idris antoinette; d2 :: done

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Sept 30, 2024 8:20:29 GMT -5	idris antoinette; d2 :: done Feb 26, 2014 22:30:02 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2014 22:30:02 GMT -5 Name: Idris Serafine Antoinette Age: Seventeen Gender: Female District/Area: Two Appearance: Personality: History: Codeword: O HAI DAIR. Other: BURN - VERSAEMERGE
	Last Edit: Feb 27, 2014 2:41:54 GMT -5 by Deleted

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idris antoinette; d2 :: done Feb 26, 2014 23:41:26 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2014 23:41:26 GMT -5

“You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.”
_Chuck Palahniuk

4AM Alarm goes off. Get up, pull on shorts and a tank top, shiver because my stepfather keeps the house like a fucking meat locker, shuffle blindly down the hall to the bathroom. Squint under the fluorescents until my eyes are mud-brown slits, sleepy fingers fumbling to pull matted chestnut hair up into a high ponytail. Scowl at the mirror. Square jaw. Broad shoulders. Stick-out ears. Fyffe always was the pretty one. Tiptoe down the hall with too-big feet, past all the rooms, my mother and stepfather's, Fyffe's, each one of my step-siblings'. I'm the only one awake at this hour. Stop at the front door and lace up running shoes. One step out the door. Two. Breathe in. Out. Sprint off into the sleeping District like if I run fast enough, all my doubts won't be able to catch me.

5AM Run up the gravel drive to the cemetery, breath screaming up my trachea in painful wheezes. Stop and lean over at the waist, fighting the urge to throw up and smiling in self-allowed victory when I don't. Catch my breath and start walking the rows of tombstones with an automatic familiarity, fingers tracing over etched names. Old friends. Jaime Lyon. Cassius Birch. Demeter Glory. Maia Grayson. Nash Harvey. Stupid fuckers. We're told to revere our fallen tributes, but how much reverence can they be worth? They're fucking dead. The only tribute of District Two that has my respect shares my last name, and she can't seem to find the decency to give me the goddamn time of day. Of course she can't. No one in this fucking family's got time for me. That's why I make time for myself, here in this gray hour before sunrise, spending time with the only friends I have. The ones who remind me of what not to be. Mutter a quiet goodbye and take off spitting gravel in my wake. Home for a shower and a few more minutes of solitude before I have to run the real gauntlet.

7AM Sit down for breakfast, hair damp and eyes narrowed. Ask Baptiste what the fuck he's looking at with that shit-eating smirk on his face. Look around at everyone else's bounty. Bacon. Pancakes. French toast. Look down at my own plate. One half of a grapefruit and one carefully-measured cup of granola. A self-imposed regimen. A Career's body is a machine, one that requires the right kind of fuel. I'm not the pretty one, not the smart one, which leaves my only possible option as being the strong one. Shoot a glare at Fyffe with her perfectly-imperfect hair-makeup-everything and wonder how in the high holy fuck we shared a womb for nine months. That's what people always ask. "Really?" they say. "You're twins? But she's so..." Pretty. Smart. Talented. Purportedly good in the sack. Yeah, I know, fuck off. The bitch beat me in the race out of our mother's body, and she's been kicking my ass at life ever since. She knows it, too. We're both rebels, but with different causes and outcomes. Her infamy is better than my obscurity any day of the week, and some part of me is convinced that lording it over me is the only way she can sleep at night. Push the rest of my granola aside with vague disgust, tell my stepdad to mind his own fucking business when he asks what's wrong. Stalk out of the kitchen and out the door before Mom can yell at me. The distance to school can be an extra work out, and it sure as hell beats being forced to ride with the rest of the Brady Bunch.

8AM Come into my first period English class at a flat-out run, hair flying and sweat clinging to my forehead. Notice that Fyffe is already perched in her chair, pretty as an art nouveau picture framed with some greasy creep looking down her shirt. Accidentally-on-purpose knock hard into her shoulder on my way down the row of desks. Try to ignore the knuckle-dragging dudebro that snipes "Watch it, manhands!" as I pass. Fail. Lash back with a loud "Watch it yourself, fuckwad!" that earns me my third detention this week courtesy of the potty mouth my mother's been trying to squash out of me since I was five years old. I got it from Dad. In a way, it's the last thing I have left of him. Fuck anyone who thinks I'm dropping it now. Everyone else smiles and plays nice and pretends it's some kind of okay that we've got a fucking brood of step-somethings taking over our goddamn house. At least I'm as pissed off about it as everyone else is too politically correct to be. I didn't choose a new father. I don't want one. And he doesn't seem to want me either, which is A-Fucking-Okay in my book. Dick. Fold myself into a chair at the back of the room and bite my tongue. The guidance counselor told me after I got hauled in for my seventh fistfight that I should count when I'm mad. And I'm counting one, counting two, counting three...

12PM Move through the cafeteria in Fyffe's shadow, thankful for the concealment. The unwashed goddamn masses can look at her all they want. It's when they look at me that noses end up getting broken. Do a sweep of the room, an instinctual headcount, make sure all the little Antoinette-Descartes ducks are in a row. Check. Check. Chec- red flag. Knuckle-dragging dudebro from first period is getting all up in Lyulf's face. See the insults dripping from his lips all the way across the room. Stalk over and plant a fist in the fucker's jaw before he has time to let another nasty word hit the air. Glare at the suddenly-silent pedestrians, silently dare one of them to get a teacher. No? Didn't think so. Wrap an arm around Lyulf's shoulder and guide him over to the table I've got set up with Lisse and the others. It might not be by my choice, but he's family now. You fuck with one of them, you fuck with me. Sit down, look at my fuel. An apple and a salad, low-fat dressing. My twin eats whatever the hell she wants and looks great. Life's little injustices. Bite into the apple more fiercely than I mean to. Tell Baptiste fo fuck off for the tenth time today.

