A/N: District Six! The girl was an easier choice, but I had two good boys, and it came down to the line choosing between them. Enjoy!
Trigger Warning: Profanity, and talks of murder, suicide, depression, and drug use.
There are voices in my head
- Oooooh, You're such a mess
Saying things that shouldn't be said
- You're talentless.
I just hope that they will
- No we won't
Go away
No they won't go away
- Never go away
- Never go away
They're here to stay.
- We're here to stay
- We're here to stay
Liberty Miles, 16
Resident of District 6
Student at Propane High School
You're an ugly bitch. You should just kill yourself, Libby.
"Shut...shut up, Anaya..." I stare at myself in the mirror as Anaya's voice rings through my head. My eyes trace my features, absorbing them but not really registering them, just realizing that they are there, and that they exist, and that I am real.
I never shut up, and you know it. I never shut up when I was alive, and I'll never shut up now that I am dead.
"Go...go away!" I moan, and slam the closet door with the mirror on it shut. I know Anaya won't give up. She's never given up, not since I was 13. When I was 13, Anaya disappeared. She was found dead four days later in a scrapyard, her body intact, not a speck of blood in sight, not a trace of morphling or other addictive substance in her veins. They couldn't figure out how she died, but she was dead, and that was that. I was devastated. She was talkative but had always been nice to me, and she was my older sister. I adored her. I turned to the dark parts of Six and took up a morphling needle for a couple of months until my parents found out. They cut me off immediately and sent me off to rehab for a couple of months, where I recovered mostly from my addiction. I'm still tempted daily, however. It's hard to stay away from the dark alleys, beckoning with the sounds of backstreet drug gangs.
But ever since I slid the first needle into my arm, Anaya has haunted my head at all times, bothering me and harassing me and insulting me. At first I thought it was just a hallucination from the morphling, and then a lingering side effect as I went through rehab. But I've been out of rehab for two years, and I haven't touched a drop of morphling in two and a half years, since I exited rehab. And yet, Anaya still lingers in my head, taunting me and screaming insults and distracting me. I manage to function and ignore her voice, but it still scares me sometimes, and no one talks to me since I yell at Anaya a lot whenever she talks in my head in public. People think I'm crazy, talking to myself. I am crazy, probably. I'm just talking to my dead sister in my head, so I do have an audience.
An audience, you say? I'm not clapping for the shitty performance that's your life, you asshole.
"I don't expect you too, Anaya..." I trail off before turning away from the mirror and heading over to my dresser. I pull out a purple shirt and jeans and put them on, and then I march downstairs, managing to suppress Anaya's thoughts on my clothing choices.
When I sit down at the counter to eat, I let my guard down. My mother and father look at me curiously as I clench my teeth. Anaya's voice splutters out everything she's been thinking for the past couple of minutes in one rush.
That shirt is ugly it shows off your flat chest, and those jeans are so saggy on your concave ass, and why the hell do you hop down the stairs like that you fag? And you still eat sugary cereals you immature bitch. Get out of your diapers and go take a hit of morphling and be a real bad girl that all the guys want.
I plow through my bowl of Puffy Sugar Oats, not really tasting them, just feeling dozens of tiny pinpricks littering the undersides of my arms, the places where I injected morphling into my veins where I was thirteen. The little dot scars are pretty hard to see, being on the undersides of my arms and being minuscule, but I still often feel self conscious about them. People still think I do morphling because I'm so aloof and distant and quiet. I don't need to give them another reason by seeing the scars that pepper the undersides of my pale arms.
Once I am done with breakfast, I grab my book bag and wave goodbye to my parents as I wander out of the house. I traipse down the smoggy avenue, the eternally gray skies overhead smothering the sun and making my skin pasty white like everyone else with skin like mine in the District. Heck, it's so sunless here, even people with darker skin look washed out and lighter than most people of color in other Districts. I shiver as a cold breeze rattles down the street, pushing trash sluggishly forward across the rough pavement. A few other kids walk to school nearby but they give me a wide berth. I don't give a fuck what they think about me.
Yes you do. You KNOW that you do. You know that you want to be accepted, with the boys flocking at your feet and the girls clustering at your every beck and call. Just take up that needle, and they'll all realize how cool you are, Libby.
My eyes glance down a nearby alleyway, where I see two older men playing with a vial and a set of needles, and my heart flutters and my will almost gives out. I almost head down that alleyway as Anaya taunts me relentlessly.
Go do it, Libby. Squirt the morphling into your veins and send me away for a day. You know you want it. You KNOW you want it. YOU WANT IT, SO GO GET IT YOU SNIVELING LITTLE BITCHY LITTLE SISTER! GO. TAKE. A. HIT!
I run like my life depends on it, and I does. I barrel through the front doors of school and rush to my locker, not thinking about anything but taking out my homework and my books and heading to Ms. Zitiz's room. I shuffle my graded papers in their folder, all bearing bright red A's. I smile at them, and put the folder in its spot inside the locker before grabbing my history books and binder. Ms. Zitiz teaches history, and is my first period teacher.
