"Lego [house],, {Cass}

One, two, three, four… The words echo in my mind, just like the very day I had spoken them out loud, following a young girls lead. She had skipped, and danced over each and every crack in the road, not wanting to touch them. When she got too near she would gasp as if they would open into a gaping whole and swallow her and she would disappear without a trace. Just as I feared being forgotten, finding myself six feet under the ground and not knowing how it had happened.

The girl had counted each of her steps and the moment when she had paused at the number ten I had continued on her chant, speaking the next numbers out loud as if she had forgotten and I had jogged her memory into remembering the next numbers, she had continued the pattern, I had joined in. That was the first time I had seen her smile, it was a beautiful smile that wasn’t covered by a false sense of joy, it showed her troubles, but yet underneath it it was amazing, beautiful and natural. I didn’t know her, but her face was open and warm, I had smiled in return, it flickering across my face. But my smile had not been like hers, I had to hide my troubles and miseries deep beneath me for no one to see, mine had been true, but fake. Fake surrounded my life.

I don’t know why I smiled, but after we had meet and then turned heading onto our own paths I had taken up the counting. Her soft words would often mingle with mine when I started to hum, or breathe the numbers. I would always pause at the time when I had entered, I don’t know why, but I would stop at the number elven for a second longer before continuing through the number until I reached one hundred, from there I would start again. It was like a continuous cycle. When I felt lost and felt as though I was about to sink once more into depression, I had only to remember her smile and then I would count; five, six, seven, eight…

The counting distracted me so I kept doing it, when I became frustrated, angry or even pained I would begun to hum the tune of the numbers, or whisper them into the air. I would never speak of them out loud when people were around, but I would say them in my mind. In a way they kept me sane. I let them take away my emotions and my feelings of pain and guilt and I let the numbers consume my mind, until I felt once more happy and relieved with my life and everyone around me.

I had grown up in a big house with my parents, but an illness had struck them down, leaving me as an only child. I had then found a home with my cousin Surge, we had lived together for a number of years before he was thrown into the games, I didn’t watch. I couldn’t. After my parents death he had been all I had and his family were like my family. He never came home, except for in that stupid pathetic wooden coffin. His parents had cried and cried, I had felt useless, unable to shed a tear and yet burning with ain at what had happened to my family.

It turned into a depression that consumed me and controlled my every movement, I hadn’t been happy for a long time until I meet her.

I was walking down an empty street, but then the streets in district three were almost always empty, when it was this time of the day, that is. I didn’t look up from the path beneath my feet, delicately weaving my way through the alleyways and roads, stepping over each and every crack, side stepping a curb or jumping over a forever running rut in the road. It was like a game, but in this game when you lost you found yourself dead, you would leave the world that you cherished, the ground would open beneath your feet and swallow you, you would burn in hell. Never to see light again.

It was a sick twisted game, but I played it all the same. I followed the rules like a child who was oblivious to the obvious flaws in such a narrow-minded game, but it kept me entertained. It kept me going. I notice the girl standing bare-foot in the dirt; I don’t think anything of it, until I recognise her. Everyone in the district new this family, they were famous. After all Tacara Goravich was Klaus Goravich’s sister. I couldn’t quite see what she was doing. Well there family was pretty crazy, Jamarion was the school bully and a big arse, that Lyanna chick was always hiding, now here to be seen, that marina was fucking crazy and Hopper was a sassy gay guy. “Err… Tacara? What are you doing?”

Why had I said her name? That just sounded so weird, I hide my embarrassment by coughing, before looking back up at her.