Nessie Libertine [[District Four]]

There are other things that make me me. These are the things that cannot be captured in a moment, stored in a photograph. These are the things that I know, that my family knows, that nobody knows. Things that are there, but cannot be seen. The tears behind the smile. Shadows haunting the night. Things that at first glance cannot be seen at all. Some things even I am not so sure that I know.

I swing my legs up underneath me on the hard plastic chair and glare at the counsellor as though she has just told me she thinks I should become a photographer, rather than simply having offered me a biscuit.
Her lipstick smile falters slightly, and that gives me some feeling of satisfaction - like I have a power over her that I have over nobody else at all. There is something about being neither the youngest nor the eldest in a family of nine that automatically makes you invisible. You have to do something other than exist to be seen. So I choose not to be seen and to simply exist because then nobody presses to see what is below the surface. Now the lady stares at me, her eyes boring holes in my fiery defence.

"So, Vanessa," she begins, and her voice is crisp and sharp. A suppress a shudder, and struggle to keep my hands still in my lap. Already I want to run far away from here, and the lady before me has only spoken two words.
"It's Nessie," I say, because nobody ever calls me Vanessa. Not Ursula when she is smiling sweetly about some fresh knew debt I owe her; not my mother when she is angry at me for sneaking away during some important event; not even my teacher when I purposefully neglect my homework for the fourth week running. It's not that I'm not smart - if I try I'm quick minded and biting, sharp and ruthless. It's just that I don't see why I should try when it comes to algebra and formulas and things I'll never need to know.
"Alright, Nessie," she tries again, managing to surpess the frustration in her voice. I see right through you, I think. "I think you know why you are here. Is this correct?"

I decide that she is not completely stupid after all. Maybe she deserves to be humored for a little longer. I tuck my legs back down under the chair, shift in my seat and tuck a strand of glossy hair behind my ear. I can never keep still for more than a few seconds at a time, and I am yearning to open the window and let some air in. I'm too afraid that I'd jump right out and head for the seashore, so I stay sitting in the plastic chair, wondering which District it came from. "I know why I'm here." My voice is steady, smooth, with just the slightest tint of malice in it that makes me sound far more experienced at hiding my secrets than I am. After all, I've only had fourteen years to practise. This lady has surely had at least forty more. "I'm here because they think I'm crazy. It's not really that hard to figure out." The lady looked a little taken aback, as though she had never come across a case quite as fiery and upfront as I am. Obviously she hadn't been working with very interesting people.

You know how birds feel when they fly higher than they have ever flown before? Do you know if a panic rises up inside of them as they do, if they fear that their wings will no longer hold them and they will fall forever into nothingness, before hitting the ground. No. Of course you don't, because it's a bird and as far as I know you can't talk bird. Well, that's how I see myself. Flying high, so high that I think I might fall, but nobody would even know because nobody speaks my language. The lady sitting on the other side of the desk recovers and looks at me steadily. When she speaks, her voice is calm and clear. I guess it's meant to be soothing. "You're not
crazy, Nessie. Just confused. I'm here to help you and to talk to you. I just want to be your friend."

I visibly shudder at this for two reasons. The first is that I really have no friends other than people I have to be friends with, like the Ripley's and such. Secondly, this prim and proper is obviously more interested in sticking her nose into my families business to care about becoming friends with a fourteen year old brat. I decide to let her go on, to play her games for a while, because maybe if I do I'll be able to leave here more quickly. "Thanks." I smile.
"So, how are you in general? How do you find school?" At this, I look to my shoes. It's not that I don't know how to do everything, not that I'm dumb or stupid, just that it bores me to death. The teachers rant and rave about Panem and quadratic equations when all I want to know is the color of the sky from the other side of the world, whether the sun sets in the same place year round. So I scribble in my textbooks and sometimes take pride in the fact that I can slip from a silent classroom without anyone so much as noticing. Then I run to the sea and let the waves lap against my toes. I feel trapped when I am inside. "Fine," I hear myself say. "School is fine."

