ASA REAU, DISTRICT TWO

AGE . Seventeen.
GENDER . Boy.
DISTRICT . District Two.
OCCUPATION . Career.
SEXUALITY . I'm a virgin?
TALKING . DFD1A8
DOING . 626B5E
DEEP THOUGHT . 8F1212
HEARING . 85836B
OTHER . 021927

What's in a name? My mother always told me that when I loved someone, it wouldn't matter what they looked like. A rose by any other name still smells just as sweet. They could be fat, have an odd nose, have an annoying laugh, and have the worst habits, and it wouldn't matter. They'd be beautiful to me. I hope she's right about that, because, if someone's gonna fall in love with me, they'd have to be blind. Blind and stupid.

Of course, my mother always said I was her handsome little boy, but that stopped fooling me ages ago. When you have a brother like mine, you tend to become a bit of a realist. See, Heracles got the good looks. My father's chiseled jaw, black hair, and light blue eyes. He's had girls swooning over him since he learned how to walk. Me, well. I'm me, aren't I? I'm too thin according to my mother. Too fat according to my dad. My brother says I'm a piss stripe little weakling, he could snap me like a twig. Coach says i'm strong, can finally go to that same elite training academy that my brother went to. At this point I'm not sure who to believe. As far as I'm concerned, I agree with my dad. I could do better,a lot better. I just need to work harder. My mother says that if I don't stop working so hard, I'll work myself to death. My step-mom disagrees. She agrees with my dad, she always does.

I'm always trying to lose the meat on my bones, just to make my dad proud of me, like he is of my brother. I go for runs, eat greens, I'm a bloody vegetarian for Ripred's sake. I get my protein from the handfuls and handfuls of nuts that my Step-mother makes me eat. (Dad always called her a health nut, but he says that's why he fell in love with her.) No matter what, I never seem to lose enough weight, and gain enough muscle for my dad. He puts me on the scale at least once a week. If it's too high, my portions get smaller, and it's always too high for him. He says that Heracles was much fitter at my age, but that's not fair because we're not the same. I wish we were.

I've got muscle, (Not good enough) I'm a typical career. I go for endurance though, endurance, speed, and a bow and arrow. Not like Heracles, all strength and heavy lifting. Sometimes I run races for sport, and I'm usually third or second. Not fast enough. Once I even tore a muscle because I was training so hard. Not Enough. I have battle wounds, oh yes. So many little cuts, burns, problems. I have a bad knee, sometimes it gives out on me. I have little cuts all along my outer arms from the throwing knives my brother likes to casually toss for my 'benefit'. Once, when I was little, I broke my wrist. Rather, my brother broke my wrist for me. He isn't a bad brother. Just not a good one. I have burns from experimenting with fire weapons. They added them in this year, so now I have to. I have a weird, pale blotch on my skin, just underneath my shoulder blade from when I was first learning what herbs to eat and what herbs and flowers were poisonous.

Once, when my brother and I were training, he accidentally gave me a scar on my back. Sometimes I wonder if it was really accidental. I mean, it's hard to 'accidentally' scar someone so badly that he still isn't completely healed. Stop being a baby, Asa. I don't know. It starts on my hip bone, on my lift side, and runs all the way up my back to coil around my right shoulder like a lover's arm. It happened when I was thirteen and a half years old. It still hurts in cold weather, and makes me stiff in the mornings. A lot of things happened when I was thirteen and a half, like puberty, and my mother leaving my father. Let's talk about puberty first.

Puberty, is a terrifying thing that means pimples and crooked teeth that were previously charming suddenly become ugly. Puberty means that suddenly I had to learn how to use my new hands and feet which grew way faster than the rest of me. Puberty means that over the years I've grown to stand at almost five feet and nine inches. Heracles is still taller. Puberty also means other things, but I'm sure you'd know all about that. Unless you're a girl, and you're not a guy reading this, in which case I'm sort of embarrassed. Either way, actually. For some boys, puberty seemed to make them louder, for me, it made me even more invisible. When puberty hits a guy, they're supposed to inflate and get muscles, get confidence, and all that great stuff. Me, nothing changed, my muscles might have gotten smaller actually. The only good thing about puberty was growing hair on my face.

My father says I always look concerned, even when I'm not thinking about anything. My mom says it's because I have big eyes, and thick brows but my brother says I'm a puss. I don't smile much either, but I have plump lips, and a squarish jaw. My ears stick out, and my hair is sandy brown. It sticks up all over the place no matter how often I smooth it down. My eyes are so dark blue that they're pointless, and according to my step-mother, I stare too much. (Stop staring at me boy, you're creeping me the fuck out.) On my insides, I am made of muscle, bone, blood, and water. On my outsides, I am made of skin, hair, the odd freckle, and eyes. I do not know what this makes me. Not good enough. Whatever I am made of, it is not good enough for them.

I don't really know who or what I am because everything that I have done or will do will be not chosen by me. Which leads to the question: If I have never decided anything for myself, then do I exist to others, or am I simply a shadow that my brother casts? I could weakly argue, I could say that I like training, I like doing what I do, but there is no point when my points would begin as whispers that trail off into silence. No, I have never decided anything for myself, but yes, I undeniably here. (This I know because it's fact.) Give me a good solid fact and I will trust it blindly. Give me a good solid lie, and I will choose to trust it as well. It's easier that way, and there's nothing to argue about.

I suppose my main character trait if this were a novel, (though I can't see anyone wanting to write a novel about me) is that I am good at being quiet. Without a distinct personality trait, I don't think I'm really all that important, so instead I simply stay quiet and listen, and for some reason that makes me acceptable. The other boys let me tag along, mostly because I think that they forget that I am there in the first place, at least until they need me. I am also a great listener. For some reason, this makes me the choice person for people to tell things too. I guess it makes sense, I don't say much, but I listen, and I think that's really what everyone wants most. To be actually listened to.

