The Truth is Inevitable
I wasn't supposed to know the truth, or at least not until I was several years older. Twelve-year-olds are meant to be shielded from anything questionable or controversial. That was the case for me until a few months after my birthday.
But when I look back at the incident with more knowledge and insight eight years later, I realize that nothing my parents could have done to protect me would work. All of their attempts would end up futile no matter what. I guess censorship isn't as successful as they say.
There's at least one moment in your life when you think that everything's going to go the way you expect, but then, one thing sends it in the opposite direction, nothing that could have been foreseeable.
When I was a child and early adolescent, I never questioned anything my family did, nor did I suspect anything odd about my environment in District 11. Even if I wondered about things, I just kept them to myself and accepted them for the way they were. My life was simple to say the least.
That moment happened to me one Sunday, when I went to my grandparents' house. I remember the day I was over there more clearly than any other childhood memory. It was the one event that catalyzed my transition into adulthood.
I think about how if circumstances were different, I might not have made the discovery which changed my life and led me to doubt things. But as I said before, I would've found out anyways.
It was the very end of spring, and school would be ending in a matter of weeks. I remember going to the house with my older sister, Carissa. She was a serious and hardworking girl whom I looked up to. She always obeyed our parents and never talked back to them. I tried to follow in her footsteps, but I felt like there was a piece missing in the puzzle, something that I couldn't put into words.
Looking back at it, I'm beginning to think that it was wisdom. Three more years of life than I had, several more experiences than I could imagine at the time. While I wanted things to be simple, I also wanted to have the same knowledge that Carissa did.
When we finally arrived at the house, she knocked on the door. The person to open it wasn't who we expected at all: it was our cousin, Marcus.
From what experience I had with him, he was always cynical and sarcastic around me, never failing to say a negative comment under his breath, if even that. While I knew when to hold my tongue, he would say whatever was on his mind. He was about the same age as Carissa, but he always claimed to "know best", considering himself superior even to her. Marcus was someone I tried to ignore.
Unfortunately, incidences like these were inevitable, and I would have to spend time with him.
A smirk formed on Marcus's face, and he led us inside the house. His cocky attitude about everything bothered me. I wished that it was just Carissa and I. We went into the small family room, where my grandparents sat. I had an interesting relationship with them, needless to say.
This was one of those days when my grandma was more detached than usual. She didn't look up until Marcus called her name. I looked over at my sister, wondering what was going on. All she did was put a hand on my shoulder and whisper, "try to understand". That's what my parents always said: give them a chance, don't be too hard on them.
My grandpa was asleep on his lounge chair and barely moved a muscle, minus his deep breathing. His pipe was set on the side table. At least I wouldn't have to deal with him today. Whatever words we did exchange, it was extremely uncomfortable for me, and I wanted to get out of the situation as quickly as possible.
He was a sullen and laconic man who kind of scared me. The most common phrase in his conversations with me wasn't even a word; it was a grunt or an "uh-huh". I wasn't exactly sure what his deal was.
Little did I know what my grandparents had been through that led them to become the way they were.
I looked back at my grandma and tentatively came a little closer to her. Close up, I could see that her dark eyes were glassy, as if she had cried for a while. Her brittle legs shook, and it looked like they couldn't stop. Carissa went over to her. She gave her veiny hand a squeeze and said hello. My grandma made friendly small talk with my sister.
Carissa was good at that kind of stuff, while I was more on the timid side. She pulled away and tapped my shoulder. I got the message.
I took my grandmother's hand and squeezed it, just like Carissa did. It was frigid— ice cold.
"Hello, Grandma," I said. A weak smile formed on her face.
"Adelaide," she whispered. I didn't really like to be called Adelaide, but I wasn't going to correct my grandmother. I tried to smile back, and I kissed her on the cheek. Before she could say anything, Marcus intercepted.
"Before you guys came, I was cleaning out the basement. Wanna help?" I knew he wasn't asking, rather, he was telling us to help him. And I could tell that he didn't like it one bit. Nevertheless, we followed him downstairs.
I had only been in my grandparents' basement once or twice, but when they were unresponsive, Carissa and I would help around the house in several ways. Usually, we swept or mopped, just the generic house tasks. Only on rare occasions did we work in the basement.
When we were out of sight from our grandparents, closing the basement door behind us, Carissa raised an eyebrow at Marcus. I knew what kind of person she was, one who would always express concern during shady situations.
"Did she seriously make you go down there?" she hissed.
"Yeah." He shrugged his shoulders and headed over to this major patch of dust farther away from the entrance. He picked up the broom lying on the wall and started to sweep.
"So…" Carissa asked, "What should we do?"
"There's some sponges over to the right," he groaned. We went over and got them, starting on the cold concrete. The texture of the floor made me cringe, and it hurt my ears when the sponge rubbed against it. Fortunately for me, the task wasn't as tedious as I thought it would be.
The room was dead with silence, though. No one made a peep.
We were all focused on our tasks that it was shocking when we heard a faint noise. It was quiet, but it was still audible. I jumped, and when I turned around, I saw a photograph a few feet away from the shelf, near where Marcus was standing.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly, returning back to his sweeping. Carissa started washing again, but I was more focused on the photograph.
My family didn't take too many pictures, but we had an album from when Carissa and I were little, spanning over several years. They intrigued me. I wasn't exactly sure why, but I guess anything from the past interests me.
