nori graham } district twelve . fin

Ma tries to call me an angry child. 

I just say survival ready. 

District twelve has never been a pinnacle of safe keeping, no, it's no oasis or heaven. It's Sodom, a city of plague and death and honestly it's either you knock the teeth out of life or it gets you. I've always been an optimist like that, I guess, a crack of the knuckles like a reminder that I'm still alive. I'm well alive. I'm not just no unhappy child, forgive me for trying to stay alive. It's just a few chipped teeth, down in district twelve you get whippings just for your siblings being shit, ya know? So what if life's fucked up my perfect smile, I never had one of those to begin with anyways. 

I've got a lot of my Ma's traits - crooked teeth, thin nose, small mouth, hair, eyes - the whole nine yards. I was always told that I'd grow into looking more like my dad but I guess that never happened did it. Ma always called him a sinner, something about being unfaithful - it's all details really. Details, details, miserable old details; he fucked some other woman and broke that truce that comes with marriage and a kid and happily ever after but to be honest, in a district like this they should've known better to begin with. Nothin' good comes out of district twelve, remember that. 

Nothin', and they don't come back either. 

Reapings have always just been a mercy killing down here now, taking sinners one at a time into the flames and hell, they gotta get rid of us somehow. We're plagues, mange, ticks on Ripred's back and the four horseman ride our asses everyday - the reaping is an escape from that in a way. Instead of sixty miserable years it's just two short weeks before one of us get decapitated day one. 

Sinner's don't know how to live. 

That's something Ma always told me before I became one, sinners don't make it in this world. Ripred gets them and one day there'll be a cleaner world and blah, blah, blah, all those details. The kind ones make it, and the devoted and studious ones. All you have to do is market yourself for Ripred and hell, you might just make it out of here. As a kid I honestly believed it, believed that my father's fists on my jaw were a normal thing and Ripred would take him but it doesn't work like that I've figured out. You just have to survive for yourself, really. 

It's something I've gotten used to, more than used to honestly. Alleyway fights and bloody noses; fuck, it's not like it's not anything I haven't seen before. Broken thumbs and black eyes, the first fight it was awkward. Can you blame me, not all twink ass district twelves can win the hunger games to begin with. I remember spitting blood between my teeth as a fourteen year old pounded into my bottom lip, a few betting in the distance and after having me in wheezing condition one of them pulled the older kid off me after they finished playing goddamn monopoly. I swore one of my lungs were broken, the smell of karosene burned into my skin from the arena and I swore on my way home not nearly as bad as my poor old Ma when she saw me.

I still laugh at how mad she got, the very first "Nori, what the fuck!" etched into my brain. She tore me a new one while I held a cold towel to my forehead; we never had a hospice in our backyard y'know. Sometimes you got kids growing up learning to bite their own teeth when they get stabbed. And that was the first time of course, I swore it was a one time thing and she prayed for me to not be a fucking idiot, but hell - Ripred ain't got shit for sinners I guess. 

The second and third times didn't change much either, got my ass kicked and I barely got any swings in and I went to school with bruises and cuts and black eyes and broken fingers. Hell, I didn't get much out of it at first, you only get money if you win but that's something I don't get out of life often. My teacher would talk to me after class too, tried to talk to me about what my life was like and what I thought it was, don't remember what his name was. I dropped out that year too, good old dad didn't have the money to keep me in and Ma got tired of fighting with the ass so I got dropped. Anyways, my teacher would look me in the eyes as he sat me down, getting serious in a way. "Nori, what's your home life like?"

"Oh, it's fine, Mister-" whatever the fucker's name was. 

"Really?"

And I would pull out the cheekiest smile, "oh yeah, it's great as long as I'm not there!"

Honestly, I just liked putting on a show. It gets the bets coming in harder when you have a story behind you; average thirteen year old with crooked teeth? Not that interesting, but add in a tragic family life, a few cheeky lines and a smile when you get the hell beat out of you and you might actually get some income, kid. Really, Pa and I weren't that bad, he'd throw punches and I'd catch them with my face and it was pretty much like being in the corner fighting with any other dead ass. I'd throw a smile once trying to be cheeky with him, and he'd get pissed about how I'm the reason we're broke as fuck. How his fuck up's are on my name, that I'm my own idiot. 

I'd smile, for a while. 

That was, until I realized it's better to survive for yourself. One day I punched him back, throat punched the cunt with thirteen years of rage and he would've near killed me had Ma not spoke up, of course that didn't solve much. Nobody really cares for a house of sinners. You see, I guess my dad, my Pa, my old man, I guess he's always been a dumb cunt just like me. Wasting family money on random women and having nobody else to take it out on then the only other asshole in the house. 

Ahh, details, details. My dad and I aren't always that bad, that was the first time I threw hands back and I ended up sleeping at a friend's that night because I was scared to go back home after getting out. But that was on me in a way, and by two years later we only fought a few times. I learned real fast to just fuck out of the house, returning from the arena made Ma so livid and running into dad could go even worse so I just take it with a smile and a grain of salt. 

It's just how I survive, I guess.