✨ Citizen of the Year Gala ✨

Q u e s t

"Nobody can replace anybody else
So, it would be a shame to make it a competition"

It had to be a scam, right?

Congratulation, you’ve been nominated!

The letters were all shimmery gold with glitter pouring out as soon as you opened it, I half expected music to start playing when I pulled the card free from the envelope. There it was, scrawled out that someone had nominated me for something called distinguished districter and that I’d been invited to attend the honorable ceremony in district seven, and if I could just provide a three sentence biography with a copy of my most recent photograph they’d be glad to tell everyone about me in the brochure.

So a couple of things – I’d have to travel out to district seven, which meant buying a train ticket, and then I’d have to figure out how the hell to book somewhere to stay, which was another cost. And then they’d have me giving them personal information and some glamor shot to use in a book that people would probably throw away just as soon as they got it (but then again, it was the paper district so they probably just shredded everything anyway). Part of me believed that it was just a plot by some sleazeball in Seven to make a quick buck by making people from around Panem think they’d done something important with their lives.

I mean, no one actually believe that getting called a Distinguished Districter was some kind of high honor did they?

My brother Ether did, or at least, he kept telling me about how I was being disrespectful to all the people that had worked really hard to get noticed. Which – okay, I get it, some people see a little prize as some sort of validation for their existence. Like a little treat to tell them to keep up the good work. And that can be a great motivator, unless it’s this toxic need to have someone tell you how great you’re doing, or that the work you’re doing is good. Because learning how to take criticism and objectively praising someone are difficult skills to master, especially when the world we live in is such a shitshow.

I have plenty of clients who tell me about the guilt and the sadness of not being able to provide – for their partners, their children, their pets. They grasp on to that twisted notion that their self-worth is locked up in what they can produce, and if that failure is a reflection of who they are as a person. They can’t be happy because they aren’t happy about what they’ve done first, before anyone else has had a chance to tell them.

And – okay, maybe I’ve mellowed in the last eight years – but people are allowed to like things, even if they’re stupid or ridiculous, because being happy when it’s not harmful can be healthy. Like, Ether is allowed to enjoy his stupid little painted miniatures and dice games he plays with all the random nerds that come over every Sunday, just as I’m allowed to put on my headphones and blast my ears to death to whatever the hell I damn please.

Anyway, the whole point of it was that maybe I could at least show my face to let them know that this #girlboss was #gatekeeping what it meant to be a distinguished districter. And if it was anything like the peacekeeper ball (#apab) then I’d at least get the chance to get liquored up and maybe make out with someone.

I mean it only made sense for me to be a distinguished districter anyway. I had come back to life. I owned a woman-owned business that had opened up supply to multiple districts. And I got my PhD, thank-you-very-much. The struggle may have been real, but the hustle here was deep.

The ballroom was – well, I guess I didn’t know what I was expecting aside from the marble and the black tie affair that the peacekeeper ball had been. But Seven, unlike six, where everything was made out of concrete, had the cozy cottage vibes and wooden craftsmanship that I could actually wrap my head around being not terrible.

You’d have thought that they were all log cabins and peat moss, but they’d managed to turn some second-rate government building into a swanky hall with all the fittings of a real gala. Someone had to have been from the capitol to put this together, or at least someone who’d spent enough time there they had pinned down the details.

The chandeliers gave out a warm yellow light and the archways provided a place of refuge for those that didn’t want to tend to the dancefloor. A brass band played out what I imagined were tunes from someone’s youth, not anything my parents had ever listened to, or maybe just the hits the people in seven listened to. Then again, I don’t know if anyone that really worked in the forests was going to be treading over the red carpet here.

And of course, the most important thing was that there had been an open bar, which was the first thing that I had made sure I had easy access to, even if the table they’d decided to place me at was further toward the back of the room.

Somehow they neglected to mention that there was another tier of people invited to this thing – Citizens of the Year or some shit – where we’d all have to stand up and clap and probably watch a retrospective on their lives or something. In the meantime, I was going to see what sort of top or middle shelf booze I could get my hands on, and if there was anyone from any other district worth getting to know.

I steadied in the line that’d formed at the bar and waited to order a gin and tonic, and wait for the rest of the crowd to come tumbling in.