A/N: I have a lot of explaining to do and one very short answer.

I know I didn't update through November. Basically, I did Nanowrimo. (In case anyone's interested, I didn't win, but I did finish the story, so that counts as winning to me.) I'm going to start updating on Fridays. (I know I've said that God Knows How Many Times, but I Have A Plan Now. I know I've said that, too. Nanowrimo got me.)

Also… heh, embarrassing! I sort of lost the PMs the other District 3 girls were in that were up for the running… so basically, anyone who's sent in a District 3 girl, can you please PM/review her in again? Thanks!

Well, I guess that's all I've got to say. Gigi was sent in by Mystical Pine Forest!

Gigabyte Data, 16, D3

My older sister used to tell me stories before bed. My favorite story went like this:

'Once upon a time there was a little girl. She had long black hair and a long black dress. The little girl was just barely royalty, the daughter of the son-in-law of a duke. The other children in the village made fun of her, sometimes for only being royalty by a hair, sometimes for not behaving like a royal girl should.

But the girl ignored them and did as she always did. She sat on roofs and in windows, staring at the sky.

And yet as so often happens to little royal girls, the tentative peace was not forever. On the day of her birthday, the year she turned…" and here my sister would always tickle me and say my age, "a wicked wicked witch came to the castle. The witch was the most beautiful woman the little girl had ever seen and yet the witch was evil. The witch cursed the little girl to become a blackbird, for blackbirds live only two years. The wicked witch told her that in two years time the little girl would die. If the little girl was worthy, the wicked witch would bring her back, but no one could do much of worth in just two years, spent as a bird, and the little girl would die forgotten and unneeded.

The little girl, now a blackbird, was panicked and flew away, far far away, out the window to hide herself away.

Once the little blackbird was far far away she began to think about the witch's curse. She alighted in the branch of a tree and sat down to think about her situation. The little blackbird, suddenly, realized that she didn't mind if she died. She just wanted to be remembered. Not to be famous, either, but to be remembered, to have some people in the world who occasionally said, "Remember that blackbird, we saw once?"

So the little blackbird set out to find people, many, many people. Every new village she came to she would stick around until she got to know the people who lived there, and she helped them, and played with their children, and the felt like a family to her until she remembered how little time she had and left, off to the next town again.

In the end she became an elderly old blackbird with grandchildren and what she considered a great big family all around the world, consisting of all the people she had befriended. She died happily knowing that she would be remembered by all.

Then much to her surprise she opened her eyes and there she was again, a little girl on her birthday, except now the wicked witch was gone. The little girl looked all around but could not find the witch nor any explanation for what she had gone through. For years, she searched for the witch far and wide, and up into adulthood still sought explanation for her experience as a child.

Then on her deathbed, the witch came to see her, and they greeted one another like old friends, and left together as thought they were both young."

Then Tera would smile, and blow out the lantern and kiss me on the head and mess up my hair and I would lay down on the pillow and smile sleepily at her, and she would get up and leave and close the door very, very quietly.

Then she'd go running down the hall and I'd hear doors slamming as she left for the night and quiet, aggressive voices as my parents argued and the three dogs out back, barking, barking, barking, and then all the lights in the house would be out and I'd be staring at the ceiling by the light of the moon.

It was nice, when my sister used to put me to bed.

I stood at the window. I could still see her footprints in the frost. She left late last night. She got caught up in the argument. She's been getting caught up in the argument more and more since the arguments started being about her. I didn't get involved. I never do. I always hide downstairs or in the closet or behind the barn with our two remaining dogs, Kettle and Pot, and the puppies.

I was willing to bet that if I went and looked out the window on the other side of the house, I could see footprints there, too- Mom's or Dad's, one of them always stomps through the woods to the abandoned house, or the town square, or one of their friend's houses, and sleeps there. Every night since I was twelve. That was when Tera started to make the main character of the story an orphan.

