I wake to the same cracked ceiling and the same stale air, like this room has given up on trying to breathe. My alarm is silent because I turned it off months ago. No point in it screaming when every day is a repeat of the last, a broken record of dead dreams and half-finished prayers.
Ash Hollow is a dying town, a place where even the crows are too bored to circle overhead. Coal dust sticks to the windowsills like a disease, and the old aluminum plant on the edge of town looks more like a tomb than a factory. The streets are mostly empty, a few broken-down trucks here and there, a gas station that rarely has customers, and the occasional stray dog looking for something that doesn't exist anymore.
I drag myself out of bed, pulling on the same faded black hoodie and jeans I wore yesterday. I know they're clean enough, or at least no one at school will notice. It's not like anyone there gives a damn.
My parents sit in the kitchen. Dad's already halfway through the paper, his face hidden behind the same headlines that never change. Mom's at the stove, flipping eggs that are always too dry. She looks at me like she's searching for a reason to care, but she's got nothing. Neither do I.
School is a ten-minute walk down cracked sidewalks littered with cigarette butts and rusted cans. I pass old men staring at nothing and younger ones with nowhere to go. The school itself is a decaying relic with chipped paint and broken windows covered in cheap tape. I hate the way the halls smell like bleach and despair.
My bullies wait for me just inside the door, like vultures. Kenny and Brad, best friends since second grade, united by a shared hatred of anything different. Kenny's got a face like a brick wall and eyes that never smile. Brad's smarter, but that just makes him more dangerous. I keep my head down, but it doesn't matter. They shove me, call me a freak. I barely feel it anymore.
Then there's her. Raven hair, black lipstick, a darkness that feels like home. Her name is Lilith, but she barely knows I exist. She walks the halls like she's on a different plane, too cool to care about this place or the people in it. I watch her from the shadows, a silent prayer I'll never say out loud.
Classes drag on, one dead hour after another. Teachers drone on about equations and wars that mean nothing here. I draw in the margins of my notebook, sketches of circuit boards and crypto rigs, dreams of something more than this place.
By the time I get home, the sun is already dead behind the clouds. Mom reheats dinner. Dad mutters something about layoffs and pensions. I nod, but I'm not really listening. I'm thinking about the glow of my computer screen waiting in the corner of my room.
After dinner, I sit in the living room with my parents. The TV is on, some news anchor babbling about politics I couldn't care less about. Then the screen flickers and there it is: Bitcoin. One hundred thousand dollars a coin. My breath catches. I missed it, didn't I?
But maybe I didn't.
Later that night, alone in my room, I dive into research. CPU mining. GPU mining. ASICs. I read until my eyes blur. ASICs need too much power, special outlets I don't have. CPU and GPU might be enough to get me started. I can feel the hunger gnawing at me, a sickness in my gut that whispers that maybe, just maybe, this is my way out.
And that's where tomorrow begins.