Ulysses Dank rolled over in bed at the sound of a hovercraft alarm. He groaned as he tried to shield the sunlight from his eyes, the sun glaring horizontally into his small bedroom. He used to share it with his older sister Genevieve before she married, but now it was his.
He liked it that way.
He was a boy after all, and sharing a bedroom with your sister gave everyone at school a chance to make fun of him.
It also didn't help that his nineteen year old sister was considered to be very attractive. He shuddered just thinking about it. Like seriously, she was his sister! The guys at school shouldn't –
Oh Panem… School.
Ulysses shot out of bed, putting on a pair of jeans and throwing on the first clean shirt he saw and struggled to tie his shoes. In a matter of seconds, he brushed his teeth and grabbed his school bag and ran down twenty-three flights of stairs.
By the time he reached the main floor of his apartment complex, his premature acne-prone face was red with effort, and he had to lean over and catch his breath for a few minutes.
I…really…need….to…exercise…more often.
Sure, District 6 was all about transportation and all, and every morning a hover-bus came for him and took him to school, and to be honest they didn't really do much walking…
But still…
I need to keep in shape.
When he regained his breath, he walked out into the streets, strangely quiet on an everyday morning. He put that thought out of his head though, as he sped towards his bus stop, which thankfully was only about half-a-block away from his apartment building. Ulysses couldn't believe that he had slept in this morning. Last night he made sure to go to sleep on time even if he had to leave his new blueprint for his school transport fair unfinished. It wasn't due until another month anyways, but he liked to do a couple drafts of the print before he finalized it and turned it in.
He didn't think himself a perfectionist, no… Just a very particular and meticulous person.
On the way to his bus stop, he met a familiar face and felt relieved he hadn't missed the hover-bus.
"James!" He called to his friend, the closest he had next to Lena, but… He didn't like to think too much about her these days. Her death was still fresh in his mind.
James turned around to see his friend, tucking in his blonde hair into his beanie and stuffing the small packet of morphling pills into his jacket pocket before Ulysses caught a glimpse.
"Hey dude! Has the hover-bus passed?" He asked, still slightly red in the face and with sweat beading down from his light brown hair.
"Hover-bus?" James looked at him as if he was crazy. "There's no school today, Ulysses. It's the Reaping, stupid"
Ulysses flushed with embarrassment and slight anger at his friend's comment.
"I knew that"
"I'm glad your parents let you sleep over last night" Nadia Silver rolled onto her stomach, her stormy blue eyes tired from staying up all night gossiping and chatting with her best friend.
"I'm glad your parents let me sleep over" Peggy giggled, bumping Nadia with her hip.
Nadia rolled her eyes and started to close her eyes, just for a little bit of rest before they had to get up to eat breakfast,
"Oh no you don't! I spent all night discussing Rob Farrell with you, you better stay awake now!" Peggy clonked Nadia over the head with the pillow.
Nadia shot straight up, mousy brown hair tousled and knotted from the restless night.
"You weren't complaining when we were talking about Sidney Clash!" She retorted.
"Shhhh! Your brothers are in the next room, remember? If they hear us, that'll be the end of our double-date fantasy with the two most sexy, muscular, tall –"
"Okay there sister, simmer down" She hit Peggy with her pillow, both girls giggling at her description. "Besides, Morgan is only fourteen and Jack is thirteen. How would they know the eighteen-year olds we are talking about."
"Umm, hello? Panem to Nadia! Morgan is friends with Sidney's little brother?" Peggy opened her green eyes wide and shot her eyebrows up as if to make a point.
"So? They don't know Rob" She laughed to herself as her friend gasped.
"Evil! Traitor!" She laughed as she pretended to be affected by Nadia's words.
Mrs. Silver chose to walk in at that second and took one look at her daughter, and then her daughter's friend. They started hitting each other with pillows, and then Nadia forfeited her pillow and chose to instead try to push Peggy off the bed. It was at this second that Mrs. Silver cleared her throat, amused at her teenage daughter's strong will and determination – she had so much of it that she didn't even realize her mother had walked in the room.
"Oh… Hi mom" Nadia smiled close-lipped at her mom, stopped in mid-action of pushing Peggy off.
Peggy had one leg on the floor and one leg on the bed and was about to lose balance.
"Hi Mrs. Silver" She said before toppling to the ground.
Nadia's mother raised an eyebrow and narrowed her eyes playfully at her seventeen year old daughter.
"Good Morning girls…" She waited until Peggy got back up onto the bed, and the continued to talk. "Breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes" She brushed back her brown hair with her fingers, her choppy bob cut falling straight back into place. She turned to leave, but first cast a mock-serious look to the girls.
"No more sexy boy talk, ok?"
She heard their muted giggles of mortification when she closed the door and despite what event was going to take place later that morning, she felt lucky to have her family.
