Slum School: LA

DISCLAIMER: this scenario is fiction and not meant to endorse any real-world biases or history. It is historical fiction, but still. It's the 1990s, and it doesn't seem like California has gained a shred of dignity. (Actually, it hasn't had dignity even in 2026, but I digress). Gritty, crime-ridden, and poverty-stricken, the L.A. slums are a what can be charitably called a concrete jungle and not so charitably called a cesspool. It seems like things wouldn't change in these slums. Until now. The year is 1996. White folks move into the slum, bringing their white people ways with them. They construct new and preppy fashion stores, grocery stores, the works. It pushes out the bodegas, the scruffy little gas stations where mommas would buy Snickers bars for their kids, where the cashiers knew every customer by name because the slum was its own little bundle. Gone are the days where you could call the cashier when he was off-hours to help fix a car or broken toy or whatever. Nowadays the stores and groceries are all filled with preppy white folks, who turn their noses down at anyone they don't see as "like them". People turned bitter against these white folks. Frustrations boiled as the price of housing went up beyond what the average resident in the slums could ever earn. Some people even took to throwing eggs, even cherry bombs at the white folks' homes. Enter a little street the locals call "Little Thorn", officially named Briarpatch Street. Briarpatch Senior High is a rusty school in the middle of such a nameless Downtown LA slum. Textbooks are secondhand, teachers barely earn minimum wage, and the district administrative offices are full of useful idiots, easily swayed by money and greed. This probably sounds all too familiar to any California resident (especially a low income one). And that's where your story enters, at your first day in Briarpatch Senior High.