Josephine Bartlett, District 5

'Joey'
District Five
Female
Seventeen

This lovely mess

Dissonance
a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.

Dissonance is a state of being during the rebellion. She, like her parents, is caught between two clashing sides. They do not stand with the rebels, but they also don't side with the Capitol. Trapped, ground between the mountains and the boots of workers, they live small lives, ignored like the flies that hover incessantly around shed blood and the bodies of the fallen. They starve, unaided by either side. She learns that the only one she can count on are her own people - and that circle is very small. Each person for themself.

Joey... Baby...
Don't get crazy
Detours, fences...
I get defensive....

It feels like years since she had eaten, but it had only been a few days. Her father comes home with empty hands again and the crestfallen look flitting across her mother's face tell her that once again they would be going hungry. This war would kill them from starvation rather than guns and bombs. They would be lucky to die from anything but the slow withering of hunger.

She contemplates how leaves and dirt might taste, how clean each puddle is to drink. The few times they were out in the street with her, her parents always hustled along without giving any of these things a second glance. They would not yet stoop so low as to root in the mud like swine. Still, she gave a longing look at a couple dark red berries crushed in the road. Damn it if they killed her, at least she would have the taste of something other than disappointment on her tongue as she died.

There is a barely perceptible shift in the aura her parents give off one day, a determined look from her father and a resigned expression from her mother. They leave without telling her where they are going. As the hours passed and they didn't return she contemplated the thought of being an orphan, of her parents having been killed by one side or the other as she sat here, useless.

When they returned they finally had food in their hands. She asked no questions, simply too grateful to be eating to wonder where it came from. Never had she tasted anything as delicious as the morsels her parents had brought back, despite the mud and other things that clung to the limp bread and the splash of what may have been berry juice - or something more sinister - on the bruised vegetables.

I know you've heard it all before
So I don't say it anymore
I just stand by and let you
Fight your secret war

She eventually discovered how her parents were finding food with sudden abundance. In the first few days they had simply been trying to find someone willing to give away food or trade it for something of minimal value. Unsuccessful, they had finally become desperate enough to cast aside their pride and retrieve food that had been thrown out, or dropped in the mud. They even had turned to petty theft from whatever source they could manage and would snag an item or two from one place, then another from somewhere else.

They only took as much as they needed, and tried to not put another family in the same situation they had been in. From them she learned not to be cruel, but to know that you had to take care of your own first - after all, that was how they had fallen through the cracks in the first place.

And though I used to wonder why
I used to cry till I was dry
Still sometimes I get a strange pain inside
Oh Joey if you're hurting so am I

They managed to scrape by through the war. They had their lives, food enough to keep them, and had avoided the hassling by either side to any real extent. Looking after themselves had been their only way out of a terrible situation, a lesson that would stick with her always. Loyalty to yourself is the only way to survive. The Capitol and the rebels had never done anything for them and so she would show neither side any loyalty. Reports of cruelty from both sides only enforced her thinking. Hangings occurred on what felt like a nightly basis, but she refused to view them.

The dissonance never ended, though the war was over. It rang through the districts like a gunshot each day, or the snap of a neck. Rebels continued to try and fight and Peacekeepers continued to stomp down on the last embers of the revolt.

Joey... Honey...
I've got the money

All is forgiven. Listen....listen...

Her family began to rebuild slowly, finally able to go from digging scraps out of the trash to being able to purchase meager amounts with money earned by honest work. Some of their new favour was also built on a continued habit of sneaking a bit extra off the top. Having found a new talent at supplementing their efforts, her parents had never quite ceased their illegal habit. In fact, they taught her how to slip items from the pockets of passing people and how to scoop a chicken egg from a farmer's market stall without being seen.

She was taught to take only what she needed, but to take it without guilt. Look out for yourself first, above all others, but don't be cruel. This was how they would survive, for it had worked for them in the worst of times.

Oh...
Joey, I'm not angry anymore

^{Lyrics from Joey by Concrete Blonde
Definition from Google}