juliet monaghan. d12.

Someone's gotta run shit around here.

Jamie just wants the credit, and that's fine. He does enough. I tell him what to do and he eats it up sooner or later, even if I've gotta force-feed it down his throat. Not to toot my own horn or anything but none of this would work without me. There's a fine art to supply and demand, mastering stealth and perfecting the art of bullshit. I learnt from the best, just as Mom learned from her father, and he his father before him.

This is my inheritance, an invisible heirloom. It's also my future, and my sibling's future, and their children's future. I stopped going to school last year and 6 months in I was running eighty percent of our business - and that's just the legal side. 

Sid's getting good at it too, twelve years old and already wanting to take over from me. I admire her drive, even if she does make me crazy poking her nose and her fingers in any and all of my business. At least I know I'll have a pair of hands to help me when we're older. That's the best and worst thing about having eight siblings - you're never alone. Even when you want to be.

Save when I'm working a shift at the sole bar in Twelve. They needed help after the last bartender drunk himself under the table and when they asked how old I was I told them 'old enough'. Three nights a week when we close up shop I slink across the street and get to work, pouring and sipping and passing cash from hand to pocket, stocking shelves with stuff that doesn't come off the shipping crates once a month. Nobody says a thing, not even the Keepers, else they'll have nothing left to drink by the second week of the month. Nothing bites harder than withdrawals. I'd know better than anyone.

Shoot me for carrying a flask in my back pocket, swigging from underneath the shop counter or my duvet cover. Gotta get to sleep somehow. It's hard to get some shut-eye fighting off the nagging knowledge that I'd sold an addict his death wish or that Bailey stole food back from a starving child. I say that I don't care - and I don't, most of the time. It's my family or theirs. My siblings or someone else's. I know who I'd chose a thousand times over - but sometimes, just sometimes, it gets a little too much.

A light buzzing in the front of my brain, I braid Noah's hair and take care not to touch the back of her neck because she doesn't like it. My fingers work quick and I in silence, big sister to my big sister.

It's always been this way, younger ones looking after the older ones. It's just the way this household operates. Pouring cold water on Eli's sleeping face the morning of the reaping or placing a bucket by his bed for last night's dinner, giving Mom and Dad excuses about where he's been. Tying Noah's shoes for her, taking her for walks through the fields of flowers in summer evenings, helping her choose groceries that she'll eat. Eli is Eli, he can handle himself. But Noah? She's different.

Not that that's a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing, actually. Wonderful Noah, fragile and different. When two thick plaits hang over her shoulders I smile at her reflection in the mirror, kiss her cheek, make her giggle and tell her she's pretty.

"Pretty," she sighs back. It's the first thing she's said to me all week.

"Yeah," I smile. "So pretty."

This is why I do what I do, to make sure she's okay. To make sure all of them will be okay.

And we will be, tall scraggly kids with dark hair and dark eyes, jewellery around our wrists and shirts with matching buttons. Out of place, yet fitting in, meant for less yet destined for more. We're okay, for now. Mom and Dad have made sure of it, and Jamie and I will make sure of it, and if we ever have kids after the reapings are over they'll make sure of it too. It's the way we were raised: shallow, secretive, steadfast. We were bred for deception and luxury, cut-throat kids that crawled their way out of the Seam and hung on by the skin of their teeth until they got a footing, a handle, until they stood on top of the damn mountain, until they could look out at the entire District and barely see the Seam line.

Like hell am I going to lead us back to poverty. They don't deserve it - not the kids, not Sid, not even five-fingered Bailey. Most certainly not Noah. Maybe Jamie and I deserve it, and maybe Eli's got it right staying out of everything, but if I don't have this then what am I? A sad, sullen, skinny little girl with a drinking problem and too many regrets.

Maybe I do belong in the Seam after all. Maybe that's why I'm so desperate not to end up there. Because I know what I have done, and I know what I will continue to do, and I know I cause more harm than good in this shitty district just to keep my family fed. Mom did it, her father did it, his parents did it. All the brass earrings and chipped nail polish in the world can't hide regret, not even in my steely gaze. I know I'm a piece of shit so I drink and scold Eli for doing the same damn thing. Noah looks at us and sees no faults and it makes me feel even worse, lying to protect her, protecting her from lying. 

Gold chains weigh me down, but the drink is what makes me fall asleep. I wake up, splash cold water on my face, dab on some tint and roll up my sleeves and get to work. Sid on my toes, Noah under the table, Bailey running off, Jamie front-and-centre. I click my fingers and point, order, smile, keep the machine well-oiled and well-concealed, wrap up boxes of soap and slip a vial of morphling underneath the brown paper. 

Bailey looks at me when the bell clangs and the door shuts behind a customer, little brother poised and ready to strike. I shake my head; no, not this time. Let them heal. An alive customer's a returning customer, that's what I always say. But really, deep down, I know they need their medicine more than they need their money. We save lives, we ruin lives. It's not a balancing act, more of the latter, but I know when to pick my moments. Sometimes, just sometimes, I let myself be selfish - let myself be the good guy.

It doesn't last long, but it's enough to get me by.