Cassandra M. Wells | District 6 | fin

Cassandra M. Wells | District 6 | fin Jul 2, 2021 14:42:36 GMT -5

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Post by dovey on Jul 2, 2021 14:42:36 GMT -5

SELECTIONS FROM THE JOURNAL OF 17-YEAR OLD

CASSANDRA MARIETTA WELLS

FROM DISTRICT SIX

Lying flat at the bottom of Cassandra's backpack, hidden beneath textbooks and three-ring binders, there is a journal bound in pale leather. In neat lettering at the top of its front flyleaf, these words appear: “This is a private journal. If you're a decent person you won't read it. If you read it you'll regret not being a decent person.” The rest of the journal is full of poems, the handwriting not nearly as careful as that of the initial inscription; inkblots stain the paper in places. Near the beginning of the journal, several pages have been torn out. The remaining pages have been numbered neatly; the journal's owner must have done this after the missing pages had already been removed, as they are not accounted for in the numbering.

On the first page:

My name is [thoroughly scribbled out]
If you want to know my age, it is twelve.
It’s my birthday today
So to celebrate – yay!

My mom got this book for my shelf.

On the twenty-second page:

In Mrs. [scribbled out]'s class last unit we studied the Dark Days:

How the Districts rebelled, and the nation starved, and all was chaos.
Afterward, everyone agreed such horrors must never be repeated.
Very wisely, the Capitol instituted the Hunger Games as a reminder.

Everyone had to watch as the children of rebels slaughtered each other.

Hard as it is, without the Games, how would we remember the Dark Days?
Our people aren’t all starving anymore, and no one dies by uncontrolled violence.
Probably, if we didn't send kids to the Games, even more would be slaughtered.

Every year I watch the Games, and I remember the rebellion.

On the twenty-seventh page:

I am as tall and knobbly-kneed as a giraffe.

I am as hairy as a gorilla.

I think I'm smart,

But I am as brainless as a bacterium.

WHAT AM I?

Answer: [thoroughly scribbled out]

On the twenty-eighth page:

I'll keep it to remember it's not true.
Such ugly words aren't really what I'm due.
Though insults shout themselves within my head,
I’ll try to think of compliments instead.

On the forty-fifth page:

There once was a villainous foe

Whose weakness no hero did know.

But I prophesy now –

Though I cannot say how –

Someday we'll bring it lower than low.

On the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth pages:

Somebody asked me out today.

I acted like I should: mature.

"Ew, gross," I thought, but didn't say.

"Not till I'm older, parents say,"

I answered, "or I'd tell you 'sure.'"

Somebody asked me out today.

I shrugged a bit and walked away,

Since I felt no hint of allure -

"Ew, gross," I thought, but didn't say.

I told my mom about my day.

"Though I said no," I did assure,

"Somebody asked me out today."

"You're old enough by now to date.

Why not say yes, my girl demure?"

"Ew, gross," I thought, but didn't say.

Could be I'm younger than my age.

Could be I'm simply insecure.

Somebody asked me out today.

"Ew, gross," I thought, but didn't say.

On the sixty-first page:

Console me, Panem, ere I weep –

Beneath the black earth buried deep
Tell me your children do but sleep
And will arise, the wind to reap.

On the sixty-second page:

Gem of Panem, mighty city,
Loudly do we sing your praises,
Vowing that you'll stand for ages.
Gem of Panem, very pretty,
Great in honor as in pity,
Who can say a word against you?
For your love we’ll recompense you
Giving as you’ve given to us
Like for like, as our love moves us.
Richly will we recompense you.

On the seventy-eighth page:

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun –”
But hush – I will not further plagiarize.
Between my eyes and stars there’s likeness none
But who can claim to have the stars for eyes?
The beauty that’s in poetry of love
Is not the beauty that is found in life.
I am nor muse nor lioness nor dove;
No man will die for lack of me as wife.
I will not lie and say that I am fair;
I will not lie and say that I am foul.
I’ll not believe the lies that fill the air
The words all ads against the homely howl.
I’ll not pretend at superhuman grace,

Nor painted will my words be, nor my face.

On the eighty-ninth page:

I was born to be a doctor,

I was raised to be a chemist,

I was begged to be a pharmacist at least.

When they ditched all those ideas

'Cause I had dyscalculia

Then they hoped at basketball I'd be a beast.

But that dream too was interred

When I proved to be a nerd

Of the sort that doesn't any money make;

I am honestly surprised

My parents never theorized

That their kid was switched at birth with some cheap fake.

On the ninety-seventh through one-hundred-and-first pages:

After her father realized she would never
be a doctor, after her mother realized her
career would not be in research or engineering, they
decided, reasonably, to stop bothering her
every time she brought home a C in Algebra.
Fortunately for her, though they are not
greatly rich, they can afford a daughter who
hasn’t got the faintest hope of landing a fancy
internship or scholarship or at least a well-paying
job to ease her journey to adulthood. And they’re
kind enough to suffer through her incessant
laments about difficult rhyme and meter, her
marked obsession with thesaurus and dictionary, her
never-ending requests for synonyms.
Of course, when she’s grown and they’re gone,
presumably she’ll starve to death, but it’s not
quite time to fear that future. She’s young, a
rose in bloom, so her parents still believe
she might make some man a decent housewife, and in
that way go on living. It’s a good thing her diary remains
unread by them; otherwise they would worry
very greatly, shedding tears over the bad poems she's
written pretentiously in the third person. "Solve for
x," they might insist, as they did in her childhood.
"You can’t live on poems." Then she’d say, "X is
zero, I have made it zero, no matter the equation.

You still don’t understand, you experts in your fields –

x is the only rebellion you acknowledge. I have not

written my diary in poems to feed myself, but in

very truth I will eat them anyway; my textbooks will sit
unread, and I will live on my own ink and paper.
That isn’t something you can understand,"
she would tell them, that pretentious girl. "The sun
rose this morning," she’d say, "not because of numbers
quite impossible to pinpoint, but because of my bad poems;
presumably you can’t understand that either, you solvers
of problems, you reasonable people. I could make this poem
never-ending, but it would not resemble your irrational numbers,
marked by mathematicians as something they are not.
Laments are irrational, and satires, and odes. Numbers are not the
kind of thing that can be spoken of that way, but that’s your
job, to speak wrongly and precisely and not to understand. The
internship I’m pursuing pays in hunger," she would tell them.
"Hasn’t hunger been uplifted, after all? Hasn’t it been
greatly honored? Hasn’t it got a yearly namesake?"
Fortunately the girl’s parents don’t read her diary;
every page they understood would make them panic, and she’s
decided not to hurt them any more than she can help. Her
career will not be in doctoring or research, but she’ll
be a daughter for as long as she has parents.
After they’re gone she’ll starve, but the sun will rise redder.

On the one-hundred-and-ninth page:

I am too sick to rhyme or riddle
or spin contronyms into poems.
I am so sick of rhymes
and of contronyms and poems –
I am so sick of riddling words,
of forms and rules and rules of forms –
I am so SICK of caution
and of contronyms and care!

Here is how it is:
I am lost in a labyrinth
and it’s dark.
I could light a torch
but if I do

the minotaur will find me.

So here I sit in the dark

and dream about fire.