orpheus finley, district 2, fin

I've never had time for anyone but myself.
"You're doing it again," she says. I can hear the sobs even as she tries to conceal them.
"Sorry, babe," I say, and she knows as well as I do that I don't mean it at all.
And I don't.
I'm going to move on within weeks, days. There are thousands of other girls exactly like her whose hearts I haven't broken yet.
My name is Orpheus Finley and I'm going to be perfect.

They don't tell you, when you're a kid, they don't tell you how everything falls apart eventually. Your family, your friendships, every relationship you ever have will crumble like ashes in the wind.
And it's beautiful.
Impermanence is something I thank Ripred for every day. I am a different person each time I wake up. The only question is who I feel like being.
Call me whatever you want. I go by any name. Lie to me-I won't mind. We're all different by the morning.

When I sleep, I shed my skin, lose track of whoever I decided to be that day. When I awake I start over.

I've been to all corners of the District. I get people to tell me their secrets and tell them fabricated ones of mine. "My girlfriend is pregnant." That one always gets sympathy from men. Or the classic "my brother/sister/cousin/whatever died in the Games." I've gotten some tears from that. I carry it as far as I can without giving the game away. And who's to say that I'm not telling the truth? Who knows that I'm lying besides myself?
Nobody does, and that makes it all the easier.

I care about other people, but they're only passing crazes. Nobody has stayed in my heart for more than a month because I am a soul for rent, not purchase.
I am made of minutes, not days; hours, not weeks.
There are two exceptions to this: my sister, and the boy I see in my dreams.
My sister, Cady, my sister, she's stable. She lets me be restless, shifting constantly, because I am always aware that she will be there when I return. I would've left the District long ago if not for her.
Which brings me to the second thing: the boy in my dreams.
I don't know his name. I don't know anything other than in my dreams, he plays piano, in my dreams, he sings like an angel. I've probably seen him before in the street, turned him into this with my own mind-they say your brain can't make up faces.
Cade says that I should either find him or forget about it.
I'm not planning on either.

My hair is brown, but Cady cuts it for me, keeps it the way I want. She takes care of me.
It's longer than most boys', a little spiky sometimes. I buy makeup with whatever money I have and create intricate patterns on my face-anything from lightning to a flock of birds.
I wear anything I find secondhand-threadbare t-shirts some days, embroidered corsets others. Whatever I can get my hands on, whatever I feel like being that day. Consistency has never been my friend.
I'm tall-almost six feet, I think. A little taller than Cady, which drives her crazy. She used to always push me down when I mentioned it-
And I'm slender. My limbs are long and skinny-Cady's got more muscle on her than I do, for sure. I've always been underweight, no matter how much I eat. My hips are narrow, and my arms, legs, fingers-they're all longer and bonier than most people's.
Cady says I'm a ghost, a skeleton. Sometimes I think I might be.

Me and Cady are twins. I think I forgot to mention it. I would say we have a sort of symbiotic relationship, but I think I'm really the only one benefiting from it.
Our dad was a drunk. Mom left him years ago, made a new family. I haven't seen her since, and I doubt Cade has either, but she doesn't tell me everything.
I say he was, but he still is, far as I know-he's still our legal guardian, but me and Cady earned money on our own, moved out last year. It's been the best year of my life, so far. That could change. Obviously.
He never beat us, or anything. He didn't touch us, and if he did, I think Cady'd have killed him then and there. But he screamed, and ignored us, and filled the house with empty bottles until you couldn't take a breath without fear of getting plastered.
She came to me when we were fourteen-it was her idea, of course. The only good ones always are.
She said that she couldn't be there any longer, and she asked me to come with her, and I agreed, and we sold and bartered until two years later we could afford to rent a shitty apartment from a unimpressive landlady who told us that as far as she knew, we were eighteen, and we better keep it that way.
It's the little things.

Call me absentminded if you want. Stupid, even. I know my head's in the clouds, but I can at least admit it.
I'm certainly not a genius, but I have a way with words, people have said. I leave them behind me like a trail, paper scraps, napkins, the walls of our building until Cade called me a dumbass and told me it would ruin our security deposit.
She's always watching out for me. Little things like that, that's how I know I'm not falling.

I leave scraps of poetry behind me, words, phrases, paragraphs, whatever I can fit onto paper. I have to get the words out of my head before they break apart, and the only way I've found to do this is write them out. And once they're out of my head, I don't have a use for them anymore, so I leave them. I've met a few ex-girlfriends that way. They all think it's so charming, dating the scatterbrained writer who sheds poetry, and they all think every verse is about them;they're not, they're not about anyone. I don't know where they come from and I don't know where they go once they leave my brain, and I'm not all that eager to find out. The words aren't mine to deal with, I'm just a vessel for them to make their way back into the world.


There are some days I wake up and I don't know who I am, and those are the days I go about like a ghost, a specter. I am so many different people that I don't know what to do when I am none. I make room for so many names and personas that I'm not sure what's happened to myself.
Good morning, I'm Razael Amaranthine, son of the mayor, engaged to a beautiful girl, the wedding will be in the spring. Good afternoon, I'm Laslo Denning, outlaw and rebel, I'll hit you if you look at me the wrong way. I don't have any kind of disorder because I still know who I am, I'm still Orpheus beneath every layer, every skin. It's just not fun being confined like that, don't you agree? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way, if Cade's any indication. She says that I'm the abnormal one, but she doesn't tell me to stop. I think she knows me better than I know myself.