Cammen 'Cam' Tern // District Nine

Cammen 'Cam' Tern

I hate when people call me cute, I still get called that all the time no matter how much I argue. I am not cute. I'm sly, and creative, and smart, and better than everyone but I am not cute. They say it's my hair, how it's always messy and that it looks like I constantly have a case of bedhead. I don't understand how that's supposed to be cute. My hair is messy because I don't care for it - it only gets cut when my mom physically drags me to the barbers and gets it trimmed down to about an inch long. I guess I like it best when it's more like two or three inches long, but really I don't care that much. And my eyes, people always say they make me look adorable. They say they're big and blue and very pretty to look at but I hate it. My eyes look big because they are, they're too big for my face and the blue is so dark it's a wonder people can tell that they aren't black. I mean, I do like the colour, but why does everyone else have to adore it.

Only my mother seems to realize that I'm not the cute little bit everyone sees. Well, my siblings and dad too but my mother most of all. She tells me I have a spark of devilish glee in them a lot, the look that tells her I'm up to something. It's really the only thing people can read in my eyes, even though I wish people couldn't read anything in my eyes at all. Ugh, speaking of things I wish I could change - my voice is annoying. It's so high pitched and squeaky. I wish I had a deeper voice like Aleutian or Caspian, but of course not. I have to be the cute little squeaky brother that everyone treats as though he's still seven even though I'm almost fourteen. Err, I'm thirteen and a half but that's close enough to fourteen right? Rounding up it's fourteen.

It really doesn't help that I'm short. I'm only four feet and eleven inches and I feel like a dwarf. Other kids have made fun of me for it but I've always gotten back at them for it. Even the tall kids can't say that I'm short without knowing I'll pull something on them. I'm thin, too, so no one every suspects I can do anything. I have little muscle, but enough to be able to climb well. I suppose that's one nice thing about not weighing much - I'm only about 80 pounds - but no one else seems to realize that. Besides, I'm quick. I'm one of the fastest kids in my class, and those I can't outpace I can outsmart. No one knows how hard I am to catch, except once again my family and mother in particular - after all, she was the one who had to chase me around when I was a toddler to make sure I didn't hurt myself. I still managed, for all her efforts, but I learned quick what hurt and what didn't. It's one of the reasons I learned to outsmart my siblings.

The clothes I wear are hand-me-downs, it's hard for my parents to be able to afford new clothes for even a couple of us and still put food on the table so I understand. Not to mention, my mother is a skilled seamstress so she can usually fix things up without it looking odd, and sometimes she even takes old clothes and makes new ones out of them so I don't have to wear the exact shirt that Aleutian or Caspian did when they were my age. It also helps that my mother is a seamstress because she can make the clothes fit me since I'm so much smaller than any of my siblings. My favorite pair of shoes that I have are boots that used to be Blake's until his feet got too big. That's one nice thing about having so many older brothers, I suppose, I get a lot of options.

I am the best one in my family, none of them realize it but I am. I'm faster than most of them, and smarter than the rest. I know I can be the best one of them all and prove it, if only we had some sort of competition or something between us. I mean, other than the petty sibling rivalries that sometimes occur because I usually win those but no one seems to care. I do the best in school, at least I do better than Blake and Lestlie - even if I know they don't really care - and I'm sure the others aren't much higher than my marks if they even have higher grades than I do. I am smart, I just cause trouble in school sometimes so the teachers don't like me much. You can't blame me, though, school is boring.

All the other kids my age are stupid, or annoying, or stupid and annoying. Still everyone seems to like them more than me, I'm just adorable in looks and that's about it. No one likes me, all that talk of girls liking the bad boys is a load of hooey. Not one girl has ever told me she liked me, and I can tell you I can be a bad boy. True, I can be a bit obnoxious about being the best at everything but a little competition never hurt anyone. Oh well, if they can't figure that out on their own then there's no point me being with them anyway because I'd have to explain it all. That would be a pain.

Secretly, I wouldn't mind being reaped. It would give me the opportunity to show everyone how good I am, even if I'm some little kid from District nine. There have been winners from the lower Districts before, and one of them was a twelve year old. If she can do it, I can. If I could win the Games then people would wake up and see that I really am the best. My family would all be in awe of me because I did something none of them did. I would finally be unique. Perhaps I feel like this because that's really what I want - to be unique and better than my siblings. Having seven older siblings really casts a shadow over you and it's hard to find your own time in the sun. Well, my time will come soon enough, I'll see to it.

Even from a young age my mother knew I would be one to watch out for. At barely the age of one I was already making mad dashes on all fours - too fast to be called crawling - around the house. Before my father installed a make-shift baby gate I had managed to fall down the stairs three times. Each time I had managed to go a few more steps down before loosing my footing and shooting down on my stomach, much to the fear of my mother. Even after the placement of the baby gate I still managed to take tumbles off of things, since I already began to show my love of climbing.

I hardly took any time in learning to walk. As soon as I was steady on my feet I started to run - my mother chasing me around in usually unsuccessful attempts at saving me from self-harm. I never broke any bones then, still haven't in fact, but that was the one thing I haven't done. I've dislocated joints, gotten cut, scratched, bruised - you name it, it's probably happened to me at some point. Still, I don't have any lasting scars. I got over all of those accidents really quickly, though my mother hasn't.

When I wasn't out performing dangerous stunts, or foolish acts of something like bravery, I was bothering my siblings. Lestlie was my favorite target, and I would always try to pull some trick or ploy against her. Once I managed to set a trap for her that dumped mud all over her. I hadn't realized how much she didn't mind mud, and was rewarded for my efforts with a fistful of mud to the face - I had also forgotten what a good shot she was. Had I pulled the same prank on Brindle I might have gotten a more satisfactory response. Oh well, lesson learned.

Member of the Tern Family

FC: CJ Adams

I'm too lazy to make a fancy table, so this is all you get for now.

Words
Appearance - 687
Personality - 412
History - 315
Total - 1414