When Madeline's Pa was a boy, the artisan he sold his finished stone to tried to cut his prices, knowing Pa had nowhere else to go and no one to sell it to, not without losing the extra on transit. Pa couldn't stop him, so he did the next best thing: he found the man's pretty, naive daughter and stuck it to her out behind the back of the shop one night, with nothing more than a stolen blanket and a handful of half-melted candles to set the mood.

Seven months later she showed up at his door, big-bellied and black-eyed and sobbing. He hadn't thought she'd been old enough for that, but turns out old enough to look like that - old enough to do what they did - and apparently that's all the miracle of life needed. Lucky for him there'd been a drop in Panem's fertility rate that decade and the government was awarding stipends to new families, so they got married at the courthouse. Pa got enough money to buy that diamond-tipped saw he'd been working on, and Mama got saved from a life of disgrace.

It's the first bedtime story Madeline learns by heart. She even knows to stop and spit onto the ground at every mention of her granddaddy, a monster she's never met.

"And you, little girl," is how it always ends, Pa's callused finger pointing at her face, "you'd better be grateful, because I could've let you and your Mama starve to death in the streets. I could've let your Mama be passed around the rail yard like so much trash instead of making her an honest woman. But I didn't, because I'm a decent human being, and you best not forget that."

"No, Pa," Madeline says dutifully, standing straight with her chin up and her hands at her sides.

"That's right," Pa says with satisfaction, leaning back in his chair. "Now you do your job, little missy, and grow up pretty so we can find some rich idiot to trade you to when you're old enough."

She doesn't know what most of the story means until later. She just knows it makes Mama's mouth go thin if she's in the room.


When she's very small, too small to count past her fingers, Madeline keeps saying her name wrong. The last 'n' is hard, it sticks in her nose and it sounds wrong, all thin and nasty like a sneer. 'M' sounds better, softer and warmer, and 'Made-lime' is both easier for her to wrap her mouth around and nicer in her ears.

It's not like she has any friends who aren't imaginary yet, and so Madeline gets away with it until the day Pa catches her building a tower of blocks and singing to herself (Made-lime, Made-lime, bestest person all the time) and gives her a sharp smack across the palm with a ruler. "You're old enough to get your name right," he snaps at her while Madeline stares up at him, eyes wide, the block tower scattered all over the floor.

She can't say the letter 's' right either, and he cures her the same way. By the time she's three, Madeline enunciates clearer than most kids three times her age. Adults compliment her on it all the time, how grown up she sounds, and she smiles at them and says 'thank you' and hides her hand behind her back.


Madeline's one of the only kids at school without brothers or sisters. She was a hard birth, Mama told her when she asked; Mama was young and Madeline came out kicking and screaming, and the doctors almost lost them both.

"Lost us where?" Madeline asks once. She's five years old.

"Far away," Mama says. "Over the mountains, past the district boundary. We never would've come back. We were lucky, but they told Pa not to try to give me another baby or it'd happen for sure."

Madeline frowns and picks at a loose seam at the hem of her skirt before Mama slaps her hand away. Fabric is expensive, and Madeline has a habit of ruining everything she touches. "Why did you let Pa give you a baby if it was dangerous?"

Mama laughs, low and dark, and it's not a nice sound. It makes the hairs on Madeline's arms stand up. "Oh, baby girl, I didn't have a choice."

There's a rock in her throat and spiders in her blood, and Madeline fights to sound normal. "You mean a boy can just give you a baby and you can't say no?"

Mama hesitates. "There are ways to get rid of it before it's too late," she says carefully, "but they're dangerous. You better stay away from boys altogether until your Pa says it's okay."

That night Madeline sneaks into Pa's workshop and steals a chisel, crouching down in the darkness and striking the edge until she wears it to a point. She keeps it under her pillow when she sleeps and straps it to her leg under her skirt when she leaves the house. No boys will be giving her babies without her knowing about it.


She learns early the different ways of being afraid, the ones that are useless and the ones that make sense, the ones she can stop and the ones she can't. She learns the things it's smart to be afraid of whether she is or not.

Madeline is afraid of thunder first, when she's really little, too little to know better. Pa laughs and smacks his leg when the booms rattle the house and Madeline gasps and tries to hide under the blanket. He tells her thunder can't touch her, though if she's stupid enough to go outside during a storm the lightning might get her. Madeline hates being laughed at but it does help, because she's never afraid of thunder again. She sits right by the window and snarls at the flashes of light as they turn the air white, daring them to hit her, but they can't. It's the first time Madeline feels powerful.

