Chapter Eighteen: Top of the Food Chain

emiT si gnivom sdrawkcab, yltnerappa!

Remi Hamick, District Six Male

I know I have a good life.

I mean, there's always food to eat in the fridge, the electricity almost never fails in the house, and we have running water, plenty of spare time, and typically don't have to worry about some insane Peacekeeper killing off our entire family in a second.

All of this is possible (at least, for us) thanks to the Capitol's charity. Currently, my father works as a government official, and what the Capitol provides us for his services is more than enough to live a comfortable life. And I'm thankful to them for that.

I mean, who wouldn't be?

Anyway, the apartment is still busy, despite the fact that, as of now, only two people are inside it. So far, today's been as close to "normal" as it gets in here.

"Mom, can I get something to eat?" It is lunchtime, and I am starting to get hungry again.

"Sure, Remi. Just about everything is in the fridge," she says.

Smiling, I walk to the fridge to look for something to eat. Needless to say, it's stuffed to bursting with many different kinds of delicious food. I'm not sure which of the things in there I like best, so I just take a little bit of just about everything and pile it on a plate.

Even with me trying to stretch out the time everything's in my mouth, it doesn't take long for it to be finished. So, I just put the place on top of the sink, like I'm used to, and let loose a colossal belch. "Sorry about that, Mom."

I'm the only kid in the house right now- Jacob and Fiona, my two younger siblings, are both out with friends. Come to think of it, it'd probably make sense to do the same thing as they are right now, considering that the Reapings are tomorrow. (My chances of getting Reaped are low, but, as everyone I know stresses, they're not zero.)

"Mom, can I go out for a little?" Hopefully, I can just walk to wherever everyone else is. The sections of town we tend to hang out in aren't very big.

"Just be back in time for dinner," Mom says.

"Will do, Mom," I say as I hustle out the door.

Thankfully, I have to walk less than a mile before someone I know comes into sight. However, it's not the happy reunion that I usually get.

Kiara, a close friend of mine, is currently waiting quietly outside a car dealership, just standing still and staring at some invisible spot on the ground. Moving closer, I can tell she's trying to hold back tears. Even if she's attempting to hide it, it's super obvious.

"Is everything okay?" I try to whisper this, but maybe I am a tiny bit too loud. Kiara cringes away from the noise, and then she turns to face me. "And before you say everything is, you know I can keep secrets," I add.

Kiara sniffles a little. Then, she collapses onto a curb. Even though that thing has to be sharp and pointy from so many people stepping on and cracking it, she doesn't even wince or cry in pain. Or at least it isn't noticeable, given her current expression.

She turns to me, and starts talking in between quiet sobs. "We just- just found out that my father- he's a morphling addict. Mom- she walked in on him with a vial in his arm, and then she found a whole bunch of empty ones hidden in the closet- and- and-"

"And what?"

Kiara takes a long, deep breath, and then screams up to the sky. And holy crap, can she scream. It's so bad I have to cover my ears and grit my teeth to try and keep it from ever being broadcast in my memories. Someone leans out from an apartment about three stories above us and throws a glass bottle out the window at us, yelling, "Shut up, street rats!" The sheer nerve!

Then, Kiara starts talking like a normal person again. "She began screaming in his face about- about- about how this was what they never wanted to happen and how he could be so- so careless and stupid-"

Clearly, this is leading up to some form of a horrific climax. "This just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?"

"YES!" Kiara's clearly lost it. Considering the crap she's describing, I don't blame her. "Then she started punching and kicking him, and she forced him out of the house-"

"Jeez, I didn't know a woman could do that to a guy-"

"NOT THE TIME!" She's currently so worked up that I can practically see steam rising from every crevice on her body.

"Sorry about that, go on-"

"And then- then- then-" she's sobbing uncontrollably at this point- "he started screaming about how she was such a bitch and that he was never coming back. Then- then he just walked out of the apartment building."

That does sound like a pretty horrible thing to say, but something tells me he'll probably be back by the end of the week. Most people are prone to making threats they aren't going to carry through when they're drunk (or in this case, high) and upset. My father is generally a decent person, but when he has too much alcohol in his system, he's prone to getting into shouting matches with Mom for seemingly no reason. Fortunately, none of these bouts have resulted in a physical altercation- at least, yet.

Kiara just keeps going on. "Sorry about that, Remi, I just needed someone to vent to," she says.

"Totally understandable. I've done that more than once."

Kiara wipes a tear away, then walks in the other direction, presumably to go back to her apartment.

However, I have to go on. I don't know how long I've been here and I still want to get back in time for dinner.

After about half an hour of walking under a scalding summer sun, I somehow manage to find everyone else. The second they see me, their mouths fall open and their eyes go wide.

That's not surprising in the slightest, however. We're spread so far apart that even getting most of us together (outside of school) is near impossible. Our house is lucky enough to have a working phone, but not everyone I know has one, and the phone lines, even in the nicer parts of town, have the annoying tendency to stop working when you're in the middle of a conversation. Thus, all meetings we have are organized almost exclusively by word of mouth.

I sit down next to Gerald, one of the three of them, as the other two stand up so that we're all facing each other.