I walked away from the window and to my closet. My room is sparse. A bed, a rug, a shelf, a closet door. I open the closet to get a dress- ratty, long, old, supposedly green but in this light, just gray. I put it on along with leggings and a coat, both of which are also old and long, and some shoes, which are luckily neither, and slip out my door and out of the house.

Kettle hears me coming around the back door and comes running. Pot never strays from the puppies- he's a very good father- but Kettle comes straight up to me and shoves her face under my hand. I stroke her twice and shoo her back to the barn.

I make my way down the street not really sure where I'm going and end up at the schoolyard. The elementary school. I've not been here in years, now- six of them, to be precise.

There aren't any kids around. It's ten o'clock on a Monday but no one's here. It's the Reaping day.

No one's even awake. On Reaping Day, the whole town shuts down. Everyone sleeps in like they're letting our economy take a pause.

I look around at the drawn curtains and frosty sidewalks which are already starting to melt even though it's cloudy out. Then, I climb over the low, low fence which is about half my height.

I make my way over to the monkey-bar thing that's shaped like a dome made out of diamonds- I've never been sure what it's called. I climb to the top- hardly a challenge, and sit on it, the metal bars digging into my butt.

I remember coming here and sitting on top of this the whole recess. I remember imagining everyone was gone. I remember imagining a day like this. On days like this, everybody's gone. I didn't yet understand why.

I look down at my legs- long, certainly my best feature- and smooth my dress out prettily around them. Pointless.

I sit there for I don't know how long, until curtains start to open in the houses all around, and I scramble down from the dome thing, hop over the fence, and run home.

I come in the back door again, after greeting Kettle, and notice my sister's boots next to the door. So she's come home- and she's probably taken over the bathroom. Lovely. Not that I needed it. I'm staying in and at home until the last possible minute. If I could, I would spend every day at home, lying in bed, singing, staring at the ceiling.

Singing is my favorite thing in the world. My voice is awful but singing is beautiful and calm and adds a tiny bit of hope to our meaningless existences.

I talk like this. I've been called a nihilist. I get called a nihilist a lot, really. By people who don't even know what it means.

…who knows why they would waste their time gossiping about me of all people, gossiping at all, when they are so firmly entrenched in the belief that they have a reason to stay alive that they spend all their waking moments attempting to do so. Who knows why saying this about me makes them feel better about their own pointless existence.

I've been standing rigid in the doorway, and suddenly I realize this, and how dangerous it is, and I close the door and flee upstairs to my room, where I lie on the bed, splayed out, pretending as always that I'm not there.

At about 8:00 my mother, called, "Gigi! We need to go or we'll be late for the Reapings!"

I think about calling down, "Where's Dad?"

"Is he at the firm?"

"Is he at Marlene's?"

"Which one did he lose it on last night, you or Tera?"

But I don't say a word.

I sit in my room until I hear Tera walk by, then I get up and leave and walk past her out the door and towards the Town Square. I don't wait for Mom or Tera, I don't want to wait. I don't even care.

It's such a short walk to the Town Square, and check-in barely takes a few seconds. All the roads are cobbled up here. We invented carts and wagons that automatically account for that. We're a rich District- not Careers, not physically strong enough for that, but we're not nearly as poor as any of the others. If we were all strong enough and cared enough to win and weren't so set in our apathetic enough to be sometimes considered rebellious ways, then we would certainly be Careers by now. The Capitol needs electronics far more than it needs fish.

There I've gone again. I blink and stare into the face of the Peacekeeper who's pricking my finger.

"Age," she says again, looking tired. Her face is sallow and her hair, dyed lavender probably from her Capitolite glory days, is now faded out and put up in a ponytail.

"16," I tell her. The computer automatically tells her my name and gender, but we've not yet written a program that tracks people's age just by looking at how long it's been since they last had their finger pricked. (In school, this whole semester has been about how to begin working on that and how to write the basic code.)

"Go to your corresponding age group," she says, and turns to the next girl.