She's afraid of babies. They're tiny and wet and needy and they scream and cry and drool and ruin people's lives and you can't give them back when someone gives them to you. The first time one of Mama's friends comes over she tries to hand her baby to Madeline - tries to trick her, obviously thinking she's too young to understand the rules - but Madeline knows better and so she scrambles back and runs away. Mama scolds her, her friend chuckles, and Madeline lets out a breath of relief. After that, whenever people with babies are around she makes sure to drop things and break them and run into them so they know babies aren't safe with her. People stop trying to hand her babies, so that's that one safe, but Madeline still can't quite erase the fear.

She's not afraid of the tools in Pa's workshop, even though he tells her all the ways she could mangle herself if she used them wrong. He tells her stories of men without fingers, with bashed-up hands, how if you slice your thumb off with the right kind of saw you don't even feel it until you pass out from the blood. But Madeline just narrows her eyes and listens to Pa when he gives her the safety rules, and soon enough he lets her help him work the ashlar.

Madeline is not afraid of Pa, even though she should be.

She knows she should be because Mama is, and Mama is older and knows best and Madeline should listen to her. There are lots of things about Pa to be afraid: his big stomping steps through the house when he's mad; the way he likes to pick up a ruler or a big spoon and slap it against his hand, or hold his belt in a loop and snap it tight, when he's using his angry voice. Mama tells Madeline she should be, tugs her down by the arm and holds her tight until her fingers dig into Madeline's skin and leave red marks, tells her she needs to stop looking Pa in the eye when he gets in one of his moods or she'll get in trouble.

Madeline tries her best. The next time Pa comes home from work mad - some customer tried to cheat him, he says - and starts slamming things around the house, Madeline digs deep inside her, searches for the fear she feels when she looks at babies, the fear that makes Mama's face turn white and her eyes go big, and for a second she thinks she hits it. Her stomach lurches and her blood goes hot except it's not fear, it's not fear at all, it's something else. Something that turns her hands into fists and makes her clench her teeth so hard her jaw hurts and her chin shakes.

When Pa storms into the room, Madeline stares up at him, her eyes hard and determined. Pa stops and glares down at her. "What are you looking at, little girl?" he demands.

"We're not the customer," Madeline says, clear and distinct and hissing on the letter 's' with her tongue safely behind her teeth just like he taught her. "You shouldn't get mad at us. It's not our fault."

Pa stares at her, shock and fury turning his mouth into a big 'o', and he takes a step. There, finally, is fear, just for a second, running through Madeline like a lightning strike, but she holds still, pretends she's a big tree rooted in the ground and he can't move her. Finally Pa stops and points his finger at her face like he always does. "If you weren't a girl," he says, letting the sentence trail off, and then off he goes, his feet making the pictures on the wall shake.

Madeline lets out a long breath, and her legs only wobble a little.


The thing is, she doesn't like Mama that much either. Madeline hates the way Mama cringes when Pa's around - she's convinced that Pa is like mountain lions, if you gasp and run they'll chase you, but if you stare them down and wave your arms and throw rocks at them they'll leave - and the way Mama always makes excuses for him. The first time Madeline walked in and saw Mama holding a towel full of ice to her face she felt bad, but then Mama told Madeline it was her own fault, she shouldn't have started on him about coming home late when he works hard and deserves time to go get drinks with his friends. After that Madeline feels nothing but a sick, curling disgust where her sympathy should be.

She doesn't like Mama because Mama makes her wear dresses and keep her hair long, even though her skirts tear when she climbs rocks and her hair always flies into her eyes and gets stuck in tree branches. Then Madeline has to come home and listen to Mama scold her about ladylike behaviour and ruining her pretty clothes.

"What does that even mean?" Madeline grumps one afternoon, sitting with her arms folded across her chest, scowling at the mirror. Mama stands behind her, ripping a comb through her hair hard enough to hurt, and muttering to herself under her breath about girls who don't know how to comport themselves. Madeline just grits her teeth and refuses to say ouch when her scalp stings. "What's ladylike? Going out behind the shop with a boy and letting him give you a baby? If that's being a lady I don't think I want to be one."

