A/N: And today, District Ten! I'm happy with this pair, and I hope you enjoy reading about them. :)
Trigger Warning: None
This is for all you girls about thirteen,
High school can be so rough can be so mean,
Hold on to on to your innocence,
Stand your ground when everybody's givin' in.
This one's for the girls
Miriam Park, 13
Resident of District 10
Student at Rinds Middle School
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The referee flashes a yellow card my way, glaring sternly. I look at him, shrugging it off like I didn't do anything although Betty McKee is glaring at me, her pretty blue eyes narrowed into tiny slits. She's red faced, and she's rubbing a sore spot on her side. Oh, what? Sorry, I just elbowed Betty when I was going in for the kick and she was hurtling right at me. Betty's infamous for her illegal modified slide tackles that always get by the refs somehow. I'd rather chance a yellow than being plowed down and getting injured and being out for the rest of the season. And no one scores a goal on me.
A yellow card is just to caution a player, telling them that they're close to getting a red card, but Coach Anne pulls me anyway. She always pulls people when they have a card called on them. Lora Beady takes my place, and I watch with energy bubbling in my chest as Betty McKee gets away with an illegal slide tackle, kicking the soccer ball to her team's best scorer, my best female friend, Sierra Scolil. She's one of the only girls in my school that I can actually stand, and we're great buddies. But on the soccer field, friendships are worth as much as the turf stuck to my cleats. It's me versus her, and I only feel half happy when she manages to juke out our goalie, Bulla, out and score the third goal of the game. They're up by two now. I just fold my arms and watch as the last minutes tick by; the score doesn't change, and Coach Anne won't put me back in. She's telling me to stop playing rough, I know, but the team's hurting. I'm good at my position. I can hold of Betty even without illegal moves; the shove was just the only thing I could do in time. Lora barely keeps Betty from stealing the ball a couple of times, and I commend her effort when she comes back to the bench when the game's over. We've lost, but we're still the second best team in the division, just behind the team that has just beaten us, the Steers. We're the Broncos, and the other two teams in our league are the Boars and the Roosters. I've played soccer since I can remember.
I pile into Coach Anne's old gray van with the other girls that don't have a ride; Lora, Dana McThaid, and Igga Thompson. I'm decent friends with Dana and Igga; they're at least bearable. Lora, while quiet on the field from nerves, is pretty rowdy and normal-insecure-naive-plays-stupid-girly-girl type. I can't really stand girls like that, but in our big country town, most of the girls are clones of Lora, only different in appearance.
The soccer fields are just past the city limits. As we leave them behind, we pass the sign reading Welcoming to Latticeville! It's thick and painted and wooden, made by the District government, also known as the Panemian government, also known as the Capitol. It's too colorful and oblivious in a landscape of livestock pens and slaughterhouses. A second sign, a plasticky white lawn sign, reads ¡Bienvenido a Latticeville! There's dozens of small villages scattered throughout Ten that speak exclusively the thought to be extinct language of español, and everyone knows how to greet and sing and count and inquire in the language. It's just the way of our District. Coach Anne's Hispanic; so is Lora. Dana and I have a dash of it in our veins. It's just the way it is here.
Coach Anne's van is old and slow, from before the Dark Days. Here in Ten, since we butt up against Six, cars are common in the suburbs. Ten isn't a very rich District; our two big cities, Pronge and Marrow, and our hundreds of minuscule villages, are as poor as dirt, but nearly everyone in the suburbs is decently rich. My family's on the lower side in Latticeville, which is a rich suburb among rich suburbs. A lot of people are rich via inheritance from prior to the creation of Panem, putting back what they take from the family inheritance via nice, hard work, and then passing the wealth on down to the next generation.
But anyway, everyone's already long gone by the time Coach Anne gets the van up and running. We drive slow into the city. Thankfully my house is the closest, so I get dropped off first. Coach Anne rolls up smoothly onto our gravel driveway. I grab my soccer bag from the trunk and then say thanks before waving and then running into the garage. Coach Anne pulls out and drives away as I step into the house, setting down my soccer bag with a clatter on the hardwood.
