{Grady Rim} {District 8} {Finished}

Grady Rim

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So you want to know about me, huh? Well, my name is Grady Rim. I am seventeen. I am male. I live in District 8. I suppose I am bisexual. I work at a factory. My favorite colors are Wipe your feet!, Olive tea, Old Brick, and Helpful

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Appearance

I suppose I should tantalize you with intriguing details of my striking looks. You want to indulge yourself with interesting descriptions. You don't just want to hear I have flippy hair colored brown. Of course not, I know you would expect much more. You deserve better than rushed, choppy sentences that are bland and dry. Trust me, I was born to write.

My mop of hair sits at the crest of my oval-shaped face. It's a normal shade of brown, not too light, not too dark. It's styled differently on many occasions, for it all depends on what kind of cut my family can afford. It's normally short, but sometimes I keep it long, in a skater boy style. The strands stuck on my forehead pact together and cling to the left side of my head. It normally stays in place, only slipping when there's heavy moisture on or under it. I keep my hair well groomed for a guy in my district. It's soft, yes, but I don't strive for it on purpose. I do enjoy my hair, but I don't mind if one day it's smothered with grease.

My favorite feature is my eyes. Many people have blue or grey eyes these days, trying to "vary from the norm", but I think that brown is rare these days. They aren't that almost-black-but-still-barely-brown color, but the color of milk chocolate. They are huge circular discs drilled into my skull, framed by lusciously long eyelashes. I haven't seen anybody around eight with eyes like mine. They're good for staring contests, you know.

Under my pride and joy is a nose that fits better than any other would. My mother always tells me that it's adorable, and I get the same remarks from all relatives. It not a long, skinny nose, nor is it a short, fat nose. Under my "cute as a button" nose lies the things that many girls and guys want, my lips. They aren't thin and stretched like those of the Capitol, nor are they plump and pinched like Caesar Flickerman's. They are the perfect sized, set in a straight, unemotional line. They have a flavor, too. They taste like freshly picked strawberries, sprinkled with sugar.

Enough with my face, I know you're getting a bit bored. Underneath a long neck lies my upper torso. I've never been shirtless, ever. Well...I guess if you count the times I shower and the small amount of seconds between changing shirts, then I suppose I have been shirtless. You can only imagine how pale it is under my shirt. It's a ghostly white, only a small bit of cream smothered in, making me slightly more tan than an albino. I'm not muscled, not at all. My ribs poke out, showing more than a stencil on my stomach. I have no other details drawn in. I don't have abs or pecks or whatever else a guy can achieve through hours of working out. I've never touched a weight in my entire life, nor have I ever bench-pressed, done push-ups, or any other form of exercise that could slather muscles onto my poor upper body.

As you can imagine, my arms are neither muscled. They are skin and bones, threaded to my broad shoulders by a few strands of actual muscles. They hang limply next to my thin sides. My arms are long and gangly, swinging with great motion when I walk. My fingers are just like my arms, long and bony. They are awkwardly attached to my hands, making most of them double-jointed. My veins pop out in my hands, even though my skin is perfectly smooth. Occasionally you can see blood running through the thin walls that carry it, making my hands look like a painting.

Linked to my stomach is two long legs, different from the rest of my body. They are muscled, from the thighs down. It's not very obvious, though, but I can flex my legs and show my proof to anyone who dares to question its existence. Your probably asking yourself, why are his legs muscled while they rest of him is skin and bones? The answer is simple. Dance.

When you total up the lengths of all my outside body parts, you get a total of seventy-two inches, or a clean six feet. Yeah, I'm pretty tall. The only last time I went to a doctor, I was told that six foot was my growing point, that I wouldn't grow an inch taller. When I step naked on the old, rusted scale in my bathroom, the reading normally comes out between 135-142 pounds. I'm just slightly underweight, for I am not fed very well. It's not very obvious, though. On the outside, I look like your average teenage boy.

Personality

Now I guess you wanna know how I act... I would advise you not to read this though. I'll probably scare you to death and stuff.

