marnie kuro. twelve.

My Dad always told me that ambition gets you killed in Panem, but I'm still breathing aren't I?

He never had a problem when my big brother wanted to do something more than mining with the rest of his life. Good for him, too - people like his music enough to pay him to perform. When the Capitolites came down here to record him properly it was like we'd become celebrities overnight. All the kids wanted to be my friend because my brother was Piers Kudo with backing vocals on the radio. And that's fine and all, but sometimes I want them to like me for being me, Marnie - not a little sister.

Piers teases me a lot for being young and ambitious, but it doesn't help that I can't sing. Tone deaf I am, not a musical bone in my body. He says it's fine, that I'm pretty and popular enough to get through life as easily as you can in Twelve. But I don't want easy. I want a challenging life. I want adventure and glory and I want people to care about me the way they care about Piers. 

I told my brother that and he joked that I should volunteer. I didn't laugh.

"I'd sponsor you," he added with a scruff of my head. "This whole damn district would, all those kids you're friends with begging their parents to spend their tessera money on you."

"They're not my friends" I said coldly, turning and walking away. "They're your fans."

Well, all of them but Hop. He's the kind of kid you want around always, even if he gets a little tediously excited over everything. Barely takes a breath before launching himself into everything he does, bet he'll be the only eighteen year old grinning from ear to ear with a spring in his step as he skips down to the mines on his first day. I hope he'll be more than that. I told him he's got a knack for becoming a Healer, bandaging up my scraped knees on the sad excuse for District Twelve's playground. And I meant it, too. Hop's great at looking after everyone but himself. All that enthusiasm and yet he still falters in self-confidence, overshadowed by his big brother too. 

I think that's why we're friends. We know what it's like to want to outshine our siblings, but aren't quite sure how to. That's why I'm quite protective of him, telling the kids off who put him down or compare us to each-other. Hidden grades don't hurt when you get A's and he gets a B-, because he's grinning from ear to ear and I'm just expected to excel. I know that school doesn't matter at this age and I told Dad that I'm just going so I have something to do each day, but really I just want to be around people like Hop. Underdogs. People with something to prove.

Maybe Dad's right and I'm just talking out of my ass. I haven't even decided what I want to do when I get out of the reaping. If I get out of the reaping. What's a quiet, stern girl with a frown so prominent little lines are already forming between brown brows supposed to do in Twelve, anyway? Become a wife? A shopkeeper? No thanks. That would require smiling, and although I do smile around true friends like Hop I reserve it for special occasions.

I think I stopped smiling when Piers became the talk of the town - if I scowled, people backed off a little. A frown gave me space. A stern look gave me some peace and quiet. A glare helped me fit in between the hungry and the hard-done-by in this District. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark look on my face. Clothes handed down from Piers, slightly too baggy and slightly too long for my arms and legs, I hide myself in fabric and keep my joy deep within. "Cheer up kid," Dad would say, pinching my cheeks and pulling them toward the sky.

"Cheer up kid," I say glumly in the mirror, fingertips at the corners of my mouth stretching thin lips into a curve. For a moment my face is scrunched and pulled and I look like something terrifying from the television. My hands fall away and my smile drops back to a line between my tiny ears, dark under-eye circles as present as ever on pale, patchy skin. But still, pretty.

Pretty enough for around here, at least. I'm skinny like everyone else and always a little under-fed but my jaw slides underneath my teeth nicely and my nose sits small and pointy on my face, littered with black-heads every other week. My hair could do with a brush and no matter how much soap it sees it still glosses with oil but even as the picture of exhaustion with a scowl and a quiet tongue they still follow me around the District, ask me about my brother, ask for my opinions, ask if I'll go out to the flower fields with them at sunset. 

I say no, quietly. Politely. And then their smiles fade and everyone around me is just as glum and as dark and I. 

"Cheer up, kid," I smile halfheartedly, pinching their cheek between my fingers. "You'll find someone else."

Someone who doesn't mind settling.

Someone who's not me.

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