Skye Bittanti|District 9

15|Female

District 9

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She swam until there was nothing but sea, sky, and the moon.
There, she sang a song so sad that the moon wept
And she collected its pure tears in a crystal.

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No longer a child, not yet an adult, I struggle to stand with my head facing forwards and shoulders back. Every day we of District 9 begin a routine: Wake up, go to work. Finish work, go home and sleep. Our lives are structured similarly to that of a machine – constantly doing the same things time and time again with no struggle or complaint because that is what we were raised to do. It is what everyone in District 9 has been raised to do, including I of the Bittantis. Though I am still a child by law, able to be Reaped for the Games, I am just as much a worker as everyone in this district. Every day, wake up. Go to work. Finish work. Sleep. It's an endless cycle, one that has taken its toll on my body though I am still a child.

We of District 9 work to our deaths, choked and suffocated by the endless smog. The factories that pollute the skies – the skies that have long been scared away by our unnatural poisons – are our only opportunities to survive. Our children, including I, perform the most degrading work for the same factories that rot our own lungs. They utilize the young ones especially in factories for their small hands which enables them to easily perform the most precise tasks. Many do not survive adolescence due to the high number of accidents that occur each year. Those that do are usually permanently stunted, walk with a stoop, develop tremors, hacking coughs, or worse. Only a lucky few escape unscathed.

I am not so lucky. Like the rest of the children forced to work for their lives, I too have a permanent injury. My right arm, weakened forever from a broken bone that was never healed properly. It is crooked and I am now left handed. My once-blonde hair has turned a mousey brown, tainted with the colour of inescapable smog. I am forced to keep my hair tied close to my scalp or run the risk of it being caught in some terror machine. The only part of me that has been untouched by the desolate surrounding are my eyes. They are pure crystal droplets of a land far from my own. My mother tells me tales of a faraway fairytale, of a place my eyes match not only the colour but the depth and mystery of: An ocean.

Of course, I do not know what this 'ocean' she speaks of is. I do not understand her tales. My mother speaks of stories passed through generations, stories originating from when the Bittanti family still hailed from District 4. The only one left from that time was my grandfather, but he passed on when I was an infant still gasping for breath. Many of her tales come from Grandfather, but they are not full of experience and reminiscing like his were. She says she named me after the sky, but I have never seen the sky, not once in my life. My only reminder of my family history, of what an 'ocean' should be, is a small cracked crystal that I wear on a thin wire as a necklace. I wear it dutifully, though I might one day have it disappear, stolen and sold for means of survival.

Everything about me is a dull sepia except for my eyes. They are the only part of me that makes me human and not just another mindless robot made to be used by the Capitol. Everything else – clothes, hair, skin, face – everything has become monotone and cold. It is as if I have already grown up.

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What a sad world we live in.
That everyone feels they have to put so much energy into
maintaining their feelings of mistrust.

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Like the faded tan of the district, I have become just as dim and downtrodden as the world in which I live in. Only one tiny part of me still retains something that I vow I'll never lose: my hopes and dreams. The eyes that betray the colourless canvas and add a splash of life hold inside them the last of my childhood innocence. By now, most people had given up on ever having anything different. They gave up and fed the machine. While I might not know any better, I still can't let go of the dream that one day I might see the colour in my eyes reflected by the sky or even something called 'stars'.

It sounds– Well, it sounds quite silly. Call me a dreamer, if you will. I should have given up on it long ago, but everyone knows how young children are. They don't stop dreaming of a better place. What can I say? Those stories my mother told me as a child are still with me today, and I'm technically still a child. Contrary to how much I've given up on this district, I still haven't given up on the idea that maybe one day I might finally see the ocean. I might finally see District 4!
But, like I said, that's all just child's play.

I have to become one with the crowd, act as I am supposed to. I want more than I should have, more than anyone would ever have. I fall in line and don't trip, not even accidentally. Eventually, the line has to lead somewhere. I just have to wait long enough to find it.

I just hope that I don't run out of time before I do. I don't want to lose faith in myself. Somehow, I have this fear that if I stop believing then maybe the only part of me that still has colour will fade into the same sepia tone that envelops everything else in this district.

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But there are some things we must never forget. No matter what.
Tragic memories that we have to carve firmly in stone
so that the wind can never blow them away.

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One-hundred years ago, my family once lived in the land of District 4. My mother tells me that in that district was a vast sea and all that is left of it now is in my eyes. With the start of the Dark Days, my grandfather and his parents were relocated to District 9 due to some sort of anti-rebel movement that the Capitol created. Plus, apparently they needed people who already knew how to hunt and fishing was the next-closest thing. My grandfather grew up and married my grandmother, who had lived here all her life. For whatever reason, they changed the district specialty from hunting to raw industry and refining. My mother grew up in that world, only one generation different and yet she did not understand the stories my grandfather would tell. She still passed them down to me, when I was an infant refusing to sleep. I grew up with stories of another place in another time filling my head. While I grew up in a daze of fumes and smog, I had a better life in my head. This made school very difficult for me to adapt to. The exasperated teachers, minds already stretched to their wit's ends from the living conditions, had struggled to keep my attention and teach me the basics. Mostly, though, I was brainwashed like the rest of the kids into looking forwards to work because at only six years old, I had to leave home and work in the factories every morning like my parents.

It was excruciatingly boring and I would often get in trouble for fooling around. I learned my lesson when I was daydreaming one day and didn't pay attention to the machines working furiously around me. To make a long story short, I broke my arm and it never healed properly because we didn't have the money. My mom set the cast herself using spare plastics and she is definitely not a healer. My father and mother were both more concerned on me living, since people don't need arms to live.

I don't work at the metals plant anymore and instead make soap all day. Liquid or solid, I make sure the soap has the perfect scent. The most popular kind is the rose-scented soap. I hear people in the Capitol use it as 'shower-gel'. Whatever that is. We get flowers imported from District 11 every few weeks to make it.

Codeword: Odair