snowdrop siebold // district eleven

The girl that looks back at me in the mirror is much older than the last time I saw her. I don't like to spend my precious time staring at myself in the mirror. I haven't seen my own face in a whole year. But today I'm all alone and there's nothing to do. My family has gone to harvest the corn. If I were to look out the window, I would see them picking the golden crop in the corn fields. I live right outside the corn field in District Eleven.

I peer into the mirror at myself. The last time I saw myself, I had a cute face with round edges and skin as white as a daisy's petals. My eyes were huge and round like blue buttons, and my nose was just a tiny little thing in the center my face. Light brown freckles are sprayed all across my nose and cheeks from past sun exposure, but they have been slowly fading. My face was bright and lively, my blue eyes twinkling with joy. My eyes don't twinkle with joy anymore; they are dull and lifeless. I looked like a very jovial child, who would run outside at night and catch fireflies. I was a very jovial child.

But now, I look like a different person. My face is now thinner but still round, and my cheeks have gone from chubby like a chipmunk to slightly sunken from lack of food. I am still fair-skinned, but in a different way - a sickly way. Choppy, deep light blonde hair falls messily around my face. My nose is a little bigger than it was, but it's practically the same as it was the last time I looked in the mirror: short and narrow. The greatest difference between how I looked when I was eleven and how I look now is not the age in the face. It's the attitude and personality that's displayed on my face. I once was a jovial child who would twirl around in her old white dress and sing lullabies that her sister would sing to me before bed. A child who would play tag in the cornfields and pick wildflowers. But now I am a hollow, scared, lifeless young girl who won't repeat sweet lullabies or twirl in a white dress or play in cornfields or pick wildflowers. I've always been hollow, but only now I let my true colors show.

Deep down inside, I've always known who I am. I am a hollow, unfeeling girl who's never loved anyone. I'm the coldest person who ever walked the earth. I hate myself for it. I can't help but loathe myself. I can't even love my own sister, Liatris, who has done everything for me and has loved me for than anything in the world. I don't love Liatris, I don't love my brother, Birch, I don't love my parents, I don't love anyone. No one, not a soul. I don't know why. I don't know why I can't love anyone. Maybe I was just born selfish and unfeeling and cold. At least I'm not callous, right? At least I don't hurt anyone. No, I don't hurt people, but I know I would if it meant staying alive. I only care about my own survival.

I feel salty tears gathering in my eyes. I'm still human if I can cry, I think to myself. I'm still human on the inside.

I glare at myself in the mirror and put my hand to my cheek to feel my pale, freckled skin. People look human, but some of them are not. Their bodies are human, but they themselves are not. On the inside, they are monsters.

You are not a monster, I think as hot tears pour down my cheeks. Tears are a sign of weakness, but tears also assure me that I'm human. I'm weak. I'm weak and I know it. I'm weak, I'm weak, I'm weak.

Sobs begin to rack my body as think over and over, I'm weak. The sobs grow louder, attacking me in waves. I can't help it.

I feel a throbbing in my chest. Maybe I'm just imagining it. I place my hand over my heart, just to make sure I still have one. Sure enough, I feel the rapid beating of my heart, like a big drum inside of my chest. Sometimes I feel like it's not there. Especially when I look at Liatris and I don't feel anything. No love, nothing. I want to feel something, but I can't. I can't explain it.

"I hate you!" I scream as my fist collides with the mirror.

My fist leaves a big spiderweb of cracks on the mirror. The mirror slowly collapses, the image of my face disappearing. The shards of glass clatter on the floor rhythmically, music to my ears. I'm not worrying about what will happen when my parents come home and see the broken mirror. I'm not worried about anything at the moment. My hand stings from punching the glass, and when I look at it, I flinch in disgust.

Glass is buried in my skin, drawing blood from my body. I pull out the glass shards, trying not the cry in the process. After I'm done, my hand is throbbing with pain. Dammit, why'd I punch that mirror?

"Nice thinking, Snowdrop," I say scornfully.

My family will be home soon. They think I'm sick - I'm not, I faked it. My lie will unravel once they see the broken mirror. I'm a good liar, so maybe I can keep up the act. I can lie like there's no tomorrow. I could make up an entire fake life story and people would believe it, because all I know how to do is lie, lie, lie. I'm deceptive and two-faced, as my mother would say - that's what she calls liars. But she doesn't know me, not really me. I am deceptive, and I am two-faced. I can't stand it, but I that's me. I can't change that, but I can't accept it, either.



Night has fallen and I'm all alone. I lay in my bed. I'm in a pensive mood at the moment, allowing myself to think deeply. Whenever I'm in one of these pensive moods, I think back on my whole life. I'm only twelve, so this only takes about thirty to forty minutes to play back my life in my head. I close my eyes and picture myself as a baby, a porcelain-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed baby girl. I see myself being held by my mother, my family surrounding me, staring in awe at the newborn child. I imagine my mother bestowing the name Snowdrop Evergreen Siebold upon me.

The scene changes, fast-forwarding four years. I hear the screaming and yelling of Birch and Dahlia, my other two siblings, who are fighting in their room. They always fought. Liatris takes me by the hand and leads me out the door. She takes me to Wildflower Hill (that's what we call it), the place where we'd always go and pick flowers and put them in our hair and laugh together. We're the closest siblings could ever be, but in a different way. Liatris is like my mother, my protector, my guardian. She shields me from any harm that comes my way.

Liatris taught me to care for plants and harvest them, just like our mother taught her. She molded me into a nature-lover over the years (seriously, who doesn't love nature in District Eleven?). She taught me every herb she knew, every poison, every flower, every tree.

As Liatris starts to weave flowers through my hair, the scene shifts again. I see Liatris giving starving people on the streets money and food. They whisper, "Thank you." I remember how envy would swell inside of me whenever she showed such kindness and benevolence. I still feel that way. They call her the Giving Girl. What do they call me? Nothing. No one knows who I am. I'm shy and I don't like strangers.

Liatris holds out bread to a small, skeletal child. They gratefully take it from her and smile. She drops coins into a pregnant woman's bag. I smile. Liatris is a reverse pickpocket. I wish I could be like her, I always have. But people cannot change. They are incapable of change (that's what I believe).

The scene changes once more.

"Squirrel!" I tease my sister as she gracefully climbs higher up the tree. "How do you climb so fast?"

"I don't know," giggles Liatris. "But you're not gonna beat me!" She climbs higher and higher, tailed by me.

The climbing goes on for a while until Liatris finally prevails and beats me up the tree.

The scene fades away, and I'm all alone in my room. My hands are knotted in my tangled hair, and I'm hanging my head, facing the floor. Tears stream down my face in rivulets. I sniff and wipe them from my face, but as I do this, more pour down my cheeks. Acidic emotional pain throbs inside of me. I run over all of the insults that scarred me at school.

Look at that nose - it's like a rat's!

Your sister's not here to protect you now.

Weakling.

The list goes on.

"Dammit, Snow. Why d'you have to be so damn stupid?" I sob. "They're right. Your so weak. I hate you. You can't even love your own sister!"

Stop.

That's enough. I pull myself back into reality. I went too far this time. I open my eyes, relieved to find myself in bed. I like to look back into the past, but I don't like to look back at the bad things. Only the good. I try to shut out the bad, but sometimes my mind wanders.