4PM Sink a knife into a dummy's head. Another one in its heart. Another one in its femoral artery. This is my kingdom. I might fall prey to insults and social exclusion at school, but no one fucks with me at the Training Center. It's only taken a few years of asshole after asshole getting hauled out on a gurney to make the fact sink in that here, I'm untouchable. Here, I'm content. Here, I'm about as close to happy as I'm ever likely to get. Shoot a glance over to where Cricket is watching with some of the coaches. Let a small, crooked smile settle on my lips. I'm not the only Antoinette that makes a habit of namedropping our Victor cousin, but in my case, Cricket's name is less of a bragging right and more of a prayer. I want to be her. I want to be the best. I want to be seen and loved and given everything that my sister stole from me growing up. Raise my hand in a vague wave. If she sees me, she doesn't show it. Feel the smile die on my face. Sink a knife into a dummy's head. Another one in its heart. Another one in its femoral artery. This is my kingdom. I'll rule it with or without Cricket's help someday.

6PM Sit down for dinner. The Brady Bunch is having steak and white cheddar mashed potatoes. I am having a whole-wheat wrap stuffed with turkey and lettuce. Rabbit food, my stepfather tries to joke. Tell him to shut up and eat his life-shortening hunk of cow. Bite back a joke about how he can take his pick of what I meant, the steak or my mother. Listen to Mom bitch about how she got a call from the school again regarding my behavior. Snap that if they're going to ground me for saving Lyulf's bony ass from the dicks we call our classmates, I'll just let the bullies get him next time. Wait for Baptiste to flick brussel sprouts at me three times before I stand up, throw a piece of our best crystal at his head, and scream at him to fuck off before I shove my foot so far up his ass that he'll puke up my shoe tomorrow morning. Tune out Mom bitching about my mouth and sit back down, staring at my empty plate. I know not to ask to be excused. You're part of this family, Idris. Act like it. Idris is a stuffy-ass name. Mom picked it. I've never liked it. I didn't like the name Antoinette either, until it came back with a Victor's crown on it. Don't like it attached to Descartes one fucking bit. But who here gives a shit what I like? Sit with my teeth clenched, listening to them all chew. Baptiste flicks another brussel sprout at me, and I'm counting sixty-six, counting sixty-seven, counting sixty-eight...

8PM Report to the living room for the manufactured hell referred to as "family game night." The parents think that their sad efforts will somehow make a group of kids whose tolerance of each other is just barely beyond the level of outright loathing into the picture perfect family. Twice a week, we huddle around a scrap of cardboard and some fanciful pieces and pretend we like each other so we can get out sooner. Sulk at the end of the coffee table and twitch at every forced laugh I hear from someone's mouth. My move. Fyffe's move. Mom's move. Cycle after cycle of buying up imagined real estate with scrap-paper money until I lose track of it all. My turn again. Again. Again. Baptiste is cheating, the little shit. Snap at him, get a stupid smirk in response. Yell out a stream of profanity and chuck my game piece right between his freaky alien eyebrows. Stepdad tells me to settle down; it's just a game. Flip the coffee table and stomp upstairs with a scream of rage, slam the door of my room behind me. Hear them laughing downstairs. Assholes.

10PM Lay out two sets of clothes. One for my morning workout. One for school. Strip out of clothes and into pajamas. Listen to the house falling asleep around me, Fyffe's door closing on the other side of the wall followed by the dull creak of her climbing directly out her window, off for another night on the town, Mom and Stepdad mumbling to each other in the hallway. Tuck myself into bed. Set alarm. Close my eyes and try to sleep, imagine a field of fluffy sheep, and I'm counting a hundred and nine, counting a hundred and ten, counting a hundred and eleven... Dream violent dreams that would be a psychiatrist's field day, about taking a nice, sharp knife to Fyffe's pretty little face until she's not the pretty one anymore, until people won't glaze over me like a problem child with my hair-trigger temper and my too-big nose. Listen to her scream and cry. Roll over and smile slightly in my sleep.

4AM Alarm goes off. Get up, pull on shorts and a tank top, shuffle blindly down the hall to the bathroom. Squint under the fluorescents until my eyes are mud-brown slits, sleepy fingers fumbling to pull matted chestnut hair up into a high ponytail. Scowl at the mirror. Square jaw. Broad shoulders. Stick-out ears. Fyffe always was the pretty one. Tiptoe down the hall with too-big feet, past all the rooms, my mother and stepfather's, Fyffe's, each one of my step-siblings'. I'm the only one awake at this hour. Stop at the front door and lace up running shoes. One step out the door. Two. Breathe in. Out. Sprint off into the sleeping District like if I run fast enough, all my doubts won't be able to catch me.

Last Edit: Feb 28, 2014 11:37:07 GMT -5 by Deleted

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Sept 30, 2024 8:20:29 GMT -5	idris antoinette; d2 :: done Feb 27, 2014 2:43:37 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2014 2:43:37 GMT -5 Le done~

✨ zozo. Retired Staff 8,203 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Sept 23, 2024 14:15:14 GMT -5 bloomtodeath	idris antoinette; d2 :: done Feb 27, 2014 4:32:59 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by ✨ zozo. on Feb 27, 2014 4:32:59 GMT -5 UM OK SO I LOVE HER LIKE A LOT WOW
	“and men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins.”