K I L O / / D 4 / / F I N

( K I L O )



" don't be so cool, yeah you think
it's something I can't understand
but when you wake in the evening I know
that there's no master plan "

---

It's tough work saving the world, but somebody's gonna have to do it.

Dad's playing the banjo off by the river bank with me, and we usually sit out on the parish like this. Watching the steamboats trail off to the other districts, he watches the spokes while I watch the steam. The bridge will raise and set as they pass underneath, giving way to the way the trumpet blares like a scream- when I was a kid, he used to tell me there were dragons in cages on board. Can't believe it! He'd look me in the eyes and lie just like that, always playing around with that dope beard. Never shaves it, never does. 

You can't believe how mad I was when I found out there was nothing but shrimp and crabs on that thing. I mean, I can't be too mad, they all taste great with butter and some lemon pepper, but still -- I always wanted dragons to be real. Draw those bad boys on the side of my sneakers and smoke the other boys on the track field. Could you imagine how fast I could take them out if I was on a dragon though, like c'mon? It's just not comparable, man! 

I'd practically dance on 'em, they wouldn't know what was up and what's down when I'm done out there. The other kids in the Peaeckeeper Youth Center, they just don't get how to let go of things. The world's depressing, I get that. I think most kids my age know that before we're supposed to, like it's written in the margins of the textbooks at school -- History with Mrs. Krigel, she opens her voice and she's like "oh yeah, and here's where the peacekeepers in district nine shot into the crowd," and there's a photo of Carly U-- uhh, I forgot her name. But her photos right there, microphone in her hand, shot three times they say. 

That's crowd control, right? They can't fight us if they're too busy bleeding? 

I sit next to my dad, swaying my legs above the bog water, algae on the wood sticking to the back of my jeans. He and mama wanted me to go through with it all, and I guess it's not that bad, really. My biggest problem is that the other kids are so stuck up. They aren't richer than me at all, not the bulk of them at least -- I'm middle class! My dad's an inshore fisher, and my mama's out making the boats- I can't believe I let them fool me like that, still. I really sat around thinking my mom's just got dragons at work, huh. 

Anyways, what I'm trying to get at is that the academy isn't even rich kids. They aren't sipping tea with their pinkies out while shooting an M16 pistol. Rifle? I think M16's a rifle, they don't let the lower classes work on those and a part of me hopes they don't make me do it by the time I get up there. Some of the other kids are really into it, focused on how they're gonna feel when they do it I guess. That brings up my second point: these kids are just weird.

They always talk about honor and prestige and I'm gonna be honest, I thought we were trying to save the world here, that's what I was told! I was told we go in, we get a hair cut and we do good things. We'd be going around district four saving kittens out of trees, and helping veterans and victors with their day to day chores. I pictured it differently, before and after. They say that there's riots in the lower side of the world, I can't picture what they look like in color. 

All the photos are in black and white, I asked my mom that once. Walked up to her like hey, if we can see in color over here, why hasn't anybody gone and brought it to district - I 'unno - eight? It doesn't seem all that hard, we've done it once, and she sat me down and told me it was all about the cameras. District three sends them to the capitol, and then to one and two and four. They keep some for themselves, of course, and then to five. Six gets the grainy ones, seven doesn't need them, they can't see past all the trees. 

And by the time they get to eight, they're all out of the new ones, so they hand out the black and white one's from the dark days. The film's grainy, and you can't even see the sun in the sky, just the beams. 

Well, before that I thought that we lived on an incline, you know? You'd see it on t.v., the trains would leave and go to the capitol in that order even though the trains all leave at the same time. So that means one must be the closest, and two's a little farther away. The truth is, we're all over the place! They taught us that in the academy, the steamboat sails north but it doesn't go to the capitol, no, it's going to eleven. Or it's just taking some en route, but still, it's going to the lower districts and at least one of them is north of me. 

So I'm reaching out, and I ask why the boats are going to eleven. I mean, sure they have their own lobsters, we can't have all the water- but they don't have enough. They can't eat over the summer because of the riots, because the world's falling apart and they can't see the sun anymore. And I just sit here, on the dock, looking over the smoke come out the boat and I have to wonder: do they see that too? Does the smoke come up in black and white, is that just something that's blocking out their sun? 

How do we help them with that? 

I'll ask that at school, and it doesn't seem like that's our job. We don't do what my parents do, we don't send out the food and water- things we have. We send guns, and men, and white suits and riot shields, and I think that's making me learn what the world means. Peacekeepers don't create it, they don't keep the peace, they force it. Force it into hands that would pick up the gun if they could, and I'm lucky in a way to have the choice. 

I never got told how violent peace-keeping truly was, I guess it's just catching me off guard.  

I see Nico Thorne on television, and he looks like me in a way the other victors don't, but it's still so different. The Victors are supposed to be treated well, right? I don't understand it, how he's still treated poorly because the number twelve is part of his history. Not his appearance, ever since winning he's looked more like me and my dad, and not in his personality that I can tell. He's brave and he's getting through life on his own, isn't that what we're doing, too? We've got poor people in the academy all the same, and they're the ones saying twelve isn't worth it's coal either. 

Maybe I'm just partial, maybe I just see him and want to be as cool as him. They send the tabloids back on the boats and we see photos of him on Capitol runways, splitting cocktails with Capitolites despite it all- because of it all, right? He's got wealth, and he's got power we can't understand, and the peacekeepers still talk him down like he should have died for the princess in the finale. 

The way I see it, he's just fine. 

Strike out the maybe, I want to be him. Dude, that'd be so dope! Being in the games ain't much different than being in the peacekeepers, you kill and survive and hurt good people all the same, that's what I'm learning. The only difference is I've gotta starve while I do it, and Mr. Thorne's built for that on the steepest decline there exists in panem. If I get my badge and my rifle, and I march down to twelve, I don't know. 

I know I'll see him, the man I've always idolized, and he'll be across the field saying what's right.

And I'll be the one with the gun, looking at him through the glass of my visor. 

But I'll make my dad proud, right? 

If I pull that trigger in ten years? 

Will that make it all worth it? 

The steepest decline yet. 

I can't say so, not fully. 

The bridges rise,

and I sit, still.

Wading. 

Dope.