Mama gasps, and she wrenches the stool around and slaps Madeline right across the face, hard. "Don't you ever say that again!" she spits, and her face is white with two angry red spots on her cheeks. "Don't you dare!"

Madeline just stares at her, the same narrow-eyed, blank look she gives Pa when he's in his rages, and Mama sucks in an angry breath and turns back to the comb.


Madeline learns not to be messy, not because she likes being tidy - she doesn't, she hates having to pick up her toys and games in the middle of playing and put it away just because Pa decides he doesn't want to look at it - but because there's no telling when Pa will decide he wants everything super clean. One day Madeline leaves her truck on the floor just for a minute while she goes to get a drink of water, and when she gets back, Pa is screaming, picking up everything and throwing it into a bag.

"That's it!" he yells, and Madeline isn't afraid of him but she is, sometimes, afraid of what he'll do and how it will affect her. "Anything on the floor is getting thrown away."

And the thing is, he's not kidding. He shoves Madeline back so she can't get past him to try to shove things back into her chest or onto a shelf in time, and within minutes half her stuff is gone, stuffed into the garbage bag and held over his head so she can't get it no matter how much she tries. Madeline screams right back, beats his leg with her fists and pulls at his shirt until a seam tears, but it's no good. He takes her things out back, builds a fire, and tosses the bag on it. When Madeline tries to run away he grabs her by the arm, twists it until she gasps out in pain, and makes her watch until there's nothing left.

"That's what you get," he says, throwing her back hard enough that she stumbles. "Now go explain to your mother why she has to buy you new clothes tomorrow."

Madeline doesn't tell Mama anything. She wears the same things over and over, washing them in the bathtub late at night when her parents are asleep. Mama never pays attention to her if she's clean, and like always Pa forgets the next day.

It's still not enough; sometimes when Madeline comes home from school Mama screams at her, shoves a cloth into her hands and tells her to dust, faster faster faster, because the house is a mess and Pa works long hours and deserves a nice clean home. There's no getting away; Madeline is stuck in the house until Mama is satisfied, scrubbing and washing and dusting until she can see her face in the sink and the floor squeaks underneath her finger when she rubs it.

Even after all that, there's always something. A pot in the wrong place, a shoe not lined up with the rest, and then Pa spends half an hour shouting at them about how lazy they are, how he should just stop going to work and see how well they'll do without his support. One time he says he should just pick up and leave and see how they like it; Madeline bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood to stop herself from saying she thinks she'd like that a lot.


This time Mama didn't do the dishes fast enough; she'd left them to soak in the sink, meaning to clean them by the time Pa came back, but he left work early and got home before she'd finished and that's her fault because she should have known he wanted to eat dinner at four today. Now he's gone again after threatening to stay away for a week - he won't, sadly, follow through on it - and Madeline squeezes out a tea bag to put on the bruise under Mama's eye.

She doesn't mean to say it, but the anger is too strong, boiling up inside her like the water in the kettle to make the tea, and the words tumble out. "I'm never getting married," Madeline spits out. A clean house is one of the things she's come to understand is a husband's right and a wife's duty. Madeline thinks that if Pa wants a clean house then he should do the cleaning, but that's not the way it works. "If I don't ever get a husband then he can't do things like this."

Mama just shakes her head. "It's not like what you think," she says, pressing her fingertips to the swollen skin above her cheekbone, her face twitching. "The world isn't a nice place, honey, not for women. We're not safe on our own."

Madeline thinks about Mama, young and stupid, believing everything that the boy with the rocks told her, but she keeps her mouth shut. It doesn't sound to her like women are much safer with husbands, either. Not when being married gives the man the right to whatever he wants and the woman to - well, Madeline hasn't figured out to what. Mama says protection, but it's not protection from being shouted at, it's not protection from flying hands.

"I don't care," Madeline says finally. "I won't get married. Not ever."

"You're young," Mama says, and this time her voice goes soft, indulgent, the way people talk to babies, and Madeline's spine stiffens. "You'll change your mind."

"I won't!"

"Well, of course you think so now," Mama says. "But you'll grow up, like all little girls do. All little girls start out thinking like you do, but we get older, and one day you'll see. You'll meet a boy and you'll realize it's not so terrible after all. You'll realize you want it after all."

