Nori Halliday, District 11, done

She was tall and skinny, like most of the other girls her age she had met. Bones stretched at the skin on her elbows, her knees, and her chest. There wasn't enough food to go around in the house to put meat on her body. At night she would drum on her ribs with her fingertips, wondering if there'd ever be a morning when she wouldn't see them poking through her skin in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes it looked like her heart was trying to jump right through its cage of bones.

Her body, her hair, her eyes were the color of the earth, the soil she could never keep her hands out of. When she was little, Nana taught her how to work the garden--when to start the seeds, how to tell what the plants wanted. They spoke to you, if you paid attention. Wilting of their leaves called for water, and yellowing called for food. It was a game of watching and listening, and if she played it right, she knew she would be rewarded come harvest time. Cucumbers, squash, beans, carrots, turnips, and strawberries. 

Watching and listening came easy. Growing up in a house with three brothers and a sister was noisy enough to make her quiet, and she was content to observe. Nori was a girl of few words, but she told things how they were. She might have seemed like a pushover to those outside her family, but she was happy to follow others around. Out of all her siblings, she was the most supportive, an open ear they could tell all their worries to, and the best secret keeper in the house. She liked to take care of things--plants, people, words. She was trustworthy and had a sharp memory.

Sometimes she wondered if her parents would have been proud of the way she helped around the house. She would take care of them too, if they were still with her. They were taken away by a fire when she was five, after a cornfield was struck by lightning one dry summer afternoon, lighting it ablaze. The peacekeepers hadn't allowed the harvesters to stop working during the storm, and her parents had paid the ultimate price for it. Nana said the ashes of their bodies were back in the earth now, helping the flowers grow. 

She and her siblings lived with Nana now, their father's mother. Nori grew everything in her parents' memory, in the garden where Nana had laid a handful of their ashes after the fire. With the utmost care, some might say obsessively, she tended to her plants every morning in the warmer months. She knew part of her parents lived in their veins and leaves, and that the nutrients from the ashes would make them bigger. In a way, they were still with her. But  she also knew that flowers and zucchini wouldn't tuck you into bed at night. 

Since the fire, Nori felt like she was doing the right thing, stepping up to the challenge of being the eldest daughter, taking care of her brothers and sisters--making sure they got to eat before her; that they got enough sleep; that they were okay. She had been a good girl, but there were times when she was angry. At first she thought she was angry at her parents. But she found that she was angry at the Peacekeepers who insisted that the storm wasn't deadly enough to stop working, and angry that they hadn't died too, in their fireproof body armor. Daddy died in his white tank top and jeans, and Mommy too, with her hair tied up under a handkerchief the way she always wore it. She was angry that so much had been taken away from her, and from Jade, Tucker, Ezra, and Remi too. 

Hiding the anger was hard. As sweet as she could be, she had a quick temper if you rubbed her the wrong way. And no one had better say anything bad about her siblings, ever. She knew she would have no chance with her fists and scrawny muscles, but her words could bite, and she could hold a grudge for a lifetime. 

With her anger came an outlet. When her siblings hungered for mischief, she'd tag along and never tell. They made her feel brave in a way she never felt on her own. The way she saw it, any rules they broke would be another middle finger to the Peacekeepers. Nana never said anything about it; as long as none of her rules were the ones being broken, she turned a blind eye. They'd all take care of each other. They could never bring back Mom and Dad, but the Halliday children would at least make sure they never lost themselves.