Fluke McCormack District One

Appearance: I keep my head down as I walk through the halls of Whitfield Children’s Academy. Perhaps if nobody can see my face, look at my beady sludgy brown eyes or my bushy eyebrows they won't say anything, won't practice their training on me, won't mention my business or my parents. That’s the way I am at school. Hiding. I hide my stringy brown hair beneath a hat and my pale boney arms beneath a hoodie. I stoop and refuse to make eye contact and my thin lips rarely part to speak to anyone or flash my crooked smile. My large ears are always hidden behind my hair and my eyes behind my thick, dirty glasses. Really, when it all boils down to it, there's very little I don’t hide in that place. But hiding is good. Hiding keeps me safe.

I suppose it’s no wonder they pick on me when you get a good look at me. I'm nothing like them. I'm not tall or muscular or loud or fast. I'm short, skinny, and weak. I’ve sprained my ankles so many times they want to twist out when I walk making me loud and clumsy when I move. My spindly fingers and toes are just a bit longer than it looks like they should be, so buying shoes or loves that fit right has always been a challenge. And speaking of clothes that don’t fit right, since the shop’s started failing, my parents have started making me wear my father’s old clothes so that I still look “nice” when I go to school. He of course was a real career. Like my classmates, taller than me, stronger than me, better than me. So my day to day outfits are all baggy and held up with belts and safety pins.

Like my mom and dad, I’m desperate. But they're desperate to stay in the wealthy crowd and keep up with the Joneses and I'm desperate to get out of the wealthy crowd. The people at Whitfield and my parents friends are all elitist bastards. I have no loyalty to any of them and they have none for me. They tease me and play up my many insecurities. My one goal in life is to get out of my situation and into one where people actually care about each other instead of just maintaining appearances and keeping faux friendships in a grotesque attempt to one up the neighbors.

But as much as I hate the rich in District One, I need them. You see, they are paying for me to get out of here. Every time I sell one of them my wares, I get that much closer to becoming a traveler and leaving this terrible place for somewhere where people really care about each other and actually know how to love. I know it sounds corny, but I'm breaking bad to try to find something that I could never find among the terrors that prowl the halls of Whitfield. I want someone to love who would actually love me back and not just want to use me to make money. So every night after my classes, I use my extensive knowledge of botany and chemistry to grow and create a wide range of drugs to sell to the disgusting swine of District One. They eat it up. I can’t even count the number of people who are addicted to my stuff. I know I should feel bad for ruining lives like this, but if you really think about it, the people I'm hurting are more like animals than humans anyway, so it doesn’t matter in the end.

You know what else I hate? I hate the Hunger Games. That’s right. I train to be in them every day at school and don’t want to have my moment of glory. I am a realist. I know that I wouldn’t have a chance in that arena and the sadistic part of me finds humor in the fact that my peers wouldn’t either. So even as my parents take tesserae for me to help with bills and train me so they can end up with the ultimate honor—having a victor for a son—I am dreading the day my name gets pulled from that orb with all of my heart because that is the day that my death warrant will be signed and I will know that everything I’ve done, everything I've worked so hard for will be for nothing. Worst of all, my chances of living a long, simple, and happy life would be shot.

My parents were both born into money. Not a lot, but they were both the children of well to do businesspeople. My dad’s family ran a gem cutting operation that kept them in a nice home and mom’s family owned a butcher shop. They married for each other’s money and have been arguing ever since. The only thing they have in common is their all-consuming greed and pride. For the first few years of marriage, they lived life large and made “friends” with the rich and frivolous members of our community. They wasted their family fortunes on fine clothing, a nice house, and fancy food and wine. What they didn’t expect was the added cost of a child.

I was a surprise sixteen years ago. Neither of my parents really liked children and they definitely didn’t want to have any. I was most likely the product of a drunken night of partying. That’s where I got my accidental name, Fluke. Now my parents were angry to be a new mom and dad because they could barely afford to keep up their lavish lifestyle just the two of them and they assumed I would be expensive to keep, but like the other members of their social circle, they bought me nice things and paraded me around as though I was their pride and joy.

As a small kid, my parents were pretty much absent. They continued to eat high off the hog and party every night and pretend that we had money and weren’t racking up more debt faster we could ever pay back. I had everything money credit could buy, but I never got to spend any time with my mom or dad. They just kept living like I wasn’t there. As time went on, I began to resent them for thinking that I was as materialistic as them or that they could buy my affection. So I decided that if they were going to live like I didn’t exist, I’d do the same to them. All day every day, I would study my books. Science books about how the world works were my only friends. So as they went around gallivanting and acting like out of control high schoolers, I was expanding my horizons and my knowledge base.

When I turned ten, everything changed. A few of my parent’s friends decided that they would send their children to this new high-end school where they would be trained to be champions in the Hunger Games and also get a normal school education of English and Mathematics and Science and things like that. My parents knew that they couldn’t afford to send me there, but they couldn’t bear to tell their friends that they weren’t as wealthy as they had seemed. So I went off to become a future victor and scholar with a bunch of the most spoiled rich kids in the district known for its spoiled rich kids.

Needless to say I hated school. The only thing there worth doing was science class and that unlike my books really only focused on manufacturing and gemstones and things that have to do with us making luxury goods for the capitolites. The other students were all terrible to me because I was one of the few students who were not big and intimidating. So I became games practice on a daily basis. Each night, I had more bruises and battle scars from my classmates’ torturous actions.

Eventually, my dad sat down with me and told me that we were having money issues. I was disgusted that he expected me to be surprised or feel bad for him. He told me that what they would probably have to cut out of the budget was me. “You see son, you're old enough now that you can probably find work somewhere and manage to buy your own things.” They decided that they would continue to pay for my tuition to the hellish academy to make sure their friends didn’t wonder and they sent me off into the workforce.

At first, I was stressed out about finding a job. I didn’t really want to go into either family business or become a craftsman’s apprentice. What I really wanted to do was to be a scientist or apothecary. So I read up on those science books and discovered a way I could make money and do something I enjoy. I became a drug dealer. I started out small with just a couple of hydroponic cannabis plants, but my drugs sold like hotcakes in the stuffy halls of Whitfield academy. For a few seconds every day, my peers would treat me like an actual person as they would give me their money in exchange for my high quality recreational items. But soon the marijuana just wasn’t enough for many of my clients. I decided to take my operation one step further and begin to make and sell methamphetamine.

I have no idea how my parents have missed the meth lab in my bedroom for two weeks now, but as it stands, I've actually been able to not only pay for my own food and clothes and toiletries, but I've also been able to save up some cash. Someday soon, I’ll have enough to set out into the open woods as a wanderer and hopefully, I’ll meet some people who share my ideals who I can actually stand to be around.