"I'm home!" I shout, not expecting a response. My mother's stuck in bed, probably asleep, and she's a heavy sleeper. Dad's working his butt off at the slaughterhouse right now. I don't know how I'll be able to work there when I'm older. It's not the blood that bothers me, it's the monotony, the normality, the lifestyle of working ten hour days that are exactly the same. Schedules are a bit pesky to me for some reason. I like being free to do whatever I please whenever I want.
I walk past my mom's room on my way to my room. As predicted, she's sound asleep. She looks so frail and fragile, like a porcelain doll, under the puffy buttercream colored covers. She doesn't sense me, she just keeps snoring on softly. I stand in the doorway, watching her, and I let out a defeated sigh. It's been almost a year since she got sick; cancer, the town doctor calls it. The only treatment is in the Capitol, and of course we can't afford to send Mom there. We live the sham of being a rich family in a rich suburb town, but really we're dirt poor. The signs are showing. Peeling wallpaper and paint. Cloudy windows. My dad walking to work because he doesn't have the money to fix his pickup truck. My clothes, threadbare and worn twice or thrice before being cleaned. Our eyes, empty, tired, hollow, hidden behind lovely smiles. We have an inheritance of our own. We share it with my dad's brother, Uncle Jimmy. Well, we used to, before he died from alcoholism three years ago. He sapped the funds dry in his quest to relinquish sobriety, leaving our once rather rich family with barely enough money to pay the bills and feed and clothe ourselves, not to mention buy treatment for Mom. It hurts, but I think we've all come to accept that one day I'll come home from my soccer game, Dad from the slaughterhouse, and she'll just be gone. It'll hurt, but it feels like she's been dead for a year since she was diagnosed. I've already grieved plenty. I can't imagine I'll grieve even more after she's truly gone, but I know I will.
I leave the threshold of my mother's room, rubbing the back of my head thoughtfully. I sigh again, and push thoughts of my mother from my mind, instead walking down to the very end of the hall. I push open the wooden door, a bit of peeling white paint flaking off as I nudge the door open with my shoulder. The door squeaks closed on its own as I sit down on my bed. I pull of my socks, my shirt, my shorts, everything. Stark naked, I then head into the bathroom, the room next door. I remove a towel and a wash cloth and turn on the water all the way to the hottest setting; it comes out lukewarm. Soon I have coated myself in suds, and I let the lukewarm water slowly cool down to an icy cold. Even then, I just stand in the shower, trying to think about my friends, about soccer, about school, about the Games, about anything but a coffin and a tumor and a mother, cold, dead.
Eventually the water shuts off on its own accord; the Capitol only supplies shower water in Latticeville for fifteen minutes max, and that's more than in the big cities and the tiny villages and in Districts like Eight, Nine, Eleven, and Twelve. I step out, towel drying myself as I look over my skinny, bony figure in the cloudy mirror. I wring out my hair and then wrap the damp towel around my body before I walk off to my bedroom again.
Once I have a clean pair of shorts and a shirt on, I hear the front door banging open. I start grinning as I burst out of my room and sprint into the waiting arms of my father. He's still in his slaughterhouse uniform, plain white and smelling of bleach, his hairnet still on. He tears it off when we break our embrace, and then he starts chuckling as we walk together to Mom's room. His laugh is like a spell; she wakes up almost immediately, and smiles weakly as my father presses his lips lightly against her forehead. I sit on the foot of her bed, and we talk and smile and are a family. I look at my mother for once without eyes that see that she is already gone, a mouth for once that isn't a firm, flat line. For once I look at her and see a forever alive woman that is my mother, who will grow with me and shape me and change me, and has already done those things for thirteen years. I don't know how I'll live without her.
I'm down below where it's silent and it's safe, resounding with the question of "Where to, from here?"
I know my direction, I know what it takes, but I'm weak and I'm weightless with everything to fear.
I write about what's real to me when all I feel is make believe, but I won't say there's nothing left.
There's everything, but just out of reach.
But I'm not helpless; I'm not hopeless.
It's time to see the floor sink around me, pushed down with my two bare hands and now I'm stronger for whatever comes.
Let the blood rush, as I rise to my feet.
Rufus Braunvieh, 17
Resident of District 10
Laborer and Student at Langston Gangrene Conservatory
You're so cute I wanna wear you like a suit. I think you'd look pretty good on me. You're so cute I wanna wear you like a suit. I think you'd look pretty good on me. Ok alright, Ok alright. Don't know how it started to start but now it's starting to stop!
