why are we the way {we are}? :: [lei]

I am a creature of the night. My nights are not spent tucked safely beneath the velvet-soft sheets of a bed like the majority of my siblings’, but are instead filled with the stench of cigarette smoke and the reek of alcohol on the breaths of the street trash I surround myself with beneath the cover of darkness. I always return just in time for a few hours sleep before breakfast, going about my day like any other child of the Shore family – training and training and more training with a few pro-Capitol bullshit videos thrown into the mix for good measure – and as soon as dinner is over I’m off to bed, only to awake just a few hours later and slink into he night once again. And the cycle continues, just as it always has.

But these past few nights have been different, a deviation from my usual schedule. I find myself returning in hardly enough time for breakfast, much less enough time to steal a few hours’ sleep, and leaving just a little earlier than what I’m used to. Being one of Kaelen’s Angels has proved to be a very strange, and – unfortunately - time-consuming experience, and I’ve been beginning to feel the effects. I’m often finding myself dozing off during breakfast, and my mind too abuzz with “war” plans and Dempsey’s silken voice constantly reminding me to stay on my toes and be a good little spy for him and his cause thrumming through my mind while I try in vain to catch just a few much-needed hours of sleep before my nightly escapades. I want to think that I’ll be able to return to my old routine once our attack on the Morenos is over and done, but something tells me that I won’t have a decent night’s sleep for quite a while longer.

Better catch it when I can. The hours after the Reaping are often spent in vigorous training as our parents vent out their frustrations of not having a child Reaped that year – it is these times that they are usually at their most desperate and their most harsh. However, this year is different. A Shore has finally been Reaped – dear Emmy, sent off to her possible slaughter at the hands of children, just like she’s always wanted – and that fact alone is enough to placate our parents and keep them content for at least a few days. When I arrive back at the house (it’s never been a home to me; my place is with the likes of Dempsey and Rex and Winters in that run-down little shack of a house where our meetings often take place), it is nearly empty and uncharacteristically silent. At first, I can’t quite place what it is that I’m not hearing, and then I realize that Emmy’s not no one’s training. I don’t hear the clash of swords or the thump of a knife into a target dummy, the grunts of my siblings as they practice their hand-to-hand combat with each other. It seems I’m the first one back.

Good. I should have no problem getting to sleep, then. The stairs creak beneath my weight as I take them one at a time, tugging the tie around my neck loose and unbuttoning the collar of my dress shirt as I go. There’s no point in being modest when I’m the only one here, and I’m certainly not going to bed in my Reaping suit. It’s not until I get to the top of the stairs that I hear it, though, the girlish and slightly psychotic giggle from down the hall, and I can’t help but groan in half-frustration, half-exhaustion. So I’m not the only one here after all, but why does it have to be her?

She’s standing on my bed when I flick on the light switch beside my door – creepy little thing, snooping around my room in the dark – bouncing up and down on the mattress like a five year-old on a trampoline. She didn’t even bother to take her shoes off. Animal. “Might want to get off of my bed, Ave.” I take a few steps into the room, glaring daggers at my adopted sister. Everyone in the household knows about her condition, her warped sense of her own appearance. I’ve been dealing with her kind of crazy for years now, and I know exactly what it takes to send her running – and often crying – out of my business. “I have to sleep there, you know, and I can’t do that if you snap it in half.”