clove becomes a killer at age 5.
her mother is fresh-faced, all rosy cheeks and gleaming eyes when she wakes clove up in the morning.
"wake up, princess! we're gonna do something special today!" her mom says, opening the window and sitting on her daughter's bed.
clove giggles and pulls the blanket over her head.
"I can't see you, mommy!"
"oh no, where did my little girl go?" her mother asks, a grin on her face.
clove's head pops up from under the blanket, her sable hair in a mess of curls.
"there she is! okay, up you go, sweetness. go brush your teeth, and I'll pick you a dress to wear today."
they walk hand in hand to a thicket of berries enclosed by a shaky barbed wire fence, the only place in Two that qualifies as beautiful. clove's mother picks up the baskets she keeps hidden in the tall grass and hands one to clove, keeping one for herself.
"pick as many as you can! the bigger, the better." her mom says. they walk through the tangled grass and clear the bushes of their berries, though clove's mother is the only one whose basket gets fuller. more of clove's berries end up in her mouth than her basket, but her mother doesn't complain. she just sneaks berries into clove's basket when the girl isn't paying attention.
before they leave the thicket, clove's mother pours the berries into a burlap sack and tucks it into the front of her shirt, buttoning her jacket and hoping no one questions her decision to wear long sleeves during summer. she kneels down, covers the baskets in grass, and looks clove in the eyes as she always does when she's telling her something important.
"now, clover, I need you to pay attention. this is a secret place, okay? you can't bring anyone here, and you can't ever tell them about it."
"why not?"
"because it's a secret! if anyone else finds out, we won't have any berries for ourselves!" her mom says, rubbing the juice off of clove's chin with her thumb.
"oh. okay!" she says, attention diverted by a flock of birds off in the distance. clove's mom grabs her by the hand, and they walk home, her mother ever wary for the glances of strangers or peacekeepers alike.
they make blackberry jelly together. her mother sits her on the counter and mixes the berries and the sugar and the powder together, turning it into a syrup. she pours most of into a pot to boil, but she gives clove a small cup of it to dip her fingers into. as kids do, clove manages to get more syrup on her dress and her hands and her face than she does in her stomach, but her mother doesn't mind the mess when she sees the girl's berry-stained smile.
"you're such a big girl, helping mommy with the jelly! I'm so proud of you. remember, you can't tell anyone." she says, kissing her daughter's forehead. clove nods, plunging her fingers into the syrup yet again.
that night, her mother sits her down in the bath and cups water in her hands, pouring it over the girl and using a cloth to scrub her tiny hands. the syrup washes out of her skin easily, and clove is mesmerized with watching the tinted water swirl down the drain. as the tub empties, clove's mother throws her stained dress into the fireplace. when clove asks why, she says that some stains don't come out.
a week later, clove starts kindergarten. she makes friends with girls who shoot arrows with miniature bows and boys who carry their toy swords everywhere. they all play hunger games during recess, but clove does not. she sits with her new friend named terra whose dad owns a brick shop. clove eats some crackers and apple slices, and terra pulls out a slice of bread and slathers it in jam out of a plastic packet, like the kind you can buy in the market.
"what kind of jelly is that?"
"blackberry. it's yummy."
"not as good as the kind my mommy makes."
"your mommy makes jelly?" terra asks, an excited look on her face.
"yeah! she picks the berries and mixes them up. sometimes I help." clove says, and it's only when she sees the teacher frowning in her direction that she remembers that the berries grow in a secret place and her heart drops to the pit of her stomach.
that night, the men and women wearing white come to clove's house and knock loudly on the door. clove pulls the door open and waves to them just like mommy always taught her to do, but they ignore her, rushing into the house and to her mother's bedroom. they pull her out of bed and rummage through the cupboard, eventually pulling out two small glass jars of blackberry jam.
"are you hungry? I can get you some bread! it's real good with raisin bread." clove asks, but when she reaches up to grab it, a lady grabs her hands and pulls her away.
"we're not hungry. your mother is in big, big trouble."
the next morning, they hang her mother in the town square and make her sit in the front row and watch. then, they give a speech about how theft from the district is theft from the Capitol is theft from the nation. clove does not cry. she just watches, numb, as her mother swings from a pillar. she waits for her to wake up, but she never does, and clove knows it's her fault.
clove gets to choose: go to the community home and waste away, or go to the Academy. she chooses the latter. she forces herself to forget her mother. it's better that way.
when she's nine, they do blood training. last year, the trainers told them stories about people and animals dying. this year, it becomes real.
each child has to slit the neck of a baby pig, pour the blood in a bowl, and paint a picture with it.
clove paints a jar of blackberry jam. when they ask, she says it's supposed to be a bullet.
that night, she sits in the shower and watches the blood go down the drain, the same purpleish-red color as a sunrise or a bruise or blackberry syrup and cries for the first time in years, but she's not quite sure why.
after that day, there's always blood under her nails.
when she's sixteen, she volunteers as tribute. when she gets out of the arena, she's covered in twelve girl's blood and shaking from head to toe and laughing like someone just told the funniest joke in the world and cato's wasted, formless body is still being torn at by the mutts. they disappear. she tries to save him, but they carry her up with his body to save time. his blood mixes with twelve girl's mixes with her own and she's still laughing when they sedate her.
she supposes that they wash it away while she's asleep, but when she wakes up, it's still there. just no one else can see it.
she takes three showers and two baths a day. no matter what, there is always blood. her hands and her clothes and her eyes are always stained red. eventually, the constant scrubbing wears away at her skin, and then the blood is real again, her hands cracked from constant washing. she bleeds on her sheets when she tosses and turns in her sleep and dreaming about blood only to wake up and see it for real is enough to make clove a little more unhinged than she already was.
one day, she sits watching the bathwater go down the drain, redder and redder, and she feels five again, covered from head to toe in blackberry syrup. but this time, her skin won't wash clean.
she calls enobaria crying, saying the blood is everywhere, staining everything.
"at the market, there's a table where a lady sells cleaning products. ask her if she has any hydrogen peroxide." enobaria says, matter of fact.
clove buys a hundred of bottles of peroxide with her blood money. she washes her clothes in it. she bathes in it. but her mother was right about one thing: some stains can't be washed away.
there is a quarter quell. they reap the victors. clove suffocates when a red rain ends up in her lungs.
she dies covered in blood. it's only fitting.