Tamron Rhodes :||: District 11 :||: FIN

Name: Tamron "Tam" Rhodes
Age: 17
Gender: Male
District/Area: 11
Bio Part 1:

If you lined up Crusader, Harbinger, and I in a row, no one would have guessed that we were brothers. We were all different shades of tan, and we had no similar features. Whereas Crusader and Harbinger always kept their hair short, I would grow mine out until it was an unruly mess. I didn’t like the idea of having my hair cut so short, and I suppose it was one of few times I made a conscious decision to be different from my brothers. Even then, we were so different. We had different smiles—though mine was always a little like Harbinger’s—and our eyes were different shapes and colors, although some people would say that we all had the same look in our eyes.

My nose was off-centered from one of the many times I was rough-housed by the two. I was offered to have it corrected, but by then it was healed that way and it never bothered me. The horror stories I had heard from Crusader and Harbinger and their friends were enough to make me pass on the offer. They were always bigger than me, and I would dream that one day I would be their height and they would accept me, but I remained smaller than them and therefore nicknamed ‘Runt’ despite towering over most of my classmates. Most people never believed me when I told them Crusader was my brother, and some of them even did a double-take when I told them Harbinger and I were related.

But just because people were so blind and could not see past the shade of our skin, it didn’t mean we were completely different. Physically, we were different, but our mannerisms grew to be the same and there was a point when we would even gesture similarly. We grew up with each other so I never understood why it was difficult for other people to comprehend, especially when I was a younger boy and all I knew was who was my family and who was not.

The stubble on my face always finds a way to grow back no matter what I do with it. Crusader was the one to show me how to shave closer to my neck so I could look a little bit neat; Harbinger was useless with that. The stubble keeps scratching, but it takes too much time to maintain and maybe one day I’ll just grow it out, though Harbinger said that would make me look ridiculous and like I was definitely adopted.

The color of my skin is half from my mother and half from the hours I would spend outside, whether out in the orchards working or out in the fields dreaming. My father always told me that if I became any darker, no one would ever believe I was his son, but that never stopped me from soaking in the sun’s rays. It was also some sort off odd consolation because it meant I was in the middle of Harbinger and Crusader, and that made me feel connected to both of them.

Bio Part 2

Despite growing up in District 11, death was not something I was accustomed to. Despite losing my mother, death was not a concept I completely understood. I took my life, my brothers’ life, my father’s life for granted. Standing there at the reapings, it felt more like a formality than a reason to be anxious. But when Crusader was reaped, I began to understand what death really meant.

I was never the type to let myself down in the dumps. My father would always tell me to bring my head down from the clouds, to face the reality Crusader and Harbinger were trying to battle. A smile was more quick to my face than a frown, because I knew my older brothers wouldn’t want to play with me if I was ‘such a grumpy cat all the time’. But now I was one brother left and it was hard for me to keep a smile on my face. Sheer muscle memory reminded me that I still could smile and it wasn’t until after the first two months that I exercised them once again.

I took it hard. Everything about watching the Games was hard, but when my brother was in there, it was as if I was falling from the sky. I didn’t know when I would hit the ground—I hoped that I wouldn’t—but that last blow to his leg, that last blow that took the life out of him, was when I collided with the hard earth. It felt as if I had fallen with him, but I could wake up while he could not. My father and Harbinger were there to greet me on earth, welcoming me after I had spent so much time in the sky.

I was the younger brother, the one they liked to pick on because I looked a little different. I even believed them when they told me that I was adopted, that our mother had picked me up off the street, because my name was nothing like theirs. It never mattered the color of the skin; they were older so I believed them.

But I wasn’t adopted. I had the same parents as Harbinger and the same mother as Crusader. I was born in District 11 and my mother was the one who gave me my godawful name. I spent my childhood looking up to my brothers and wanting to join in, but I was too young to be playing with the big kids even if I was only one year younger. In a way, I idolized them.

I was really young when my mother passed, so I didn’t remember much about her growing up. As far as I knew, it was always my brothers and my father. We always lived in poverty—part of the reason why my mother left so early—but it never bothered me because I didn’t know any better. Everyone around me was hungry, working to survive. I was lucky enough to go to school, but was often pulled out to help with the work, especially when harvest season was there.

Harbinger and Crusader were always trying to save the world, but I could never quite follow their footsteps. Healing was their thing; dreaming was mine. I dreamt of getting out of District 11, away from the prying eyes of the Peacekeepers, away from the poverty we lived in. They told me I was silly, all of them, to think that I could get out of this district. “There are too many eyes watching.” “Remember the last one that tried?” “If you keep talking like this, your father won’t have any more sons.”

They were right, but it wasn’t me that my father lost. Even though Crusader wasn’t really his, my father treated him the same way he treated Harbinger and I. The loss of Crusader had hit me hard, because he was my older brother. He was supposed to be invincible, to help save the world when no else could. Even though I had grown out of my childish mindset, I never stopped idolizing my older brothers. So when I finally accepted that Crusader was gone, Harbinger was really all I had left.

Codeword: odair