Emery Holbrook [D11 - Finished]

|name| emery nathaniel holbrook
|age| seventeen
|gender| male
|district| eleven

: a p p e a r a n c e :

When people first meet me, they always look surprised when I tell them I’m seventeen—I can’t tell you how many funny looks I got last year from the other kids in my age group at the reaping, because I lost count. Then again, I suppose you can’t really blame them; puberty arrived a bit late, but it gave to me more generously than it had to the other sixteen-year-olds. It had all happened so fast, like one day, I was this skinny little kid with a curly-top, and a few months later I was six foot two and sporting a full-on beard. Uncle Gabe says Dad was the same way, that people thought he was twenty-one when he was seventeen. Apparently he had used it to his advantage, and if he hadn’t, I supposedly wouldn’t be alive today. ”You think he told the ladies he was seventeen?” my uncle had asked me once, chuckling reminiscently.

According to him, I look a lot like my father. I’ve got the same broad jaw line; the same dark brown hair; the same monstrous eyebrows. I even have the same little bump at the bridge of my long, skinny nose, the one I’d always thought had grown in there just because my dad wore glasses so often, and needed something to keep them from falling down (my uncle has it also). I was built like him too, tall and well-muscled from working the fields, with strong shoulders and big, meaty hands. On the other hand, I’m told that my hazel eyes and pale, feminine lips are my mother’s work. I’m not one to argue; sadly, I remember even less of my mother’s features than I do of my dad’s.

: p e r s o n a l i t y :

I like to think of myself as the nice guy, the kind of person who can be there when someone needs a friend to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on, or maybe just someone to share a laugh with. It’s hard to explain the feeling exactly, but in short, it makes me happy to see other people happy. If one of the younger kids in my family are having a bad day, I have this inner need to make them feel better before my head hits the pillow at night, or I’ll have trouble sleeping; I feel responsible, in a way, for making sure that they’re okay all the time. My aunt says it’s because I’ve already lost two people that I love, and maybe she’s right. I’d do anything for my family, and they all know that: Uncle Gabe, Desmond, my brother and sisters, and Tobias too, even though we’ve never really been all that close.

But sometimes, the person whom everyone tells their problems, needs someone to talk to, you know? And since everyone in my family has enough to deal with already, I would feel guilty putting extra weight on their shoulders, so it just builds up inside me with nowhere to go. Once, it built up so much that I exploded, yelling at Iona for practically no reason. The moment I finished, I felt terrible, but by then she was already bawling and running into her room. I told her I was sorry, and that I’d never do it again, but I think I scarred her, because there’s been this strange distance between us ever since. I don’t want that to happen with anyone else.

Singing helps me feel better sometimes. I sing in the fields while I work, just like everyone else in the family does, even though I’m definitely not the best at it. Evangeline is the best singer out of all of us by far, and we all know it.

I guess there’s not much else to say about my personality, because aside from my complicated history, there’s not much to me. I’m not particularly special; I’m not smart like Iona, or adorable like Evangeline, or an athlete like Adrian. The only thing I’m especially good at is working with my hands; I’ve got a knack for building and carving things, but I’m not really sure how that would help me very much in a District whose main industry is farming.

: h i s t o r y :

|mother| adrianna holbrook
|father| benjamin holbrook
|sisters| iona holbrook (15)
evangeline holbrook (13)
|brother| adrian holbrook (20)

|uncle| gabriel holbrook
|aunt| susan holbrook
|first cousins| tobias holbrook (16)
desmond holbrook (17)

Trying to remember what my parents looked like is like trying to put together a puzzle with a bunch of missing pieces; impossible to do completely. Sometimes I close my eyes and think real hard and try to draw up a mental picture of my father’s face, but in the end, it looks just like the face I see in the mirror every day, and that feels like cheating. I remember his scratchy face, and the big, funny glasses on his nose, and the way his strong arms felt around me when he hugged me before bed each night. My mental picture of my mother is even more unclear—just her smile, her long hair, and Iona’s face on a stranger’s body. The other memories of my parents are so indistinct that I can’t tell if they’re real, or just things I had dreamed about before.