I'll admit it. I'm loud. I get on people's nerves very easily. I have a lack of control over my volume. I was born to be loud, as my parents always told me. I've been told people enjoy hearing me speak, hearing my voice dance in their ears, so maybe that's why I'm so loud. If my voice is inspirational, then I want everybody to hear it. I have a feeling though that the people complimenting my voice is just a handful of admirers who think my voice is hot. Anyways, I was in a school play years and years ago, when I was really little. We rehearsed it a few times before performing in front of our parents, and I remember how I always whispered my lines. I don't know why my teacher was so furious, considering I was maybe seven at the time, but it didn't matter to her. She told me I had to speak louder, that I had to project my voice to the crowd. Ever since then, I've been "projecting" my voice.

Being loud has many downsides to it. For one thing, I sometimes talk too fast and everything comes out in big jumbled mess. I spit out words like there's no tomorrow, especially words I don't mean. Rambling is something I do daily, I suppose. I can't string my words together in a neat fashion. Of course, I try to speak slower whenever possible, but sometimes things are so urgent that I just blurt it all out. I don't know how, but this causes some people to call me gay.

Yeah, some guys call me gay. It's not true, though. Partially. I'm bisexual, which means, yes, I've liked a guy or two before. It was somewhere between one and two years ago, so I think I'm kind of past that. I'm mostly straight. I most certainly act straight, in my mind at least. Guys think I'm gay because I dance. I love dancing.

Dancing is my life practically. I can't dance as much as I wish, though, considering that I live in one of the poorer districts. I can dance without music. I don't know how to make music and my mother works long hours, so I often dance in the quiet safety of my living room. I've never danced in crowded places, like the square or factories. I dance in deserted buildings, outside lonely stores, around empty fields. I've never had an audience that I notice. Sure, a few people gather around every once in a while, but I'm always too lost in the dance to notice.

I guess my passion for dancing makes me kind of... soft. I'm really emotional these days. I remember when I was younger, before I started learning about the history of the Games, I would hide behind the couch while my parents watched the gory deaths on the screen. I would cry when the tributes from Eight died, even though I wouldn't know them. I would cry over the smallest things when I was younger, but know I've learned to control it a little better. The older I get, though, the more people die. I cry over each; I go to each ceremony whether I know them or not. I can produce tears in an instant, plaster an feeling on my face without thinking.

Obviously this leads people to think I'm bipolar. I suppose I am bipolar though. I've never really thought about it, though. Yes, I can be extremely happy one second and then be crying the next, and yes, slipping on a smile when I'm broken is one of my specialties. It's one of those things you've done your whole life and you've never seemed to notice it. It's nothing severe, or well, I'm guessing it's not because I haven't noticed it before. It's nothing I can control. I'm proud of it, oddly. I'd rather show emotions than remain emotionless.

History

Ahh, it looks like our time together is coming to a close. What a shame; I was starting to enjoy telling you about me. Now's not a time for telling about me, really. It's about telling you my stories.

Let's start at the beginning. When I was born, my mother and father were both somewhere in their late twenties. I had a brother who was just barely five. I obviously don't remember this, but my father and mother do. My mother doesn't like telling me this story, and my father has only told me once.

While my mother was giving birth, my father told my brother to sit in a chair outside in the hall. He had no idea what was going on with my mom, nor why she had suddenly grown so big. He heard screaming a minute after my father left, and burst into the room, concerned. He watched my mother birth me. The second I was all the way out, he screamed, "Food!" Only my dad understood. He told my brother that mom was getting so big because she kept eating a lot of food. My brother then asked why he couldn't have some of this food, and my dad replied that the whole family would be able to enjoy mom's wondrous gift in a few months. Thinking I was food, my brother ran right at me, mouth wide open. Nobody knows if he actually bit me, but a doctor quickly yanked my brother up and extracted him from the room.

This next part was told to me by my brother a few years back. My father ran out into the hall and grabbed my brother by one of his wrists. He dragged him into the men's restroom and began to yell and scream at him. My brother began crying, promising that he didn't know that I wasn't food. My father couldn't take it anymore; he slapped my brother across the face and stormed out of the restroom. He left my brother laying on the floor, face streaked with blood and tears.

