Violet Sage Etherage, District Eight

(a p p e a r a n c e)

I'm a'trapped in this prison and there's nowhere to go but the open fields. 'Course, there's not a chance in the ocean that I could survive out there all by myself. 'Tis not my own fault, y'all know. It wasn't my choice to lock myself inside and rot away for all of time. I was always dreamin' when I was younger, but by now I've just about given up. When I was small, I was always thinkin' of open fields and of freedom, of runnin' away to be free in the wind. Reality has suddenly sunk down on me and I know the truth. I guess I might be a lil' bitter. I know nothin' of the ways of nature. I wouldn't last one minute out there in the wilderness, fendin' for myself and all. I'd die within the day like the poor souls who don't survive the bloodbath in the annual Hunger Games. 'Twasn't always so bitter, I promise. Once I was better than all that. Free enough, I guess. Still, I was confined inside the district as though I where trapped in a prison, though I had done nothin' more wrong than being a'born. The people all around me, they got nothing but smiles on their faces and springs in their steps, but me? All I got is a pain of a momma trappin' me here as though I'd killed somebody, or she's ashamed of me. As much as it seems like it, I know it can't be true. I should just forget all the reasons I want another life, for I know I can't do nothin' about what I have here. Even if I somehow escaped this terrible prison I'd still be the same old me, the same old Violet runnin' away from herself and her secrets. Forget all the reasons why I couldn't live like a wanderer - I don't know a thing about the survivin' and I have no experience with no people. Not enough to get some help anyways. So y'all see why I have to stay right where I am, confined inside the boundaries of my mommas house. I'm a doll, that's all I am. All I'll ever be.


The thing is, although my momma spends all that time treatin' me like one, I don't look like no image of beauty, not at all. It's not even that I care all that much, for what does it matter if I'm not a pretty one like my sister was? Nobody will see me. It's not like I could ever get a husband anyway. Momma wouldn't allow it even if it had never happened. My secret. It's so hard to hide these days that I feel as though I could burst with the weight of it. I can't see it gettin' any better though. As time passes it just feels worse and worse until I have to go and rest myself. It's goddam awful, really, what I've become. My skin is pale and pasty, my eyes ugly and heavy-lidded. Why should I care? I have nothin' at all going for me, but why would I need somethin' to go for me at all? Accordin' to momma, love's overrated and no man would ever want me anyway. I'm pampered and spoiled and sheltered and my secret haunts me far too deeply for anyone to find a way in. Anyway, I've become far too tame. There ain't a drop of spontaneous left in my body, not since sissy died. Anyhow, that's another story. I thought I was a'tellin' you 'bout how I look? My heavy-lidded eyes which make me look so terribly tired all the time. My large nose which is all protrudin' from my face like a volcano from the ground. According to papa, noses don't ever stop growin'. Then again, papa says an awful lot of things he doesn't know a lot about. My face is no picture, it's square and short and misshapen as though someone came along before I was a'born and decided that I didn't deserve to be beautiful like my ma and sister. Not even plain like papa and Aunt Mathilde. No, no, I ended up with all the genes in the family that made me look a right site. There are my feet and my legs and no ankles in between. My hair is a dirty shade of brown despite mommas constant brushin' and combin' and washin'. She says it's stubborn, like me. Papa says I'm just ugly, and he's right. I'd like to say I have something redeemin' about me - maybe my body is nice or my lips are rosy, but all I can say is that maybe once. But now my body is slowly fallin' to pieces even though I'm just eighteen. My lips are as pale and pasty as the skin that surrounds them, and flattened from spendin' so much time pressed up against the window-pane.

(p e r s o n a l i t y)

I have an old teddy bear that has set on my desk ever since I can remember. When I was small I would talk to the dear thing, tellin' it of my dreams. Back then I was always thinkin' and dreamin' and readin' and inventin'. I'd sit at the desk and let my mind wander over the fields and into the sky. Nowadays all I do at the desk is wait patiently as momma pulls a comb through my hair and messes about with my outfit. She treats me like a doll, and deep deep down I want to strike out and be free, yet I know I've brought it on myself. I could have fought while I was strong, could have learnt while I had the chance. I did much too much thinkin', and by the time I realized that somethin' was needin' changin' it was much too late and I was already my mothers dolly. I was fifteen, but I had fire in my eyes and the will to be free. I can't say so much about myself anymore. Not nowadays, when I spend all of my days rottin' away and drownin' in my own nightmares. Papa says I have and will come to nothin', and mother prefers me this way. Better than my crazy old self. Out of control, I was. Thinkin' all these terrible thoughts about how what I thought was more important than what President Snow thought. My momma says "thats how girls get dead or worse," but I never so much as cared for her thoughts. I went around the place thinkin' that I was better. Smarter. Always was I thinkin', and stupidly so too. In the end my ma had to imprison me in my room for me own good. Beat that stubbornness out of me with a hairbrush. Papa took that far too literally of course, and the peacekeepers had to drag him off of me. I stopped all my inventin' and daydreamin'. I became my ma's dolly, sittin' pretty and waitin' around for somethin' better to happen.