Kaylee and I walk side by side through the giant house, listening to the warbling, bombastic, high dive treble voice of the local belter, BettyAnn Putnam. Her warm, honey syrup voice flows thick and sticky through all halls and rooms of the house. even up into the cold, musty attic. The pretty singer with blonde hair crystalized in hairspray and blue eyes so big it seems like she's always in shock has a big price tag hanging from the tuning pegs of her old, red and orange Fender acoustic guitar. That price tag is zip in my grandparents' eyes, however. When you own more ranches than you can count with your fingers and your toes and the fingers and toes of your spouse, children, and grandchildren all put together, you can afford little old BettyAnn Putnam.
Kaylee and I both look well put together, and we are. Her dark blonde hair, more natural than BettyAnn's, falls in a waterfall of curls down her back, and her flowy teal chiffon dress plays well with her green eyes. My teal bow tie with my black slacks and tuxedo correlates with her dress, and many people think we're a couple. No, she's just my friend in all honesty. We have similar backgrounds; the Brandford's own two baker's dozen ranches adjacent to our several dozen, and while they're no where as near as affluent as my family, they're still rich compared to most people in Ten. Most people in this part of the District work on the ranches people like us own for meager salaries, living poor, pitiful lives in tiny houses with empty stomachs.
Is it wrong that I would rather be like them?
That's what links Kaylee and I. She fidgets with the silver necklace, too heavy and expensive, looped around her neck, eyeing the ruby pendant at the end warily, knowing it could feed a family of five for the next week. My hands itch to loosen my bow tie, to roll down my dress socks, to roll up my slacks and tuxedo sleeves, to drink a cup of water instead of sour wine and chatter mindlessly with Kaylee and our other friend, Cody, while we wander the countryside that is interspersed with huge ranches and massive slaughterhouses, like the one I choose to work in. If I had my choice, I'd live in the villages with one set of overalls, maybe two flannel shirts. I'd work in the slaughterhouses or on a ranch, and I'd find myself a good guy or gal to marry, and we'd have kids of our own or adopt, or both, and we'd struggle and we'd fight and we'd fracture and we'd wish for a better life, but we'd be real and gritty and honest people, not the people my family are.
My Grandparents own the large system of Braunvieh farms. My father manages three of them, and his brothers and sisters manage several of their own each as well. My mother stays at home on our home ranch, about a ten minute's run from here, my grandparents' central ranch, which they call the La Chacra Grande de Braunvieh. Like many people, we have bits of Spanish heritage sprinkled about our lives. But anyway, they're filthy rich and stuck up snobs, and they know it, and they don't care. My fathers' too preoccupied worrying about us, his family, and his ranches to be snooty, but all of my aunts and uncles that also own ranches are just like my grandparents. My mother's from a little tiny ranching village, a pretty girl who only married my father to get herself and her family out of destitute poverty. My siblings and cousins are a melting pot of different personalities and views, but a good majority are or are destined to be like the Braunvieh elders. Some of my siblings and cousins are understanding of my views, but all of them plan to stay in the family's good graces and work on the ranches or supervise them. I'm the only one out of the twenty four grandchildren of Marjorie Walsh Braunvieh and Edward Braunvieh that wants to leave the ranching system.
Kaylee and I chat politely with other ranch owners and their children intermittenly, but most of the time we stand by windows or in shadowed corners, conversing quietly about our plans for the midnight outing. We always go out after these tedious parties filled with the richest people in the heart of Ten, the Tierras de Ranchos as they're called. They talk politely about how their livestock is better and their land claims bigger and their feed pricier and their housing larger and how they are just going to sweep everyone else off of their feet with their new equipment and cheaper prices. It's all passive aggressive, polite talk of how they'll beat each other out at the market, and that's all they ever talk about. No "How's your love life?" or "How are the kids?", not even a cursory "The weather's alright, ain't it?" All they care about is more money sliding between their beefy fingertips and outdoing one another. That isn't living.
