Yarrow Cicle//D12

There’s not really anything in particular in my appearance that sets me apart from the other boys in my district, in my opinion. I mean, I have the typical look of those who dwell in the Seam, with my olive skin and wide grey eyes (the color of slush). I have black hair as well, although it has gotten a bit shaggy in recent months, curls close to reaching my shoulders. I would find a pair of scissors to cut it with, but there are more pressing matters on my mind. I have thick eyebrows, and I can often be seen squinting. I’m a bit nearsighted, but I live in The Seam, so I can’t exactly afford eyeglasses. Nor can I afford acne cream or anything like that.

Anyways, puberty has at least given me a blessing where height is concerned. I stand at about 6’5’’, so you can probably pick me out in a crowd. My build is average- not too skinny, but not too plump. As for muscles, I don’t exactly have the biggest ones. I can usually be seen wearing a brown tunic and soot-stained jeans.

My motto is “Smile- the world will think you’re up to something”. And that holds true for me., because I usually am up to some mischief. You have to be, when you’re in the line of business I’m in. You also have to look for advantages and one-ups whenever possible, so I’ve learned how to sweet-talk people, It doesn’t always work though- some people in D12 are smarter than most people think.

I also can be little cold-hearted, I’ll admit. I see people as tools rather than flesh and blood. But there’s one person I’ll always protect- Yisteri, my older sister. I care deeply for her, and know I’ll always have to protect her. I will do anything for her, even murder, although I haven’t had to go that far yet. I mean, she became a little crazy after...I’ll talk about that later. Right now it’s about me.

I am constantly adapting to every curveball that comes my way, and I’m always on guard, ready to fight if needed. I wish I didn’t have to fight, though, to live the life I’m living. But it’s necessary to my survival, so yeah, always on guard. I am a thief and a liar, true, but I’m also a man. I am never above working and baking my own bread, if that’s what it takes. I leave the baking mainly up to Yisteri, though. She’s happiest elbow deep in dough. Sometimes, when she’s not looking, I’ll peer into the small kitchen we have, and as she’s kneading bread dough, I sometimes see her smile, one of the rare occasions she has done so since our Dad died. And that smile...it gives me hope. That smile makes me think that maybe, just maybe, things will be alright.

Well, I was never able to choke much information from Dad about life before I was born. But from the few scraps of knowledge I’ve gotten and recorded in the small journal I keep hidden from the world, I know this much: Mom and Dad were Seam kids from the start, and somewhere along the line, they must have fallen in love. When they were twenty-something, the Hob was just coming alive in D12. I don’t know what made them have such courage, but my parents took a chance, broke the rules, and set up a shop in the Hob, selling stolen bread. Eventually, they figured out that the bakers of D12 threw perfectly good bread out, either it being too stale or burnt or stuff like that, and started to sell that, with the occasional theft of goods. My parents also made bread sometimes- it wasn’t very good, but they were able to make money off of all this.

And then they must have done the hink dink at some point, because a couple years after setting up shop and they had made a decent amount of money by District 12 standards, my mother gave birth to Yisteri, my older sister. She was adorable, which I know from the one picture Dad kept of her birth. So they decided to have another, much cooler baby boy, two years after she was born. That was me, obviously.

But Mom died in childbirth, and Dad didn’t tell me much about her condition. When he usually got to this part, he gave me a long stare. I don’t know much about what he was like before my birth, but I don’t think he was the same ever since. He blamed me, I could tell, and he was a very candid man. But I still respected him. Anyways, Yisteri and I were born into Hob and Seam life. Dad, known as “Bakey”, would take us down to the Hob to open up shop every day, and in the early years, a woman named Nitrice sometimes took care of us while she sold her strawberries.

We proved to be good at our jobs over the years, having a blast making bread and digging through trash. Okay, I wouldn’t exactly call it a blast, but it entertained us. Still does, to a lesser extent. In school, we were (and I still am) both able to make friends decently, and got good grades. And Yisteri was a genius, I think, before Dad died. If you saw her doing math, you would have thought she came from District 6 or 3, where great minds dwell.

But we should have been watching Dad. Over the years, he became more and more distant and depressed. But one day, something must have pushed him over the edge. We came home from school one day, about three months ago, and found him lying on the floor, dead, a steak knife in his heart. I was shaken up by it, no matter how much I hated the old bastard, and I cried for days after. Nobody was affected more by it than Yisteri, though. She’s locked herself away from the world now, and barely speaks, maybe saying six words a day, maximum. Her mental processes have definitely been slowed by grief, and I don’t know how long she’ll remain this way. Or if she’ll ever come out of this state.

The only thing that keeps us out of the community home is the fact that Yisteri is 18, of adult age, and is able to care for me. But she can’t care for me, we both know that. I’ve been skipping school more often to work the shop at the Hob, to keep us alive. Yisteri stays at home.

But I don’t know how much longer we can live this way. Our money is dwindling, and my sister gets worse by the day. But I shall always have hope...