I walk down the aisle and duck under the box that's roped off and labeled "16". Easy enough. Few people are here already; my mother said we were going to be late, but we're always early to everything when she's in charge.

I stand around examining the cobblestones for about a half hour- a small lizard seems to live under one, but he always gets away before I can get a good look at him.

Finally, the area fills up and the ceremony begins. The mayor reads off the Treaty of Treason as always, and then, from behind backstage, an amused looking woman clad in orange totters on her heels up to the mic. She has a top hat on top of smooth dark hair, a peacoat and a mid-knee length skirt, and heels, all a bright orange.

"Hello everyone!" she says. Her voice is surprisingly deep and sultry for an escort- normally they sound like they've been drinking helium. She's new, too. Last year's escort- and the year before, and the year before- was an old, fragile looking lady who called herself "Darling". I think they moved her to a better District… either that, or she died.

"I'm Sherbet!" the woman clad in orange exclaims, and claps her hands on her thighs. She's feigning enthusiasm. She's clapping, bouncing, and all sorts of other things that will register as 'excited' for a lot of people, but her face looks amused and a little bored and her voice flat.

I can see Tera standing off in the eighteens section, her hand on her stomach like it always is now. Like Mom and Dad always fight about.

I suddenly feel a little claustrophobic.

"Isn't it a lovely day?" Sherbet says, putting her hand on her face and tilting her head a little bit. "Well. It's time for the Reapings, now!"

She gestures to the mayor who brings her over the ball. (In 3, where we're, as I mentioned, a tiny bit rebellious in an apathetic way, it's become tradition for the mayor to hold the Reaping ball.) She digs in one slender hand and pulls out one name.

It takes her just a moment to read it and understand it, her face flicking over the name once, twice, three times. She frowns. She reads it again.

I feel like everyone's pressing against me.

Finally, finally she opens her mouth and reads into the microphone, "Gigabyte Data!"

I can feel the blood rushing to my head.

I hit it on the cobblestones and wonder, vaguely, if the lizard is going to crawl on my face.

huh?

I wake up on a couch.

My head hurts and I don't remember much. Nothing at all, in fact. I remember the Reapings and Sherbet calling my name, and…

That's it.

Do I have a concussion?

I blink once, twice, the world isn't spinning like it was before I hit my head so that's all well and good. I see that the ceiling is white and think about how nice the couch is and wonder if I couldn't be in heaven. If there is one. "Unlikely," I murmur aloud.

"What's unlikely, sweetheart?" Sherbet's voice purrs from the corner.

I practically leap out of the bed. There she is. Her clothing is a lot chiller now. Just a puffy light sherbet colored shirt and the same dark orange skirt and heels. Her makeup is mostly washed off. She looks almost like a real person now.

"Nothing," I say. "Where am I?"

Sherbet smiled thinly and it doesn't reach her eyes. She reaches up and pats her knee nervously. "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, sweetheart."

"Yeah?" I say, trying to seem fearless so she won't baby me. I want to know. I want to know.

"You fell down and hit your head and you were unconscious… for quite a while," Sherbet says.

"Yeah?" I repeat. The ground feels a little shaky. Must be the hit on the head.

"Quite a while," Sherbet says again.

I just look at her now.

Sherbet reaches up, touches her hair, starts to play with it but stops and puts her hand back on her knee. She grimaces. "So long that we had to put you on the train without allowing you to say goodbye to your family."

I think of loving, fragile Mom, optimistic, flaky Dad, scared, lonely Tera, and a feeling of dread and horror sinks over me and settles into my bones.

I want them to remember me.

A/N: Can I just say that Sherbet is one of my favorite OCs I've ever made? She's cunning, empathetic, and not at all what she seems to be… :3

Gigi originally didn't have any family problems, but I extrapolated from their personalities and, well, it was a really good explanation for an honestly strange personality.

(And in case anyone was wondering, yes, I was implying that Tera was pregnant. Because she is.)

Que tenga un buen dia,

Phannie