Larry Pepperwood | District 10 | fin
Jul 11, 2021 21:24:55 GMT -5
Post by dovey on Jul 11, 2021 21:24:55 GMT -5
LARRY PEPPERWOOD | 16 YEARS OLD | DISTRICT 10
“Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down
Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down”
Larry never knew being famous could feel worse than being invisible.
He’s always wanted to be known, but not like this. He wanted to be envied, not pitied – stared at with admiration, not morbid interest – talked about, not talked about. He wanted to be – well, he wanted to be Thad or Harmon, if he’s honest with himself. He used to watch their every move, trying to isolate what it was about them that got them invited to all those parties. Was it their self-confidence? Their willingness to get drunk or high, to really let loose and have fun with people? (Larry’s a little scared of doing drugs, even weed. Just another one of his failings.) He couldn’t pin it down – and he had a nagging feeling that even if he could, it wouldn’t matter. That he would never be able to replicate it.
Then came Thad’s reaping.
And now Larry is known, he’s famous, but all of it’s wrong. Everyone thinks it’s their business that Thad is dead, and Larry hates their condolences, hates their attempts to relate, hates the way they make his brother’s death even bigger and more complicated than it was already – a matter for the whole of Ten, when Larry can barely even deal with it as something personal. He just wants them all to get their noses out of his family’s business. What do they know about why Thad volunteered or why he lost? Nothing, that’s what.
He wants to go back to his old problems. Like acne, or being worse at football than his older brothers, or his far-fetched dreams of popularity, or even the question of his sexuality. It wasn’t too long before the reaping that he finally realized it wasn’t exactly straight of him to find guys hot even if he didn’t want to date them. So then he’d been wondering what it meant that he didn’t want to date them, and if maybe he actually did, he just didn’t understand what wanting to date someone felt like in the first place – and then Thad was reaped, and then he was killed, and the questions didn’t go away but Larry didn’t have time to try and answer them anymore. He didn’t have time for much of anything except figuring out how to mourn.
It’s not fair, really. Even ordinary life had him screwing up left and right – saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment, losing his homework, tripping over his own feet while playing football. And now Thad’s dead, and how is he supposed to handle it? He’s not made for this – and no matter how many well-meaning pushy people tell him to let himself grieve in his own time and things like that, he can’t shake the feeling that there must be a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Only he has no idea how to figure out which is which.
And it just – it feels like he should be doing something about Thad’s death, something more than grieving. But there’s nothing for him to do. District Seven killed his brother, and then District Seven got killed. There’s nobody to hold accountable, nobody to take revenge on. Hunger Games – fact of life. It’s just like if Thad had been killed in an accident on the farm, or died of an illness, or been on a bus that crashed. There’s nothing to be done but cry, and bury him, and go on living.
Why can’t Larry get himself to accept that?
“Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down
Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down”
Sometimes he feels like his body is too big for his soul. Like he’s rattling around inside himself, a pebble in an empty can, and there’s nothing he can do to fill the space he was supposed to fit perfectly within. It's why he never got the trick of proper posture, why he's always curling his broad shoulders inward, ducking his head to make himself seem shorter than he is. Trying to be small enough that he can manage his own existence without screwing up.
It's gotten worse since they took Thad away. One of the teachers at school is obsessed with posture, and she used to stop Larry in the halls maybe once a week to tell him to lift up his chin and stop hunching over. Now it's almost every day. He's not sure she realizes his brother is in the Games - not sure she even knows his name, knows him as anyone but the boy who refuses to stand up straight.
He doesn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, it’s not exactly a confidence-booster to know she finds him so unremarkable that not even his brother’s reaping helped her put a name to his face. On the other hand, it’s better than the way some folks at school have been treating him since Thad’s reaping – either like he’s made of glass or like he’s got two heads, or some even more uncomfortable combination of the two. The district pities the Pepperwoods as it would pity the relatives of any tribute, but Thad’s attempt to volunteer has made their family the object of curiosity as well.
Larry never knew being famous could feel worse than being invisible.
He’s always wanted to be known, but not like this. He wanted to be envied, not pitied – stared at with admiration, not morbid interest – talked about, not talked about. He wanted to be – well, he wanted to be Thad or Harmon, if he’s honest with himself. He used to watch their every move, trying to isolate what it was about them that got them invited to all those parties. Was it their self-confidence? Their willingness to get drunk or high, to really let loose and have fun with people? (Larry’s a little scared of doing drugs, even weed. Just another one of his failings.) He couldn’t pin it down – and he had a nagging feeling that even if he could, it wouldn’t matter. That he would never be able to replicate it.
Then came Thad’s reaping.
And now Larry is known, he’s famous, but all of it’s wrong. Everyone thinks it’s their business that Thad is dead, and Larry hates their condolences, hates their attempts to relate, hates the way they make his brother’s death even bigger and more complicated than it was already – a matter for the whole of Ten, when Larry can barely even deal with it as something personal. He just wants them all to get their noses out of his family’s business. What do they know about why Thad volunteered or why he lost? Nothing, that’s what.
He wants to go back to his old problems. Like acne, or being worse at football than his older brothers, or his far-fetched dreams of popularity, or even the question of his sexuality. It wasn’t too long before the reaping that he finally realized it wasn’t exactly straight of him to find guys hot even if he didn’t want to date them. So then he’d been wondering what it meant that he didn’t want to date them, and if maybe he actually did, he just didn’t understand what wanting to date someone felt like in the first place – and then Thad was reaped, and then he was killed, and the questions didn’t go away but Larry didn’t have time to try and answer them anymore. He didn’t have time for much of anything except figuring out how to mourn.
It’s not fair, really. Even ordinary life had him screwing up left and right – saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment, losing his homework, tripping over his own feet while playing football. And now Thad’s dead, and how is he supposed to handle it? He’s not made for this – and no matter how many well-meaning pushy people tell him to let himself grieve in his own time and things like that, he can’t shake the feeling that there must be a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Only he has no idea how to figure out which is which.
And it just – it feels like he should be doing something about Thad’s death, something more than grieving. But there’s nothing for him to do. District Seven killed his brother, and then District Seven got killed. There’s nobody to hold accountable, nobody to take revenge on. Hunger Games – fact of life. It’s just like if Thad had been killed in an accident on the farm, or died of an illness, or been on a bus that crashed. There’s nothing to be done but cry, and bury him, and go on living.
Why can’t Larry get himself to accept that?
“Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down
My roof’s got a hole in it and I might drown.”
My roof’s got a hole in it and I might drown.”
[lyrics from "Don’t Let the Rain Come Down" by the Serendipity Singers]
