gaige fulbright } district two . fin

Life -- the existence of an individual human being or animal.

I never really expected anything more from mine. 

As a kid, Silas and I would punch each others arms and raise finger guns to the skies while blistering under it as we pretended to be cowboys in district ten, with dust in our eyes and mouths and we laughed going door to door between different garages pretending to rob saloons. And at eight years old the stars seemed brighter and distance seems so much shorter, and Silas would punch my arm as we lay down, sticking sun burnt skin to cement floor and I would feel skin peel off my body before laughing again. 

He liked to talk about running away, and at eight years old I almost believed him, but I've always been too gullible. 

District four was the goal, I think, he always wanted to see more of life and I always wanted to see more of him smiling because at eight years old he seemed so much brighter. And back then, my skin was tanner and my hair wasn't so frizzy, and us two would play on sand banks and mimic the victors we learned in class. Silas would take my hand and we'd jump off trees into the river below before he'd take command and I'd hear "ahoy, captain," echo off the trees and we'd take swords out of branches and raise them up as I crossed my heart and swore to be his knight, giggling after a short "forever," and he punched my arm. 

We had no idea how to be pirates or cowboys, and we had no business being so. But around him, I felt so much more than a gentle Gaige, not better just, fuller. I wasn't a pirate, or a cowboy, or a knight anytime I wasn't around him, alone I was just the half of me, and I'd breathe alone while my roommate slept in that old orphanage and the sunburn burned a lot more. Alone, my frizzy hair would cover my eyes and I'd read about past games and draw crowns and whales in the corner of my papers - the word forever still lingering on my mouth.

And by definition, forever should be the longest, wholest thing, taking up the entire branch that is my life and by definition I should be given this longest moment of wooden swords and sunburns; I've always been too gullible.

Between sawdust breathes, I'd heave on the training floor with the cold air burning on sunburnt skin and my lungs felt frosted. I was never going to be a success story - not like Silas, or my roommate or the other orphans. They all wanted something, Silas with his road map and Hardy with a crown on his head, and I cough my hands around my mouth in the corner thinking (forever) that I just wanted to be. That between pirates and knights and the sword spectrum I could just be something other than Gaige Fulbright, frizzy hair and burnt skin, district two, orphan. 

But of course, I don't make the definitions, I just read them. I just draw squids between the lines and anchors on my arms, and Silas would smile at ten years old and we'd hang the photos of the ocean up in his attic beneath a white bed sheet, and the cosmos could drown me and I swear I'd still be okay. And I'd write the definition of heartbeats on the wooden walls with sawdust in my lungs - pulsation. Living, being. 

Something- something.

Silas was something extraordinary, and in the decade we punched each other's arms and wrote puns on attic walls I believed he was my anchor keeping me docked onto something worth being, when I was the anchor dragging him down. 

At eleven years old, brains are still perfecting the art of understand, and I still am honestly, and at eleven years old no matter how much games information was etched into my forehead, I still couldn't find a definition for the cold in my lungs as the orphanage owner sat me down and looked in my eyes in silent for five minutes before wheezing apologies. My eyebrows furred under fuzzy hair and I scratched at my forearm and his deep voice was like ambiance to a beating heart, "This is a valuable lesson that I hope you never forget, Gaige.

Sometimes, in this world, things you rely on may leave before you're ready for them to go, but you have to remember to be strong enough to continue on with the holes. And-" I tuned out, gripping my skin in pudgy children fingers as he held my stare and my cosmos and oceans were caught in my throat. 

"I regret to tell you that a boy was found dead near the banks, and I was called to identify the body and recognized him as not one of my sons. However, I did recognize him as your friend, Silas. 

I'm sorry."

And of course, to an eleven year old this isn't correct. To an eleven year old and a should-be twelve year old that knew the answer to their entire life and held reality in the threads of every fiction until it couldn't be woven any more, this couldn't be correct. I could feel Silas's fists in my gut and the dark water of the banks engulfing us as we jumped freezing my lungs and his, and as a child I couldn't really understand between the lines of what the orphanager owner was saying, and he held my hand and I counted his wrinkles until my eyes blurred over. 

That night too I sat at my desk at night, a single light on yellow paper scrawled with writing in messy writing - "I can't sleep, what's forever, district four," - and I held my hand over my mouth the entire time comprehending before writing on the back of the notebook:

Forever - the distance between two different timelines, that of ours, Silas and mine, and that of just mine. 

And then I ripped the notebook, and choked.