Amaryllis Ainsworth//D11// Done

You know what I fucking hate? Thorns. They're sharp and get stuck in your skin and you have to stop and yank them out before they bury themselves too deep. Plus, it's another reason for your mother to yell at you not to go around barefoot- which I think is dumb. We should eliminate all thorns and stickers from nature and abandon shoes. Feet were made to become one with the earth, to have soil stuck under nails and mud to slip between toes. I think shoes are prisons, and thorns are what entangled our feet in such detention centers. As for myself, I try to free my feet as much as humanly possible. Every chance I get I slip my feet out for a bit of sunshine and air. They're calloused things, usually caked with dirt but I don't mind. I like to feel the ground beneath me without a middle man. I want something pure and I think the purest thing in the world is to just stand in a field with your feet in the dirt, letting a breeze roll over you. In that moment you're not a worker, you're not a sister, you're not any other title that you never wanted in the first place. All responsibilities roll away until you are what nature intended you to be- unadulterated you.

Except sometimes you don't know who you are. I know that sounds so "coming-of-age" but hey I'm on the brink of adulthood. I'm almost out of the clutches of the Reaping so I can farm for the rest of my life and die. That sounds a little cynical doesn't it? Well, I guess. I mean I love the fields, don't get me wrong. I really do think there is something spiritual about being one with the wheat. Most summer nights I take some time to myself and sneak out into the fields and sit in the fields, hidden by the tall stalks and dimming light. You might think that's silly but if you were in my shoes you'd do the exact same thing. The Ainsworth homestead sits on a piece of land so dusty and old that even the Peacekeepers only check up on us once a week. No one wants to travel to the far reach of the district to check up on some quiet farmers. Our haul makes up only a fraction of the food in the Capitol, something that is brought up every year when we turn in our crops. "You'll need to improve your harvest or your land will be given to a more profitable family." They say, checking off their spreadsheets and weighing the blood, sweat, and tears we have churned out that year.


There's a very thin line the citizens of District Eleven walk every year. They're allowed only a minuscule percentage of their own crops, and they have to decide how much to sell and how much to keep to eat themselves. Naturally, you want more people to work the fields but that also means more mouths to feed. It's a snake eating its own tale. In our quaint little home we have my mom and dad in one room, my father's parents in another, my mother's brother and my own brother on the floor in the main room, and one tiny room for myself, my sister, and my cousin. And those are only the permanent residents, my father is a sucker for other citizens who are down on their luck and need a place to work until they can get back on their feet- or more often until it's their kid's birthday and they can collect tessera. There isn't a single area in our drafty house that hasn't been used as a bed. I'm one of the lucky ones, I get an actual mattress stuffed with a combination of hay and cotton that we've collected over the years. The only problem is I share it with my younger cousin, Nettle, and my kid sister, Aster. They're sweet girls but they're significantly younger than me and love to talk. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to their stories and jokes and we keep each other warm on cold nights but sometimes I all I want in the world is my own bed to spread out on. I don't want to have to fight over blankets or have to give up my only pair of wool socks to my grandmother because she's my elder. I want my own house and my own stuff, but in a place like this it's only a dream.

I don't spend a lot of time inside the house. It's too stuffy and people breath too loudly. Raspy, gasping breaths that make goosebumps grow all over your body and send a spike through your temple. It's hard enough I have to give up my warm clothes and the idea of a second serving of dinner to these people, do they have to steal my thoughts too? Of course, they want everything. They think they've earned it. My grandfather always calls us reaping aged kids "temporary." In his eyes we don't become actual members of the family until we turn nineteen. It's hard being so close to being respected but it still being out of reach. Of course the other members of the family chide him for saying such things but you can see it in their eyes- they don't want to get too attached yet. They love us, of course, but they know how quickly a name can be picked and we could be gone forever. It hurts us but it makes it easier on them.

There's only three of us still not of age: Aster, Nettle, and myself. My older brother, Kord, is twenty going on fifty-eight and has earned the position of adult. He's supposed to watch us when we're working. He just thinks he's so important because everyone else isn't afraid of him dying on TV anymore. Jokes on him because once I turn nineteen he won't be so special anymore. He thinks a few years between us makes us so different, but we have the same sandy curly hair, the same dirt brown eyes, and the same smart mouth that gets our hands smacked with rulers at school. We have a few differences of course, he always makes fun of my lower lip because it is so much larger than the top. It's like I got my mother's top lip and my father's bottom one. He just got both of mom's lips so when he grins they seem to vanish and he's all teeth. I knocked one a tooth out of his mouth once, but it was only a baby one and he made me promise not to tell anyone or else they'd think he as a coward and couldn't fight for himself- which is completely correct but I kept his little secret to this day. His tooth is buried out near the barn somewhere. I hope in a hundred years people come across that little baby tooth and get really freaked out- that would make my knuckles aching for a week worth it.

The warm dry air of District Eleven agrees with my lungs but not my hair. All the different kinks and curls fly and frizz every which way. It's always a toss up each morning, either I'll look alright or like a complete crazy person. Aster has it worse, I always have to drag a brush through her hair each morning and fight it into a bun. She doesn't like her long hair and wants to shave it all off and be bald like our uncle but ma would have heart attack if she saw her sweet daughter with a buzz cut. However, I may or may not have promised to help her shave it for her nineteenth birthday.

