levi walsh {twelve} done

My name is Levi Kenrick Avery-Walsh. Just Levi Walsh, most of the time. Mum named me after some priest in this big old book she's got, but I've never read it. The words are too tiny for me to see. She keeps telling me I need glasses, but I think she forgets that there's no way we can afford 'em. Way too much money.
I'm twelve-and-a-half. Turning thirteen in five months. Mum acts like it's this big "coming-of-age" thing, and I'll be the man of the house and she'll put me in charge of everything. I don't know why she bothers. I'm already the man of the house, with three younger sisters, a baby brother, and no more Dad to take care of us. He quit when Esther came along. Mum tells me he had to move for work, but I've figured out it's because he couldn't be bothered to take care of us. There's too many families in District 12 with the same story for me not to figure it out.
I don't remember much about him, but Mum says I look like him. Same wide nose and buck teeth, same facial expressions. Apparently I get the same dimples when I smile. I've got her eyes and hair though. Big, grey-blueish ones with wrinkles from too much smiling and dark marks beneath them from too little sleeping. My hair's always been kinda messy, mostly because I don't like cleaning it up. Mum cuts it herself so it doesn't look too bad. A little scruffy, brown like mud, bangs that go down to my eyebrows. It's long enough to pretty much hide my ears, which are huge. Great for making monkey faces at Aaron and Esther.
I'm kind of short, but Mum says I'm getting into my growth spurt. We keep track of our heights with pencil marks on one of the door frames in our house. I'm almost five feet tall, a little bit under Mum, who's five-foot-two. We're all underweight, definitely on the lower end of the health-scale of our district. There's an old, dusty scale in the bathroom that we use sometimes, and usually it reads me at anywhere from seventy to seventy-five pounds. I don't really know what I'm supposed to weigh. I just know my ribs aren't supposed to peek out through my skin.
It's mostly Dad's fault that we're all so underfed. A bit of my fault too, but Mum always gets mad when I say that, so I try not to. Like I said, I'm already the man of the house. I get most of the food for everyone. Our district hates dumpster divers, and I've had plenty of things thrown at me, from metal pots to a dead chicken, but I need to bring food home somehow. In the summer, I can go to the meadow and get us some greens to eat, but when it's all cold and snowy, I have to dig through the trash cans behind people's homes. I try to be sneaky, but sometimes I get caught.
When I went to the meadow the first time (I think I was eight), I didn't know what would be good for us and what wouldn't. So I'd go into the allies and catch some rats and stick them in a cage, and then when they got hungry enough, I'd feed them the plants I found. I'd watch them for a few hours, and so long as they didn't keel over and die, I'd bring the same plants home for us to eat. Once I tired killing one of the rats. The first one wriggled out of my hands and got away, but I did it with the second one. The only problem was the meat was super tough and stringy, and Mum wasn't too happy when I brought it home. So I stuck to greens and trash.
I learned to steal when I was ten. It was freezing outside, the trash cans were empty, and I didn't have any food to bring home. I was down at the market and I saw this girl stealing some cash out of a man's wallet. She would've been sixteen at the time, I think. I went after her, and at first, I thought I was going to turn her into the Peacekeepers. I thought maybe I could ask for some kind of reward and use it to get us some food. I don't know what I was thinking, but I cornered her in one of the allies. Of course she could've gotten around me. I was (and still am) this skinny little stick, and she was way better fed than me, and older. She could've beaten me up if she wanted to. But she acted all scared and asked me not to turn her in and said she'd teach me how to pickpocket like she could, and then maybe I'd have some food for my family. So I said sure.
She said her name was Jezebel, and we've been friends ever since then. She's kind of like an older sister, which is nice, because I only have younger ones. At one point she tried teaching me to wrestle, but I'm so small compared to her, and I probably couldn't do much no matter who I was fighting. So instead she taught me how to use a knife. She's got a small one, I think the blade is maybe four inches long, but it's sturdy and real pointy. Mostly she uses it to cut things like cloth and rope and sometimes to skin a rat she's caught. She likes rats much more than I do, says they're hearty. Sometimes she buys sweet-smelling treats and the market and puts them just inside the fence where there's a loose piece, and she'll get a good rabbit for dinner. She'll catch one for me when I can't find enough food for my whole family.
I like to think that I grew up when I met Jezebel. I was more mature, I took care of my family, I learned to protect myself. But Mum says I never grew up. I'm still a kid, I still like to play, I like to laugh at smile, I like to make silly faces at baby Aaron and six-year-old Esther. In the summer time I bring home big cardboard boxes from the dumpsters, and we make forts in the meadow and pretend we're knights and queens and kings and evil sorcerers. Sarai and me usually end up being the bad guys, I think because we're the oldest and we don't mind. Tamar and Esther love it. Sometimes Mum will come out to watch with Aaron, and he'll laugh and clap his hands at us. Mum always tells us that if we had better schools, we'd be in a drama class.
I've always been too talkative. I used to tell some pretty tall tales, but not so much anymore. Now I just make my stories sound exciting by adding little details and extra bits here and there. But the truth is still there. I've always like story-telling. Before Esther and Sarai and Tamar all go to bed, we sit down in a circle and I'll tell them some grand adventure I had that day. It's fun, and when I don't have enough food for them all, it'll distract them from the hunger. Mine, too. I always make sure they get fed first, so my tummy usually growls a little bit while I'm talking. I don't mind. I've gotten used to it. Plus, the nights we go completely without food are rare these days. With all the tricks I've learned over time, and a little bit of help from Jezebel, we've been pretty well off. I just hope it stays that way.