Finally, the party ends after hours and hours. The house is still hot when everyone is gone but not as hot. Grandma walks around the house, instructing her servants to crack the windows and clean up the mess as she and Grandpa head upstairs to prepare for bed in their massive master bedroom. Most of the family is already gone, and I tell my parents and my two siblings who still live at home, Wade and Kinsey, that I'll meet them later. My other, older siblings, Brice, Huckleberry, Sawyer, and Weston, all live or work on other ranches and have already left.
Kaylee and I wait outside on the back steps for Cody. He works on one of the ranches a couple of miles away, the one my brother Sawyer manages. We met when my brother started managing that ranch several years ago, and we dated for a bit before we decided to just be friends. It's worked out so far, I guess. He and Kaylee are my only real friends, and I love hanging out with them. Cody's the type of person I want to be, down to earth and hard working, and Kaylee has the same viewpoints as me, wanting to be someone besides a Brandford. We all mesh well.
Cody arrives, walking fast down one of the dirt roads that connects the ranches, the moonlight highlighting his dark brown hair, sort of the same color as my own. He grins when he reaches us, and we stand there by the back steps for a little bit until a thought comes into my head. I run inside, and grab the keys to the big white and gray garage that sits separate from the house. I unlock it, grinning, and pull out three dirt bikes.
"Let's ride," I mumble with a goofy smile, and I can't help but appreciate that this wealth at least lets me ride through the District on a dirt bike.
We hop onto the bikes, turning them on. Everyone in the Tierras de Ranchos knows how to ride a dirt bike; it's just a sort of thing that everyone does. Bike riding of every sort is probably our District's biggest sports besides soccer and rugby. We roll them out a good distance away from the house so we don't wake up my grandparents or startle any of the servants. Then we rev up the engines, and we ride.
The moonlight glistens on the shiny metal spokes of the wheels, the silvery handlebars, the headlights which we keep on a low setting so the lights don't totally blind anyone we might come across. We glide down the dirt roads like ghouls, the stars twinkling overhead like miniature spectators, cheering us on. Our hair streams behind us and our cheeks are rosy in the sickly sweet heat of the summer nights, intoxicating and immersive. We ride for what feels like forever, and in what feels like a millisecond since the beginning of our journey, we stop at the edge of the woods somewhere in the back wilds of the expansive Braunvieh property. I pop open the saddlebag of my dirt bike and find a flashlight, a survival manual, and a tiny first aid kit. I flick on the flashlight, and we stumble into the forest, soon finding a ravine. We sit on the tall, muddy cliff over looking the winding band of dirty water below, and we sit in silence and marvel at the beauty of the forest at night around us. Insects chirp and buzz, and a bullfrog croaks, his bass voice warbling through the air. I tilt my head towards the sky, and wish every night was like right now.
A/N: Today we had Miriam and Rufus, thanks to HogwartsDreamer113 and Alecxias respectively. This pair is just stunning, and I enjoyed crafting their POVs to the best of my abilities to showcase their uniqueness.
Decent length for both this time. No overboards. :)
Reapings are due to be finished by Sunday? That's a tentative goal. It's a hopeful goal.
Many of you have been commenting on how much you love my worldbuilding, and I'm so happy you guys appreciate it! I have a really set in stone, in depth head canon for each District if you can't tell, and I love showcasing them. Next time, I'm going to have to write like a manual on tracelynn's Districts of Panem so people don't give me a boy of minority ancestry with bunches of muscles, is rich, and is supremely healthy and happy that lives in a big city. Tracee bot says does not compute! It simply doesn't!
And, okay, I've been nice, ignoring some bitter reviews or PMs I've gotten about this story, but I have a comment for you, Guest: Am I not allowed to have liberal opinions? And would you want to read a chapter containing abuse if, say, you were abused as a child or don't have the stomach for that sort of stuff? I think not. That's why I have the sometimes over the top Trigger Warnings. Better safe than sorry :)
Thanks, y'all, for being the best reviewers a writer could ask for. I'll admit last chapter was not my best work, and thanks for discreetly letting me know that xD
Who did you like better, Miriam or Rufus? Overall thoughts on this pair? Predicted placements? Thoughts on the writing?
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you had a fun Turkey Day that was politics free, thankfully just like mine! :D (Probably belated by the time you read this, I did get this out at 11:20 P.M. on Thanksgiving night xD)
Until Next Time,
Tracee