brentley gray { finished } district four

Your eyes cast across the morning news - it's the usual glamourised Hunger Games information screaming from the pages. The tributes, the outfits, the GameMaker rumours, betting odds - you have to roll your eyes a little at how over the top it all is. Nobody around here actually cares what GameMaker is sleeping with what stylist (and if they actually are you doubt it) or who the Capitol is making the most fuss about. Here you care about supplies and profit and regulations. The real deal, the stuff you come home to and talk about at dinner, the skills that will guarantee you keep you and your family alive for 364 days of the year. (The 365th day is down to fate and everybody holds their breath.)

District Four doesn't give a damn about this rubbish and neither do you, really, but newspapers seem to be your only friends since you were kicked out of the Academy four weeks three days 16 hours and 48 minutes ago. In fact there's an article hidden in one of the pages, and after a quick shuffling you find it, settling into the words and drinking up their information with an intense thirst.

STRICT REGULATIONS ENFORCED AT PTA
After a scandalous alert of drugs being integrated into District Four's Peacekeeper Training Academy, Head of Office Griffin Pyrmont has ensured us strict action has been taken and that all of those involved have immediately been discharged, expelled and removed from the institution. "It is with great pleasure that I can assure the Citizens of District Four, our students and their parents, that our Academy has sourced the violators and dealt with them accordingly", Mr. Pyrmont commented. "Our school is a crime-free, drug-free zone, thanks to the bravery and courage of our most excellent scholars and teachers alike." The accusations occurred last month and word quickly spread through the District, but parents should be rest assured that these allegations have been shot down and dealt with. 

Along with this statement the academy informs us that they have set up new enforcement's in place warning students of the strict consequences of dealing with illegal goods and involving themselves in any attempts at treason or other banned activities. Security has been tightened with metal detectors at every entrance and cameras in every classroom. PTA student Calypso Leto - famous for her assistance and capture of a runaway thief accused of treason and armed robbery last year - gave us her insight: "I think the changes are most excellent" she explained. "Now they won't think twice about bringing unwanted trouble here. This is a place to fight crime, not encourage it, and anyone who thinks they can bend the law deserves to be thrown out on the street." More stude

You stop there - it's almost unbearable. You can practically hear her sickly-sweet kiss-ass tone through the pages. Hopefully Aine will have given her a good smack in the fact for that one. Now that she crosses your mind you realise that it's been a while since you've seen your only friend but you don't dare traipse around the schools anymore and her parents would throw you out faster than your own did if you were caught in her house. Not that they'd dare publish it but you imagine her telling the reporter that what you did was pretty badass. Not that you did do it - well, not really. You were young, and foolish, and desperate to make ends meet because you'd hung with the wrong crowd and it all went to shit when you were caught transporting one bag of suspicious goods to an equally as bad group of thugs. Apparently around these parts plastic bags don't cut it - it's the brown bags that look like lunches that keep you in the shadows. If only you'd known that two years ago.

If only that piece of shit son of a bitch meathead bastard fuckwit Mateus didn't.

You can picture them now in your head, sitting all high and mighty at their precious fucking elitist table right in the middle of the Academy lunch quarters. With their prissy hair and snobbish faces and fancy training clothes and high-end weapons. You preferred to sit with the kids from across the street at the school - well, just one kid. Cement-kneed, chain-smoking, sarcastic Aine Hathaway with her snide comments and fists like steel. She hated them as much as you did and you'd sit there, coughing up lungs as you howled at each-other's jokes and impersonations. Some days you'd just sit in silence and watch the world go by and quietly know that you were better than them all, really.

And you were. You, at least, were a damn shot better at this Peacekeeper shit than he was. Self-appointed 'Colonel' of the goddamn heirachy of ass-kissing and brown-nosers all desperate to hit each-other with batons - saints in white with cores made of the devil himself. Mateus and Calypso and the whole fucking lot of 'em - and you outshone them all. You scored higher, hit harder, learnt more and proved yourself king. The kid with the messy blonde hair and tattoos painting a past not worth living, who arrived out of nowhere with a bag on his back and a grin on his face and a glint in his eye that could only mean trouble. They hated you because you were better and they knew it. You heard them whispering and felt them glaring, but you just shurgged them off. You weren't going back to your old life of a criminal (the word seared into your skin more permanent than the ink punctured into your flesh) because that's where they wanted you to go. You had a point to prove, and you proved it.

So did they.

There's an array of clippings just like this one that line your bedroom wall. (It's not much of a bedroom, a recently abandoned house with some squeaky floors and a bath with no plug, but it's something at the very least.)  Photographs of you stare back - eyes either alive or dead, a portrait wall of 'before' and 'after'. Words written by others that spin parts of your life you hadn't even known you'd lived. (Apparently you bet up some kids at the Academy after being caught - you didn't, of course - but damn, you'd love to.) 

TRAINING CADET ARRESTED
 A shock discovery at the Peacekeeper Training Academy resulting in the brave coming forth of information from students has lead to the arrest of Training Cadet Brently Gray on suspicion of being involved in a drug cartel on school premises, as well as charges of vandalism and assault. The Academy was unable to comment at this time - as well as Gray's family when approached on the matter - but sources inside the Academy state that the matter is being handled with the utmost professionalism and that the strictest punishments will be handed out. This is the first major act of crime in District Four to be associated with the students or staff of the Academy. Charges against Gray are rumored to be looking to be harsh with copious amounts of debt. No doubt the criminal shall be removed from the Academy effective immediately. Rumour has it the arrest has been linked to the shocking drugs bust some months ago at District 4's Wharf 14 in which multiple criminals were hunted down by the brave forces of Four's Peacekeeper Squad.


A photo of the accused Gray (17)

Paper-trail walls surround you and dictate your every step from this past year. Letters and numbers and accusations paint a picture of what you've done - it's suffocating, and yet strangely you cannot seem to ever acquire enough. An obsession ticks down in your mind as you cut and paste and pin and underline, linking each point together with your own mind map. Justice, justice, justice - you sound just like them. It is an addicting game of whodunit and they are (or rather, were), your most valued possessions.

That was before your saving grace arrived, however. There's only one piece of paper you carry close to you now:

To whom it may concern:
Congratulations! You have been cordially invited to the Black mansion for a formal ball. Only the most important figures in District Four will be attending, which, of course, is why you have been one of the select few chosen to attend! We look forward to seeing you there.

You set off at the brink of dawn and leave your past behind. It's time to get a clue and write your own future instead.