When I was a kid, I admired the pale pink dresses lined up inside Madame Lynne's boutique down The Plaza. They were beautiful with their lacey helms and glittering fabrics. I would lean on the glass and envy the little girls that were inside trying on the dresses. It's not the only store that caught my attention. In fact, all of the stores seem to hypnotized my desires. I used to sneak down there to just stare at the bright stores standing proudly side by side. Dylan's candy shop, Lynne's bakery, the mighty Town Hall, the flower shops. It's paradise. I would walk there with my tattered clothes and dirty shoes to drink in the beauty of the fairy lights and the cheery ambiance. The Plaza is located in the middle of the richer part of District Two, away from the Seam. From from us. The workers of District Two and their families live far from them to hide the "heroes" as Mayor Dugham put it. To protect us, he said. But we know better. The Mayor wanted to show the visitors from Capitol that even our District can hold a little extravagance. So there was I, stood outside the bright store, out of place. A speck of dirt on a pretty painting. Now that I'm older, I dread going in there. The place is crawling with stuck up bastards who think they're citizens of Capitol. Whenever I go there, they would look at me with distaste. It's as if seems we're not in the same district, the same level. They would wear bright neon clothes during summer and dark ones during winter. Their houses aren't that big as the ones in the Capitol but they're big enough for us. They are painted with rich lively colours and there are little gardens on their front yards. It's a beautiful scenery, really. You would think that for once, you've left the world of hunger and emptiness. If you had the chance to sneak inside one of their houses and you came from the Seam, you will never want to leave. I was blessed enough to have someone to invite me in. They have these furnitures that could feed the whole Seam for fifty years or more. They eat the freshest of the fresh, the sweetest of the sweet. But behind all of the grandure and the cold people, I know that deep inside they are still as scared as the people from the Seam to a certain game. From where I live, the only colours you'll see are either dark colours or just stained and muddied white. We all have the same shade of clothes. Sometimes we look like a flock of dirty sheeps. The houses are something you won't be proud of but they're better than nothing. There are a few people sleeping outside with just thin quilts during winters. It's a horrid sight, seeing their thin bodies shivering out from our broken windows but my father told me that it's life. "If they wanted something better they would have worked harder," he would mumble. They were practically living in the streets with their goats and cats, lonely and hungry. They live with people sparing them a burnt bread or a pinch of salt. They aren't really different from us, the only difference is we have a home and a family. My dad worked in the main masonry of our district, he'll be there as early as a bird and will come home by 8 in the evening. He's a tall muscular man with brown shaggy hair and the most beautiful green eyes. He have scars all over his calloused hands from the masonry but other than that, he's a gentle and loving father. My mum would be cooking dinner by the time my dad come home, what I mean with dinner is soup made out of either wild dog, rabbit or squirrels my dad would buy from the market. I don't do much work by then, I just help my mum feed our four chickens in the back of our house. My mum is beautiful with her rich dark hair and porcelain skin. She's sweet and annoyingly caring. We're a happy family, always laughing and sharing smiles. If we were rich, we could have been a perfect family. It's my dad's dream to give us a great life. Then it all crumbled to dusts. My father died when I was just nine and the reason of his death was something that pushed me to stop dreaming of pretty dresses and sweet candies. He was shot by a peacekeeper from the plaza, thought he was stealing a pink dress from Madame Lynne but it was false. Of course they never admitted it. I kept the dress in my mum's old closet, the dress was bigger than me and I can't look at it without sobbing. Since my dad left us, my mum sells chicken eggs to the bakery beside the mayor's house. The others won't take it, they said they don't want to die of salmonella. It wasn't really enough seeing that we only have four hens. So I occasionally tag along with the hunters. The Hunters are the one who catch the wild animals or food for some of us to sell at the market. This isn't illegal in our district, peacekeepers keep an eye out for us in case we try to escape. Now the thing is, since I was just ten when I joined them, there were a lot of mishaps with the traps. I tend to step on them, ending up with a lot of angry mumbles and warnings. I almost got kicked out but a buff guy with blonde hair told them that I will be his responsibility. His name is Floid. He lives by himself by the stream where the main masonry was located. He taught me how to hunt and it was disastrous enough to singe his eyebrows and got chased by a boar. While taking a break down the murky pond we found, I played with his knife, threatening a lone lizard on a tree. It was an accident that I flicked my wrist and stabbed it's head. Since then, I didn't do traps and that stuffs. I just sit on a low tree and wait for something to kill. I just flick my wrist and trust my flying knife to kill a game. I do this until now, I even needed to sign up for tesserae to keep my mum going. That means more Clove in the death bowl. I don't mind it though, I've been through worse. I've seen people dying of hunger, ignored and laughed at by the richer folks. I've been wounded inside and out again and again, I've been in a whirlpool of emotions at a young age. These things made my usual sunny smile turn into a cold facade. And it scared my mother. In the age of 16, I hope and prayed to the gods that I could get away from this place and risk my life for a better future for my mum.