I slip into her room a couple of minutes before the bell. I sit down behind my desk and complete the easy bell work all while Anaya harasses me. I manage to get really great grades in school despite being distracted by Anaya. I can stay focused besides hearing Anaya, and I'm really smart, so a lot of things come easy to me in school. If I wasn't as naturally smart as I am, I would flunk school with Anaya pestering me all of the time. Ms. Zitiz walks into the room. She's a tall, beautiful, young, graceful, curvy woman, the kind of woman most girls want to grow up to be. She has a rich, successful husband and a two year old son named Zach. I smile at her as she greets us. She's a very nice and good teacher, and she's one of my favorites. Anaya has a different opinion.
What a slut, wearing such a short skirt. She probably wants to seduce one of these hormonal teenagers. Such a whore. She's so fat and ugly, you should stand up and scream that in her face. Go ahead. Come one, Lib, call her a fat, ugly seductress. Go on!
I push past Anaya's whiny voice and focus on the lesson as Ms. Zitiz starts talking about the 10th Hunger Games. On the electronic chalkboard, Ms. Zitiz pulls up a picture of the Victor, the infamous Serephina Manchas. There isn't much to learn pre-Dark Days in History since the Capitol obviously doesn't want us knowing what the world was like before the inception of Panem, and most of Panem's history pre-Dark Days is already mostly lost. People don't live that long in the Districts, especially in Districts like Six, polluted and full of toxins. But anyway, we have a quiz tomorrow about the tributes of the 10th Games. She gives us a pop quiz on them. It's just three questions, simple, easy, not even a grade.
1. Who was the Victor of the 10th Hunger Games?
Answer: Serephina Manchas
2. How long did the Games last? Elaborate on the length.
Answer: 12 days. It's about the average length of a Games.
3. Which District was the first to lose both of their tributes?
Answer: District 10
I turn in my little slip of paper to Ms. Zitiz, and then I'm allowed to leave class. I wave goodbye, and go to my locker. Most people are still in class, and I see a guy walk towards me. He holds a small package in his hands, and I look at him inquisitively as I pull out my calculus book and notebook.
"Hey, addict-girl, I'm startin' to sell some vials. Want some?" he asks, holding up the brown paper package. The glass vials inside clink together.
Take it! You do have money in your backpack for lunch. You'll survive without lunch for a day. Take it, Libby!
I push past him and storm off to calculus as the other kids start to come out of their classes. Sometimes I really wish my sister was fully dead.
Look
If you had
One shot
Or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you capture it
Or just let it slip?
Fender Hopkins, 17
Resident of District 6
Student at Propane High School
Torque and I walk together down the street. He lives close to me, and every morning we wake up very early to head to the school's gym for an hour or two before school starts. The two of us chat and joke, prodding each other with insults and shoving each other around a little bit as we walk. The sky is dark, not only from the smog but from the night. It's around 5 A.M., and the faint haze of sunlight that permeates through the clouds during the day isn't there, so the sky is pitch black, although we can make out the street and the buildings around us due to the streetlights spread out unevenly along the street. They paint streaks of golden light across the street, and light our way. They also reveal anyone else walking by at this early hour. A homeless man shuffles by, ignoring us, and I hear some laughter from a nearby alleyway. A pair of older man are high off their asses, two needles in their hands, and I growl, rolling my eyes. They start brawling on the ground as they disappear from my sight, and I just shake my head. My hoodie reads "Pride in Six" with our seal below it. Everyone that knows me knows that I hold our District in high regard. Before the Dark Days, we were a mecca of trade, diversity, ingenuity, and forward progress. We were the fourth richest District in Panem, right behind the Career Districts and just barely in front of Five. Now we've fallen to ninth place, with only Nine, Eleven, and Twelve below us. Our streets are riddled with gang violence, drug abuse, and rape. We are no longer the pride of the Outliers. No, we're bloodbath fodder along with places like Nine, Eleven, and Twelve. I have respect for Nine. They're a resilient, hard working place, and so is Eleven sometimes. They can produce great tributes. Twelve, however, just seems like they gave up when the Games were announced, and they've never tried to win ever since.
"Dude, you're really quiet," Torque murmurs. "Thinking about Demica?" he says with a grin, elbowing me playfully. I swat his arm away. Demica Taski is this girl I'm friends with. I don't have a girlfriend, but if I had one it would be her. I think she likes me, and she's a really pretty, great girl. I'd be proud to be her boyfriend, but right now I need to focus on other things than girls.
"No, just thinking about the business," I reply. Not exactly true, but my train of thought was heading there. Torque and I are working on this business model with the help of my father. We've started working as mechanics and we fix cars for lower prices than most places in Six, and we're both really good at it from all the classes in mechanics that they offer at Propane High that we've taken.
We're at the high school now. We buzz in and report our names for the office workers to let us in.
