Quoyle Tarris - D4 [FINISHED]

I'm the spitting image of my mother, or so they say. But no-one has ever called me beautiful. I am lean, like her - no thanks to the portions of food that become smaller and smaller each day. Perhaps you'd call it scrawny, for lean sounds much too nice for someone like me. I have eyes the colour of moss, like her. My nose is little and my mouth petite, like her. But my hair is mousy-brown and my eyebrows sit at an odd angle that conjoin with my scowl to make my face look permanently angry, like my father. My skin is pale, splotches of a red blush that give my limbs a sign of life. Scars and bruises seem to be the permanent accessories of my body, each marking a wrong-doing of mine with every move of a finger down my arms, tracing a pattern, linking up my errors. I dropped a glass and it smashed. Failed a test in school. Supposedly lost my brother's best throwing knives. Happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when my father came home angry. I like them though, in an odd way. They define who I am. They tell a story. A story of how I fought against them and their ignorant prejudice. They show how I was stronger.

People often mistake me for a boy. And if only they weren't mistaken, perhaps things would be different. I cut my hair off when I was eleven because I was sick and tired of being blamed for something I could not control. I did not ask to be a girl just to annoy you. It was out of my hands - and it was out of yours too, Dad. He should not blame me for something he could not fix. But I like the short hair, regardless. Something I can control. I can be myself and not have them punish me for it. Since then, I've kept it short. Unchanged. My clothes are mostly my brother's hand-me-downs, but it's better than no clothes at all. I hide under too-big jumpers and trip over too-big shoes to conceal my wounds from strangers.

I am nothing.

I am beaten to the ground. I am covered in dirt and choking on dust. I am mud on my face and grazes on my knees and the taste of earth that settles at the back of my throat. I am quiet, timid. A mouse, they say. I am the scowl that rips across my face, right between my ears. I am the determined grit of teeth as I stand silent whilst they scream abuse at me. I am my mother's memory - floating in the background, almost untraceable. I am a lingering wave that crashes through time, day after day. I am a curled-up and worn out rope. I am a useless piece of driftwood that has no purpose, is no good, and I defy everything they think I am.

I camouflage torment with small smiles and silent blinks. I do not speak for I fear that wrong will slip off my tongue and struggle to climb back in. I am a wall that I have built up around myself, protecting me from harm. I become estranged from everyone else in fear of them discovering my secrets. I struggle through reapings with the sinking feeling at the back of my head that knows they put my name in there more than once. They don't even need the food. They want me gone. Another problem easily fixed, ridden of by someone else. I am wanted dead, not alive.

I am breaking. Like the waves that crash against the shoreline. I belong with them, the waves, but am terrified to join them. I am a piece of thread, worn, stretching and snapping with each tug. I bounce against my boundaries when they are not looking and cower back down again when their gazes loom upon me. I will be who my mother believed I was. I will be strong. I will be brave. I will not become them. I want my name to be pulled out of that fatal box of names just to prove to them that I am more than they bargained for. I have a fight in me that screams to surface, forced down and forbidden to show itself for fourteen years. I will fight and kick and scream and shout with everything I have and will go out with a bang.