templar loomis [mayor of district twelve]

templar ricardo loomis
mayor of district twelve

forty-three
male

Born into a wealthy family, I had everything I could've asked for. I was supplied with the needed amount of food, my dad and mom had steady jobs. Our family was close-knit and my parents treated me kindly. But the thing about my parents is that we never talked much. We were tethered together with invisible chains: everyone knew we were connected, but we never showed it. I tried plenty of times to connect with my parents, even offering to bake cookies with my mom once. Too many times my mom and dad copped out of hanging out with me - like it was a chore and not a privilege. Sure, they had work: my dad doing something with the mayor (it was "confidential") and my mom helping women give birth. Both odd jobs, but they both offered a nice salary to support a family, especially one as small as ours.

You want to know what the funny thing is, though? Whenever my dad had a fancy dinner, or my parents had company over, I was suddenly the greatest thing in the world, like I had turned from silver to gold in a matter of seconds. And sure, I did love when my dad called me sport and patted my back, and when my mom called me sweetie and dear, but the worst part was that when the dinner was over, things were back to normal, and it went without saying. I guess I could use the lack of attention my parents gave me as an excuse, but that's a poor one. I've been an introvert for as long as I could remember.

Not that I didn't have friends in school, but we were really just a bundle of hermits, bonding over everything that wasn't sports and wasn't school. I was the smartest of the group, and I suppose the most mature. There was four of us, and of course, now, we've gone our separate ways.

In school, I always did what I was told. And I guess that's one thing that hasn't changed about me. What has changed, however, is my hair, now showing specks of gray that I keep trying to rule out. And my skin is starting to sag like a deflated mattress. My body is starting to shut down altogether, though I have access to the richest foods in the District, and that's something I don't take for granted.

As I got older, I started seeing the world any abandoned son would: clearly. I saw black and white, and I knew there was no in-between. That bothered me a bit. But it was true. My father was not a good man, and my mom was not a good woman.

I can't prove that my dad was a bad father, but I can prove that Mom was. (But the sad part is, I have both of them on me. My roman nose inherited from my father and the wavy hair mainly from my mom. MY dark, brown eyes coming from my mom and my thick eyebrows coming from my dad. And my height, well that comes from my dad, 6'2" ever since I was sixteen.)

I was supposed to sleep over my friends house. I ended up throwing-up, and luckily, he lived a few houses down, so I could just walk home. When I got home, I saw my mom's sweater on the ground, and next to it was a man's. I had supposed it was my dad's, and that it fell from the coat rack, so I didn't think anything of it. As I walked further into the house, I saw more and more articles of clothing, each one getting a bit more interesting as it went on. As I climbed up the steps, curious about the reason of the mess, I heard a thumping through my mom's door, coupled with moans and shouts. "Nancy," a man's voice moaned, but it wasn't my dad's. I ran outside, making sure they didn't hear me, and went back to my friend's house. I told him I was feeling better. In reality, I was feeling worse.

And I didn't tell Dad. Because I'm a good son and I didn't want to upset him, even though that's all he did his whole life to me.

After that, I kind of gave up on my mom. I didn't want to hang out with her any more than she wanted to hang out with me, and for once, I was okay with that. I was wondering if she was ever going to confess about her affair, but she never did. I always wondered how long it had going on for, but apparently, it was pretty long.

When she died of a heart attack three months later, I heard the man at the funeral. Dad probably thought it was an old friend, and that's what I had assumed at first, until he kneeled down in front of her corpse and said, "Nancy." Sure, he didn't moan with intense pleasure, but the way he held out the a and exaggerated the c gave it away. And it was like that only way he knew how to say her name.

Dad was pretty upset about Mom dying, but I wasn't shook much. I felt kind of bad, but what did people expect? Well, I suppose people were expecting me to me sad, but that's because they didn't see what went on at home. Or, I suppose, what didn't go on at home. The lack of attention I got, and then the deflating amount of attention I wanted. I felt like giving up sometimes.

Dad must've realized I wasn't sad, and must've known why, because he tried spending some more time with me. But I was fifteen, and he never really wanted to talk to me before, so what was I supposed to talk to him about? I didn't know the first thing about him. I didn't know what he liked to do, but he didn't like to do, what he wanted to be, what he was. So I gave up talking to him, and again, so did he.

I really didn't have many friends in that stage, which is ironic because that's when I needed them the most. To cope, I set up a special language. It wasn't that special, and it wasn't that hard to crack. You just took whatever the letter was, and flipped it any way I could. For example, 'c's and 'u's were switched. 'M's and 'w's were reversed. 'L's and 'i's were correlated. It's funny, because once you notice that a lot of the letters can be interpreted in a few ways, there's a lot of opportunities.

Let me tell you something right now: I never intended on being a mayor.

But things started to fall in my favor. With friends out of the way, I started to get more time for academics. Dad got some money from Mom's death, and he bought me a library. (I spent days upon days in that room, reading away.) And then, I met a girl. Her name was Summer and knew she was the one.

I was twenty-one, working as a waffle-house waiter, and she was the girl that came into the place every day. And every day, she'd sit at the same place and order the same thing, and I knew what she was getting so I wouldn't even bother writing it down. She was beautiful, with piercing blue eyes that outshone my bland, brown ones and flowing obsidian hair. Eventually, I gathered the nerve to ask her out, and she said yes.

Things were looking up for us. We spent every second together, and I wanted it to be like that for the rest of our lives.

But then, she met some guy. And she knew he was the one. She knew that that was who she was supposed to get married to and she knew that I wasn't Him and she new that all along. She didn't even invite me to her wedding, but she probably knew I wouldn't go anyways. She also never returned to the diner. The girl who took her spot was named Autumn, with ginger hair and freckles with granny-smith green eyes.

Unlike Summer, I didn't think she was the one.

But Autumn asked me out, and I complied.

Time went faster with Autumn, and unlike with Summer, there were no rough patches, only the occasional breeze. And I loved Autumn, and I still do. And if I didn't, I definitely wouldn't have had kids with her. But our marriage, and the story after that, took place ten years after we met. We were thirty-one when we were finally certain, and three years after that, she gave birth to twins - a boy and a girl. They're nine now.

The one thing I'm proud about so far is that I pay attention to them. Dad is still alive, by the way, but he's retired now. Of course, after working for the mayor for so long, he got enough money to live worry-free for the rest of his life.

And, well, let's just say I was part of the reason he retired.

See, after Timberlyn died, I stepped in. Of course, Timberlyn was the second mayor my dad worked for, and not the first. See, my dad didn't exactly retire. I made a deal, however. I told him I'd either fire him, or that he could retire now. Of course, he went with the latter.

I've spent my life doing the opposite of what my dad did. I try to reach out to every person in District Twelve, never leaving anyone behind. I'm a very active mayor and I always want to help. And there is one promise I've made to myself the moment I became mayor: I would never, ever, become my dad.

odair
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