danger hoskins || district 8

I hate my parents.

I shouldn't say that. Not because it isn't true. But hate is just such a boring word. A boring emotion. You can't do enough with it. It just sits there, simmering. Blazing. Burning, searing, smoldering, fire, fire, fire, blah, blah blah. It's red. Thick. Like blood.

What good is it?

The only fire I've ever regarded positively was the inferno that took down the textile factory on Eighth and Sateen. You know, the factory where they were manufacturing aramids for ballistic armor underlays for the peacekeepers? You know, the fire that broke out in the middle of a windy night and buried the store room in a tomb of ash and rubble so charred they couldn't pick through it to see if anything was left, let alone salvage it? You know, the one that they ruled an accident of bad chemical storage and worse timing? Wink.

We can unpack that. Not the arson — the boring reds. Blue is better. A gulf of continual disappointment that ebbs and swells between us, unbridgeable. Indigo dye, barrels pried open and spartan-kicked across the factory floor, white uniforms and my boots and the unfinished concrete all splotched and stained, unabashed, unafraid. Even if I'm caught blue-handed in the morning, what are they going to do? No, I'm not worried about that. I'm eighteen; I'm invincible. Absolute worst case, what? They stick me on a train back to my parents and I leave again. It'll be even easier this time, now it's all cemented in cyan (cold, icy) and stoic grey, my complete lack of desire to see or hear from them again. Like the ocean. Absent from this district.

Thank god.

Can we stop with the finger painting? With the poetry? You know this is all bullshit. There's a million things more interesting than my trauma, we could talk about any one of those. Did you know I've got a skeleton key for District Eight? It worked perfectly back in Four, too. A well-placed lie is a pair of bolt cutters and I've never met a lock that's stopped me before. And, yeah, the bolt cutters themselves do in a pinch, too.

Look, I'm not trying to do the dark and mysterious thing to make up for the fact that I spend the first sixteen years of my life too scared to step out of line to actually develop a real personality. I'd just rather talk about clipping the valve stem off of truck tires or moving around the stakes and ties so they pour their foundations off-kilter and have to do it again. Not that it'll set right. I could tell you how to ride the rails of a freight train so you can hop between districts without a permit, to show up wherever you please and just pretend you're some urchin kid that no one cares to keep track of. Even easier if you don't need to pretend.

No, I don't really want to get into it. It's not exciting. It's just a pair of assholes who named me Ethel and didn't hug me enough as a kid. Whatever. I don't need a star from running away from home as an adult. Shit, you can't kick a rock at the reaping without hitting a dozen or so kids with worse childhoods than me. I get it. I make friends easy. I swear. It's the bluster. I don't think we've ever grown past the pulling-your-pigtails-means-she-likes-you phase as a society, have we? The best friends I ever had I made by dunking on them, I think. Just, real merciless — the mockery. I know you couldn't tell, but I'm good at that. Sarcasm and snark may as well be my first language. Ripred knows I never heard a compliment that wasn't back-handed growing up.

Maybe I should write them a thank-you card. Dave and Carol, Thanks for the perpetual lack of support. That craving for approval has made me dozens of friends! Gotta love the crippling fear that no one will want anything to do with me the minute I mess something up. Gotta love that burning — smoking, searing, flagrant — need to break something, to tear it all down. Look. I'm a saboteur. It starts with myself. Or maybe it ends with me. I don't know what the genesis of it is. Maybe it starts with a milkshake lobbed at the shipping magnate and ends with the spacers removed from the warp machine so everything comes out misshapen and tangled, and passes through ignoring my friends and alienating my comrades on the way. All the pieces are there, so I don't think the order matters.

Oh, yeah. Danger. Danger is my middle name. No, really, it is. It was aspirational on Carol's part, I think, or maybe Dave lost a bet. Ethel Danger Hoskins. What a fucking joke. Could've been worse, I guess. I'd've been destined to be even more of a disappointment if they'd just gone and named me Pride and Joy. Ugh, Ripred. My poor sister.

Yeah. I do feel bad for leaving her. I hope she's better at rebuffing all of the bullshit than I ever was. Maybe it'll be better for her. I know that's a lie, but it's nice to think that our asshole parents might take half a minute to think about why I left. That's a nice thought, isn't it? That they might not just bemoan what their melodramatic problem child has gone and done to them this time? That they might paint themselves as anything other than the victims in this narrative? Maybe I should've left a note. I didn't have the words then, and I'm not sure I could even think of something now.

Do you think a smashed vase in the foyer would've gotten the message across?

I'm no good at goodbyes.