𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗠𝗜𝗭𝗭𝗘𝗡 - 𝗢𝗡 𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗗

𝟏

𝐀𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐑𝐀 𝐏𝐎𝐕

I lay stiffly in bed, listening to the sound of my brother's ragged breathing. It's early, not even 5:00 in the morning, yet I haven't even gotten a wink of sleep.

You know that feeling? The one where you just know something terrible is about to happen, yet you can't do anything to stop it? That's exactly how I've been feeling, ever since last night when my best friend, Eliza Ferris met me behind the old warehouse, the one where they make things used for transportation. 

I never really knew why we create the transportation if no one ever gets to use it. The only time I've ever ridden in a car was when my younger brother, my dad, and I were ushered to my older brother's funeral. 

It doesn't matter how many times I try to forget the day when my brother died on national television, in front of thousands and thousands of people, it just doesn't go away. Like when you get a stain on your brand new white shirt and no matter how hard you scrub it, it stays there, forever. But that was five years ago, back when Dad was still alive.

Everyone who has talked to me about said it was just a tragic accident. I know better than to believe what I hear. 

My father, a wonderful man, and one of my favorite people in the world, had gone into work one day just like any other day. That day I had also woken up with the same feeling I was experiencing now. 

Even though it happened two years ago, the picture is still clear in my mind. It plays like a video on repeat. The banging on the door, the Peacekeepers standing on the front step, stating briskly that my father had died in a warehouse accident. Warehouse accidents were quite common where I lived, several happening within a week or so, but the news of my father hit me like a brick. Someone had to have put something into the transportation piece he was working on. He had been the only one who died. My father had been too good for this world and someone had finally noticed it. Of course nothing good can ever exist in the world of Panem.

There was no one left to take care of me and my brother, Everett. All of our family had either died in the war or participating in the  fight to the death that has happened every year since I was three. The day after that was the first time I had ever been in the mayor's office. It was also the last day anyone saw me cry.

Mayor Addams, a thin lady with a stone cold face and even colder gray eyes, told my brother and I that we would be living with the Gulls, a family that lived about two blocks away. I had never met the Gulls and I wish I never did. 

Persephone and Willis Gull were the cruelest people I had ever met. Persephone was tiny and thin, so thin you could see several bones pointed out. She had the lightest eyes I had ever seen, they looked almost as if they were white, as I would've thought so if I didn't see the black pupil in the middle. Her black hair was piled onto the top of her head, the kind that took hours on end to complete. Her husband, Willis, was frail too and had a thick mustache that looked like some sort of bug crawling across his face. Looking at the thin couple you would've never expected the things they would do.

Called them anything besides 'Ma'am' or 'Sir'? Slapped. Being even a second late? Slapped. Didn't serve dinner (mostly of which consisted of the smallest portions, anything they could muster, most of which going to Persephone and Willis)? Slapped. Didn't do everything perfectly every second of every day? You guessed it, slapped. 

I took most of the hits for my brother. Some were worse than others but the bruises stayed. I didn't care. It was almost as if showing off battle scars, something to keep me going, rather than discouraging me. 

The only good thing that ever came out of living with the Gulls, was moving in next to Eliza Ferris. Eliza was 13 years old then, I was 11. That didn't seem to matter to us though. We met on the front step of her house. Persephone had ordered me to go retrieve a single egg from next door, threatening me before I could even respond with a 'yes'.  I knocked firmly on their blue-gray door, one that was incredibly worn out and dull. A small black haired girl had answered the door, peeking out curiously from the other side. When she had seen me she opened the door further. The rest is history.