"Uh, guys? I'm sorry, but do you not get the concept of personal space?" Seriously, though, Mia and Dion, the other two, are so close to me that I can hear- scratch that- feel every time they take a breath.

They take the hint, thankfully enough. After moving about two feet back so that we can actually have a conversation like a bunch of normal kids our age, Mia asks the obvious question that everyone's thinking about.

"Anyone seen Kiara anywhere? If we manage to find her, this will be the first time outside of school we've all seen each other for a while," she says.

Of course, I have to speak up. "I saw her. Something tells me that she'd not up for seeing us anytime soon."

Everyone else lets loose a groan. "Oh well," Gerald says. "Why it's always her, I'll never know."

I bite my lip. Despite what they all think, having their parents go through a heated argument while having that be the start of a (hopefully temporary) separation between them might just be a good enough reason to not want to see anyone.

But now's probably not a good time.

After about an hour of just having a nice conversation with everyone, the sun starts to be obscured by the towering buildings all around us, and that's my signal to come home.

Thankfully, the time we spent wandering around the city was not that long, so I don't have to sprint back home in order to make it on time. (Which isn't exactly a good measure of how far away we've gone- my sprint speed is awful and distance doesn't make it any better.)

When I finally get to the apartment, I fumble for the house key I'm supposed to have on me at all times before realizing I forgot it. Again. Luckily, the door's never unlocked except for while we sleep, because A) Most of the robbers and morphine addicts and such still have enough sense to not try to pull off a robbery in broad daylight and B) The three of us (Jacob, Fiona, and I) constantly forget to bring a key with us whenever we leave the apartment, meaning that if we locked to door, our parents would be forced to constantly unlock it anyway.

Pushing the door open, I'm greeted by a blast of pleasantly cool air. Mom must have turned on a fan or something to try and keep the brutal summer heat at bay. It seems to be working.

Jacob and Fiona have gotten home and are sitting on the couch. Or, more accurately, Jacob is sitting on the couch and Fiona is trying to sit on the couch. She only manages to stay on for about a second at a time before Jacob keeps knocking her off.

"Hey! Knock it off!" This coming from Fiona.

Jacob replies with "Sorry, I don't understand you. I don't speak baby talk!" This is followed by him making several faces that are trying to convey that, but in reality, he just looks like a big buffoon.

It's still funny, though. My sister's cute and all, but she gets worked up really easily. It's something that Jacob and I have been exploiting for years. Her reactions are always priceless, way worth any punishment we get for them.

And this time, since Mom is busy cooking stuff for dinner and just doesn't have time to deal with us, we'll get punished lightly, if at all. Works for me.

As of now, Mom's almost finished cooking, which means Dad's going to be home pretty soon. I don't know how he does it, but he always comes through the door at the exact time that dinner starts. Whether he just has extremely good intuition or is just being a total creeper, I don't know and I don't think I want to ask.

Either way, his arrival hopefully won't throw the entire family into disarray like some of them do. He's both pro-Capitol and "pro-guy," as he calls it. While I'm both of those things as well, he exhibits both of those traits to an uncomfortable degree, even by my standards. Also, it really grates on Mom whenever he says stuff like that, to the point that more often than not she tries to leave the room whenever he starts up like that.

"Okay, everyone," Mom calls from the kitchen, "Dinner!"

Sure enough, the door opens and Dad steps into the apartment as soon as she says that. He leans his suitcase against the wall, drops his hat and coat on the chair right outside the door Mom placed there for that exact purpose, and ditches his shoes right next to it before sitting down right next to me.

"Hello, guys," he says. "Work, as expected, was amazing today? Anything exciting happen today for you guys?"

"Yeah, lots of stuff happened today!" Fiona begins to chatter. "First, I got up and went out to see Axelle and Tyra and everyone else I like, then we went out to go watch some cars get assembled and then we saw a car chase, or at least a tiny bit of it, and then we"

"Okay, I think we get it," Dad says. "You clearly did a lot of things today. Jacob, Remi, what about you guys?"

Jacob, of course, starts before I can get even a single word in. "Well, first, I obviously went to see friends, then…"

Before he can get too far, I wolf down the rest of my dinner and try to politely excuse myself from the table. Unlike with Fiona, Dad's going to let Jacob ramble on forever, to the point where I'm never going to be able to get a word in.

And anyways, I'm exhausted. I need an early bedtime.

So, before anyone (including Jacob, who's still in the middle of rambling on and on) can ask me where I'm going, I slip into our shared bedroom.

The lights are on, but that changes in an instant as I quickly flick them off before crawling under the sheets. It only takes a second for the room to plunge into pitch-darkness. As soon as that occurs, I shut my eyes, not even noticing the difference.

I hear my own breathing. Then nothing.

Author's Notes:

-Sorry about the eternal wait for this chapter. Don't worry, this story is not dead, I just had this thing called real life (ugh) get in the way. I will finish this story by any means necessary.

-Thanks to DMonkey1607 for sending me Remi.

-We're almost through these POVs! Only six more tributes to go.

-Coming up next is DMonkey1607's other tribute, the D11F. This will be followed by the D7F, D11M, D10F, and finally, the combined D9M/D9F POV (They're so closely related I'm just going to make one slightly longer chapter combing their introductions).

-See you next chapter!