Chatter "Smokey" McKellan // District Eight

Name:
Chatter "Smokey" McKellan
Age:
18
Gender:
Female
District/Area:
Eight
Appearance:

Brighter than one of those Capitol dresses, and hopefully not as ugly

I'm not the prettiest girl, i'll be the first to tell you that. Trust me, put me up against one of those pretty girls who try too hard to do their hair and get all the pretty dresses to wear, and it'll be easy to see who's prettier. I know that. Long, blonde hair is usually seen as a rarity and most times, pretty, but in my case I just feel like it's... An oddity, almost. It falls awkwardly on top of my head, only looking good when I spend actual time to do it up (Which, I really don't). Freckles dot my skin, placing themselves directly under brown eyes that hate to stand out.

I can't help but feel like my face is just angled to be awkward. Seriously, the only thing it's good for is making weird faces or that "Really? You're gonna interrupt me?" face. Though, if I twist and turn my face until it's at the perfect angle, I actually look quite charming.

But honestly, I think all of these things go to waste in the fact that my clothes take the spotlight. See, working in the textile district has advantages. Those extra scraps of useless fabric that usually get thrown out? Thats a new shirt. Sure, maybe it's not the prettiest thing, but damn right i'm gonna wear it. Dresses, shirts, gloves, bandanas, my tiny and pale skinned hands could make them all, all out of useless fabric.

I've heard people say that I don't have a mean bone in my body. Well, that's not true. First off, bones can't be mean, they're bones, but I guess that's besides the point. Second, I can be mean. I can be bitchy like any other girl, I can be angry and I can sure as hell be mean. I just, don't let that come forward very often. I don't see a point in it. But seriously, has a bone ever been mean to you? Like, have you ever looked at a bone and it's just insulted you? No, i'm willing to bet... Not money, no, I don't really have money to bet, but if I did i'd totally bet on the fact that bones can't be mean to you.

I'm incredibly talkative, shooting words out of my mouth like it's some kind of gun that shoots bullets made of my voice. They're not harmful, of course. Well, not physically harmful that is. Words can hurt, that much I can tell you. I've had words hurt me before, and i'm sure some of my words have hurt others before (Maybe that gun statement I made earlier wasn't too far from the truth). A lot of the times I can talk someones ear off (Again, thats just a statement), and most of the time I just end up talking to myself more than the person who I was actually talking to.

You know, one of the things that irks me about people is that they love to interrupt. Sure, I talk a lot, maybe more than normal and sure, I don't really give you a lot of chances to say what you want to say (honestly maybe I should just carry a label telling people that I talk too much), but if i'm talking and you suddenly cut me off halfway through my sentence, you better expect a scowl and a few semi-harsh words.

I think that's what kind of gives me a bad reputation in this district, the fact that I can talk all I want, but others can't. I'm unsure, though, because my voice also sounds a lot different than most. See, I was born with polyps lining my vocal cords. They're like benign cancers that I was born with, and let me be the first to tell you, they suck.

I always feel like I have something stuck in my throat, and not to mention the fact that I have pain from my throat all the time. And the breathlessness, one time in school we had to run a mile and I was about to die (And that's literally this time). But I think the thing that sucks the most is that I sound like a freaking smoker all the time. I don't even smoke, it'd kill my throat. And yet, I sound like someone who's been inhaling cigarettes all their life. Thats not fun at all.

Have you ever seen those really bright flowers that, when an insect goes into it, it kills them? Well, i've only seen them in books, but I think i'm gonna compare myself to that. I have friends for a while because i'm really nice and kind, but then they just.. leave because they can't handle the fact that I talk to much and that honestly, i'm annoying.

Of course, being a literal chatterbox (maybe i'm reincarnated from a Jabber Jay or something) has it's advantages. I can dodge a question like a fly can dodge the hand of someone thats swatting at it. I'm not the smartest of people, but i've found out that when you talk a lot and cram words down someone's throat, they tend to look at you as an intelligent being. Take Caesar, from the games, for example. That man can talk up a storm, and yet if you look past that he's a complete idiot.

So there you have it, i'm a rambling, killer exotic plant.

When I was younger, my mother would always tell me about when I was born.

She'd tell me all about how I came out talking, babbling on about anything and everything in sight. Of course, I wasn't really talking, it was more just spewing sounds out of my mouth, non-stop like I was one of those dolls where you pull the string and it talks, except the string was stuck and it just babbled on and on and on. I swear, my family should have known that I was going to grow up to be a chatterbox. Honestly, maybe it would have been better if they had shut me up from the beginning, just pressed my lips together so that I would shut up for just a few minutes.

My mom was originally planning to name me Rose, you know that? Well, Roses don't really talk a lot (They don't talk at all, because they don't have mouths, in case you didn't know). Well, I guess my mom was never really the type to stick to decisions because when I popped out of her womb and ended up in her arms, and the doctor asked her what my name would be, she uttered the word "Chatter", and I was born.

