Learned to Manage
"I shoulder ev'ry burden, ev'ry disadvantage, I have learned to manage. I don't have a gun to brandish, I walk these streets famished."
Brooke Murray, 18
District Four Citizen
They're calling it tesserae. A way to provide the districts with badly-needed food after the war. A way to give us enough resources to rebuild. Any citizen between the ages of twelve and eighteen – reaping age – can take tesserae for themselves, and for each member of their family. Sounds good, right?
But it's a lie. It's all a lie. Because it comes with a price. For each tesserae you take, your name goes into the reaping bowl one extra time. They tell you that beforehand, of course, but some of us … well, we're desperate. Eighteen-year-olds already have our name in the reaping bowl seven times just because of our age. What's one more?
And for me, it is just one more. I lost my family in the war. I don't have anyone else to care for. I can only take tesserae once, and, in addition to putting in extra hours down at the shipyards, I have enough to get by. Barely. I'm still living on the streets. There's still an aching in my stomach every night when I settle down in whatever alleyway I can find that seems the least damp and chilly. But I get by. I've learned to manage.
I'm just one person, though. I don't have anyone else to care for. Others my age have families to think of – sometimes families they're in charge of after their parents died in the war – on either side. If they have enough siblings, their name could be in the bowl five or six times. Their chances of being reaped could be doubled.
Which is the idea, of course. They don't want to leave it completely up to chance. They don't want their most well-off, productive citizens to have the same chance of going into the Games as us street urchins. They can't reward their top citizens by taking their names out of the bowl – that would look a bit too unfair – but they can punish the rest of us, and make it look like a favor while they're doing it. They're giving us extra food – how thoughtful.
I wouldn't be surprised if Bliss' family had something to do with it – at least in District Four. She and her family were completely loyal to the Capitol during the war. They spread Capitol propaganda like wildfire and helped sway so many to the Capitol's side. And how were they rewarded? Their daughter was reaped and sent into the Games. The chances of something like that happening again just got a lot slimmer.
And, for the rest of us – for those of us that the war left hungry, destitute, and desperate – the chances just got a lot worse. None of us want to take the risk of putting our names in more times, but all of us are banking on the thought that at least there are poorer, larger families whose kids' names will be in the bowl even more times than ours. That maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe the odds will still be in our favor.
I shiver as I head for the district square. There's only a light drizzle, but, after spending the night in an alleyway, trying to keep warm, it's already soaked straight through my clothes. I keep my eyes on the ground as I take my place with the others my age. None of us say a word. There's nothing to say. Nothing to do. Two of us are going into the Games. Two of us are probably going to die. There's nothing I can do about that. Nothing except hope … hope that it won't be me.
Submissions are still open. Thank you to everyone who's submitted so far. Keep the tributes coming. :)