One thing I do remember, however, is that we were happy. Our family owned a decent-sized farm, so Mom and Dad always had enough food to keep our tummies full, and enough money to buy Adrian and Iona new clothes when they needed them. Growing up, I wore clothes that Adrian grew out of, Evangeline wore Iona’s hand-me-downs, and that was just fine. No one ever complained, because we all understood. Besides, were better off than most.

For a few years, we were the perfect little family. I was too young to remember Iona’s birth, but Evangeline’s was a different story. My parents didn’t name her until three days later, but I don’t think they could have done it more appropriately. Evangeline. It was a name fit for a princess, and that was what she was from the start. She still is, even now—spoiled rotten but sweet as honey. She was a troublemaker, that was for sure, but we all quickly fell prey to her puppy dog eyes and sweet little honest apologies, and every misbehavior was forgiven immediately. Her constant wailing had made it hard to sleep at night, and she stole all of Mom and Dad’s attention, but that was okay because we were all so happy all the time.

All of that changed when I was six years old. It happened too fast for any of us to see it coming; one day, we were eating dinner at the table with Mom and Dad just like every other day before that, and the next day, they were dropping us off at the home of some uncle we barely knew. Mom had burst into tears when she said goodbye that day, which confused me, because I knew they had to be coming back. ”You’re gonna be staying here for a while, little man. Be nice to your sisters,” Dad had said, giving me a tight hug before ruffling my brother’s hair with his huge hand. ”You take good care of Emery, all right?” The nine-year-old Adrian had nodded vigorously, which made my father smile. Then he just stepped out the door and closed it behind him—that was it. I don’t even remember the last thing I said to him. Now I regret not telling him goodbye, or that I loved him, but I had been six, and how was I supposed to know that “for a while, little man” meant “I’m never coming back”?

Every evening for two years, I watched the road through my bedroom window. Two years, and my uncle never said a single word about it. But by the end of those two years, my sense of hope had begun to dwindle, and by the third year, it had wasted away to nothing. I knew they were never coming back, and that I’d never see them again. It took nine more years for someone to finally tell me what had really happened to my parents, and it wasn’t even Uncle Gabe who finally fessed up; it was Adrian. ”You know how most of the produce from the district goes to the Capitol? They took too many crops for themselves, Emery. That’s why they had to leave. They knew the Peacekeepers would be coming to take them away, so they brought us here.” Apparently he’d known about it for three years.

For a while, I was furious with my uncle for telling my brother about it without telling me. But my anger only lasted a month or so. I loved Uncle Gabriel, and I knew he loved me too, so there had to have been a good reason for not telling me the truth. It was all water under the bridge anyways; staying upset at my family wasn’t going to bring my parents back, or make anything better for any of us. Life was good at Uncle Gabe’s house; no one went hungry, and there was no shortage of good company.

Don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way, because no one will ever completely fill the hole that Mom and Dad left behind. But Uncle Gabe is almost like a father to me. I say almost, because it’s always been clear that the love for his own sons is far greater than anything I could ever hope to achieve. It bothered me a lot when I was younger, but now I understand that I can’t really blame him. I’m not his son, I’m his nephew, and Toby and Desmond are his own flesh and blood. Besides, I love them like brothers, and it doesn’t do you any good to be jealous of the people you love.

I remember one time, just a few months after my parents had left, there was this huge thunderstorm—and I’m talking big, like every-boom-of-thunder-makes-the-floor-shake big. Desmond and I were born only a few months apart, and since we were the closest in age, my uncle had put us in a bedroom together. So when I got really scared, I climbed out of my bed and into Desmond’s, who just so happened to also be scared out of his wits. We huddled under the covers and talked to each other until we fell asleep. From that point on, we were inseparable. If you didn’t know us beforehand, you’d probably think we were brothers, and in a way, I guess we are, you know?

Every now and then, I still get those sad looks from people when I tell them my name, and I know they’re thinking, ”Oh, that’s the poor kid with the parents that got shipped off to the Capitol.” They’re sorry for me, but I don’t need them to be. That’s not who I am anymore. I’m Emery Holbrook, a regular kid who lives with his uncle and a family who loves him, and you know what? That’s just fine.

: o o c :

|name/alias| raseri
|age| fourteen
|gender| female
|rping experience| approx. two years
|other characters| directory
|codeword| hello dair
|notes/other| faceclaim is alex libby

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