Fear starts up in Madeline's chest like the low rumble of thunder across the mountains. "What do you mean?"

"It's the way nature made us," Mama says, and she lets her hand fall on Madeline's head, stroking her hair. Madeline is too frozen to tell her to stop it. "When girls are very young, they think boys are smelly, and stupid, and all sorts of things. Then, when they're old enough - when they begin to become young women instead of girls - it changes. Then they start to see boys as something else. They're handsome, and brave, and strong. And when we're old enough, we find the one who's meant for us, and we marry them."

Madeline's hands shake, and she clasps them together to try to stop it. "No," she says, her throat scratchy. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. "No, you can't make me."

"It's nothing to do with making," Mama says. She gives Madeline a smile, one hand still holding the tea bag to her face, her eye squinted shut. "It just happens. When you're old enough you'll see."

Madeline is seven years old. She's terrified to know how old "old enough" is. In her head a giant clock starts ticking.


The next day at school, Madeline chases down one of the boys in her class just before home time. He's around the same size as her but he's not a bully, and it's easy for Madeline to grab him and shove him up against the wall. "Give me your clothes!" she yells.

The boy stares at her, eyes wide. "What?"

"Give them to me!" Madeline slams him hard enough that his head knocks against the brick. "I need boy's clothes and I don't have any money. Give them to me or I'll punch you until your teeth fall out."

He holds up his hands, cringing away. He looks like he believes her, which is good because Madeline is dead serious. "If you let me go home I'll give you all the clothes you want," he says, sputtering and crying. "I swear. But I don't wanna walk home in my underwear. Please!"

Madeline slits her eyes at him and bares her teeth. "If you're lying you'll pay for it," she says, borrowing one of Pa's phrases, and the boy swallows hard. "I'll come with you. I'll give you two minutes to bring me clothes. If you don't, tomorrow I'll find a rock and I'll beat your head in."

She's never actually beaten anyone up before, but she knows she could. Madeline is big for her age, and strong for a kid, and she has more at stake than whatever makes a boy like that blubber just because someone's threatening him. She just never bothers with that kind of thing because Pa would find out eventually, and it's not worth it just because some kid might have something she wants. Plus, it always seems a little dumb to Madeline to fight kids smaller than you; what does that prove? It makes about as much sense as Pa smacking Mama in the face when she's half his size. Yeah, big man right there.

Madeline follows the boy home, hanging back at the edge of the fence around his house - she picked right, then, nobody has a fence unless they're rich enough to think they have something worth stealing, and probably a kid like that will be able to grab some things without his parents noticing all that much - just in case he ends up telling his parents after all. It's a few tense minutes, Madeline hooking her fingers around the iron bars and trying not to look suspicious, and she's glad that while Pa might not be a craftsman or one of the people in the art guild, they're not quarriers either, which means she doesn't look as out of place as she could.

Finally the boy comes back with a backpack, and he stays on the safe side of the fence and tosses it over at her. "Here," he says, face pale, but he's braver now with something between them. "Now will you leave me alone?"

Madeline isn't stupid, and she opens the bag to make sure he didn't just stuff it full of paper. But no, there's shirts and pants and shorts, and she has to bite her tongue to stop from letting out a sigh of relief. "Good," she says shortly, and slings the bag over her back.

It makes her late coming home, but Mama is busy washing the windows and doesn't notice. "Pick up your room when you go inside," Mama calls, like she always does, as though after Pa went crazy that one time Madeline doesn't keep everything she owns crammed out of sight for fear Pa will look at it and decide she doesn't deserve to have it.

"Yeah, I will," Madeline yells back, and sneaks into the kitchen for a pair of scissors. She's good at sneaking, otherwise she'd be a lot hungrier on days when Pa decides she's mouthy and deserves to go to bed without dinner.

Madeline shuts the door to her room - there's no lock, at least not on the inside, so she jams it with a textbook from school where the wooden doorframe warped from the heat - and pulls out all her clothes. Every skirt, every dress, every shirt with ruffles on the sleeves or collar, every pair of tights she hasn't already destroyed by snagging them on rocks or tree branches, she yanks out of her dresser and puts onto a pile in the middle of the floor. She almost does the underwear, too, but nobody's going to see that and she didn't think to make the boy give her any, so she leaves one drawer of those.