They say good things happen to those that wait, but I've been waitin' for three years and nothin' good has ever happened to me. I know I sound all mopey and forlorn, but I'm sick to the back teeth of being an object of my mommas. A plaything for her to dress up all pretty and occasionally show of. Secretly they're all scared of me, I know. I see it in their eyes, my mommas and my governesses. As though I am a wild animal awakening from hibernation, and their not entirely sure if it's a'right to approach. I gave up on fightin' back so long ago, but I guess somethin' of my old self still lingers in my eyes. I guess it's comin' back now. Because I have to be a fighter soon. Not yet, but one day. When my secret is too heavy to hold alone and I tell it I know Papa won't be pleased. That is when I'll have to be strong again. Not yet, though. For now I'm still sittin' pretty and waitin' around. I don't even read no more, I just sit and stare out of the window as if I think that if I stare long enough all my problems will go away. I'll be fourteen again, and fiery and happy and knowin' exactly what I want and how I'm gonna get it. It's better to have unrealistic dreams than to not be dreamin' at all, I say. When I get taken out people stare. Momma treats me as though I am on a leash, and being taken to the bakers and grocers is a special outin' I should appreciate. I don't, though. People look at me funny, as though there be something wrong with my head. Maybe there is. All I know is that I'm blank. I have no dreams and no future and no thoughts. Maybe I'll start my inventin' again soon. It helped me. I have a ribbon which is always in my pocket. Usin' it to keep my hair out of my eyes while I was thinkin' was somethin' I often did. I haven't touched it in years.

This is the kind of blankness I feel. Thoughts pass through my brain but it's as if I'm numb. Maybe it's depression. Maybe I'm unstable. I don't think so, though. It's just as if my brash and loud old self gave up. Suddenly stopped fightin'. I guess it could have been Papa's comments about my brain and my dreams and my looks. He was scornful of everything I did, he still is. If I had been the one to invent electricity, he would have frowned and said I was a'fritterin' away my life on sparks. If I looked as beautiful as my mother, he would have complained I was relyin' on my looks to get me through life. If I had dreamed big, he would have laughed scornfully and said I would never make a doct'r or a peacekeep'r or a wander'r. Because I'm stupid. I'm worthless. You can't a'blame him for thinkin' that way though. How could you not when you had one perfect daughter and one ugly, intolerant, stupid one. How could you not be sad when the perfect one dies and the bad one is too wild to be let free in the District. 'Tis not anyones fault really. I'm just unlucky. I'm no rebel, but sometimes I go on too long feeling nothing and feel everything at once. I don't talk, not really, I just go on thinkin' and wonderin' and contemplatin'. I'm distant and disconnected and not really all there. But every once in a while I find my fire all at once and that is when everybody runs screamin'.

(h i s t o r y)

I guess a history is kind of a story. 'Cept for history has no starin' point and no endin' point and stories gotta have edges. When somebody asks we 'bout my history, there's nothin' much to say. I'm just a girl livin' with my momma and papa, and that's all I've ever been. I guess theres my secret to tell, but I'm not ready. To be honest I don't think I'll ever be quite ready. Times'a creepin' up on me nowadays though. I've barely blinked since I found out 'bout it and now I've only got a short while left. It makes me 'fraid to think about it, so I'm gonna start with the beginin' and see where it goes. My story starts before I was born. Eighteen months so. My momma didn't know nothin'. She was young and beautiful and free enough and soon enough she and my papa had Elsie on the way. O' course, my mommas parents weren't too pleased, for she be only a child herself. She moved in with papa on the eve of her sixth reapin', but he wasn't happy with her either. When papas not happy he punishes you with his hands. The rough skin on his hands - it hurts like fire when it comes down on you, and that's what mama felt for her mistake. Anyway, papa had a job, bein' much older than mama, and the house was large and luxurious. She was happy enough, and when Elsie came along she was thrilled. Even papa seemed to love her, for she was perfect in every way. Soon as Elsie where born, papa found mama useful again, even though she where tired. Right after that I was born, and a surprise was I. Papa said it was mamas bad genes that made me so terrible, and Elsie used to say it was simply karma comin' back around and punishin' me for doin' wrong.


