[center]Thirty households. Thirty letters. One boy. One bicycle.

It was going to be a long morning. Surrounded by the titanic homes of Lakewood Summit, the young messenger was on a mission. Deliver all the letters, don’t come into work for the rest of the day. He hadn’t needed to be told twice. After all, he [i]hated[/i] the country club. The people more than anything. He was young, just over fourteen years old, but he’d be damned if the residents and people he caddied for at the Summit Country Club weren’t exactly pillars of society (despite what they might claim themselves). IN fact, quite the opposite was true: they were rich and stubborn and demanding and full of themselves and just [i]generally all around not nice people[/i].

Some of them had little facades they put on, yes, but it was really just… a game to these people. The game of life, and frankly, they were all winning in their own ways. Winning more than he and his family were, at least. The size of their homes alone spoke volumes to him. The residents of Lakewood Summit may be assholes (at least to a [i]normal[/i] person), but… they were [i]rich[/i] assholes.

The houses [i]were so big[/i]. No family, let alone a single person, had any business living in homes [i]this large[/i]. What purpose did it even serve? Gigantic. Titanic. Enormous. This entire [i]place[/i] made no sense. Honestly, he was surprised he was pedaling through the streets so cleanly, without being stopped, especially given the time of day. Checking his watch and the letter bag, the boy looked at the rising sun, just barely cresting the eastern skyline. If he kept the current pace, he could be out and on his way by no later than 6:48 AM. (Approximately.)
[hr][hr]
He was, strangely so, [i]right[/i]. One last letter, delivered to the final house. 6:46 AM. It’d only taken him roughly an hour and a half. Now, freedom called him. He pedaled quickly, wanting to escape before they roused and flooded the streets, checking the mailboxes to see the letters he’d stuffed into them:

[img]http://www.erindalec.act.edu.au/home/?a=377382[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/cgEczLg.jpg[/img]      [img]http://i.imgur.com/OKpk0rp.png[/img]
[img]http://www.erindalec.act.edu.au/home/?a=377382[/img]

The invitations were tucked away carefully in stark white envelopes, and stamped shut by hand the night before. The wax that closed the letters was shaped in the symbol of the country club, which the boy thought was rather generic, but it wasn’t really his place. Plus, the head of the country club paid him. In cash. Every week. No complaints here. Regardless, each letter was addressed to ‘the head of the household,’ same as it was every year. Ten years now, the art auction had happened.

Shrugging his shoulders, the boy flashed his badge at the security gate(something given to him by the head of the club), which worked. With a simple shrug, the security guards opened the gate to him, and he rode past it. Escape! As he rolled down the road to the summit, he could feel tiredness start to overtake him--he wasn’t meant to be up this early--but, waking up had given him the opportunity to [i]not[/i] go to work and be a busboy for the club during the party. He didn’t understand why the letters needed to be delivered [i]the day of[/i] the gathering, but he wasn’t nearly as fancy as the people who lived in the houses behind him.

Secretly, he thought that for the best. Life in the Summit was probably stressful…[/center]