She's shaking by the time she finishes. She wants to cut them all up into tiny pieces with the scissors, but there's no time for that, not when Mama might finish with the windows and come in to check on Madeline's room before she's done. She has to make sure there's nothing left, nothing they could put back together; she can already see Pa throwing her in front of a table and giving her a needle and thread and refusing to let her move until she's pieced everything the way it was.

Madeline only leaves one dress in her closet, and that's the plain blue one she wears to the Reaping. That's too serious for even her to mess with, no matter how mad she is, but she shoves it at the very back and hides it behind other things so only she will know where it is. That done, Madeline peels off her school dress and pulls on a pair of pants and a short-sleeved shirt from the bag the boy gave her.

It feels like climbing a big tree when the breeze is high, leaning forward on a large branch until she's balanced on her stomach with her arms keeping her steady. It feels like she thinks flying might feel. It feels like the dreams she has where she comes home from school and the house burnt down and Pa and Mama are dead. Madeline blows out her breath in a quick whoosh and swipes at her eyes with her hands.

There's a laundry basket in the corner, and Madeline shoves everything into it, cramming it down with her feet until it's nearly bursting, and she drags it outside. The basket thumps against the floor with every step, and she holds her breath the whole time. But finally she's safe in the yard, out at the burnt patch of rock and scrub-grass that Pa uses to get rid of trash, and she piles the whole thing on it and sets it on fire.

The ash-smell of the burning cloth sticks in her nose and makes her cough, but Madeline stays where she is, only shifting a little to avoid the worst of the smoke when it blows into her face. She squints against the brightness of the flames, watching as one dress she hated more than anything else blackens and curls, the lace turning brown for a split second before disappearing in a flash of fire. It takes less time for all the clothes to burn up than Madeline thought it would, and soon there's nothing left.

Mama will notice soon - it's lucky she's cleaning the other side of the house - and that doesn't leave Madeline much time. Once the last of the clothes turn to black lumps, she takes the scissors out of her pocket and hacks at her hair, tossing blonde handfuls onto the last of the fire. It takes her a few tries - she's got a lot of hair, and Mama never let her cut it before - and by the end her arm cramps from holding it behind her but finally she's done, her hair chopped short and close to her scalp.

Burnt hair, it turns out, smells way worse than clothes, and it stings the inside of Madeline's nostrils and makes her eyes water even worse. She throws handfuls of dirt onto the low flames, kicks the remains loose, and stomps on everything with her shoes until the coals break apart and turn to smoke and dust.

Madeline twists her fingers in her hair - so short now, shorter than she ever remembers it being - and swallows as her heart rate kicks up. She's in for it now.

Her luck holds out until she sneaks in the back door and turns the corner, where Madeline runs right into Mama, who takes one look at her and shrieks, clapping both hands over her mouth. "What did you do?" Mama shouts, and she goes to grab Madeline by the arm but changes her mind halfway through, recoiling like she thinks she's going to get a disease. "Your hair - your clothes!"

"I don't want to get married," Madeline says, and sticks out her chin. "If I look like this, no one will want to marry me."

Mama gapes at her, all the colour gone from her face. "Oh, baby girl, no," she says, her mouth hanging open. "Oh. Okay. Okay. We can fix this. Give me the scissors and I'll try to make your hair look cute. We can tell your father you were getting a rash from the heat, that's all, and I thought it would be best to cut it. Go upstairs and put your clothes back on."

"I can't," Madeline says, and this is it. There's no turning back. "I burned them all. There's only boy things left. And if you go out and buy me a dress I'll burn that, too. I'm not wearing girl clothes anymore."

She expects Mama to shout some more, to turn red and angry and start slamming cupboard doors the way she only does when they're alone and Pa isn't around to hear, but she doesn't. Mama just goes whiter and quieter and more and more frozen until she looks like a statue, and Madeline doesn't like this. She knows how to deal with Mama mad; she has no idea what to do with this.

"Oh, baby girl," Mama says again, finally. She stumbles back, hand groping at the air, until she finds the wall, and she leans against it with her back pressed to the wood. She sucks in a wet breath, and her eyes are wide and shining. "You have no idea what you just did. Do you know what he's going to do to you?"

Madeline doesn't like this at all. "I don't care," she says, but her voice lilts up at the end instead of staying firm without her meaning it to. She wants to kick herself.

