Dyani Hawkins (D11) FINISHED!!

[/color], the kids at school say I’m odd looking and too skinny. But that’s what happens around here when its just Mama and me. She works the best she can in the fields, but even that isn’t enough to keep proper food on our table.

It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t such a big mouth. I’ve got a problem of just saying whatever I want when people provoke me. A lot of the time I end up in trouble, in fact I’ve been on the losing end of quite a few fights. One of these days I’ll learn[/i][/color]. Trust me I try hard not to say the things I do, but sometimes I get so mad I can’t help it. Deep down I wonder if its my want to meet my father that keeps getting me in trouble, the idea of the peace keepers coming to get me and it being him and he realizes that he left a child behind the night he decided he had to have Mama burns deep inside of me. Not to mention the want to stab a knife through his eye and out the back of his skull[/color].

I don’t hate everyone. I promise I don’t. In fact I have a good lot of friends who I really trust, and when I’m around them I feel like they like my sassiness. I say the things they only wish they could. Maybe it’s the fact I don’t care what people say back about me that doesn’t tie my tongue. I know a lot of them wish I could just shut up and fall in line, but why should I when I’ve got my whole life to live? If I let the Capitol break me the way they broke Mama, then they win. I won’t let that happen. Till my dying breath they won’t be the ones that win.[/i][/color]

That’s not to say I don’t have fun, because whats the point of being a teenager if you can’t enjoy a little bit of life. Like the late night kisses from the older boys who ask me to sneak out at night, or the slipping off into one of the hidden streams after a long day in the fields to strip down and let the water wash away the soreness from my muscles. Even little things like that make life worth living. Mama hates that I don’t follow all the rules of being a lady, but if I did then I wouldn’t be me. I like being a girl, but being a lady is something I don’t think District 11 has much of.

It all started when I was born. I was loud and obnoxious then, and not much has changed over the years. I didn’t have the daddy figure to step up and tell me that I couldn’t act that way, in fact most the time I didn’t have a Mama to do it either. She worked a lot and left me with one of the older women in the community who watched all the “youngin’s” . I don’t resent her for it or anything, and I don’t think her being around would’ve made much difference. Sometimes people are just trouble, like me.

When I was old enough to go to school it was already too late for too many manners to be installed. The old woman had her hands so full with toddlers and diapers and bottles that things like manners fell through the cracks and if you were a natural born smartass your bad habits were never broken. I spent many days in the corner of school, my nose pressed against the wall as a reminder of how we weren’t supposed to speak of out of turn or smack other people upside the head with our Capitol issued history books. The problem was the teachers couldn’t see the smirk on my mouth as my back was towards them.

Now I’m better at hiding my snarky comments, and even though they’ve kept me passed the school bell more than my fair share, I’m slowly starting to understand there is a time and a place for my sass. Mama is getting older, her fingers are starting to crook and bend with the beginnings of arthritis and its making me pick up more hours in the fields for what little we can scratch out. I won’t sign up for tesserae no matter what our situation looks like, per Mama’s orders, cause a dead me is useless and a living me is the only way to be. I’m only fifteen but I want to live to be the next old lady to watch the children, I don’t want to be snuffed out by the bastards who created me[/color].





[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size][/color][/justify]