Cullen Olivier | District 8 | finished

Cullen Olivier | District 8 | finished Sept 24, 2013 21:53:37 GMT -5

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Post by Raseri on Sept 24, 2013 21:53:37 GMT -5

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o u t s i d e

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Although I’m tall for my age, about 5’7”, I’m not especially muscular; bony shoulders and sharp collarbones stand out from my skin instead of the sinewy muscles most of the boys my age are beginning to develop. I’m fair-skinned like my mother, as are my two brothers and my sister. I look a lot like her, with my long lose and large, dark lips, and my softly-curving, rounded face. She always said I must have been a stag in a past life—long and lean and graceful—but I never agreed with her until later on. Up until I was about 13, I was very clumsy, and Dad told me it was because I just needed to grow into my long legs.

The only physical traits I really got from my dad are my eyes—which are a very dark shade of brown (so dark, in fact, that most people think they’re black)—and my thick, dark hair, always poking out in directions that I don’t want it to be in. I’ve got his bushy eyebrows, too. I’m still stuck in that super-awkward stage of growth where my body doesn’t really know whether it wants to be an adult or a kid yet, and my voice has a mind of its own now, making crackly noises whenever it feels the urge to.

My mother’s side of the family is this really long line of wealthy people, so she was born into money. Because of this, she always dressed me in very stylish clothes, and I’ve carried on the tradition. I like simple but fashionable clothes—plaids and button-downs, v-neck tees, and quiet colors like blue and grey rather than boisterous oranges and reds.

we are butterflies, you and I
the wind in our wings and the sun in our eyes
we may have to dodge a few leaves as they fall

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i n s i d e

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but we go, and we leave without a fight
the first step may not always be right
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Life is a fragile thing; easily given, easily taken. You might deny it, or you might not even know it, but we’ve all killed something before—squishing spiders on the floor, swatting at flies, breaking flowers from their roots to put in a glass of water for our mothers. We kill things without thinking, without caring, because we’re humans and that’s just what we do. I’m not calling you or anyone else a bad person, I’m just stating the facts.

Mom always said that everything has a soul—the trees, the bugs, the animals, everything that lives and breathes and dies. And when your time’s up, your soul gets recycled into a new body, a new form. It starts at the bottom, so first you’ll be a tree or something, then maybe a ladybug or a bee, and then you might be a deer, and so on. You work your way up the chain, if you’re good and you do what you’re supposed to. And then once you’ve done your duties and paid your dues, way at the top of the chain, you get to be a person. People are always born good, Mom said, but the problem is, some of those good babies grow up sour and turn into bad people. Bad people, she said, go straight back to the bottom when they die, and they have to work their way up all over again.

She died when I was 9, my mom. The doctor said it was her heart, that her cardiac muscles were too weak to pump her blood right for some reason, and so she just kind of fainted to death. My mother was too good of a person to go back to the bottom of the chain, so when I was little I used to wish her soul would come back in a body close to where I lived, so I could see her again. I never found her, though. Or, if I did, I never knew it, because like, people don’t just walk up to you and say, ”Hey, I was your mother in a past life,” you know?

My father, my sister, my two brothers, and I were left alone after Mom passed away, in our big house that now seemed even bigger from its lack of a sixth body, and from the empty cushion on the sofa, and from the absence of the good-night kisses and good-morning hugs. Dad was not only devastated by mom’s death, but he was totally befuddled by it as well. I swear she must have taken part of him with her when she left, because he forgot how to do everything for the first year after she was gone—how to cook, how to clean, how to speak without mumbling or stuttering. He forgot how to be a dad most of the time too.

My sister was a different story. She stepped right up once mom was gone, and although her little 11-year-old feet didn’t fill the shoes our mother had left behind, they at least lessened their emptiness. When we were hungry, she’d cook us the best dinners she could manage, and when we were tired, she’d tuck us all into bed—even my oldest brother, who’d had a year and three inches on her. The whole thing made her into an adult too fast; she’s very mature for a teenager. My brothers and I, we joke around and call her uptight sometimes, and tell her she needs to loosen up and live a little. But we all appreciate what she’s done, honestly, and without her, I don’t know how well we all would’ve turned out.

With mom gone, Dad must have just become really super protective over all of us or something, because he wouldn’t let us out of the house much. He probably thought we’d end up getting kidnapped, or murdered, or maybe we’d catch some kind of super-contagious terminal illness and bring it home to share with everyone. We never had friends over, or went out in the streets to play games with the other kids our age. Our contact with the outside world was limited to what we saw in the Capitol broadcasts and what we learned in school.

All of that was alright, though; my brothers and my sister kept me company. We live in this big old house that’s been in my mother’s family for about a zillion years, and we were always exploring, nosing around like little mice in every nook and corner, discovering new places and uncovering the best hiding spots. Just when we thought we’d found all we could find, something else would pop up that we’d never noticed before. Sometimes I would start counting things. We’ve got 68 windows and 37 doors, and 124 tiles on the downstairs bathroom floor. There were 13 pencil lines on the inside of the kitchen doorframe with our initials scribbled next to them, climbing higher and higher as we grew taller and taller (my sister would always stand on her tiptoes when she thought we weren’t looking, trying to pass up her brothers, but Dad never said anything about it.).

It was my oldest brother, Cedric, that finally got my father to loosen our reins. He was 14, and he’d been talking to this girl at school, like talking talking to her, but the problem was, school was the only time he got to see her. So he blew up at Dad one night—I had been upstairs in my room at the time, so I didn’t hear all of it—and said something about how he needed to let us live our own lives. It must have worked, because Cedric started going out on dates with her on the weekends. They broke up not long after that, but at least we got some good out of the whole thing.

But once I had my freedom, I didn’t know what to do with it. I still didn’t leave the house much, except to go on a walk around the block by myself, or maybe to pick up groceries. It wasn’t that I was antisocial or anything, I mean, I talked to people in school all the time. It was just that, most of the time, I preferred my own company over that of others. I was always stuck in my thoughts, or in my daydreams, or with my nose in a book. Sometimes I would try exploring the outside world like I had explored my house, but it didn’t feel as fun when Dad’s warnings about Peacekeepers hung over my head. I needed another hobby.

When I was thirteen, I found this big old book while I was rummaging around in our basement. It was about a hundred-gazillion years old, just like our house, and it smelled like, well, a basement, but it was called ”Ballroom Dance Vol. 2” and it had a lot of pictures and even some sheet music in it, so I decided to read it. It was hard to learn dancing like that from a book, but I eventually figured out the basics, and I convinced my sister to try and learn them with me so I’d have a partner to practice with. She even figured out some of the piano that went along with the dances (we’ve got a piano, even though it’s super old and very out of tune.). I had never realized before this how much I loved music and dancing. There’s something about it that feels ancient and contemporary at the same time. Sometimes I feel like music can explain how I’m feeling even when I can’t.

We’ve been practicing dancing ever since, and I think my sister and I have both improved tremendously. I’m going to start learning how to play the piano soon; she says she’ll teach me how to read music. Mother used to play, back when the piano was in tune, and we’d all sit around in the family room and listen to her sing while her fingers danced across the keys. Someday I hope that it’ll be me sitting there on that stool, and that my brothers and my sister will stop what they’re doing to listen.

it's not just me anymore
it's not just me anymore
close your eyes and put one foot out the door

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