Tiger Chautin - D2 [FINISHED]

The only thing about me that resembles a tiger or rather, a lion - actually, any big cat, if you think about it, but I've only ever seen them in books from school or distinct features in the Mutts when I watch the Games, although I think it would be cool to see one up close and personal because they're just so fierce and WOW is my hair. It falls around in a mane of yellow spirals that look like they've been coiled around my fingers a billion trillion times. And it's not even orange, either, like a tiger should be - it's blonde, which makes me laugh, sometimes but lots of things make me laugh, so much so that my little pink mouth turns into a huge pearly grin and I throw my head back and I guess my teeth are a little like a big cats too, because they have big, shiny, pearly-whites that stretch out in yawns, which I do a lot of also, especially when my Plain-Jane blue eyes my Mom says Plain-Jane a lot when she's talking about other people and what they look like, if they don't stand out - I mean, I'm good at standing out if I really try to but other than that I tend to just blend in a little with the crowd because it's just easier slowly begin to droop against the weight of sleep-deprivation school is oh-so boring sometimes and I have to be'm anything but boring. My elbows are pointed on my desk and a pale, freckle-covered cheek freckles are kinda like my stripes, except they're not, because they're dotty not stripy but they're just everywhere over my light-coloured skin like stars in the dark night sky sits nicely in my palm. Long, nail-bitten fingers stretch my skin I do need to stop biting my nails, but as much as I try I just can't seem to stop because I get quite nervous sometimes and all I can do is chew chew chew before I realise I'm doing it and I'm awoken with a jolt at the sound of my name. Tiger. Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. Like the animal, yes. I suppose I am kinda like a tiger, if you think about it (and I'm ever so good at thinking.)

I find it funny that my older sister and I hardly look alike. I asked my Mom if I was adopted one day when I was younger, and she just laughed and got out my birth certificate as proof. Our little sister Artemis is the in-between, freckled and dark hair a perfect mix of our parents. I have blonde hair, Ariadne has brown, though we do have long, well-kept locks that hang against our backs. Most of my clothes are hand-me-downs they fit me quite well because we're about the same shape, and it's not like I don't like them because my sister generally has a great sense of fashion but I'd just like some of my OWN clothes for a change. It's not like we can't afford it or anything and I know I sound selfish for it but it just gets to me sometimes.  I like floral-y dresses and little black shoes two things that I've bought brand new and I hardly ever get to do that so they're extra special to me.

Someone once called me sweet. I wasn't sure if they meant it in a good way or a bad way, because sweet in itself is nice but you can get overly sweet and it's just too rich and horrid and makes your nose crinkle up and your eyes squeeze shut and then it's not very nice at all. Or maybe they were just trying to find a nice way of saying I wasn't the brightest person in the world. But I am, I actually am quite smart, I'm not going to lie, it's just that my head has loads and loads and loads of information and ideas and thoughts and it's like one big train I really want to go on a train, to the Capitol, maybe, or just see what one's like because I've never actually been on one before yet they come to and fro here almost every day of thought that leads on to something else. Like my head is a tree with a billion branches that link up to everything, one big tidal wave of thinking about things. Kind of like those mind-maps we used to draw at school. I try not to be mean to anyone because that's just not nice someone once said that a Tiger was mean because it would eat up its victims but I don't think eating people I don't like sounds very nice, but I'm not a Tiger. I am the Tiger.

I like to juggle. It's fun. I mean, really fun. I saw the travelling circus when it came to the part of District Two that I live in when I was little and my favourite bit was the juggling. So I went home, found some apples in the fruit bowl, and practised, practised, practised. It's like my head, you see, keeping all the balls in the air at once and watching them go around and around and around and only you can control them and you've got to keep them up up up or they'll fall to the ground again. But I don't think Tiger's can juggle. Well, I mean tigers. I'm Tiger and I can juggle. But not the animals, because I don't think they have thumbs and someone once told me most animals can't do things like us because they don't have thumbs. People used to think my juggling was weird at first I've been called weird a lot by people everywhere, especially at school, but not a bad-weird way, or at least that's what everyone says. They say I'm weird because I don't get a lot of things but that's not my fault, so I just try to learn everything as it comes and I catch on eventually. So I tend to follow along with the crowd and learn as I go. But now they don't mind as much, they just smile and sometimes laugh. I don't know if it's good laughing or bad laughing It's a bit hard to tell sometimes but I just hope that it's good. 

People think that I’m this sweet, kind girl all the time don’t get me wrong, I usually am, I mean, I don’t like to judge people before I meet them so I just try to be nice to everyone all the time and hope they’re nice to me back but I can get really jealous a lot of the time. Like getting jealous of my sister, for instance – she is gorgeous and she always has been. If someone is better than me at something which is most of the time, because the only thing I could ever do that no-one else could is juggling and if I met someone who could juggle even a little bit better than me I’d be pissed off and really sad because it’s always been my thing – aside from people from the circus, of course, because they do that every day to perform in front of people, so of course they’ve got to be good, and I suppose that would be cool to do, get as good as that one day – but I’m not joining the circus anytime soon I get furious. I know that that’s not really fair, and most of the time they’re not snobby about it or like to rub it in anyone’s faces now that really grinds my gears so much that I once snapped three pencils in half in the same snap once at school when someone bet me in a History test and wouldn’t shut up about it, I was that mad, but I can’t help it. It is like I have this huge green monster that hides itself from even me sometimes and then bam, he pops out and I’m a girl on a mission to get my own way again. I am working on that though, I haven’t been jealous in one two three four weeks, apart from being a little, teeny bit jealous of my sister every day, but I see her all the time, and she’s family, so that doesn’t really count anyway.

I am a bit naive, apparently. But I can’t help that, I don’t know what’s going on most of the time because I’ve never been an actual, properly trained Career I know how to use all the stuff like a bow and arrow and know all the berries I should and shouldn’t eat and things like that, but that’s coz my Dad taught me all the things he was taught for fun and I never felt the need to go to Training and meet other people my age and things so I just try and go with whatever’s happening and not be too much of a show off that’s a bit hard because it turns out I could juggle the knives pretty well and everyone thought that was super cool and I quite liked being liked and being the only one there that could do something no one else could. I guess being popular would be nice, and have its benefits, and everyone has always said the better you’re liked, the better life will be. Though that’s like in the Games, it’s the same, isn’t it? You need to be liked to get money and sponsors and things to save your life. It is like our society is almost telling us to be liked, to be popular. Either that or I’m just using that as an excuse, but still, it is a nice feeling. I don’t really mind who I hang out with, well, actually, to be completely honest, I do. I do want to be popular but I don’t want to be hated and it’s like there’s this massive, never-ending tug of war inside of me that pulls me like a ragdoll, lost control of my own limbs like a puppet on a string just as long as they like me and we can have fun as a group and laugh or something like that, because I do like to laugh quite a bit. Maybe I’ve always belonged at the circus: a daft, juggling, lion-haired puppet girl.