phaedra cooper | district five | fin

p h a e d r a c o o p e r

Dear Diary,

Let's get something straight. Being mute and being deaf are two very different things. You don't have to be deaf to be mute. An inability to speak, that's what muteness is. I can still hear everything that the stupid little shits in my grade say. With my ears. Not because I'm a "weirdo psychic" as they would have you believe.

Another thing about muteness: it doesn't make me weak. I have been known to punch, kick, slap, bite, and claw my way out of being bullied one too many times, and on every occasion I have found myself sitting in front of my school's head master, the old bat's gray hair pulled back into a sleek bun, those ancient-looking yellow spheres dotted with icy shades of blue and black staring at me like I am the bad guy. That's a joke, right? "Now, Miss Cooper, this is the third altercation this month," she always says in a thin voice while folding her nimble, bony, gross fingers together on the wooden desk that took up most of the space in the small room. "I understand you feel the need to overcompensate for your disability, but taking it out on the other students physically is not something we will allow at this institution. We come here to learn, not to scrap, clear?" Then I nod my head, smile quickly, and I am free to go.

Also, I am not choosing to remain silent. There are claims that some people do. They think social situations make some people so terrified that they lose their voice in the cloud of terrifying possibilities churning into a storm within their minds. I couldn't give a fuck what anyone thinks of me, so that can't be the case. No, the doctors my parents hauled me around to all guessed that my vocal chords never developed fully. Chances are they never will.

It could be a lot worse.

It seems that anymore people only barely try to pick fights with me. There is a lot of pity in my life, unwanted pity, I might add to the record, and when it gets too soppy I am sure to let someone know that I'm not dying. I am not sick. I am perfectly fine. I just don't have a damn voice!

I like books because anymore they are just as unwanted as me. I can see a lot of myself in them, quiet and still somehow bursting with life and excitement. I try to read at least one book per month, and since I have been doing this as a child and don't particularly have a lot of friends begging for my time, I have racked up a fairly impressive amount of knowledge about our oh-so fabulous nation, as well as the twisted minds of quite a few capitol-residents that are just psycho enough to keep me turning to the next page to see what ridiculous thing they'll have to say next. I like to educate myself. The books about plant-life that have been hand written (it seems like people don't really like us knowing what we can survive on if we are ever on our own -- probably to prevent us all from escaping the districts,) even a few books about the history of the games: Who got this many kills, who died this way, I have actually remembered more about them than I ever thought I would.

I also like my pet mouse. He never really makes much noise, which is always a good thing to me (some people things make way too much racket.) His name is Braille, which is a sort of inside joke I have with my Mother, though I find it far more humorous than she does.

My older brother taught me sign language, and for a while we thought it was cool that we could talk to each other without anyone else knowing, but my mother grew envious and long story short, it is nearly impossible to get anything past her. My brother used to act like a guard or something, always defending my precious honor before it was even endangered. I guess I was always flattered as a little kid, but now he continues to do it and it is probably the most annoying thing ever.

He is a painter, and a damn good one. He has tried to teach me a few techniques here and there but I mostly just waste paper and decided it would be best if I just stuck to sitting at the foot of his bed with a book in my hands while he works. Once for my thirteenth birthday he painted a picture of me, and it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Music flowed into my ears and my eyes were half closed from whatever it was I heard. My arms were raised into the air, my fingers curved as if playing with the air, and my pesky black hair was actually tame for a change, no longer the curled mass atop my pasty white complexion it has been ever since I can remember.

I am still so proud of it that I keep it in my room on my wall, and when I start to feel all sad and depressed and whatever, I just look at that picture and remember that inside me is this larger-than-life person with extraordinary capabilities and then woo-hoo, my problems are all fixed. Not.

But as much as I love my brother, I think I have always envied him. Not because he speaks -- yes, it would have been nice to be a normal kid that could tell her friends jokes on the playground, but I have moved on -- but because he is just... honestly the most gifted person I know. All of the attention he gets is well-deserved, while my own is just because something in the base of my throat got lazy and stopped growing.

Actually, that isn't the only thing that has stopped growing. Fen is at least six feet tall, while I have been stuck at a whopping 5'3'' for almost two years now. As if I don't already have enough to be picked on, right? I also have super thick eyebrows that, until recently, I let grow to their little hearts' content. Which means all of the photos of my youth are ruined by two black caterpillars slithering across my forehead. I have a super huge mess of curly black hair that basically swallows me whole when i wear it down, which means I try not to. I have brown eyes while Fen has been graced with my Father's brilliant blue eyes (totally unfair.)

But I guess it's whatever. He will go off and do extraordinary things and I will probably just be chasing my tail and kicking some ass for a while until I decide what to do with my life, and that's fine. I'm only sixteen, I don't have to have all of the answers.

(Though I do have most of them.)