{Heart on a Sleeve} [Rosetta]
Oct 14, 2013 23:36:08 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2013 23:36:08 GMT -5
[/color]. In school my hand shot up into the air for the teacher when the boys and girls scribbled stolen answers on their maths or spelling. In the counting room, I was the first one to whisper to my father when a man was trying to fudge the number of bushels stacked up in barrels behind him. When my cousins had wanted me to come to a party in the fields after curfew, I sneered at them to pack sand because I wasn’t about to have a mark on my record when the peacekeepers caught us. I bet they all thought that I did these things because it was easy[/color]. That it’s so easy to just try and follow the straight and narrow, as if I was the one swimming with the current, swept up toward the waiting shoreline. I stand now, staring out the window of the justice building towards the emptying street. The sun creeps higher, and burns shadows into the wall behind me.
I a g o
I z a r – M c C l a i n e•••
I had always followed the rules
They aren’t coming.
Was it disappointment that kept them, or my upheaval that wrote me out of their lives? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know[/color]. Their only son, willing to risk his life for a boy that was bound to die in the arena… was I worth less than the pig shit that we put on top of our crops? That because I had stood up for someone whose whole life had been about imagining stars, a boy that was innocent as a summer’s sunset—they already made plans for my remains to be brought home in a little urn? A funny word, remains.[/color] Am I to be swept up, neat and tidy, as though all I had ever been was a mess worth throwing away? Life here has been nothing but chasing after the brass ring. My father, the counter and manager for the crops that come in and out of the district, my mother the bookkeeper—we were above the rest of the common folk that suck their thumbs and press their faces into dirt.
It’s a lie.
I lay a hand on the doorframe. When I was little, I would march down the street with my father. Hup, two, three, four.[/color] People said I’d have made a great peacekeeper. Always colored inside the lines, too. Your golden boy, mom and dad! I wasn’t an Izar, for sure. Not like Benat, the boy that spent a week without a shower. Deval was no better—his moods came and went with the wind. Or little Sampson, that cried his eyes out at the littlest skinned knee, or whispered his words. I was perfect. All set to be mayor someday, right? Yeah, fucking right. Spending my whole life wrapped up on the same track, thinking that as long as I said yes and jumped when I was supposed to they’d shower me with oh’s and ah’s. Being good is its own reward, you know?
If I’d have been smarter, I would’ve rolled around in the dirt. I would’ve… stolen corn from the fields and stayed out late at night to cuss at the moon. I would’ve kissed the boy behind the hay bales at the District Fair last summer and I wouldn’t have thought courage was doing the right thing. I could have been like the rest of them, hogwash and shit for brains. I could’ve been happy.
There’s a knock at the door. I stiffen and bring my hands down to my sides. The knob turns, but the only face I find is a man I’ve never known. Dressed in white, the peacekeeper tells me that I’ve got to get to the train. I nod and move to collect my jacket. I start to wonder how many tearful sendoffs there’s been in this room but after a minute I think better of it. The less I think of this district, the better it will be in the end. They’re a waste of space and a waste of breath. I want to say that Sampson will waste his life away but I stop just sort of cursing him. The only good to come out of all of this is getting to leave. At least I’ve done that on my own.[/color]
Is the train supposed to make me feel like a lost puppy? All the bits of glass on fine tables, the carpet with designs and colors I’d only seen flashes of in pictures of the capitol, and the endless rows of puff pastries. Bile picks up at the back of my throat, and I feel ready to put a fist through one of the windows. How nice would it have been to flick a match and burn the whole place to a smoldering heap? I sink into a couch and cross my arms across my chest. The girl will be here soon. Her name gives the same familiar feeling of ringing in my ear—it means little. The only thing I could tell of her was that she looked just as run down as the rest of the rabble rousing kids of the district. I dig my fingers into the leather. She had better not be a disappointment[/color]. The last thing I needed was dead weight dragging me down to my death. At the sound of the door opening, I look up, hoping it’s our mentor and praying anyone else has something good to say. [/blockquote][/size][/justify]