Ulysses and James walked around the streets of District 6 in silence. They had been doing so for an unnatural amount of time, and Ulysses thought it to be a bit strange. Lately he had been feeling like his friend was slipping away, and that scared him. It terrified him, actually. Losing Lena last year had really cost him a lot. She used to be a very special girl- Short and lean, dark brown eyes always open in amazement at the world around her… He remembered that she used to bounce slightly wherever she walked, and her dark brown hair cut in a very modern bob used to move along with her. Lena was a breath of fresh air, something that was really rare in District 6 – the tall, broken down skyscrapers and apartment buildings covered most of the sky, and the air usually reeked of engine fuel.
Yeah, he missed Lena a lot.
They rounded a corner, and was surprised at James coming into a small alley. Ulysses' hazel eyes scanned his friend. What was he doing?
He noticed for the first time the slight greenish and yellowish hue that tinted the area around James's usual bright brown eyes. His clothes seemed to sag a bit on him, indicating that either he bought bigger-size clothes (which with his parent's income was hardly possible) or that he was rapidly losing weight.
"James! What in Panem are you doing?" Ulysses walked briskly to his friend and caught him by the elbow.
"Leave me alone already" He pushed him away, continuing his slow gait further into the alley.
"This is dangerous, James! You know what kind of people lurk around here!" He tried again, unsuccessfully to stop him.
James laughed, a harsh sound against the quiet of the alley.
"Are you scared?"
Yes, I am, he thought. His parents had repeatedly told him to stay far away from the alleys – especially this one, the one in between Bolt street and Fuel Avenue. This alley is where all the strong morphling addicts hung around, and the peacekeepers liked to run in unexpectedly and imprison anybody they caught. Plus, morphling addict's attitudes were unpredictable- you never knew when they would snap.
"No. But I have the feeling you're about to do something stupid" Ulysses voiced, hazel eyes hard and focused on his friend's glassy ones. "You're high, aren't you?" He snorted in disbelief.
"What do you care?" James's chin jutted out in defiance, hand absentmindedly gripping the little bag of pills in his jacket pocket.
"I don't. You're obviously intent in ruining your life and who am I to stop you?" Ulysses took one last look at him and, before he changed his mind, sped out of there and started on home. It was either fight or flight at that point, and he knew that the latter would be most appropriate at that moment.
James could go ahead and throw his life down the toilet, but that doesn't mean I have to throw away mine…
Nadia was sitting down at her small kitchen table with Peggy when her two younger brothers decided to go ahead and ruin her mood for the day. She had just cut for herself and Peggy a couple of slices of bread and was about to butter them when Morgan and Jack ran into the kitchen. Morgan was looking over his shoulder at Jack when he rammed into his older sister, pushing her backwards into the sink. Her arm accidentally turned on the faucet at full blast – something that was disastrous in the Silver household. Instantly, water began flying everywhere, soaking Nadia from head to toe and ruining the bread in her hands.
"SHUT IT OFF!" Jack yelled, taking cover underneath the kitchen table with Morgan and Peggy, who had immediately crawled underneath the second the faucet went wild.
"I'M TRYING!" Nadia screamed while on her knees and trying to see through the stream of water engulfing her. She needed to find the main water key, and fast. If not, the whole apartment could flood. Already she could see about a half-inch depth of water in the tiny kitchen. Her fingers fumbled until she felt the key, and with quick precision, turned off the water.
The first thing she did was catch her breath. The adrenaline that had been coursing through her body settled, and when she felt like her heart wouldn't jump out of her chest, she turned to her younger brothers. Nadia glared harshly at them, and then got up off the floor and walked to their cleaning closet and took out a mop and bucket. Peggy had crawled out from underneath the kitchen table and settled herself instead to sit atop it.
"Why are you looking at us like that, Nadia?" Morgan asked, looking very young for his fourteen years at the moment.
"Why do you think?" She snapped, eyes boring into her brothers.
"I don't know, why don't you look us in the eye and tell us?" He smartly replied. He knew how much Nadia hated to look anyone in the eye. It made her feel small, and revealed. It was something to be avoided at all costs.
"Why don't you stop being a smart-" She started, but was interrupted by her father walking in with a towel around his waist.
As if the whole water fiasco wasn't embarrassing enough, here came her father, half-dressed and strolling around in front of Peggy.
"Whoa! Language" He exclaimed. "Can you turn the faucet back on? I was in the middle of a very nice shower"
Ulysses was still pretty upset a couple of hours later. He had walked home slowly, his head full of crawling thoughts that just wouldn't leave him alone. Maybe he should have stayed with James back there, make sure he wasn't in a whole lot of trouble but he worried that if he had, he might have been tempted to go down the same road as James. He worried that thinking about Lena might drive him to commit a rash action, one that would haunt him in the future.
