HOLDEN BLAKE | DISTRICT THIRTEEN | FIN

h o l d e n blake

wake me up when it's all over
when i'm wiser and i'm older
all this time i was finding myself
and i didn't know i was lost

Where have I ended up? District Thirteen feels like a prison, and I don't think I will ever be able to escape. I am eighteen now, so that means I have been here for three years with my sister. I don't even feel like the guy from District Two called Holden anymore.. It's like I am someone else completely. Somebody I just really don't want to be...

I think I can remember my friends and I- my real friends- laughing at the lunch table, but I am not sure if I actually remember Roxanne's laugh, or Dustyn and Bette telling one of their stories, or if I have dreamed it all up. I miss them. Bette used to say each of us made up an important part of the group, and if that is true, then I guess they have all fallen apart by now. I wonder if they even still speak. There is no way for me to find out, of course, I am hundreds of miles away in this hellhole called District Thirteen.

I wish I could say living here was the only reason I have changed from the boy at that table laughing with his friends, but I was already a different person before the team from Thirteen found my sister, Halle, and I on a scouting mission. It really was just rotten luck on our part, we happened to be close to the perimeter, and we couldn't out run their weapons. Living here isn't quite as dreadful as I make it out to be, but it's not home. It's not where I want to be.

"Get out. Now."

The woman's voice was angry, and it terrified the fifteen year old boy. Pathetic! He told himself. I am supposed to be made of steal! But he was not. He was made of flesh and blood and bone. He was human, and humans, like everything else, break. He looked over at his sister who was trying her best not to cry as her parents circled her like sharks stalking prey. "The one thing we've always asked for, Halle, the one thing!" His father yelled. It was not her fault her time had ran out- that she wasn't reaped and instead some pittiful soul that ended up dying anyway did, but her parents refused to realize it. "I said get out!" The woman didn't didn't like repeating herself. Her cold brown eyes turned on Holden. "You might as well go with her! Everyone talks about how good Holden Blake is! Pha! Neither of my children are worth a damn!"

Everyone said I had my mother's eyes, because they were the same shade of honey. But, for the most part, I resembled my father, as did my sister. My black hair was the very same texture as his, and I had his chubby nose, as well as his athletic build. I was always a bit short like him as well. It is strange how I could look so much like a person, and be hated by them. We lived in crummy motels for a few months. Halle worked wherever she could, and would stuff extra rolls in my pockets from lunch at school. Life got hard. We were evicted from at least four times in the six months we were cast away, and eventually, I got home from school one day to find her collapsed in the floor, tears pouring down her face and making tiny puddles of water on the cold marble floor. "Holden- I.. We can't live like this." I didn't want to believe her, but I knew she was right. Any longer and we would end up starving to death on the street. "We've got to go- somewhere, anywhere!"

So we did.

"Welcome to District Thirteen, you two!"

The woman had a face like stone, and scary eyes. She stared at the file in her hands, and gasped. "I, too, was originally from District Two. I'm sure you'll find the place just as nice as I do!" Before he could interject, his sister's words had already filled the air. "You are wrong, Ms. Enoch- because we don't want to be here." She scoffed. "Well it seems you didn't have much else of a choice, now did you? Look at the two of you- more so skin stretched over bones than actual humans!" She was right. As much as Holden hated it, she had a point. They would have eventually starved to death, or been caught off guard by some wild animal, or caught by the Capitol, or something eventually. "Whatever," Halle decided. "I guess we are stuck here, and there is nothing I can do about it." Then she stormed out of the room.

codeword: odair
face claim: taylor lautner
lyrics: "wake me up" by avicii