jaque stoneheart. twelve. fin

The first time the keepers got me, I was twelve and so hungry I really thought my stomach was going to start eating itself.

Look, not everyone around here has nimble fingers like that girl who Nico Thorne trails around after sometimes, you know? Some of us aren't born to be clever little thieves, we're just born a little fucked in the head and thinking we're invincible enough to not be noticed by Big Brother. I could just let you guess on your own which of the two you think that I am, but really, there's no fun in that for me.

It's way more fun when people know exactly how reckless I can be.

Inspires fear, or whatever.

Then again, the origin story of my stupid crime record starts with a keeper dragging me out by the wrists and then lashing me once, pushing me down and saying sternly "next time will be worse."

Rude, if you ask me.

Pick on someone your own size.

I was hungry, you know? Like would gnaw on an already picked clean bone kind of hungry. I think the worst part was that at the time, I'd done it to myself. It was my third—third? I think? Maybe second—time running away from home, and my longest stretch yet, and I had been waiting to run into Mom somewhere around the Seam before going home just to see if she would be surprised to see me, or if she'd have not even noticed I was gone. I didn't want to break the record just because I might literally die of hunger. That's weakness.

Suck it up. Steal a loaf.

Risk the lashing.

The first time the keepers arrested me I was fourteen and I don't even remember how the fuck I got my hands on a bottle of spray paint, but I did, and I graffiti'd 'lazy cunt' across the front of the head peacekeepers house. Very convenient that they'd painted it white.

Made the orange really pop.

He was not very impressed by my artistry, and I still remember looking in the mirror in my cell in the detention center and seeing the bruises around my neck from where he'd choked me out after tackling me to the ground.

A fourteen year old girl.

And choking me out seemed like a good idea.

Surely you can see where my distain for the peacekeepers comes from, right? They're lazy, fat cunts until, for all the wrong reasons, they decide they don't want to be lazy anymore. They decide they're actually just cunts.

Second time I got tossed in the juvenile detention center was approximately two week after they let me out from my first stint. I was at this party on the edge of the district and there was a bonfire and the peacekeepers took one look at me and went right for me. Familiar face, I guess, knew that I was something that could actually bring up to their boss. Bonfire was just a little too close to the fence, I guess.

They called it arson.

That's why when I got out from that sentence the first thing I did was light a bonfire on the same cunt head peacekeepers front lawn.

Didn't get caught for that one.

Still proud of that.

Sometimes I tell myself that I don't know why I do that stupid shit that I do, don't know why I am the way that I am. I tell myself that I'm bigger and badder and better inside than I actually am, tell myself that there's nothing in this Ripred forsaken country that I couldn't do if I really decided that I wanted to do it. I tell myself that I don't need to think twice because damn the consequences, they don't matter for me anyway. I'm going to be something. I'm going to be someone. Everyone in this cursed place is going to know my name.

But I know that's not it.

I mean, it is, I guess, or at least it's a of it probably. I know that I have a deranged kind of pride bordering on self-loathing and a belief that I don't deserve anything better than to be the shithead whose in and out of the detention center her whole life. Deranged because somehow in my head I want to be the best shithead in the damn game, if that makes sense. And I know that that's not something that's going to make sense to most people, and it's not something I really know how to explain. It's like, nothing can touch me because I'm already ruined, or some other poetic garbage.

All because I want my parents to fucking pay attention to me. And would it kill me to just ask, you wonder?

I'm glad you ask.

The answer, in fact, is yes. I'd sooner die than beg for scraps.

I would sooner break into the mayor's office in a black ski mask and steal every single one of the writing utensils in the place. Which, would you look at that, I did.

Listen, I know that one of these days I'm going to run out lives, am probably on my ninth one already. I know that this nerve game is probably my only shot at becoming something other than the gutter rat I'm probably destined to become, so I'm going to put my all into it.

But that's never been enough before.

Not sure it will be now.