finch leilani / d13 / fin

The rooms in District Thirteen were standard issue. They all looked the same, furniture and sheets in a boring shade of grey. Finch wished she had some art or something, things she could tack onto the wall. If she wanted something like that, she’d have to make it herself, and she didn’t think she had the talent for that. There were a lot of people in her class that were good at things like that, but she wasn’t good at anything.

She felt like the most boring person in the District. Everybody seemed to be good at something, like math or bomb making or planning raids. None of her classmates were actually doing things like that, it was just classwork, but their grades were stellar and hers were just average. It seemed as if they’d all go on to achieve great things, and she’d be left in the dust. Her parents always tried to make her feel better about it, tell her that she’d find her purpose eventually, but she wasn’t sure if she believed them.

Her parents were both runaways. Her mother had fled from District Two, her father from Eight. They both had journeyed out into the wild unknown to find something they weren’t fully sure existed. Thirteen welcomed them with open arms— the more dissenters, the better. More fuel for their eventual revolution.

Her mother had noticed her father in the mess hall a few months after her arrival. They both joked that it was love at first sight. Finch always scoffed, because she didn’t believe in such a thing, but she let them have it. She wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for their fantastical love story, after all. She was born only a few short years after their fated meeting over lunch trays and metal water bottles.

All she knew were the halls of District Thirteen. She knew her home, small and secure. She knew her bedroom, even smaller and barely comfortable. She knew the echoey halls and the cool metal railings. She knew the mess hall, where she always sat alone, and the school, where they sat in windowless classrooms and learned the history of the rebellion. She tried not to wonder too much about what her life would have been like if she’d been born somewhere else. She knew she was lucky for not living under the Capitol’s shadow, and she refused to jinx anything.

Her friend, Sparrow, liked to brag about all the things she had from the outside. Her mother was part of a survey group, one that journeyed out to the Districts and studied the state of the people there. It was dangerous work, and she knew Sparrow worried whenever her mother was out, but her mother tried to make it worth it by bringing back goods from the Districts. Sparrow had spools of yarn from Eight, dry seeds from Ten, a fashion magazine from One. When her and Finch poured over the magazine, she took note of all the details— the curves of the model’s body, the way her hair curled flawlessly around her chin. She was beautiful in a way that nobody from Thirteen was. She was perfect.

Finch thought, I’ll never be that perfect.

She was thin, but in an emaciated way, the one somebody living off constantly shifting rations was. Her white-blond hair was thin and broke off easily. The only sort of makeup she had was an old tube of lipstick her mother had brought with her over twenty years ago. She wanted what the pretty rich girls in the Capitol had. She knew it was terrible to envy them— they were her oppressors, after all, and their lavish lifestyle hid terrible secrets. But they were still beautiful.

Finch wanted that.

So what is a girl to do, when she wants everything she can’t have? When she disregards everything she learned about rebellion and pours over photos of Capitolite fashion? When she cries because she’ll never be beautiful? The magazine showed her you needed to be beautiful to be loved. She already had nothing else to bring to the table. Was she never going to be loved?

It was all too much.