Christobal Chanel- District Eight male (16)
Humans don't need to make music. It pours out of the whole world. From the unrestrained birds we hear in the morning to the more measured beats of our own footsteps, music is part of the fabric of the universe. Even beyond this world it waits for us. "The music of the spheres", they call it. That was one of the prettiest phrases I'd ever heard. Even a scientist in some sterile lab looking up at celestial bodies forever beyond our reach thought of music. Humans only make their own music because we want to be a part of that.
My mother's guitar shouts, though it is silent. I knelt on the floor in the corner of our tiny storage closet beside an open case that looked perversely like a coffin for something that held such life. I didn't know much about guitars but it seemed to be cheaply made and not that well-preserved. It had scuff marks on the pale ash wood planes. One of the knobs had a chip in it. But it worked, and that made it sublime. Even in its cheapness its form was magical. Its curved sides called to mind the arcs of a sound wave. The black mark on the right of the hole drew my eye in and led me straight to the strings. The strings. They always reminded me of science class, when we learned about potential energy. The strings of my mother's guitar thrummed with potential energy. All the music in the world was in there waiting to flow out. To pluck those strings was to give that energy life.
I shouldn't, I knew. Mom wasn't home. She wouldn't be back until after the Reaping. I could see how guilty she felt about leaving me but she had a job opportunity and we couldn't afford to let that go. That job interview was the only reason I got to even see the guitar. My mom loved me but she wasn't happy. I knew something happened before I was born. She never told me but I saw it in the way her eyes never sparkled and there was just no vitality in her face. She wasn't sick or old. She was just pining away. And she didn't like me taking out the guitar. I'd come to suspect it had belonged to someone who died. Whoever it was, she must have really loved them.
Breaking rules didn't come easily to me. Standing out for any reason didn't come easily to me. I already got picked on enough for stuttering and for the haphazard clothes my mother tried her best to sew without materials or talent. The best thing for me to do was stay quiet and disappear. And I loved my mother and appreciated everything she did for me. It would be horrible to do the one thing she'd forbidden. But I'd done it. I'd taken out her guitar and I'd patiently taught myself how to play it. I didn't know how she could forbid something like that. When I found the guitar and the music it made it was like I'd lived my entire life crawling in a desert and had for the first time found water. It was joy and life and color and magic. I wished she could see it.
I was a bad kid. I could make excuses like "usually I'm good" or "It's the Reaping. I have to have a token". I could tell myself she'd never know anyway because she never opened the guitar case. I knew all of those would be lies. As I walked to the Reaping I was weighed down both with guilt and with a single chipped guitar knob in my pocket.
Callum Rosecrans, District Eleven male- 18
If you're already on death row you might as well kill more people, right? I wasn't on death row but everyone had already written me off. Once everyone thinks you're beyond help that pretty much makes you beyond help. It was soul-crushingly lonely to know everyone averted their gaze and crossed the street when they saw me. But it was also kind of freeing. Everyone thought I was going to get into mischief at any given point so when I did get into mischief they weren't even mad. Sometimes they seemed almost reassured. "There's Callum, making trouble again. Guess things are still normal in the world".
All that would change tonight. I wasn't turning over a new leaf and making something of myself. No, I was going past what even they thought of me. No one was ever going to think of me as a grimy creep ever again. No, they were going to think of me as a murderer.
In one of life's grand ironies, I wasn't doing this to be edgy or get attention. No one would ever believe me, but I was doing this because it needed to be done. Dierdre Pagett was a pillar of our community. Everyone loved the brave, patient single mother who nurtured and tirelessly championed her frail ailing daughter. Only Stevie and I knew the truth. No one in the world would ever believe us if we told them Stevie was nothing but a trophy to Dierdre- a means to get the adoration and praise she lived for. Deirdre was a saint, Stevie was a waif, and I was scum. Who would people believe? And if we even tried, Deirdre was going to load Stevie up with the kind of pills that melted people's brains and turned them into blank shells. No one would believe me when I said I wasn't going to enjoy this. This was the only way out for us.
It was a misty, dingy night in the streets of Eight. The moisture in the air brought out the smells of garbage and street grime and settled them over me like a mist. Half the streetlights were burned out and the ones that remained flickered to make the streets look like something from a hardboiled detective story. Glass clinked as I passed by a dumpster. I hustled forward as a filthy head appeared over the edge. I locked eyes with some filthy street dweller looking for alcohol or cigarette butts or something worse. From the smell of him, it was alcohol. I felt his eyes on my back as I continued down the alleyway.
A light was on in Stevie's house. Her mother always left the light between their rooms on in case she had to "help" her in the night. I walked up the damp steps- no one ever questioned why a wheelchair-bound kid's mother picked a house with steps- and turned the doorknob I knew Stevie had unlocked.
Stevie was sitting in the front room waiting for me. She was twitchy with nervous energy. She looked over at her mother's closed door and wheeled herself toward her own room as I followed. I guess she wanted to cling to some old normalcy, since we both knew she could walk. In her room Stevie climbed out of her chair and stretched out on the floor by her bed as I crept into her closet and closed the door halfway.
"Mom! Mom, help!" Stevie yelled. She carried on as I heard the footsteps approaching. Deirdre appeared in the doorway, looking entirely convincing in her fear. Sometimes she must even fool herself.
"What's wrong?" she asked as she knelt by Stevie, trying to get her up.
"I can't get up!" Stevie cried. My mouth was dry as I pushed the door open and snuck up behind them. Stevie never even glanced at me, careful not to betray my position. She'd left the best weapon she could find in the closet for me. Deirdre didn't give us much to work with but the cast-iron frying pan was forebodingly heavy as I brought it up. It was eerie how callous I felt as I stepped forward to murder a woman. I'd gone through it so many times in my head that doing it felt like just another practice.
It really does sound like meat, I thought, flashing back to all the crime novels that described fractured skulls with that phrase. Deirdre collapsed onto Stevie, who stifled a disgusted scream with her hand. I flipped Deirdre over and we bent over her. There was no question she was dead. I wouldn't forget her empty eyes. One pointed up and one was looking down and left. In all of this, that would be the image that haunted me.
"We did it," Stevie said heavily, not in congratulation but in admission. We looked at each other and at her mother's corpse. She was right. It was done. Just like everyone said about me, I'd crossed the line.
Christobal: Cristobal is tall and fairly muscular from his time running. He has golden-brown hair that is wavy, hazel eyes and olive skin.
Callum: Callum has dark beige skin and a very slim physique. He's 6 feet and 3 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds so he is quite close to being underweight. He has a broad nose, thick eyebrows, and a square face. Callum's hair is coily in texture and a few inches long. His eyes are narrow and dark brown.