fionn cassidy / district 6 / fin

16: you've made it most of the way through. well done. what have you got to show for it? a handful of exes, grades down the toilet, a new baby sister and an alcohol dependency. you look more like your father everyday, so says your mother. she doesn't mean it as a compliment, but you'd never take it as one anyway. 

you're surrounded on the daily by people taking up the good fight in your father's name these days. seems like he's finally gotten his little revolution off the ground. long gone are the days he spent with you playing toy soldiers. you're not all that into it. there are less important things and people to be done, and somebody's gotta do them. the idea of joining in with your father's games now feels like sacrilege, yet nevertheless, every time he invokes you and your sister's future you feel it tug on your heart strings. 

the days until seventeen count down lower and lower, and as they do, you feel yourself approaching a crossroads -- to continue down a path of self destruction or to switch courses now. you figure no matter how many times you reroute, you're going to find yourself back on the road to ruin, as inevitable as your dad winding up in the detention centre, all imaginary futures smeared out by capitol hands. his optimism makes no sense to you. your mother isn't someone you understand either. despite their decisive separation, they share a forward momentum, one they believe in absolutely. moving ahead like that, they left you behind a long time ago, and they haven't even realised it yet.

15: this is the year dad moves out. it's also the year you decide to grow out your hair. you look ten times better, but also more like him than ever. your mother looks at you so fondly these days, so nostalgically, so you buzz it short to the scalp. your new body is thin, not properly filled out yet, so it lends your face an austere quality, one that attracts more worry than romance. it's fine to be a pet project, just for a bit. letting yourself be babied is as close as you get to recapturing the long gone days of childhood, when you still let your parents within a square foot of you.

you have a beer with your dad on new year's eve. he drinks quick, to forget his surroundings. probably to forget who he's drinking with. it all ends in an argument, because it always does, and you tear down the road, running until you fall. you split your eyebrow open on the concrete, and after that you make the decision to grow your hair out again. dad says it won't heal pretty. you ask him what does he know.

he's right though. your fringe can't grow in fast enough. 

14: your father's a dirty cheater. for all of his proselytising about the greater good, what's he doing on the small scale? absolutely nothing. he hasn't done anything for you in years. he still dotes on your sister; she's still so young, after all, she can't see through the bullshit. you see her for what she was now: an attempt to save the marriage. she's just a year and a half old, and she doesn't know yet that she's already been thrust into a role and failed at it. good job parents, that isn't gonna fuck her up. her arrival did nothing for your parents' relationship, only highlight the chasm between them. they love her, they dote on her, but they only ever do it separately. 

this same year, you gain a deeper understanding of what that means, of how you've internalised the compartmentalised love in your house. growth spurts happen in quick succession, baby fat falls away. your father's son indeed, it's easy to say yes to every date and love note sent your way. you understand him, for better or worse. but you're your mother's child too: you're more of a romantic than he ever was. you love solitarily, closed off, quietly, but intensely. one object at a time, love stews in your stomach, delicious and warming until the spoonful that sets you over the edge -- sets love on a course up your throat, onto the ground in front of you. a mess on the floor, bits of heart stinking of alcohol, all too much too soon. 

you're too young for the scene but you find yourself in it anyways, driven there by your father's disapproval every time he tells you he thought you knew better. better than who? better than him? he never has a good answer for that. the urge to carve out your own identity is a violent one, but it seduces you nonetheless. or maybe it's because of the violence, of the knife at your back that whispers:

go before time runs out.