Though, that happiness, that pure bliss of when a child was born was incredibly short-lived, because only minutes after I was born, my babbling turned to coughing, then weezing, and then back to coughing again. It must have been a terrible fright for my family, because my mother'd always spend the most time telling me about how she cried for days on end, thinking I wasn't going to make it and that there was nothing she could do to help me. Honestly, that was all such an overreaction (though, I honestly can't blame her, who wouldn't be worried?), turns out I had these little blisters on my vocal cords, vocal palpoi- no polyps. I should know that word by heart now, considering how many times i've said it in conversations.

Honestly, life was pretty normal for a long time. Sure, my throat hurt a lot, and sure, I sounded like a fifty-year old who ate cigarettes for breakfast, but honestly, I had a pretty good life. Of course, school began to be a problem at a pretty young age. See, personalities tend to show when you're in school, and the fact that I talked so much and the fact that my voice sounded so...different than everyone else's didn't really work in my favor.

Little kids can be so mean sometimes, can't they? I think the nickname Smokey was first uttered when I was in the fifth grade, after a particularly bad coughing fit. That little devil Dominick, our grade's generic bully/popular-because-he-bullied-kids kid. He was clever, i'll give him that, and being the little kid I was, I actually laughed at kids when it wasn't me who was getting bullied. But unfortunately, this time it actually was me. And it was anything but fun. I hated the nickname at first. It bothered me. I was Chatter, not Smokey, Chatter.

But I didn't fight it, I didn't assault that kid with words because for the first time in my life, I had none. I was shocked, appalled, flabbergasted, and all I did was just sit in silence. Now, that nickname caught on quickly, but honestly, my real name could have been just as much an insult as Smokey, if used correctly.

I came to accept that nickname after a time. School doesn't teach you a whole lot, but I guess it teaches you to be able to absorb things. It kind of makes you into a sponge (not actually into a sponge of course), it helps you to just absorb things, and absorb I did. Not only that, but I covered it all up, covered it all up by the thing I could do best, the things that had been my long time friends since I had been born. Words, or, Chatter, if you will. Words could be anything I asked them to be. Bandages, for when I was hurting. A knife, for when Chatter needed to put a bitch in her place (fortunately, that didn't happen often). They could be anything, really.

I think that's maybe the reason that I would never stop talking. Even when teachers would shoosh me or classmates would scowl (dirty looks galore, all teenagers seem to be good at them), i'd still keep talking. I don't know, maybe it was because words had never left me like friends had in the past, or maybe it was simply because I couldn't shut my damn mouth for more than a minute without exploding, but I was still willed to talk.

I started working in the clothing factories when I was... Fourteen maybe? I was young, feeble and fragile and honestly, I can't even count how many times I nicked my finger on needles and threads. I found that I was amazing at it though, and honestly, it made me a lot happier than anything else in this district had. For one, no one called me Smokey while I was there, most of these people didn't even know me or my name. Another thing is that I could talk all I want and no one could hear me. Seriously, have you heard how loud those factories are? I could hardly even hear myself think let alone talk. I was free, I was free to talk all I wanted and no one could tell me otherwise. Though, the fumes didn't really help my throat all that much (I went in there barely able to run a lap, I came out barely even able to run honestly). Thats sort of my fear if I was ever reaped in the games. Everyone dashes towards that Cornucopia and i'd just get there like ten minutes late weezing and coughing and woopsies next thing you know i'm headless like that boy from Ten. That would suck, honestly.

My family is poor, thats a given. Isn't everyone in this district? I laugh sometimes, because we're all crammed into tiny tenements with like three other families and sometimes when I talk real loud they'll start banging on the walls telling me to stop talking. I don't even care, it's not like I talk that loudly anyways. But my family is loving, they put up with me more than anyone else has bothered too (Maybe it's because they're forced too, that wouldn't surprise me). I hear all these tragedies in this district. "I lost a mother" "My brother/sisters dead" "My father left us and ended up hanging from his toes in the middle of the district" Okay, maybe that ones a bit of an over exaggeration but really, I don't get it. I don't get how so many people have had something bad happen to them. Yeah, I get that this District is extremely poor, and I get that winters are hard and all that, but it's like everyone I meet has had some tragedy in their lives. I'm honestly shocked it hasn't happened to my family yet, really. Maybe me being born with blisters all over my vocal cords is a tragedy in itself. No, I don't consider that a tragedy, more so a set back than anything.

Bottom line is, I grew up talking, chattering and dodging questions and pushing away friends simply cause I talked way too much. My family is oddly normal and even more surprisingly, we're still actually alive.

Maybe if I was reaped that'd be our tragedy. Yeah, that'd be a tragedy right? I think it would.