"Fender Hopkins," I declare, and they open the door for me right away. See, my father's a pretty high up Peacekeeper, and he's well respected in this area of Six, where he works most of the time. My mom's also an architect, a rare job in Six. It takes up a lot of time and I rarely see her as she's constructing factories and all that in different parts of Six, but she makes good money and is a good mother when she's home.
"Apollo Nitra!" Torque booms, and the office staff let him in quickly as well. Torque's real name is Apollo Nitra, he just goes by Torque. They really shouldn't make us buzz in. We come here almost every morning at almost the exact time. They should just have the doors open for two minutes at the space of time when we usually come. Then again, in that space of two minutes some stupid gang would probably break in and spray the gang signs all over the lockers that my brother Carter's started to draw in his notebooks. He sure got in trouble for that. That stupid kid, wanting to be a gangster. He thinks it'll make him cool.
It'll only make him dead.
Torque and I walk up two flights of stairs to the workout room. The big gymnasium is on the bottom floor of the high school, but the room with all the weight machines and dumbbells is on this third floor. We slip into the room, and set to work. I do sit ups, and Torque works on push ups. Then he does sit ups, and I do push ups, and then we take to the various weight machines until fifteen minutes before first period begins. We head into the locker room, shower, and change, and then we head down to our lockers, close to each other. Torque's a year younger than me, a sophomore, and I'm a junior this year. He heads off to history with Ms. Zitiz while I walk into my first class of the day, a mechanic workshop class with Mr. Herolds. Demica's in this class, and she grins at me as I sit next to her.
"How was the workout today?" she asks with a playful smile.
"Good, good, got these arms pumpin'," I reply with a goofy grin, and I flex. She just rolls her eyes and tells me to knock it off as Mr. Herolds walks into the room. He walks over to the chalkboard and writes the date and the day's agenda as we continue to talk.
"Doing your P.E. speech today?" Demica wonders aloud.
"No, I did one yesterday and Coach Wheiler said that that's good enough for the week." All the P.E. teachers like me and Torque because of our affinity with physical education, as well as mechanics. We give speeches sometimes in P.E. to the freshman about how important it is to stay healthy and fit and all that sort of stuff, and it sometimes helps. I like giving those speeches. It encourages those kids to get fit, so maybe then they'll have a better chance of surviving the Games if they ever do get the bad luck of being Reaped. If this mechanic business Torque and I have going doesn't work out, my next choice of occupation would be to be a P.E. teacher in the schools of Six. I'd be a hardass teacher, but I'd get everyone in my classes fit and able.
"Today, class, we're gonna be talking about how to fix a R-068 engine in a Fluye Hovercraft, Version 5.3," Mr. Herolds booms. Everyone scrambles to grab pencils and their notebooks to take notes about the process before we have to do it ourselves.
"Easy peasy," I tease Demica after she complains about how much she hates fixing Fluye Hovercraft engines.
"Oh, sure, Mr. Mechanic. Even Odis Armstrong struggles fixing Fluye Hovercrafts, and you're not as good as that master of mechanics."
"Touche, my fair maiden," I say in a mocking tone. She giggles and slaps me with her notebook, and Mr. Herolds clears his throat, his incising eyes locking on both of us. We both quiet immediately, grab our pencils, and poise them over our papers.
"Having trouble Mr. Hopkins, Ms. Taski?" Mr. Herolds asks in an exasperated tone.
"No, sir!" we both holler together, and Mr. Herolds seems satisfied, starting with his lesson.
"First off, to fix a R-068 engine, you'll need a monkey wrench..."
A/N: Here we have Liberty and Fender, courtesy of StarlilyJam and the victor of panem respectively. Thanks for this fun pair of tributes!
Sorry for the wait, but TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY! I had an impromptu birthday party with some of my friends last night so I couldn't get this out yesterday like I planned. I wanted to get this out before my family party today, and I hope it didn't feel rushed.
Blogs are my newest addiction, and I'm currently working on one for the Victors of this universe. It may or may not contain spoilers on who I'm pretty sure I'm accepting in the other Districts xD Here it is: tracelynnsvictors . blogspot . com
One thing I wanted to note, just so you guys can start thinking about this. I am not making alliances for you. Besides the Careers (all six of the tributes from One, Two, and Four), the rest of the alliances will have to be made by you. You will have to contact the creators of the other tributes and see if they want an alliance with your tribute. If one of the submitters isn't responding/isn't reading, I'll add them into whatever alliance you guys would like them in. And, also, alliances are not essential. I like writing solo tributes as much as I like writing alliances, if not more so. Having an alliance will most likely not effect how well your tribute does, so don't feel pressured to make an alliance. There were very few alliances in the 74th, and so if we have very few alliances in this story I'm alright with that.
The new poll should be up. It's about trains and goodbyes and how I should do them. Please go vote! :D
Halfway through the Reapings! Yippee!
Who did you like better, Libby or Fender? Overall thoughts on this pair? Predicted placements? Thoughts on the writing?
Until Next Time,
Tracee