I never really stood out, and I guess that makes sense. Not when I have a brother like I do. He's the one that gets all the praise, I'm the one that stands quietly in the corner at parties, stirring my drink. I watch them fawn over him, and I don't really feel jealous. Maybe if I could do better I'd have more reason to be frustrated. But I don't. I slack off. Like my father says, I mean I must. Otherwise I would be jsut as good as him, right?

And I write lines of poetry like open conversations. I send them out on paper rafts into the sky. They melt into oblivion. Melted by the rain, and what a cruel death that is, isn't it? To be molested by water, a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen filling your every orifice until you're drowning from it. It's funny how just shutting your mouth can keep all that water out, but open your lips a bit and it all comes shooting in. Water, will wait for it's time to strike, and will do so when you're least expecting it. I am afraid of water.

Heracles is three years older than me, and he is everything that his name means. My father named him, called dibs on it, so I guess my mother called dibs on my name because we aren't the same. Heracles means 'glorious gift from gods'. Asa means 'healer', or 'doctor'. Father didn't like that. See, my father was convinced that we'd win him glory in the arena, one of us. Heracles, I think was supposed to be that one. I was the write off, the mother's boy, the weakling. I used to think that was my mother's fault for giving me such a name. I used to think that it was her way of spiting my father.

Like a lot of folks, my parents married young, almost too young. He got her pregnant when she was only sixteen, and he was seventeen. They married because it was the right thing to do. They married because her parents insisted, and his parents thought that he'd be reaped soon anyway, it wouldn't be a problem. Their marriage was never happy. Neither of them loved the other, and in fact, my Oma says that they were so opposite it was amazing they'd bedded in the first place. I never understood why she stayed with him so long. I mean, they used to shout all the time. He shouted, she spoke with such a quiet force that it was incredible. Their arguments usually went something like this:

Mom: "You're raising our boys for slaughter."

Dad: "THEY'RE BOYS, AND I'LL RAISE THEM HOW I PLEASE, WHY I 'AUGHTER."

Mom: "Don't raise your hand to me, or I will cut it off. Besides, we agreed, you would raise Heracles, I would raise Asa how I saw fit."

Dad: "THAT WAS BEFORE YOU DECIDED TO MAKE HIM A COCK-SUCKING SISSY."

Then there was a slap and my mother angrily walking out of the kitchen, sometimes with a knife in her hand, just in case I think. When she finally left him, Heracles told me it was because of me, because I'm such a wimpy little girl. I thought that too for a long time. When my father began training me, I was only five. That was okay though, because Heracles had started training at four. My mother had fought his eagerness to train me for one long year, but when my father decided something, he decided it. So I was behind. Life went on, me training, Heracles being better at everything, my mother cleaning my scratches and kissing my hurts better. When I was twelve, that's when training got horrible, and that's also when home got worse.

My mom freaked out a lot about my wounds that I'd come home with, and I guess any mother naturally would. For a while, things had been pretty quiet, but with the increase in training, the shouting started again. My brother and I would be united for once, me on the stairs, him sitting in his doorway, pretending not to be interested at all. He'd never quite liked me, not in the way brothers do. We'd sit in silence, darkness lit only by the crack of light coming from the closed kitchen door. I remember being afraid because they always chose the kitchen, and that's where the knives were. Both careers, they both knew how to use them.

When I was thirteen and a half, two things happened. Puberty hit, we spoke of that, and my mother finally left my father. One day we came home from training, and there wasn't even a note. Just gone. My mother's things were gone, and her favourite set of knives. My father was gone too, but I didn't know where at the time. I thought they'd been taken by the capitol, for being too noisy at night. My father came home though, my mother never did. Of course, she came back to see us. My father wouldn't let her in the house. I'd watch from the window upstairs, to see which way she'd walk down the street when she finally gave up and left again, to come another day.

My father got remarried pretty fast, to some lady that I was supposed to refer to as 'Mom' or Elsie. My brother got worse. He decided that my mother left because I didn't work hard enough at training. When I turned fourteen, that was my brother's gift to me. The scar on my back. It turned out to be a pretty good gift. Since it happened at the training center, they brought me to hospital, where I was to stay for a few weeks. I had to lay on my stomach because if I moved wrong it could tear my back open. My mother came for me everyday, and she brought Oma, and they stayed with me. My mother told me that she was staying with Oma, and that's where I had to look for her.

I was still crying when my father came to finally see me and when he asked me if I was in pain, I said no. My brother pressed his fingers down on my scar and asked if I was in pain yet, and I said yes. Things got better after that though. When I got out of hospital, I went to go see my mother and she was as I remembered her but better. Things got a bit better after that, but returning home was always harder because my father would ask where I'd been. I couldn't say training, so I'd say a friend's. My brother made sure that I would never make friends with anybody, so he was suspicious. So my brother decided to teach me about poisons, and good remedies for them. By teaching, I mean poisoning me and then curing me only when I was on the verge of death. Made my skin weird, but I'm still alive, so there's that.

The harder I work, the less my father questions where I've been, so the harder I work, the more I get to see my mother. As long as I keep losing weight, I can keep going to go and see her. As long as I keep doing better and better in training, my father will be content and leave well enough alone. With my acceptance into my brother's old academy, my father has finally given me a bit of praise, albeit begrudgingly. This academy doesn't only teach how to fight, but also how to succeed in business, to the point where it looks like you don't even have to try. It was my father's dream to go here, but when he got my mother pregnant, those dreams were dashed. That's why its so important that when I go, I make him proud.

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FACE CLAIM .
LEE SEUNGHYUN • ASA REAU

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CODEWORD . odair