Noon Yi [District 4]

From watching the Games you’d imagine that all “Careers” come in one package: tall, muscled and with killing instinct. What the Games typically don’t show are those like me, the people small enough to be shoved aside as the bravest (or: stupidest) volunteer as tribute. I’m barely 5 foot tall, a fact I didn’t nearly mind so much until my younger sister Juniper who’s only thirteen hit the 5’1” mark. People always talk about Juniper as if she’s the older sibling, as if I should spend my life aspiring to be her - always smiling and laughing and so, so smart. It’s enough to make me think that if there’s ever a Quell twist to send only female tributes and we both make it to the arena, that I’d kill her first (I’m about 75% kidding).

Other than my vertical challenges, I’m not remarkable. I have my dad’s perfectly round face but it’s without his abundance of sunspots. Even if I had them I’d wear it like a real token of honor, as someone who was born and hopefully will die by the sea. Whenever I see my eyes reflected back at me on the water, I’m reminded of the expensive almonds my dad brought home when I was eight. Toasty brown, a rounded but narrow shape – I think that describes them well. I keep my black hair halfway down my back because my mom insists. “When you’re a tribute, I want you looking like a girl!” she says whenever I come home at night with my hair brittle from the sea. Still, my time is ticking to nineteen. I’m a sad Career compared to kids who are my age.

In fact, the other Careers hardly pay attention to me, except when they’re in need of a small and fast target. A raised scar – about an inch long, pink and fleshy – sits on my left shoulder from a spear that grazed by from a boy a year older than me. The town healer said it’s a special type of scar, a keloid I think, that grows over time. My mom was upset for days that we don’t have the money to fix it, but now she just tells me to wear clothes that cover it. I don’t really see why it matters. A scar is a memory, but it means nothing. That boy had missed his target; I know I wouldn’t have.

If you listen to what some people in District 4 say, you’ll know that I’m not very smart. I admit it – things like school, books and learning by hearing are boring. I like doing. I can read all about knots but it’s not until I touch the rope that something clicks in my mind. You don’t learn how to swim from listening to someone tell you. You just dive into the sea and feel the water rush over your skin. I don’t need to tell anyone else. I don’t need anyone to think I’m smart. It’s better when other people can’t read you. Those Careers are too easy to read, with all of their bloodthirst and for the honor of my family and district. I’m interested in being alive to see the sunrise and the sunset.

It’s why I haven’t exchanged for tesserae, even though my mom desperately wants me to. My dad at least looks a little conflicted about it. My sister Thistle, who is eleven, hates me for it. Like my parents, she doesn’t hate me because we’re hungry without the extra oil and grain. My resistance to putting more entries with my name on it exposes my cowardice. Well, sorry for not wanting to die on your terms. They’d rather have people think we’re poor like the lower districts than to not have a tribute with our family name. You know what I think? I think the Capitol should only reap tributes from the lower districts. The Capitol would have a fit if no one was alive in District 4 to collect favorites like oysters and shrimp. I’m sure whoever ran District 4 during the Dark Days was an idiot and not representative of us anyway.

But some days, when the skies are stormy, my mind wanders to the vastness of the water and how I would like to travel it. There might be something out there, and even if there wasn’t, I am sure I could never tire of a boat. I wonder if I could sail to other districts and meet their people. Maybe I’ll eat my words. Maybe I wouldn’t hope for their children to die instead of me, but I doubt it. I’m not kind. I know that better than anyone. There has always been a wall between my siblings and myself because at the back of my mind, a thought repeats itself: better the tribute be you than me. The worst part of all of this is that Juniper would certainly volunteer in my place, should I ever be so unlucky as to be reaped, and she’d not do it for fame or fortune. She would do it because she loves me and I hate her for that.

I was named Noon for the high tides at that time of day. Juniper and Thistle were named after plants. Really, I just think my mom rolled over during labor and named us after the first things she saw. There’s no poetry about our family. I have two older brothers, one drowned and one with his own family. They’re older by about eight years but the truth behind why we don’t talk about them is this: their greatest crime is having survived until nineteen years old without once being a tribute by chance or by volunteering. My mom’s dream is to be interviewed for the Capitol. She’ll make up a lullaby that she would lie about and say she sung to us – any chance to keep their attention.

When the punishment for the Dark Days isn’t looming in my thoughts, I think of the good things, like the taste of fresh shellfish or the salt on my skin. My dad has been a trawler for as long as I remember, and his job ensures a steady income for food. If my mom isn’t home, I often see my surviving brother Harbor stop by with a few offerings for my dad, who nearly always accepts. Even I know for him, having three daughters is not like having a son. Even if nothing in the district really belongs to us, my dad isn’t planning on leaving me valuables like the nets and the small boat we sometimes go fishing on. I can learn the trade but I can’t learn to be a son.

I’m good with knots, fish hooks and nets. Oh, and a spear, because I need to be. Thistle is an absolute monster with anything she can get her hands on. She’s only eleven but she’s more of a Career than Juniper and I combined. When my dad doesn’t need me to repair the nets, my job is to set the traps for crabs. No one seems to think it’s very interesting but I do, especially Thistle who likes to impale anything and everything. We use standard rectangular crab traps but I like the crab pots which are round or even ones more conical in shape. If I had the wire and metal for it, I could make them. People don’t think I’m very smart though, and it’s not like we get to eat most of what we catch. No one cares to make anything better when the future’s about as bleak as the past.