Emery Vale [District Two]

Emery Vale -- thirteen -- male -- District Two

Not all the time, but on important nights or when they're anxious, your parents burn things on the stove. You nod as they point out patterns in the smoke to you, faking recognition the same way you do when they trace constellations and all you can make out is a finger pointing aimlessly into the lonely expanse.

On unimportant nights, you haunt ghosts back. With a patched flashlight in one hand and pieces of scavenged colored plastic in the other, you slip into graveyards and around training centers where children died in what people call accidents but don't like to talk about.

None of this is scientific. You're about as sure of which color light to use as you are of whether it's right to put bread heels or chicken bones in the fire before signing up for tesserae. Once in a while you remember to write something in your notebook, meaning to build a catalogue of methods and evidence, but most of the time it sits tucked in your belt, entirely forgotten in the echoes of noises that might be ghosts or, more likely, guards.

Weapons scare you more than spirits, even vengeful ones, and every night you drag your dusty, shaking body back through your window, you swear off the whole thing. You aren't even sure what you hope—let alone expect—to find. Maybe you want proof that your parents are right and there's more to the world than what you can touch or see. Maybe you want them to be wrong so you have half a prayer of understanding life. Neither is worth a baton in your brain.

Whatever you say, the next week always finds you clipping back your hair and slinging a bag of makeshift equipment over your shoulder. So, always, does the next.



300/300 for my first of two CBs from the Birthday Bash dodgeball game.