Live On

What is the greatest measure of someone's worth?

To the average person the answer would likely be, a virtue, such as reliability. But for those for whom drugs, murder and violence are their everyday, their answer might be very different.

Is it the money they earn? The lives they take? Or maybe... could it be a value after all? Could it be something as intangible and unreliable as loyalty or trust?

For Hailey, an ordinary math teacher and an upstanding citizen, that second question has never mattered. She lives a life far removed from the seedy underbelly of the city. For her the world can be classified as either good or bad; the line dividing them never blurry.

Pavement is pavement.

Houses are houses.

And people are people.

All of the above are either good or bad. The world only has those two antithetical sides; good things happen to good people, and bad people get what's coming to them.

Thus Hailey lives, thus she must be living testimony that making the right life choices leads to being a contributing member of society. She must prove that it's not right to succumb to the instant gratification that the wrong parts of the city promise. Every student under her care who takes 'the dark path' is a blow she takes personally and she goes out of her way to help them back because as a math teacher she knows that every problem has a solution; there's no such thing as a lost cause or a rigged game.

But what if that solution turns out to be that the problem is flawed?

And nothing is more flawed than seeing the world in black and white.

Some things you always are, some things you never want to be. And then there are the times you are forced to bathe in the city's blood.