lethal 。 𝔠𝔞𝔱𝔬 𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔩𝔢𝔶

018 ─── absentia .

lethal
018 ─── absentia .

" you were gone "

rowan's view

𝔖un shone through the damp, musty curtains, illuminating the cracked chalkboard and the fading numbers, Mr. Dexton attempting to draw over them with the stub of chalk he had left. I could hear snickers of laughter in the corners of the classroom, immature chuckles as they watched the teacher's plight. And yet all I saw was the remaining piece of chalk, soon to run out, and leave us with even less than we already had.

The end of the week approached, and though nothing but famine and an oncoming rainstorm awaited District 12, the local students - my classmates - were giddy, energized by the sunny calm before the storm and the guarantee of buckets filled with water by the time the new week rolled around. Even I, despite my doubts about the cleanliness of the rainwater, had taken buckets out of the nearly empty storage closet in preparation. Gale and I were planning on going for a final hunt after dismissal, to round up the rabbit traps and search for any scraps before it was too dangerous to go out past the fence.

But, of course, such morose thoughts were not on the minds of the people I shared lessons with. Amongst the sea of childish children, I often felt like a forty-year-old stuck in a sixteen-year-old's body, concerned with things I shouldn't even have to know. But this was all father's design. The responsibility was mine, and mine alone, to keep my family alive, even if it costed my own life.

Father died a year ago last week. The mining accident had been long forgotten by those who were unaffected, except for Madge Undersee, the mayor's daughter, who came to give my family and I fresh strawberries she picked from the gardens behind her house. Katniss and Madge were close friends; the only close friend I had was Gale, and he was more like a brother to me. I tended to cut myself off from the people around me, especially after the explosion.

It was for that reason that I was ushered off to the side like an exiled contadino, sitting far away from the rays of sunlight, huddled in the shadows as if they were my friends. I leaned against the wall that my desk was jammed up against, tapping my fingernails against the worn wooden desk. We were lucky to have desks; the school in District 11 recently suffered a fire, taking most of their supplies with it. District 7 was working on rebuilding, but it was going to take at least a year to fully recover.

After finally managing to make the numbers on the chalkboard legible, Mr. Dexton turned around with a loud sigh, fixing his cracked spectacles over grey, fading irises. "Alrighty-then," he said, his voice oddly high pitched, especially when he used those old-fashioned sayings that he insisted were still relevant. "Copy this down in your notebooks, and then solve problems one to six in your textbooks."

I tensed immediately, biting down on my lip. My desk was empty, and my chair absent of a backpack, unlike the rest of the class as they fetched their fading paper notebooks. Prim had begun a new unit yesterday, and ran out of room in her notebook, and Katniss had broken her last pencil. I gave them mine, conveniently leaving me with nothing to use.