"Maybe you don't, but I do," Mama says, and her mouth goes tight. "All right, go upstairs. Go to your room, close the door, and don't come out until someone gets you. I'll try to talk to him and get him warned before he sees you." She leans down and grips Madeline by the shoulders. "Don't be cute and come downstairs, do you hear me? Stay in your room."

Madeline wants to say something smart just to see Mama get cross with her and have everything go back to normal, but she just nods. She runs to her room, slams the door, and wishes that her math textbook really would keep people out. Her stomach turns over and a sick taste crawls into her throat like she swallowed a frog.

It's done, Madeline reminds herself. There's nothing he can do about it. If he wants to make her grow her hair back he can try, but he can't watch her forever. He can't keep her away from scissors forever. And the thing with Pa is, eventually he gets tired of yelling; eventually he throws up his arms and tells her she's hopeless and he leaves her alone. If she's lucky this will be a quick burn, up like an explosion and out just as fast.

Madeline's legs shake. She sits on her bed and pulls her knees to her chest to try to make them stop.

She has homework, but a few minutes of sitting at her desk, staring at the page and seeing none of it, and Madeline gives up on that. She tries reading, she tries flipping through the photo book of scenic Panem that she stole from the school library a few years ago, she tries lying down with her pillow over her head hoping the darkness will put her to sleep. Nothing works. It's stupid, but Mama's nervous energy has infected her, and she can't sit still or concentrate on anything. The room fills up with nerves until she's sure she can smell it, and Madeline keeps running her fingers through her hair to make sure it hasn't grown back in the last few minutes.

Finally Pa comes home; the front door slams, and the low buzz of conversation makes it up the stairs, though none of the words pass through Madeline's door. Not until Pa shouts "What?" at the top of his voice, and then comes Mama again, high and panicked, trying to soothe him, but it's no good. His footsteps bang up the stairs, and Madeline jumps off her bed and stands in the middle of the room, where she feels safest. At the last minute she runs to the window and heaves up the sash, just in case she has to jump. She's fallen out of a tree this high and only broke her arm. It probably won't kill her.

The door flies open, and Pa fills the doorway, face contorted. Madeline refuses to be afraid, which means the twisting in her gut and cold sweat trickles between her shoulder blades must be something else. She twists her fingers in the hem of the boy's shirt - her shirt, now - and lets the rough, non-girly fabric give her strength.

"So your mother wasn't lying," Pa says, low and dangerous. "You really went and did this to yourself. You have five seconds to give me a good reason before I tan your hide."

He actually counts, big and dramatic and drawing out the final sound of each number. There's nothing Madeline can say that will convince him. She keeps her mouth shut, gritting her teeth hard just in case she panics and something tries to slip out.

"I see," Pa says. "So you wanna be a boy, is that it? You want to be a boy so bad you'll disgrace your mother and me, run around looking like some guttersnipe, well, I see. Well guess what, little girl, you want to be a boy, I'll treat you like a boy!"

Madeline has two seconds to wonder what that means as Pa rounds on her, before his arm lashes out and the back of his hand catches her full across the face.

Pa has spanked her before, and his use of rulers on her palms has left them dulled to pain, but this is different. It sparks through her whole face; there's fire in the bridge of her nose, and soon the blood flows, hot and thick and wet. Madeline cries out before she can stop herself, and she holds her forearm under her nose, snuffling and trying to pull it all back. Pa glares down at her, fist clenched, his knuckles and wedding ring stained red.

"You think it's that easy, you've got another thing coming," Pa says. He grabs her arm, wrenches it hard, and holds her at arm's length while she struggles, scrabbling at his wrist with her fingers until her nails tear at his skin. He holds her as he pulls open the buckle on his belt and slides it free, the leather rasping against his belt loops.

Madeline has never heard a sound so terrifying. She twists free and breaks for the window, but Pa lunges and the end of the belt catches her on the backs of her legs. Madeline stumbles, and that's all he needs to catch her.

"This ends when you cry," Pa tells her, his voice flat and hard with anger, as the belt strikes her skin again, again, again.

She'd been about to - nothing has ever hurt this much - but that stops her. Madeline clamps her mouth tight shut, choking on the drying blood as she forces herself to breathe through her nose. She counts as high as she can go. She tries to name all the mayors of District Two since the last Quarter Quell. She thinks of every nursery rhyme the teachers used to sing to them when she was little.

