CHARLIE TERRACE | D2 | FINISHED

( N A M E ) Charlotte Charlie Terrace
( A G E ) Fifteen
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District Two

(A P P E A R A N C E )

I'm a twig and I like it that way.

But really, it's all just a bunch of genetic crap. My skin's paper, bones are frail, and the cold slips right through them. The thing is, my mom's skin is paper too, and her bones are frail. I walk like her, with a lanky gait, and our clothes hang off of us like curtains on a rod.

I can feel how achingly brittle I am with this pen in my hand.

I write down:

I do feel like shit, but this is my way of coping.

I fold the paper into fourths and pop it into my mouth, chewing it until a papery spit builds up and I have to swallow it every so often. I push the paper down my throat, feeling it slowly fall down my esophagus and find a home in my stomach's acid.

I close my eyes and look up. I run my hands over my cheekbones, which are broad and unappealing and give my face a very stern look. I run my hands through my mousy brown hair, thin and free. I rub my middle finger over the stubble between my two eyebrows, reach behind my neck and feel the tip of spine threatening to break loose of my brittle skin.

I throw my head back and groan, feeling completely tired of this don't-give-a-shit lifestyle when, in reality, I do give a shit.

This chair, which sits in this grey room, in a very grey lifestyle, is dark and is chipped around the edges and is faded in the seat, which fits like a bucket. I'm tired of this chair, so I get out of it, and my face no longer fits in the mirror.

I don't have boobs.
I don't have anything.
Like clothes, or fucks to give.
Really, I'm one thing.
Brittle from birth.
Just a twig.
I don't care, though.
I'm fine with that.

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

My mom, which has always acted as a model of what not to be, punishes me by reminding that I'm much more like her than I'd ever care to admit. During her teenage years, she did many of the things that I do now.

Joints are a daily thing, filling up the voids that a lack of true companionship has caused. I throw my head up to the sky and blow it out in a potent stream of smoke. My tongue twists with whatever human I can get whenever my system's controlled by the power of liquor, and my hands comb their hair the way my dad did when I was smaller and innocent and there.

I'm following in my mother's footsteps, which spell out the word c o p e. That's all I do. All I do is cope, because I don't know how to do anything else.

Sometimes I run. I run until my lungs burn and my chest bounces as I stuff polluted particles deep into my body.

Sometimes I throw rocks against rocks because they have it so easy.

Most of the time I try not to give a shit by doing just the opposite.

( H I S T O R Y )

I made Mom stop calling me Charlotte when I was 5 years old.

"Why?" she'd asked, when I'd sternly and very clearly told her that Charlotte wasn't my name.

"Because I'm not that much of a girl, Mommy," I'd replied.

My little yellow dress was covered in the dust of the mountains, my hair was crusty against the back of my neck from the sweat. At that point she coped by keeping a few syringes full of morphling in a drawer by her bed and a fair collection of liquor bottles in the corner by the trash bin.

"Sure you are," she said, and she pulled her fingers through my hair the way she always did. I didn't have anything to worry about then.

"No I'm not. I don't want to be."

"Then you're not. What do you want to be called, then?"

"Charlie."

And from there on out I wasn't Charlotte, I was Charlie, and nobody knows.

---

Dad left when I was two, so I don't remember it. I remember hearing it at the kitchen table when I'd turned 12, and my armpits had started to stink for the first time.

"Your dad really liked... things, he just never had the money for 'em, y'know?" my mom had said while we picked at our potatoes.

"Yeah, I know," I replied, thinking of how mom knitted blankets for a living, and how she ached over her knuckles all of the time.

"But he was caught. It was just a loaf of bread, but it was enough for a life without words. I remember holding you that night and wiping my tears on your forehead, in hopes that maybe you could share the pain I felt. I didn't want to go through it alone. I did though, and I still do. He's avoxed in the Capitol and I have no way of ever seeing him again."

That night, I cried.

---

The first time I fell in love, it was with a girl. She walked to school with her hair pulled back and her books in a dark green satchel. She would sit outside by herself at lunchtime and bite into apples. I sat by myself too, I just didn't have anything to eat like she did.

She looked at me once and smiled and patted the grass beside her. The Games were full fledged at that time and Drusilla Charlesburg was tearing it up with that freak from District 12.

"What's your name?" I asked after a minute or two of silence.

"My name's Naomi. What's yours?" she asked.

It felt so weird to have a friend. I didn't know which to answer with.

"My name is Charlie," I responded.

A year later I tried to kiss her. The night was young and the moon hung over our heads with the stars dancing around it, and we watched them from the rocks we first held hands on and then pushed me off. That night I took a knife from the kitchen and made three long lines across my right thigh. My hands shook.

I found marijuana a few months later, when I easily slipped into the wannabe careers.

Now we all cope by saying we don't give a shit.

( C O D E W O R D )
odair

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