noah gresham : capitol : cbd1 : fin

The inside of my house is so white that President Snow would be proud. My mother insists that it be white, as if the color can magically make me healthy again. I'm not an idiot, I know how autoimmune diseases work, I know that it can't be cured by a color. If it can't be cured by medicine and air purifiers and a life of isolation, nothing else will work.

I have a brother, but he's only allowed to see me sometimes. He's a year older than me, and he tells me about his cool friends that I'll never get to meet. He isn't allowed to bring electronics, my mother thinks they collect too many germs, so we have to find other ways to pass the time. The last time he visited, we made our own ranking of the Victors. He insisted that we put Saffron Lowe first, even though I wanted it to be Patricia Valfierno. We compromised by putting Teddy Ursa third.

When I asked him why he thought Saffron should be first, he said it was because she won when she was young. I told him that Aranica Petros had been younger, but he argued Saffron had just done more with her life. Whatever that means. I didn't realize that what he said upset me until he had already left.

There is a difference between surviving and living. Right now, I'm only surviving. I eat my specially prepared meals, I take all my pills, I sit around and don't do anything too extraneous. The doctors are honest with me, they say my life expectancy isn't great. I'm not going to grow old enough to do anything important with my life. If I haven't achieved anything by now, I don't think I ever will.