Nineteen, there's that number again. I feel like everyone in the world is waiting to reach that milestone so they can go on living again. It's hard to commit to anything, especially around Reaping season, with a threat like the Hunger Games hanging over your head. I mean, can you blame us? No one wants to hang around for nineteen years before truly diving into life but for your teen years you're floating in purgatory and everyone knows it.

A few miles from the Ainsworth house, right at the edge of the District before you get to the tall electric fences, there's a tiny little pond. I found it when I was about twelve, the age everyone stopped thinking you were cute and started thinking of you as dead meat. I wandered around until I found the greenish little thing. Tiny, slimy frogs live in it, jumping around just waiting for me to scramble along the bank to catch them and return home covered in mud from head to toe holding a frog to give to my mom. She always chides for getting clothes dirty but I saw what's the point to having them if you don't put them to real use? She didn't see it like that and made me go out to the barn and beat those clothes on a rock and wash every slip of mud out of them. I end up washing a lot of my own clothes because everyone else refuses to deal with them. They don't get nature is meant to be rolled around in. Mud isn't for stepping over it's for jumping in! Wheat isn't just for selling, it's something to observe and ponder. Corn isn't only table food, it's food for thought. You plant a tiny seed and with a little love you can grow something that can help you grow in return. It's an amazing thing and they just don't see that. They see spreadsheets like the Keepers, they see profits and dollar signs that they don't have. They still haven't realized we're not a big farm like the other's around the district. We're not like the orchards near the town square, we're a tiny corner that grows wheat. We won't leave a big footprint on the world, so we should do as much to enjoy our time instead.

Think of it this way- in the summer, with a few stalks of corn bought by helping the farm down the road, and a few tomatoes from another, and some potatoes of our own, my father makes Corn Chowder. A splash of milk, a few vegetables, and you have one of my favorite parts of summer. My parents stretch the soup to feed nine people for as much of wee as they can and while they see it as being thrifty I think of it as a traditional meal. It's super tasty and has so many different flavors and textures but they think of it as a hodgepodge of stuff thrown together in just way that you can stomach eating it. I realize we don't eat fancy Capitol food all the time but we don't have to. We have our own traditions and delicacies. I used to put a smile on my mom's face talking about soup and rituals when I was little, but she hardly listens to me now that I can be Reaped. It really is hard to be invisible for a whole decade of your life.

She used to be so proud of her children. She would brag to the neighbors about how pretty and happy her wild haired kids were. Kord, Amayllis, and Aster all running around like hooligans with Nettle by their side ready to dig up any trouble they could find. Now, it's a solemn "forever in your favor" and a silent prayer when she runs into the other farmers. Sometimes I want to take her by the shoulders and just scream at her "I'M NOT DEAD YET!" but I doubt it would work. The only person who really listens to us kids is Uncle Peake. He's different from everyone else because he isn't an Ainsworth and never will be. My father's family's attitude might have poisoned my mother but it could never reach Peake. He was the one who would talk to us when no one else would. When I was freshly twelve and everyone turned me away he was the one who held me when I cried. While his shaved head and bushy beard may seem threatening to strangers, he is one of the kindest people I know. Sometimes I wish I were Nettle so I didn't have to be an Ainsworth. I could be a Combs like them. Amaryllis Combs... it sounds like I'm doing Aster's hair. Maybe, I'll change my name when I'm older.

You know what else is stifling? School. I always thought it would be somewhere I could get away from a room full of people but it's even more crowded than home and all we talk about are crops. What soil is best for kale, when you should switch crops so the ground doesn't die- stuff I'd been hearing my whole life. It must be interesting for other districts. I'd be much more interested in learning about "luxury items" whatever those are. Actually, I wish we learned anything about the other districts besides what people say during the Games. School might be a little more bearable if they talked about it in a less sanitized way. Farming takes heart, anyone who has worked from plow to harvest knows that and the teachers talk like it's nothing. Of course, they send their students off to die like it's nothing every year so I can't really blame them I guess.

I'm not going to lie, I skip school a lot. When I come back they ask and I always pull the "pa and ma needed help on the farm" card because it always works. Supplying the Capitol with quality goods is more important than going to school and they know it. I must take a day off at least once a week just to gather my thoughts. Sure, Nettle and Aster still go but they're younger. It's expected that I, the eldest of the school aged kids, be kept home. I've learned about as much as I can. All you gotta know is wheat is thin and yellow and tomatoes are round and red- really it isn't that hard. Do what your parents say and you'll get by. Where was I- oh yes, skipping school. I'll walk out to the pond or just around the district and take a day to myself. Being cooped up in that house with eight other people can take a toll on your mind so I just walk around. I can't buy anything and the shopkeepers have learned that by now so I usually leave them be and go around the town square. As long as you look like you know where you're going the Peacekeepers won't stop you either- unless you get an angry one. A few times in the last few months a tall skinny one has yelled at me for being out of school and being, and I quote, "an uneducated, barefooted toad" which I think could have been a little more imaginative. I mean I don't look like a toad at all I'm more cat like than anything else. I'm taller and skinny and slink around everywhere. I don't hop and I definitely do not have warts unlike some people around here- Kord for instance.

Yell at me all you want, I'm going to be walking around on my leathery feet next week. There'll be different mud splashes drying on my shins and new leaves in my hair but I'll be the same eyesore again and again. As much as people want to make me invisible I'll be here. I know I'm not proper and I know I could be reaped and taken away at a moment's notice but right now I am here and you're going to have to deal with it. I'm not safe and I'm not well behaved but quiet, careful people are boring.

Don't you agree?