eli. d9.

eli.

Look, I didn't want to join a gang, but some of us don't get the luxury of choice in life.

I won't bore you with the details but I found myself very much out of the home I grew up in thanks to some assholes. If I had backbone I might go back and kill them, but I have a brittle spine already - stretched too far upwards it started to bend when I was eight.

I'm going off track again. Damn it. That's not the point I'm trying to make here. We've got no time for sob stories. There's too many of them around here, all woe-is-me reasons that we ended up in this life dodging Peacekeepers and whispering every time we speak. I don't need to add mine to the mix, crying tears into an ocean overflowing. I whisper a lot. It's why I chose a small name. Eli. Tiny. Thin. It can squeeze through the cracks, just like I can. 

Brittle. Flimsy. But still me.

I don't have excuses, just a reason. Had nowhere else to go. Red lipstick on my cheek, they took me in and put me to good use. I'd never seen a gun before much less held one in my hand but it's all rudimentary now. They said I could be anyone I wanted. To the Capitol I'm still Erin Isemann - I always will be. But to them I'm Eli. A little bit of who Panem says I should be, a little bit of who the Crimsons say I should be, a little bit of who I want to be.

Not pretty enough to seduce the Keepers (girls at school said I had a face like a foot and I cried, back before I realised crying did me no good), not smart enough to plan big heists (I can read, and write, I know the basics, but basics can't keep you alive forever), they put me to work packaging up boxes of guns disguised as soap and eventually I'd done it enough times to teach the new recruits how to do it too.

They say there's no strength in kindness. I'd beg to differ. I found my talents lied in drying up the new girls tears and giving them a smile. It's fuck-all in the grand scheme of things, but Lila doesn't seem to mind. I suppose it all helps her & her ideals. Get them in, treat them kindly, they'll want to say.

It's not like we have anywhere else to go. 

And yeah, I jump at the sudden sound of a Peacekeeper gun firing and I hold my breath when they walk past, thinking the colour of my shoes on the dusty, cracked footpath is going to be the last thing I see in this shitty life. How can I not? I'm a nobody, if they shoot me it's a win-win scenario. No-one would cry. Maybe the new girls. I give a shit about them, so I suppose they give a shit about me, sisterhood. I wouldn't know. I grew up with brothers.

You'd think I'd be tougher because of it but honestly, two of them were lazy fuckers, one of them's dead, and the other is downright scary. I'm better off without them, they're better off without me. Who gives a fuck anymore. Not them, not my parents, not me!

That's a lie. I do care. I'm pissed off that I didn't have a choice. But what can I do? When life gives you lemons you wince at their sour taste but swallow them anyway because you're hungry. It's a miracle I wasn't chosen to be in the Hunger Games given the amount of tessera my Mom put on my name but if I were a tribute I'd shut up and eat those lemons, so why shouldn't I do it in this set of circumstances? It's good practice. A habit I should build. I need to stop biting my nails and picking at my lips when I'm nervous or scared. Safe to say they're both ruined. This life puts you in more scary situations than I can count, waiting to hear or feel a gunshot. 

I wonder what it's like to get shot. A girl packing up boxes isn't likely to be on the front lines of a battlefield but knowing my luck I'd wander into the firing lines. Every street is a war zone, every alleyway enemy territory. It's us versus them versus the Keepers and they keep us fighting so we don't point the guns at them, hands shaking violently, red coating their white uniforms. 

But what does it matter? I'm just a girl with a gun and no backbone, too scared to pull the trigger. So I seal the boxes up and ship them off and try not to think if the weapons I smuggled were the ones that fired bullets into the corpses I pass on the street. I can't afford to think like that. I've got too many tears to wipe, let alone my own.

Doesn't stop me from shedding a tear every once in a while.