sundrop black {d10 - fin}

I don't want to be weak.

At school, I'm not the girl who cried wolf; I'm just the girl who cried. Every knee scrape would flush my dotted cheeks a distraught shade of red, and the mockery would ensue. I've been called the weak little doe of Ten, destined to fail because I won't survive in the fields when I'm old enough to work. My skin burns easily and they've been known to call me paper thin, but my mom says I simply haven't grown to my full potential. "Sticks and stones," she always says, and I never understood. Words hurt as much as physical pain, if not more. They leave the deepest scars.

I think I've erased the target on my back. As we age we mature, some more than others. People approach me with caution or hesitation instead because they don't know what to think of me. They remember who I used to be, but can't gather the courage to find out who I am now. I'm not difficult; a little on the shy side, still short in stature, harmless as the ponies my family has been raising since I was a tiny tyke. I look exactly like my mom, auburn hair and apple cheeks flecked with sun drops. That's why I have my name. The freckles are a family trait, cherished as a beauty. They're a sharp contrast to my blue eyes, which were passed down by my father.

I have two sisters who look like me: Clementine and Melantha. I'm the middle child in a family who raises horses, so my mother is an expert at dividing her attention. There are three of us, but we're so vastly different that I can't relate to them like I used to. Melantha has already been pregnant and lost two loved ones too many, a third having turned to a darker path because there was something wrong with his head. Everything in my elder sister's life sounds so complicated and scary. If that's what maturity is, I don't want it.

I have plans of my own.

I want to be brave like the heroines they describe in old stories. Women who sacrifice themselves for their family and fight for what they believe in. I wish I could be like that, but I think we're all afraid of pain and death. Peacekeepers don't make it easy. I hate the color white because of them. I flinch every time I hear one of their whips crack. Nobody can stand against them, and people don't tell stories of the children who get arrested and punished. It's never worth the trouble to step out of line.

The first brave thing I ever did happened a year ago. I overheard my parents arguing in whispers about whether one of us should get tessera or not. There was an illness killing our horses and we were losing a lot of profit. The tessera would be a safety net, but my mother was scared. It meant more of a chance for any of her daughters to be Reaped.

I stepped up and volunteered to enter my name a few extra times. They stood against me, insisting that I was too young to know what I was risking but I know. The heroines in stories are the few volunteers that climb those stairs in the district square, and die in somebody else's place. My heart flutters at the thought of losing my voice to the Reaping. I can't imagine the freakish escort repeating the syllables of my name, and my sisters' mouths remaining empty because few are brave enough to volunteer. I can't imagine myself in the Games, a dagger in my throat. I don't want to imagine a grave with my name on it.

I don't want to imagine disappearing, yet I can't forget about what I did. There is tessera to my name and to this day it haunts me.

I'm not as brave as I want to be.

A diary used to hold all of my secrets. It was cliche and childish, but my everything when I was a lonely child. Now I have other ways, by carving drawings and words into our wooden attic walls as if they were the mythical cave paintings mentioned in the oldest textbooks. My parents don't know about it because nobody ever wanders up there. It's dusty and full of cobwebs, and although I'm afraid of spiders I have to conquer at least one fear to do what I love. If they found out, I'd probably be in trouble. I try not to care.

When I'm not tending to my horse Titus, I venture off of our property into the woods. The bandages from our expired first aid kit are hidden under my bed, and wrap themselves around my knuckles when I'm ready to fight.

I'm weak, I know that. I can't fight anyone, but I'm trying. I want to be brave, and I want to be strong and sturdy. I pound the trunks of trees with my fists until the skin breaks, and diamonds melt against my cheeks. They blend in with the sweat. I kick bark with my worn out shoes and feel the force rattle painfully in my bones. This isn't much practice. I hurt myself and my mother complains, warning me that I'm going to break my fingers. I don't care, they'll heal and become stronger. I'll mold myself into steel.

Or, at the very least, I'll pretend to.