District Seven, Jack Marko, 14

My name? Jack Marko, if you please.

My age? 17, I say, but in reality I'm just 14.

My whereabouts? I don't usually let people know, but it's an old, abandoned house if you swing a left at the main fountain and walk for about two miles. Every other day the kind baker brings me a basket of food and supplies- soap, an extra blanket, candles, the whole nine yards.

Some say that there's nothing left in this house. A few old bats, maybe. Perhaps a dog or raccoon has taken up residence in the abandoned house of the birch forest.

But they're all wrong, every last one of them.

My parents were killed by Peacekeepers. A fire stormed out in our neighborhood. All that was left of them was carnage- blackened pulps of skin and bone and blood.

Travis, Kostos, and I were at school when this happened. We heard the explosion. The south wall of our school was blown up. We were allowed home early, carrying only our backpacks and lunch pails.

Nothing was left. There was no place for us to go.

Sure, there was the orphanage. There were people willing to adopt us, since Seven just adores children. We could have had a nice family, a normal life.

But I was ahead of the game.

I thought about it and decided that if half the kids who were adopted stayed with their parents for, say, five years, then they'd forget nearly one fourth of what their parent's voices sounded like. Then the real avalanche would come. Without any pictures, they'd make their adoptive parents seem more and more like their real parents who were dead. Within seventeen years they'd forget exactly what their parents sounded like, looked like, and felt like. That's right. You can remember a person by touch.

But nobody knows this except me.

You see, if your parents are dead and you have nobody to replace them, no orphanage grandmother or foster parents or anything like that, then you remember your parents vividly. I still remember my mother in huge proportions. I remember that she had choppy, black hair and big brown eyes. Her birthday was June 23rd. She always smelled like sauces- tomato, alfredo, etc. Her name was Ava. She was an amazing dancer. Her voice was so soothing. She taught me to play my beloved guitar.

My father was tall with a brown beard, but he was bald. My father's name was Kostos. Kostos Jr. was named after him. My father loved playing poker, and his voice was deep and booming, always sounding like a train coming down the tracks. He had thick black glasses that never stayed on right.

You see how I remember my parents? Nobody who lives with foster parents could do that. They'd simply think that their mother had long, blond hair like their foster mother. But no, what if their mother had curly, average-length red hair? You'd have no photos to prove it, so they'd keep thinking false thoughts about their mother.

Such is the case today. I saw a fostered family walk by the house. Two girls, one boy, two parents. All smiling, all black-haired, all laughing.

What if their parents had brown hair, not black hair?

So proves my point.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Today was Tuesday, the day the baker would come to bring us food. Travis, who is eleven, jumped from tree to tree until he got to the front of the birch forest and perched on a small platform we made a month ago, which we call our lookout spot. It's hammered to a branch fork, and is pretty sturdy. I couldn't stand on it with my brothers on it as well, but without me they can both stand on it.

Travis waited patiently on the platform for a few hours until it got to be breakfast time. I filled a pail with a hard-boiled egg and a toasted bagel with grape jam for him to eat while he waited to give us the signal. I sent Kostos out. He climbed the two flights of stairs- one to get to the second floor, one to get to the roof- and then jumped from tree to tree, like Travis did hours before, the pail handle in his mouth.

I watched from the roof, a distance away, as Travis began eating his egg and as Kostos Jr. jumped back to the house. It was not five minutes before Travis sang out a bird's call, a sort of whistling sound. I had only time to watch Travis duck down into some leaves before I saw the baker.

The baker was a tall, red-faced man with a few pounds to spare. He is very angry most of the time, which is why we must be alerted before he comes, so we may open the door right away. If we don't, he throws everything into a pond nearby and storms off.

Today he took his time coming up the path, and Kostos waited at the door to open it. I ran down to the basement, our workshop, and grabbed the items we had for trade today- a chair, some wood I had chopped, and a few wooden spoons. Travis is in a utensil-making phase.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. The impatient knocking sounded throughout the house, and Kostos flung open the door.

"Welcome, sir!" he proclaimed loudly.

The baker stormed in, looking around suspiciously. I smelled fresh bread, and was that garlic? Delicious.

"What have trade today?" he spat out.

I showed him the spoons, chair, and logs.

He sighed. "Chair, no. No need chairs for bakery. I take spoons and log. You take this. BYE."

He set the basket on our table, took the basket from last time, and filled it with spoons. Then he heaved a few logs onto his shoulder and spat, "Leave rest at edge of forest. I take them later."

With that, he was gone.

"Kostos. Travis. You take the logs to the edge of the woods, now," I commanded. They nodded curtly. Kostos began hauling one to the door. Travis took one last bite of his bagel.

I began unloading the basket. This was not a very good day compared to all the others. One bar of soap. One hand towel. One stick of deodorant. Three oranges. Two loaves of tesserae bread, yuck. One small wheel of cheddar cheese. One slab of fish, from Four? Yes, Four was the fishing district. Two sticks of butter. One shaker of salt. One quart of milk. Two apple tarts, and the last thing was a minced meat pie that had gone stale.

I began slicing up the bread, slathering on some butter, and cutting up an orange for breakfast for Kostos and I. Travis with his bagel and egg would not be hungry anymore, and even if he was he would understand that food is low here.

I waited another hour. The boys were still not back. What had happened?

I climbed to the roof and began swinging to the look out. I scanned the tops of bushes, buildings, and trees. There! I saw two boys clad in grey and white coats. They were looking at a sign. What? They were not supposed to go into town, no! They were told to simply put the logs by the edge of the forest.

I was the only one who went to town, and that was to earn coins by playing my guitar. They were not supposed to go here for fear of revealing our location.

"And you're still not done," I whispered. There were three logs to go.

I heaved a sigh and went to the kitchen again. I had a log in each hand, a small stub of a branch in each hand to make handles. I walked two miles to the edge of the forest and dropped them at the pile that they had made.

Secondly, I strolled into town, searching for them. I found Travis and Kostos near a tavern, still staring at that sign. I tapped them on the shoulder, hard.

"Ow," Travis said, turning around.

The sign read REAPING TODAY. BE AT THE TOWN SQUARE BY NOON OR BE PROSECUTED BY LAW.

It was 11:30. People were already beginning to gather.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They pricked my finger. They shoved me to a roped-off section. They showed a video. They called a name. Guess what that name was?

"JACK MARKO."

A/N: Review!