The door creaked open ominously, cutting through the silence of the empty house.
Shock and disbelief are still worn on my face, and my mother's. I realize that I don't remember the walk back home, how I made my feet move when my whole body feels like it's weighed down with lead, this the worst of all days, the end of our already tattered family. I wonder how I'm still standing through the agony of the loss of my world as I once knew it.
Maybe Gale took us home. That must be it, and although I'm much too old to be carried, I'm grateful. Besides, I doubt I would've been able to walk, sobs wracking my body with the flow of tears blinding me from the moment Katniss took my place at the Reaping, then later overwhelming me after being cruelly ripped apart from each other's embrace in a tearful goodbye. I never wanted to leave the protection of my big sister's side, where I would always be safe. The space between her arms wrapped around me had been my shelter for as long as I could remember, and even as I tried to wrap my arms around myself to fill the void, now I felt hollow and alone. But there would be no recompense from this all-encompassing sharp pain that was my sorrow.
My mother and I somehow manage to make it across the threshold, numb to the fact that Katniss may never come home again. Hope, light as a feather, wants to take root in me as it always has in me in the past. Even in the worst of times, like when my father died, I kept going with the silly optimism of a child, if nothing else than because Katniss kept trying to make things better. Exhaustion and hunger threatened to take hold of us then, but she would make everything all right again. Part of me, even now in the midst of my own struggle to accept the outcome of the Reaping, wants to offer words of comfort to my mother. She could fall back into the crushing grief that almost consumed her after the mining accident, despite Katniss ordering her not to. It may fall to me to bring her back from the brink of wasting away, as Katniss did years ago for her, and the thought terrifies me. How did she do it, when my own feelings are threatening to drown me, a dull roar in my ear and a pounding ache in my chest the only proof I was still alive? This would be the hardest-won fight yet to survive, to have to stand alone without the protection of my sister. And just the thought of going on without her is more than I can bear. Only now, when she is gone, do I realize just how much I borrowed from my sister's strength. Her resilience saved us all more times than our mother and I could count, and now it's my turn to grow up and try to take her place, if she checks out again. But the gaping void that was my sister Katniss would never be filled, no matter how hard I tried.
I don't have a clue why it was the meal on the table that made me come undone again, but it did. The meal of strawberries and bread that was set aside that morning after Katniss had come back from hunting this morning with Gale, before the Reaping had taken place, was still in place on the table. The girl who brings the strawberries. The boy with the bread. Both gone, beyond the reach now of the meager comforts of home and family and thrown into the chaos of the Hunger Games.
There was a weak voice of protest in my head that said that eating this food would be a betrayal of their sacrifice. But my sister's voice was telling me to live, and whether I was listening to her or defying Panem and the Capitol and all those responsible for the Games, I put the berries in my mouth without hesitation. They went down, the taste bittersweet, and I resolve then and there to keep going. To try my best, same as I told Katniss to, to stay safe and sound at home until she's back here with me so we can take on the world together. Where I have been weak, Katniss has always been strong, and today marked the end of the innocence, with my older sister making the ultimate sacrifice for me. I have to keep going, and when she comes home, she'll be so proud of me.