The lady looks at me intensely, her plain brown eyes shimmering with questions. After a moment, she nods curtly and shuffles a couple of pieces of paper. "And home life? Do you get on with your parents, your siblings?"
I decide that it will be worth it to tell the truth just to see how she reacts and leave. It takes me a moment to pull myself together, to get to grips with what she has just asked me.
"What's your name?" I decide.
"Miss Lawson," she smiles at me, but her eyes remain dead.
"Your first name?" I ask, but what I really want to know is what is her name. The last word you hope that someone thinks before you fall asleep. What your parents call you when they aren't mad at you or messing around with some other woman. Like Nessie. I am Nessie. The monster that lives in the ocean, the one that is only a whisper, a rumour. Most don't believe. Most don't see. The one that is still there after all these years, even though nobody knows I exist. Not Vanessa Libertine. Nessie.

Miss Lawson doesn't understand this, however, so she smiles stiffly and mutters something like 'Maya' or 'Marion' under her breath. I decide to call her Blockhead, it's more suiting. She looks at me again, in that way that adults do when everybody knows you just changed the subject, and my mind flickers back to my family and her question. What about my family, exactly?

"I don't really talk to my parents, not really. I mean, I watch them. I know what they do. My dad, well, when he said forever I don't think he understood what that meant." I don't have to meet your eyes to know you know exactly what I mean. "My mother... well, she's kind of distant. We're not close. But she's got a lot on her mind right now. I love Penelope, I really do. I swear she doesn't know I exist half the time, but she doesn't know anybody else exists, either. When I'm with Penelope I don't have to be anyone."

I paused, gearing myself up to give a briefing on each of my siblings. "Ursula helps me out. What I mean by that is almost every mistake make she knows how to fix. I make an awful lot of mistakes, and when Ursula has fixed a lot of mistakes then you owe her an awful lot. We understand each other, though. She knows how to manipulate, and I know how to be manipulated. Inside, I don't think we're so different." The words I'm saying are true, and at first I don't know why I am telling Miss Lawson this. She doesn't care; it's her job to ask and prod and protrude - she's a counselor. This isn't even about me at all. And then I remember that I need to say what she wants to hear to get outside. I jiggle my leg, writhe my hands around one another, yet I still go on. Fighting with the desire to shy away from this lady and hide someone quiet and safe, I manage to come up with a few more words for her. "And Jorge, I like him. I just don't understand why he wants to be so free, because I don't like to be trapped, but the thought of the whole wide world scares me almost as much as a photograph. I know I'm skittish and paranoid and untrusting, but it's because of things I've done and who I am. Jorge get's that and I get him, in a way."

Why am I telling her this? Usually I can speak only a couple of words to someone before shying away and biting so blow on my fingernails that blood begins to flow. Usually I cannot stay with someone for more than a few minutes for fear that they will see into my eyes and know me and my secrets better than I know how to hide them myself. Yet now I am practically letting them flow out of me like a tide. This is not me, not Nessie, surely. Now I know I must leave before she captures my soul in my words and remembers it. "And the others... I..."

I hope that what I have said so far is enough, so I let what I have been building up to for the last ten minutes come. Tear begin to stream down my face and it crumples beneath the load. Of course they are not real, however I have learned a few tricks from those around me, whether it be my manipulative, lying siblings who I know so distantly, or my parents, who's wrath is almost as terrifying to myself as the idea of people understanding how I work. With that, I look right into the counselors eyes and sob sharply. "Please may I go?" I ask, choking back more bitter faint sobs and wondering why people choose to cry when they do not have to. It is not attractive, nor is it fun.

It works, though. Miss Lawson moves to the door, hands me a tissue and smiles at me. "Same time tomorrow, Vanessa?" she says and I know she couldn't care less about me at all.

It's Nessie. And there is no way in hell I'm falling into this cruel woman's trap a second time. The moment the door closes behind me I head for the sea, to the little cave by the shore that nobody else knows about. That is where I stay, alone, huddled in a corner and happier than I've been in a long time, until night falls and I must return home. Otherwise Ursula would cover for me and make me pay.