tub. 

“There’s always a chance you’ll have a change of heart.” He says, climbing through the window. “Do you need any help?” 

“No.” I say. Flint glances at the mountain of laundry, and grabs his own chunk of soap, scrubbing an old cotton dress of mine. I wore it last rest day. I sigh, and make more space around the tub. Flint nudges my arm while he rinses the dress, and I roll my eyes. He looks over at the old metal shelves Casey and I use for a dresser. He sees my glass jar of all the necklaces he makes. “You keep them?” He asks, smiling. 

“Casey makes me,” I say, my hands already raw and red. 

“Sure. Whatever you say,” He says, kissing my cheek. I wring a shirt out and go to hang it on the clothesline. Flint smiles, hanging the dress out to dry. 

“That’s not how you do it,” I say, moving closer to him, and fixing the way the dress is hung. 

“Sorry,” He says, picking the necklace off the windowsill, and putting it around my neck. He smiles at me for a while afterwards. I roll my eyes, and get back to work. There’s a faint sound of a high-pitched bell, and Flint chuckles. His mom is very shy, so they have other methods of communicating. “My mom needs me at home. Bye, Olive,” 

“Bye, Flint,” I mutter, as he climbs out the window again.