Once he got to his apartment building, he stood outside of it for a really long time – just staring at the immensity of the living quarters. District 6 was pretty metropolitan – and though not wealthy, they weren't poor either. District 6 was like the buffer zone between the rich districts and the dirt poor ones. Sure, they had "bad areas" where the really unfortunate resided in or the morphling druggies, but most families were able to live a pretty stable life. They always had food on the table. Ulysses couldn't remember a time where he ever went hungry.
Obviously they were well enough as a society to create addicts. Morphling was pretty costly. He wondered briefly how James had acquired the money to get his hands on a supply of them.
Ulysses wasn't sure how long he stood outside, but it must have been an extreme amount of time because next thing he knew, he saw streams and clumps of people making their way to the town square.
Honestly, he couldn't care less what he was wearing at the moment. The Reaping isn't something everyone wants to go to anyways, he thought sarcastically.
He made the trek to the town square with everyone else, sticking out in his normal clothes, but he didn't notice. All he kept seeing in his head was James's face tinted in green and yellow hues.
He didn't want to lose another friend. Losing Lena last year to the Games was enough.
Nadia was drying her hair with a towel after taking a long shower. Peggy had left a few minutes after the water fiasco because it was after all, the Reaping, and she had to get dressed at her house. After she left, she made sure that Morgan and Jack cleaned the mess up in the kitchen, while she waited for her dad to get out of the shower.
He had of course, used up all the nice hot water.
Now, it was hardly worth thinking off as she changed into the grey dress with the black lace trim that she wore to last year's Reaping. The unfortunate tributes were Grant Hefner, a tall seventeen year old that actually made it to top 5 in the Games before he was stabbed to death by the District 2 male(Salium… Or Valium , she couldn't remember his exact name), and Lena Kolh – a sweet, young girl she had always seen hanging around a brunette and a blonde guy. She didn't really know much about her, and poor thing she was killed within the first five minutes of the bloodbath – speared through the stomach by the District 4 female.
It must have been really hard to watch for her family and friends – it had been hard for her and she barely knew her.
Anyways, there was not much left to do with her short brown locks, and in the end, she resolved to French-braiding a small piece and pinning it back in a Grecian style. She honestly never knew why she bothered trying to look nice for the Reaping… Just the way her parents raised her, she guessed.
They never left anything half-finished. They saw it through to the end – no matter what.
With that thought, she gathered her brothers and started walking ahead of her parents to the town square.
She wondered briefly if anyone she knew would get reaped this year… And instantly felt sorry for whoever did because they'd have to put up with the escort, Lila Violetta .
Lila Violetta stepped on the platform the peacekeepers had set up and tapped twice on the microphone. Her purple waved locks were tied securely in a tall ponytail, and she flicked it for a sympathetic gesture.
"The Reaping has begun!" She stated dramatically, opening her cat eyes dramatically and stepping off to the side to wait out the video. The people of District 6 watched it politely, a few yawns here and there, but nothing too preposterous. She preferred District 6 a lot more to District 11, who she had escorted for almost 7 years. Two years ago, they offered her the opportunity to switch to District 6 and boy, did she take it fast!
After the tedious video finished, not that she had paid much attention anyways, she pranced on stage, her four-foot eleven tiny frame bouncing in anticipation.
Oohh she looooved Reapings!
"Let's start with our ladies! YAY!" She giggled as she reached into the crystal bowl on her right picking a slip from the edge.
"Our LUCKY tribute is…Nadia Silver! YAY!" She clapped and bounced in place, smiling hugely at the crowd as a very nicely dressed girl walked up on the stage.
"Oooh I love your hair!" Lila complimented, receiving a weird look from the young teenager.
"My name is Nadia Silver, and I am freaking seventeen years old" She spat into the microphone, obviously not very happy.
Lila Violetta blinked.
"Well then… How about we continue with our handsome boys! YAY!" She chortled as she snatched slip from the bowl on her left and clutched it to her heart as she smiled mischievously at the unimpressed audience.
"Our LUCKY MALE tribute is…." Her smile faltered as she squinted her eyes onto the paper.
"Uly…Oohly… oh haha" She giggled cutely "Ooolaysees Dark! TRIPLE YAY!"
A few snickers spread through the crowd despite the serious moment, one coming especially from a sick looking blonde boy way out in the corner.
A young teenager walked up onto the stage, an amused, yet faraway look on his face.
"My name is…" He looked at Lila "Ulysses Dank, and I am fifteen years old."
Lila Violetta danced and clapped, screaming 'YAY!' at the top of her lungs as she herded the 'lucky' tributes off to their respective rooms.
Oooh I like them! I know they can win! YAY MONEY! Lila Violetta thought.
If only the tributes were as sure of this…
A sort of serious/humourous chapter. I kinda fell in love with Lila Violetta! She's like a candy-coated version of Effie on steroids... kinda lol
I felt I needed to liven up District 6 a bit, we never read about them much...
If I did horrible, flames are encouraged :) YAY! (ok I'll stop now xD)
.xoxo