Finally Pa stops - his arm must be tired, the last while he hasn't been hitting as hard - and he shoves her away from him. "Next time," he growls, "I use the buckle end. You have no idea what you've got yourself into, little girl."

Madeline waits until his footfalls fade down the stairs before she lets herself cry, bitter and furious and silent. She twists around, trying to see her back, but she can't make it out well enough to tell if there are marks. Her calves are scored with raised pink welts, but Madeline thinks they'll fade soon enough. The worst isn't just how it hurts but the deep, gnawing sense of helplessness inside her, twisting until she feels just as sick from that as she does from the humiliation and pain.

Finally she gets herself under control, but when Madeline tries to push open the door, it sticks in the frame and the handle won't turn. Madeline glares over her shoulder at the window, but she doesn't want to risk it. Not yet. He'll let her out tomorrow morning and she can wash her face before school. He won't want her going with dried blood crusted all over her lower face, that'd shame him just as much as her clothes.

Madeline pulls herself upright, ignoring the twinges all over her, and stares at herself in the mirror. The kid who stares back is angry, scary, and not at all pretty. Not someone who will grow up into a pretty girl and get lots of boys wanting to marry her. The Madeline in the mirror looks like she might pull a knife out of nowhere and stick it in your gut before she'll let you touch her, and that's good enough.

She doesn't get to eat supper that night, but it doesn't matter. Victory sits in her stomach just as heavy as any meal.


"Madeline!" her teacher gasps. "What happened?" She lowers her voice, starts to lay a hand on Madeline's shoulder but pulls back. "Did someone hurt you?"

For a moment, Madeline pictures telling the teacher about Pa. She imagines the Peacekeepers showing up at the house, clapping cuffs on his wrists and dragging him away. It's a glorious image for all of three seconds, but after that it sours. Mama doesn't have any skills - Pa always reminds them they'd both be nowhere without him, and Madeline would get more mad at that except she's never seen Mama do anything useful ever - and Madeline's not old enough to do anything even if she did. If they take Pa away they'll take Madeline away and put her in a home, and she might hate Mama but not enough to give up her house and her room and her life just yet.

Madeline looks up at Mrs. Sullivan and shakes her head. "I was playing on the rock pile and I fell," she says. The cut on her lip stretches when she smiles. "I won't do that again."

Mrs. Sullivan gives Madeline a long look, giving her time to change her mind, then sighs. "Be careful next time," she says. "And if you get hurt again, you can tell me."

The other kids whisper, but one glare from Madeline sets them quiet. Nobody talks to her at all until lunch - she doesn't have one, not today, who knows how long Pa will keep food away as a punishment - when the boy whose clothes she stole sits down next to her on the bench.

"You're not wearing a dress today," he says, tentative.

"Nope," Madeline says, not looking at him.

Pause. After a minute he says, "You want my hat? It'd hide your face."

Madeline says noting, just stares out over the playground at the flocks of kids laughing and running around and trading each other bits of their lunches. The boy gets up, comes back a few minutes later with a cap that he holds out to her. Madeline snatches it out of his hand and jams it down hard on her head, pulling the brim down low over her eyes. He's right, it will cover the worst of her face, at least her bruised and swollen nose, and she grunts.

"Good luck," the boy says, but he leaves before Madeline can tip her head up and scowl at him.

That night after school, Madeline takes the long way home around the abandoned quarry, skirting the empty scar in the earth until she makes it back to her house. Pa is waiting for her when she gets there - he'll have left work early - and she tenses when she walks up, ready for him to make good on his promise.

"You want to be a boy, I'm gonna treat you like a boy," Pa says to Madeline when she stops in front of him, scuffing her shoes in the dirt. She can't see his face past the brim of her hat, but his voice doesn't sound like he's going to hit her. He's angry still but it's pulled back, the way Mama's got when Madeline came home with the back of her skirt torn because she chased a boy over the fence. "Come down to the shop with me. You're gonna start working the stone after school. No more games, no more playing, you hear me? If I had a son I'd start training him now. Guess that means you."

Madeline doesn't say anything, but she drops her bag on the floor and doesn't take off her shoes. Pa grunts and heads out the door.

When they get back, Madeline starts for her room. "Where you think you're going?" Pa demands. "Go wash up and help your mother set the table for supper."