We are 13

Chapter 1

Dark. Stormy. Pretty typical weather for 13. I looked outside through the cracked, dirt stained window, wondering when this misery would end. A few minutes later, dad came in, lab coat and formerly curly hair soaked from the angrily pounding precipitation outside.

"I'm home.", he called into the house.

All he got was an upset grunt from my mom, who was carrying a hand full of cups, buckets, and pitchers of all sorts, placing them under heavily dripping cracks in the old and beat up ceiling.

"Let me help you with that", he said.

"I'm fine", mom said.

"You sure?", he spoke again, pestering my mom almost as bad as the dripping ceiling.

"Yes", she said in a devilish voice, making my dad put his head down, walking quickly into the next room. He called this room his "office", even though It was just the tiny dining room, if you could even call it that, with a tiny desk crammed in the corner. He dropped into the broken swivel chair by the desk, and left his bag to the same fate next to him.

And as his chair creaked, and groaned like mom, I went back to my thoughts of how sucky life was.

Hours later, probably near about 6, I awoke with a huge crick in my neck, some weird marks pressed on the left side of my face, and my hair looking like the worst attempted Afro ever.

I got up off of my lazy butt, and went through the living room. As I passed the gloomy area, a light flashed on the TV, indicating a transmission from the capital. I pressed the button on the TV to switch it on, and I saw president snow.

"Rebellious outbreaks have greatened within the last two weeks. If these outbreaks don-"

I shut off the TV, as I had heard the same exact shpeel over and over again. Honestly, I couldn't blame the people of the districts for rebelling. Things are worse than ever. Rations are low, district production is falling, and the capitals rules are more harsh than ever. Curfews have been set to 8:00, and anyone caught outside by then would be whipped the next day.

That was the first of many, many times i felt that I had to do something about this unfairness, and before it got worse.