jagger wales | district three | fin

[ j a g g e r ]
"so take your time
while you ruin my life"

If I were a sculptor, my work would not be remembered in the centuries to come. I would not chisel beauty from marble and stone, I would just leave to potential in a heap of rubble. Some artists will go on and people will treasure their work, beg for more of it. The same people would take one look at my excuses for art and I wouldn't blame them when they laughed. I wouldn't blame them when they whispered to one another about just how atrocious it was, because it probably would be. Because that is who I am. That is what I have always done: wreck things. Especially when I try and make them better.

Take my mother, for example: a beauty of a woman. She was brilliant and was one of the few that was actually going to make something of herself after her graduation from high school. (It is a big deal to graduate from high school here. Our district may house some of Panem's brightest, but the need for work over education is an issue that really only gets worse with the passing days.) She was on the verge of coming up with a new software that would make hacking any electrical system a breeze for the Capitol government when she had what I can only imagine was the worst thing ever happen to her.

She was pregnant.

With me.

Now, if I had been a normal baby it wouldn't have really mattered, but I was always, always sick as a child. I had several illnesses and my immune system was shit thanks to the polluted air District Three citizens breathe in daily. It was either she quit her job, or my father. And anyone who knows my father knows there is no way in hell he will give up even a fraction of his precious work time to be at home with his family, so mom quit.

Things got better health-wise as I grew up. I still have a bad case of asthma, but it is more harmful to my pride than my body since I can't do anything to impress someone without bending over and wheezing my lungs out, and sucking down stuff that tastes like battery acid before I can go on with my day. But that is life I guess. There are winners, and then there is me.

There is one thing I am good at. Well, I guess "good" is sort of an understatement, but whatever, the day I start making money for what I can do is the day I'll accept that I am anything better than just "good." I think I am following in my mother's footsteps as far as computer coding. I can hack my school website and change test dates, I can log into other people's accounts for multi-media classes, and the list can go on forever. I'm good enough to have been noticed by the founders of B.O.S.S. (Blackridge's Online Skills School.)

Basically, they recruit the best, most promising youth in District Three and offer them a cutting-edge education, as well as experience and a damn good name for oneself and... oops, I seem to have fallen through the cracks and landed an opportunity to join. Not that I'll ever get in, of course. It is highly competitive. There are probably children being looked at that could build robots with both hands tied behind their backs, possibly even while blindfolded. Still, it is a nice thought.

See, my mother never went back to work for a reason. The window of opportunity in this place is quick, and extremely brief. My mother managed to climb her way to the top of a mountain of people with dreams and aspirations just like her own, and she was lucky for that. But the moment she threw her hands up is the moment she came tumbling down. The world can't wait for people. I would guess that, of Three's population, about 10% of us get decent jobs. The rest work at the factories that line every street in the entire district. Really, the air always smells putrid and vaguely toxic, which is why I was always so sick as a child, but I guess a person sort of has to get used to it.

Some people can't get used to it. Some people just keep getting worse until one day they can't do anything except roll over and die. Mom has never admitted it but I think she quit her job because she was worried I was going to be one of those people (Maybe I should have been.) I fit the description: pale skin, baggy eyes, clammy hands. Sometimes I look so close to death I wonder how I am still alive at all. But most people here are that way. Some are skinny, a stunt I have managed to actually avoid. Some are short, with hunched shoulders and quivering lips. Most have eye-sight issues, but not me. I guess I am lucky by that standard.

But only by that standard.

The rest of my life has, in complete honesty, sort of been one disappointment after another. Perfect example: the reason my father never comes home from work is because his assistant Joelle has pretty eyes and a killer laugh. It has probably been happening since before I was even born, but my mother doesn't even think I have realized it yet. She likes to imagine me as being forever frozen at the age of five, but even then I knew something was going on. Dad was never home. Every time I walked into Mom's bedroom she was wiping away tears. When I asked her why she would always come up with some pathetic excuse I was too naive to realize at the time was not true. The fact is that my mother basically raised me and my siblings on her own. The only thing I have gotten from my dad is squinty dark eyes, buck teeth, and thick eyebrows. Oh, and a pretty hefty sum of money each month from the security company he practically owns.

I guess it shouldn't hurt me by now, but it does. And I know it is bad for one's health, I know it makes people basically become these living, breathing shells of humans, but that is sort of why I love it so much. Morphling is my sweet escape. My dealer is a girl named Remmy, and like me, she understands that sometimes living without any outside assistance is a task too difficult to achieve. I don't think people usually become friends with their drug dealers, but then again, I haven't ever done anything else right, so why would that be any different?

So, that's my life in a nutshell: clumsy, awkward, pessimistic Jagger Wales, in the flesh. The boy with the bad luck streak, the shitty dad, and the drug addiction.

Who the hell are you?