Book of Secrets (Nicolas one-shot)

    

    Truthfully, every day is the same, meticulous, tedious, irrelevant schedule. There is not one thing that is exhilarating or even slightly stimulating here in District 1. People, as in teens like him only care about training and getting into the games and most likely dying. Is it weird that he's different? To be different is frowned upon in society, but this is where the fact that not many people in the District knowing him is a good thing. Not knowing means not being able to be able to accuse and judge. This is exactly how he likes it.

    Today was a day that started off similar to every other day. He went to school, listened to the unimportant rambling of teachers about the history of Panem and answered whatever questions that the teacher threw at him. Teachers often decide to "randomly" select him to answer a question on whatever topic is being discussed at whatever moment in time, assuming that he hasn't been paying attention. However, not caring does not necessarily equal not knowing. There are a lot of smart people that are lazy and find busywork repetitive and disgustingly useless.

    It wasn't until the entire school day finished with him returning home that things were a little different. His parents decided that today they were going to do a little "spring cleaning" even though it's almost as far away from spring as it can get, cold weather beginning to return, and leaves beginning exchange their bright, vibrant green color for the golden, warm colors ranging from yellow to red. All 3 of his sisters seemed to know that this was going on today as none of them are around, leaving him to help out.

    No one seems to be around though, even though the boxes, (the symbol of cleaning in his family) are everywhere, so he can only assume that his parents ran off somewhere because they need cleaning supplies. Every single year (so it seems) the house gets cleaned and every single year he's the only child of four that seems to be around. When his parents go on these our-house-is-super-dirty-and-ugly-and-needs-to-be-cleaned binges, he spends the time cleaning out his room, donating old toys that he no longer remembers playing with, throwing away random bits of trash, and just adding some more organization into his life.

    While rummaging through boxes from over half his lifetime ago (as no one actually cleans when one can go back through memory lane) in his room, he finds a small journal that he doesn't remember ever having. Although years have passed, as soon as he opens the tiny diary of sorts the memories come back. He remembers keeping the book as a lifeline during the night. Whenever nightmares plagued him, he would write about it in the book and it would help him calm down. Whenever he was angry or upset he would rant (in terrible, quite cringe worthy handwriting) about how unfair life was. Little did Nicolas know that life gets more terrible and unfair as one gets older.

    Ultimately, the last thing that he had ever written in the book was a page full of secrets that he had. Some were just tiny facts like how he took the last cookie in the cookie jar and the slightly bigger ones were about who he didn't like but pretended to tolerate because they were in the same class. He remembers vividly that no one could go through this book other than him and that he would hide it from anyone in his family that wanted to read it.

    After flipping through the book several more times, studying every word, he placed the book back into the box that he got it out of. The past is for reflection, one can think back on the past and be happy, but one must live in the present and plan for the future. As soon as he finished cleaning his room, his parents come home, loudly announcing that they got whatever spray to clean the tiled floor and counters.

    He can hear that his parents are calling for him to come down and help clean, but how do they even know that he's home? Maybe he should have taken a page from his sisters' book and gone to a friends house today... But he has to admit, one good thing did come from today, and it's that it was not as uninteresting as how the day started out.