The Smartest Of Them All

The Train

Darkness. Darkness so black you could feel it, all surrounding and cold. Like a heavy blanket it wrappes around my body, suffocating me. Distrust, the feeling that something's terribly wrong and a rumbling that rocks me back and forth as if trying to lull me back to sleep.

The train.

Slowly the memories of where and why I am here come back. I was taken away, taken away from my family, my home, taken away so thousands of people can watch me die. I have to go to the Hunger Games. The only chance to survive is to kill innocent children.

As the force of these thoughts hits me, I feel dizzy. I can't do this. For a full 30 minutes I sit on my bed trying not to scream, not to cry. Not to go completely crazy. 

I don't want this anymore, I don't want to die slowly and agonizingly and I don't want my family towatch me do it. I have to pull myself together, right now. I can't gocrazy. I have to do everything I can to come back even though thet hought of killing children disgusts me.

I try to think of something nice. Home, my family.

We live in a run-down concrete bunker in District 5. My parents work long and hard. And especially my father, a tall man with blue eyesandblond hair, is irritable and tired when he comes home. But theyaregood parents. They do their best to make our family a happy one.Mymother, with her warm amber eyes and flowing red hair, is not onlypretty but also very caring, takes good care of us, cooks for us andworks as a secretary in the government building. My father works in one of the huge run-down power plants. His job is dangerous. One wrong grip one wrong screwed part and everyone is dead.

And then there's Flynn. My little brother is a real sunshine. Blond hair and blue eyes make him a little angel. I spend almost all my time with him. He is just 7 years old. Too young to see his sister die.

We have days when we are just happy to be together, days when we laughand play tag in the gray streets and forget what kind of world we live in. Days when we dance in the rain, days when we have water fights at the small lake in our neighborhood and days when we beat each other so hard with our ragged pillows that the feathers fly. 

But slowly the days are getting gray and the harsh reality is getting through to us more and more. He is getting older and understands what he did not understand before. That for whichchildhood has protected him until now. Constant danger, fear ,poverty, oppression, all this has become everyday life and thebeautiful moments are only likesparks in a dark black sea of darknessand fear.

He is envied at school for his intelligence and looks, excluded andsometimes even beaten. He is far too grown up and jaded for hisageand has to endure far too much. His childhood is stolen from him. Something has disappeared between the two of us.

The feeling of disappointing him buries me and hearing him sob and cry, seeing him come back from school with new bruises in his face full of despair and anger is painful. But I don't go and comfort him. On days like this, I am heartless. I don't want to be, but I am. And I can't help it.

I realize there's a tear falling down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly, even though there is no one in the little train compartment. I have to stop being so goddamn emotional, because if a camera catches even a slight sign of fear, its over. It makes no sense to let things drag me down now.