After that, I always remembered my father and brother never getting along. I remember how my father would snap at my brother in public places, and I remember how my mother would simply say his name in a grave tone and plaster on a smile. When I was around three, I asked my mom why daddy and brudder never got along. She smiled, corrected me on calling Brady brudder, and then she walked away. I never saw my dad and brother fight in front of me again when they knew I was around.

Of course, I was asked to leave the room on several occasions. I would hide behind the door and hear them yell and yell and yell, and then I would hear my brother cry. After listening to the same scenario hundreds of times, I couldn't hide behind the door and listen anymore. The second the door would shut, I would run to my room and start crying. All I wanted was for my brother and father to get along.

I remember one day, my mother went over to one of her friend's house for what seemed like the first time in a year. I was eight, and my brother was in that stage between thirteen and fourteen. Before leaving, my mother hugged my brother and slipped a knife into his back pocket. The weapon was so easily concealed, I couldn't see it once the handle sunk in. My father didn't see it, he was just beaming at his beloved wife. He pulled her into a long kiss, and I was horrified to see his tongue plunge into her mouth.

It only took five minutes after she left for the yelling to began. They were arguing in our so called family room. I hid behind a couch, watching them with wide eyes. My father hit my brother right in the jaw, making a loud cracking sound. My brother screamed out a word I have never heard before, and he stepped dangerously close to my father. I watched as he quickly pulled the knife from his pocket, my father never seeing it coming. I wanted to tell my father to run, but all that came out of my mouth was my brother's name. "Brady!"

It was the first time I had ever said my brother's name. I could tell it caught him off guard, for I saw him take a small step back before slicing my father's throat open. I wish I would've called out "Daddy!" instead, but maybe it was for the best. Later that day, some PK's came and took Brady away. I knew I couldn't have a life with both of them for long. A life where father would've dodged the blow could not exist. To know that your son wanted you dead would be a harsh way to live. I can't imagine how he would've felt if he knew that mother had helped him as well.

Of course, I pretended I didn't know that mother had slipped Brady the murder weapon. I tried to cling onto the small threads of connection me and my mother had. I was growing into the phase of calling her mama instead of mommy, but I knew how much she longed for the days when Brady had been an innocent child, when father had still loved his eldest son. I knew how much tears she would start shedding, and I knew I had to find a way to make her smile.

Life was hard trying to go outside to places with people who knew your older brother killed your father. I had to do it, though. I had to be the man of the house at the age of eight. Mother was too ashamed to go outside. I tried to round up a few of her friends to help me persuade her to go outside, to persuade her nobody would say anything to her. Oh, how hard we tried. She wouldn't budge, but I knew we had sparked something in her.

Even though it had only been about a month, she began to walk to places. Not places where you would find more than a shopkeeper, but they were places nonetheless. Her tiny bit of improvement helped me move on as well. I began to make a few friends here and there. I had started dancing a few weeks after I turned nine. My grades improved, and my mother began to talk to me more and more.

The years went by slowly. We never seemed to have enough money, no matter how many jobs me and my mother had. I would try to make up for it by getting better and better at dancing and trying to do well in school. We lived our lives to the fullest, though, and we tried our best to be as happy as we could. I could never shake the feeling that when I would open the door when I came home from school, there would be my father and Brady, arguing as normal. It's hard to start something fresh when you've only known one thing for so long.

The first time I saw my mother cry tears of joy was on her forty-fifth birthday two years ago. I performed a lavish dance for her, and I don't think I could have made her more proud. She cried with a smile on her face and hugged me. I hadn't been embraced by her in so long; I didn't want to let go. She told me she loved me, and I, too, began to cry.

Other

Hey, your look says you're sorry
Heeey tell me if it's the truth or it's just my impression
Say that it's neither madness nor obsession
That it's not a whim, simply
say what you feel and that
I never stopped loving you
like before...

Colors

775533-Main text
776233-Thoughts and lyrics
773B33-Other's speech
21424A-Speech

ooc: I lied. I totally put this bio off. xD But yay for new bio formatting!