I used to try and run away, when I was a lil' girl. I'd manage to cross the town and get to the factories and then Elsie would catch me and bring me right back. Elsie was only nine months older than me, but she knew she was the better person and she took advantage of it. Everythin' I did, she was watchin' and listenin'. If I did somethin' wrong, she could play with me like a puppet and bribe me to do whatever she pleased. We grew up bein' known as a perfect girl and her shadow, and mama and papa both loved her more than me. She was sweet and talented and I was bitter and fiery and unpredictable. It wasn't really right for me to feel the way I did about her, but I always felt as though she where out to get me and I didn't like it. I plotted against her. I did and I'm ashamed of it. I was only little, maybe ten when I started to invent traps and ways to get one up on my darlin' sister. Somehow she always outsmarted me and papa was angry and I got hit. I learned to block the pain out and focus on my dreams. Anyway, if I ever cried papa would hit me harder, screamin' that I was weak and worthless. I used to wish I was more like my sister. I used to dream and wish and pray that one day I could be as charmin' and smart and funny and loved as her. She was golden haired, with perfect blue eyes and fair skin and long lashes. She was popular, and everyone but me loved her laugh. It was irritatin' for me, was her laugh. She was a manipulator, was Elsie, and I used to wish I could be so brave and strong as my sister, to be liked and loved and cherished. I used to sit and stare - outside, mind you, in the empty fields that hadn't yet been inhabited by factories. I was wild, was I, as was my sister. We went to school, yes, but other times where a'spent runnin' loose around the district. 'Playin', said dear Elsie. I called it torment, but nevertheless we played through the hot summers and the freezin' winters. I was cold. Elsie would threaten me until I gave up my coat.

So give up my coat I did, day after day. Papa wouldn't be happy when he saw my frostbitten fingers and goose-pimpled arms. Tell me I was careless, he would. I would bit my lip and cover away and look up at Elsie in accusation, but then they would say I was tryin' to pin the blame on my poor sister, who always tried to protect me. It was sickenin' really. Still, I shouldn't have done it. I regret it, I do, but at the time I was pleased as well as upset. I cried like the rest of them, mournin' her properly. I was fifteen, only just. I was sick to the back teeth of her simperin' voice and her friends makin' my life hell, so I did it. I rigged the machine in her factory, just to give her a fright and maybe scare her out of her ways. I've always been good with machines, I used to be an inventor. I changed a few joints and the next day she was dead. Wrong, it was. Should never have messed with the clothin' machine. Killed my sister, I did. I'm a murderer. That's not even my worst secret, even though nobody knows about that neither. I cried with mama and papa, and papa yelled and said it should have been I that died, and that I had cursed them all. Momma was worse. She said that it was an accident and that I shouldn't feel bad and that it was all her fault for lettin' Elsie work so young. I didn't speak up, just kept my head down. So momma says I'm needin' protectin' and keepin' safe, and she said I was never to go out without her. She doesn't work, only papa does, and I sit in my bedroom pretending to be distressed by my sisters death and feelin' so guilty for what I did. So I sit there and let moma comb my hair and dress me and treat me like a doll, and I let myself become more and more empty by the day.

She powders my cheeks and plays with me and feeds me tea and I just sit there numb, with no power to refuse anythin' or feel anything or even cry. Every reapin' she does me up all pretty and I wait and wonder if I'm gonna die to pay for my sins, but instead I seem to be livin' to pay instead. It's like the clock is tickin' but I'm stayin' still and the world is movin' on around me. I can feel and see and hear and smell and think, but I don't care. I'm just a doll, a plaything. An object. Something for people to stare at in interest and then stop thinkin' bout when they stop seein' me. Papa blames me even though he could never have known. I think 'bout the scars on mamas body and wonder what he'll do when he find out my secret. Maybe what he did to her. Maybe worse. I guess I'll find out when I stop pretendin' and stop hidin', because it's a secret I can't keep forever. It's the only thing I'm not numb to - when I think of it I feel fierce and wild and like a dreamer again. Maybe it's good for me. Maybe I can run away. It's somethin' I keep thinkin' - it's just with all these things that have been happenin' to me I can't stay anymore. It's like I've suddenly become whole again, just for a fraction of a second, whenever I'm a' thinkin' of it. Then I remember that it's not an option - leavin' the district would be like being reaped. A death sentence for everyone involved. Maybe I deserve to die. But only me. Never the secret. It's somethin' I've been thinkin' 'bout for a few months now, somethin' that never really leaves my mind and somethin' that changes the way I see the world. Not for me. Not for selfish old me. For the baby. I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to keep it safe.

My terrible, beautiful miracle of a secret.