Double Lives

Some days it was hard for him to figure out who he was.

Was he a baker, or a fisher?

Sometimes the thought of going to the water freaked him out. Sometimes he couldn't imagine life without a family. Then he wakes up, and wonders if he really wanted an abusive mother and a distant father. He wakes up to wanting to go back to the river.

Some days, the words that come out of his mouth are so filthy, even his friend-Mare-blushes at his choice of words. And some days, he can't say a milder form of the word without taking a hit to the head and a scolding for using such 'vile, Seam language'.

"What are you, boy?" She rarely calls him by either name. "Don't you dare use that Seam language in my house. You're a merchant child, we don't speak like them."

He wants to say that technically, he is part Seam. Half of his life is spent in the Stilts, in a rickety house with low pay and muddy streets streaked with oil.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hunger Games or Red Queen.