The Princess Selection

Charlotte's POV: After world war three the country decided to resort back to the time honoured ruling system of the monarchy. My grandma says that King Simon saved the country from devastation and starvation. Going with his rescue, King Simon decided to install social rankings, ones are the royal families, twos and threes are barristers and diplomats, they own businesses and have a lot of money, fours are teachers, fives are artists and musicians, sixes are farmers, and sevens are homeless and eights are released criminals. We all live in the same places, but we don't interact unless absolutely necessary.           My family is a five. My mom paints and my dad takes pictures, my sister Julia plays the piano, and I sing. We barely get by, if it weren't for my mom being such an amazing artist we would be sixes.           The rankings aren't the only thing that King Simon installed when he revived the monarchy ruling system. The Choosing was also put into place. The Choosing is a year long competition when the prince turns eighteen, where every seventeen year old girl throughout the entire nation has to submit an application from which the prince will choose fifteen girls to potentially be his wife. After the first month the prince eliminates four girls and is left with eleven. From there he sends one girl home per month until he is left with three girls who he spends the last three months getting to know and at the end of the year the prince must choose a bride.          This is the reason I am standing in this line at the moment. The line that is distributing the applications for The Choosing. The prince has come of age and I happen to be seventeen. Our state representative, Valerie Pritchett, sits at the table at the front of the line. Every state has a representative who meets with the king once a month to report on how their state is doing and what they need for the king to do for the next month.          I approach the front of the line and smile at Ms. Pritchett as her pointed face looks me over.          "Answer all questions completely and honestly. Include a photograph of yourself, if you are not able to get a photo of yourself then you can get into line over there," Ms. Pritchett says, pointing to the line of sixes and sevens standing in line behind a photographer.          I take my application and walk home. The moment I walk through the door my mother snatches the packet from my hands.          "Go out to daddy's dark room and get that picture he took of you last week at the party you performed at," my mother says, sitting down at the table and looking through the questions.          "Okay," I say, walking outside to the garage.          My mother's studio is in the garage, my dad built a little room in the corner of the garage to use as his dark room for developing his photos. Outside the dark room there's a table of all of his recent personal photos. I find the one my mother wants and look at it. I had just finished singing, I was kind of smiling, my grey eyes had a little sparkle. There was nothing exciting about the picture, nothing special.