EVEREST ROUTH :: D1 :: DONE

The thing is, sometimes I scare myself. Sometimes I think I actually care.

It makes me wonder why anyone else does things. I’m scared that my mind is telling me what I know is true. They do it for themselves. And my heart begs otherwise, pleads with me to say that this isn’t real, that their lives are dedicated to other people, but the truth is like grit in my teeth. Their lives are for them.

I don’t see the point in that.

To be totally truthful, I don’t think I’m worthless. It’s just that my worth, my monetary value, lies in what I can do for other people, even if it’s just a smile, a kind word. There are people out there who have never felt that light bulb glow of happy that is switched on in my chest, and I don’t think that I can fully feel it’s heat until I know that other people can get just a little of it, too.

Sometimes, I think my problem lies in my mother- or else, with my lack-of-mother, seeing as I never knew her. My dad, he’s a great guy, but he was never a mothering figure to me. I’ve seen other people with Mas that they can tell anything too, and I want to be that person to people who, like me, have never had that in their lives. I think I would be so much better sometimes if I could have just let my teenage emotions fall out of me, instead of just rotting inside of me like a long-since bloomed bunch of flowers. Yeah, my dad, he’s always good for a laugh, a funny bloke, but he never let his feelings show, and so I felt for a long time that I should hide mine away, too. I still think that, to be honest. Feelings are like good children- nice to have, but not to be heard in public.

When I was older, seventeen, I learned what my father did with his feelings. I’d always known he was an author, but he’d told me that he did factual work- “It’s about people long dead, Ev, you wouldn’t like it”- and I believed it. And, to some extent, he had- he’d written a number of books about the founding families of the district and their descendants. But most of our money- an amount that got sizably larger as I got older- came from his works of fiction. There, he had poured all of his tangible emotions into other characters, put problems into other people and let them sail into storybook lands. He obviously did a good job, too, as they became very popular in the district, but also in the Capitol. But like I said, I didn’t find out until I was older, until he gave me the full collection of his books for my seventeenth birthday. I saw so much of our lives in them, interlinked like tangled vines in two overlapping realities.

It was funny, because I’d always done the same thing.

My words were not stories, but lyrics and music- songs that I tried very hard to make people connect with. I liked to find perfect sentences from conversation, and translate them into a much deeper language. I found that it soothing to express my troubles to someone, even if it was only in a cryptic language to nought but the bare paper. I’d never thought my father and I were that similar, until I read those books- I’m loud, outgoing, always with a goofy smile pinned to my face and not afraid to speak up with my own opinions. But he, he’s a quiet man. He fights his own battles silently, and doesn’t like getting involved in anyone else’s. Perhaps his own scars from wars that I will never know scare him. But I saw the way he helped the underdogs that he came across was in his words- by making them likeable; making his audience connect to them, want to protect them. What he did, and still does, effects a lot more people that my careless voice.

But me, I cannot stand to see people get trampled on. I am very much in love with the idea of humanity, with the thin wick of good which I see flicker in everybody. And I really, truly believe that the only way people turn bad is by having this stamped out. If there is anything I can do, I will not let this happen. We are all human, and we all deserve a shot to aim and ignite, as the old song goes, to let ourselves catch fire. No one deserves any less, not for any reason.

Like I said, it’s always just been me and dad. Mum died when I was two, and I’ve tried desperately hard to conjure up memories of her. The woman I’ve seen grinning madly in photos says perfect words, but they do not hold a voice nor a smell. They’re all of my own creation, as much as I’d like them not to be. On the rare occasions that dad does talk about her, he looks lost, like she was the magnetic pole to his compass and ever since she left, he’s been spinning. But he held on for me, was strong for me, and was always a good dad, ready with a kind word. I’ll be forever grateful for that.

As my father would lose himself for days in the world of his fiction, so I’d loose myself in my imagination. Where I disappeared to, people would speak words that had warmth and depth, and nothing went wrong and we were pure and whole. Sometimes, I return to that place, and it does seem to do a good job of patching me up.

As a kid, I was always different. For one, I had my justice problem, a keen ability to see the world in black and white. Even my kindergarden teachers commented to my father that I would never cause a fuss when one of the other children grabbed the best toys off me, but would give them that disproving look that I’d so often seen painted on the towering-tree faces of adults, and they’d know that they had done wrong. Back then, it was simple, because they were right and, mostly, we were wrong.

When I reached the second stage of school, I became really close to this guy. Mykie was his name, and we were both around fourteen at the time. At the time, friends had become really important, and so had girls, only the latter had never really interested me. Mykie and I, we’d mess around- “Captain GoodGuy and his sidekick, Super Boy!”- and talk about saving the world. He was really passionate about stuff too, I don’t even remember what, but I started to realise how much he made me smile just thinking about him, like I had a secret in my cheeks that I had to keep pinned back. He was a mess of punctuation in my stomach, points that I couldn’t find the words for.

And one night, he was staying at mine, and we were sharing the bed, like we always did, talking about people at school and the future and just stuff. We got on to the topic of girls- something that often popped up, but was just as quickly brushed off. Only, this time, it got more serious.

“C’mon, Ev, you never talk about girls, not really. Surely there’s one of them you like, really like?”

At the time, he had a crush on this one girl in our class. Her name was Dew, and she had hair like a sunrise and he wouldn’t stop going on about her. It made me jam up, every time he mentioned her, because I wanted him all to myself. And so once again, I brushed off his question noncommittally, trying to ignore the regret balling heavily in my chest.

Later in the night, when more topics had been discussed and sleep was tantalizingly close on my eyelids, I imagined tracing his spine with my fingers. It just seemed so perfect. But that night, I learnt that perfect and infinite are words that cannot be compatible.

“Hey, Mykie?” I said questioningly. Even the memory of the words makes me feel numb behind my ears. He rolled over to face me, and I couldn’t help myself. I caught the thick air which slept on his lips, eating away at him, wanting him to be a part of me.

He didn’t want me to be a part of him. He just rolled straight over.

And the next day, he was silent as we set off for the soccer practice we had scheduled. It was not unusual- often he brooded like this. But the silence tied between us seemed impenetrable. And at school the day after he sat with some other guys, didn’t bother speaking to me unless he had to. Didn’t say anything about our shared moment, either- at least he had that courtesy. A little part of me, though, wanted him to tell everyone, to pay me out about it- because at least then I would know that he felt something, anything, about me, about us.

To anyone else, it looked as if, like most friendships at that age, we simply grew apart. But we’re the only ones who know the truth- I ripped us apart at our weakest seam.

The thing is, I don’t regret it. I’ve had flings since then, lost my feathers, but Mykie taught me never to get too attached. I’m always happy to learn from my mistakes, no matter how much they hurt me at the time. It was simply another lesson in why I shouldn’t do anything for myself- why I need to focus more on making other people happy.