Niamh Rivers ☁ District Two [fin]

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I'd be lying if I said I didn't crave excitement every once and a while. My life is a grayscale picture book, the kind with words too big to understand and no princesses to fantasize about becoming. The Rivers family is very uniform; we all have the same platinum blonde hair and clouded gray eyes. The house is very quiet, and you could hear a feather falling off a nightstand in a room upstairs. We rarely, if ever, make idle chat and it's normally about Career training or business matters. I used to draw lines on the wall with charcoal, counting the days that I spent at the window, staring at the sun dipping below the horizon, wondering if I would someday be able to become one with the earth. Then mother decided to scrub down the walls, and I stopped counting after that.

My name is Niamh Elise Rivers. I have carried that name on my back for the past fourteen years, and hated it. Sometimes I wish I could just be a normal girl, frolicking around District Two with my friends, partying the night away, and maybe getting some lip action. I've lusted after so many boys at the academy that when I came home after training one day, my father stripped me down and pinned me to the couch, whipping my bare backside with a leather belt to slap some sense into me. "Love is a frivolous emotion," he told me, "one that destroys. Don't waste your time on it, child."

That is just one piece of evidence of my father's hypocrisy. He tells me that love is worthless, that it won't do you any good in the long run. And yet, he arranges a deal with our neighbors and says I am to be married to Amur St. Clair, the snob. I swear he's about as deep as a wading pool. He acts all high and mighty, like nobody can touch him, and expects me to grovel at his feet like every other slut at the training academy. Rumor has it that he got drunk and knocked up my classmate Serein Vellichor. That man is not marriage material. Not to mention he's four years older than me, a legal adult.

My father, David Rivers, is not the only hypocrite in the household. My mother, Saskia, is always breathing down my neck, telling me all about how a proper young lady should be. She should have correct posture, she should never fib, she should always keep her temper in check. Yet she taints my cereal with little white lies, slouches in her chair at breakfast, and snaps at me whenever I don't bring home a perfect score on my exams. My sisters, Peninit and Hibiscus, are the embodiments of perfection. At least, they are when they're around our parents. Once we set foot outside of the house, they start flirting, drinking, and breaking chandeliers and windows everywhere they go. Peninit does a horrible job of covering up her crimes, and it always gets back to our parents. Hibiscus, on the other hand, is such a compulsive liar that it's become second nature to her, and she always gets away with it. Whenever people complain about how reckless my sisters are, my parents don't care. They're too absorbed in shaping me to perfection, trying to get me to contort like a ragdoll, and pulling my strings so I can spit out whatever pre-recorded shit they want to hear. On the days when my parents finally tear their eyes away from me, I run away. I run through the streets, feeling the wind's long, wispy fingers tangling themselves in my hair. People at school call me Ghost and Ghoul, because they see me tearing through the streets in my all white clothes, blonde hair covering my pale face, vanishing before they can even blink.

I don't have any friends at school. I don't know if it's because I'm intimidating, or just because people are terrified of me. I wouldn't blame them. I do tend to snap at my classmates a lot, and of course there are the days when I run around like I have no sense. I wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to walk over to me someday and tell me that I didn't belong here. I have no place in a world of magicians and harlots and tigers on gold leashes. I am not a robot like my parents, yet I am not exactly human. I may have blood pumping through my veins, acne on my face, and scars on my skin, but I will never fit in with any of the people around here. I will never feel human, no matter how many times I put on a mask and try to act like a badass Career or a giggly, stupid schoolgirl. I want so desperately to feel something. I wouldn't mind being driven to the brink of insanity, or even stabbed in the stomach a hundred times over.

I just want to feel something.

To know I'm human.

oDair

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