I ran over to the left side of the room to get a better look at the photograph. I picked it up from the floor and saw a girl about my age sitting in a tree, presumably in one of the orchards. She had thick, curly, brown hair. Her eyes had a youthful look in them, but at the same time, she looked somewhat afraid. Her skin was light brown, a few shades lighter than my own.
I tapped my cousin's shoulder.
"Who's the girl in the picture?" I asked him. He looked at me like I was ignorant.
"Rue…who else would it be?" Once he said "Rue", Carissa whipped her head over towards us and looked nothing but shocked.
"Marcus!" she snapped.
"What?" he said in that nonchalant, smug tone of voice that annoyed me to no end.
"She doesn't know who that is!" This was the moment to pipe up and find out what was going on.
"Who's Rue?" I asked.
"She's no one," Carissa replied dismissively, "It's not important. Marcus shouldn't have said that." She enunciated the word "Marcus".
"Wait, your parents never told you—"
"Just…stop talking about it. Okay, Marcus? Put the picture back." I could hear him mutter "fine".
We went back to complete silence for the next hour or so. A knot formed in my stomach, and I knew there was something off. It was the kind of tension I felt after my parents had an argument, when I wasn't sure whether they had made up or not. This anxiety lasted more than twice as long, though.
When Carissa and I finally left the house, she didn't mutter a word to me. The goodbyes with our grandma—our grandpa was still asleep—were rushed. I could tell that my sister wanted to get out of there. Usually, it was the other way around; I was the one in her situation.
Her pace was hurried. I could hear her heavy breathing as we stepped onto the road bisecting a patch of trees. This made me think of Rue. I had so many questions about her. I looked over at Carissa. She didn't show a trace of a smile, and she cleared her throat. I knew she did that when she was irritated. But I had to find out what was going on.
It was now or never, and even if she did get annoyed with me, I would have an answer.
Generally, I wouldn't have been too concerned about it, but this had happened on more than one occasion. Sometimes, my family would talk about something that I didn't comprehend, using confusing terms, thinking that I couldn't hear them.
I thought over what I would say and let the words fall out of my mouth.
"Carissa?" I began, "Could you please tell me who this Rue girl is?" Somewhat convincing—I believed so—but I didn't think my sister bought into it.
She sighed, frowned at me, and replied, "I told you she wasn't important. Back at the house, remember?"
"Then why did you get so upset when Marcus said her name?"
"Why are you doing this, Addy? Why can't you be agreeable? You're never like this. For the last time, forget that she was ever brought up!" She stormed off, turning to the right and heading towards the road leading to our house, perpendicular to the tree patch road. This had gone too far. I ran up to her, grabbing her arm.
"No! You're hiding something from me, and I don't like it! I hear Mom and Dad's whispers. I'm not as stupid as you think!" Carissa's eyes bulged in their sockets, and I was half convinced that they would pop out of her head. I shocked myself, too. I had never talked back to my older sister, not recently.
I heard her shriek in frustration.
"Let go of my arm," she growled. I didn't budge, and neither did she. Eventually, she said, "If you let go, I'll explain things to you."
"Really?" I questioned. Why should I have believed her? She hesitantly nodded her head. I released my grip, the blood pumping through my hand again.
"Here's the deal. If I tell you, you have to promise not to mention this to anyone."
"Okay."
She led me into the grass, moving under an apple tree. There were a few people out in the field that day, but they were interspersed and out of earshot. Despite this, Carissa lowered her voice and came closer to me. She paused, uncertain of what to say. She wrung her hands and looked down at the ground.
"You know that Dad has four siblings, right?" I quietly asserted this and named them in my head.
There was the oldest, Sahara, who was Marcus's mom. She wasn't as negative or condescending as her son, but she had a knack for order. I guess it's inherent with the older sibling.
Then there was Nettie. She was the quiet sister, the one we never heard of.
After that was Uncle Elliot, who was really good friends with my father.
The youngest was Leah. She was several years younger than the others; I believed she was still in her twenties, about ten years older than me.
"Yeah," I responded.
"Well…" Carissa revealed, "Rue was their sister, too. She was a year older than Sahara." It made sense when I thought about it. Why else would there be a picture of her in my grandparents' basement? It was still slightly puzzling to me, though.
"What happened to her?" I knew the answer, but I didn't want to admit it.
"She's dead. She's been dead for thirty years. She was killed in the Hunger Games." That phrase sounded familiar. I probably heard it from my parents, something I wasn't supposed to know about, as usual. But I wasn't sure what it meant.
My sister lowered her voice even more. "The Hunger Games were a ritual in Panem before President Paylor took over. Do you know anything that happened before then?"
I shook my head. The furthest back we went in history class was when Paylor began her presidency. Our teachers claimed that what happened before then was obsolete.
Carissa proceeded to tell me how the citizens of Panem were always dissatisfied with the government, ever since the establishment of the country. Eventually, they decided to revolt, and there was the first rebellion. The whole nation became ripped to shreds. People died everywhere and anywhere, and the land was completely destroyed.
This era was known as the Dark Days, which happened about a hundred years before I heard about it.
The apparent eradication of District 13 wasn't enough. (I later learned that they moved underground as a nonaggression pact with the president.) The rebels weren't going to go unpunished, so the president created the Hunger Games.
The Hunger Games were meant as retribution for the casualties caused by the rebellion.
Children ages twelve through eighteen were "reaped", or selected, to compete in them, two kids from each district. There would only be one winner, and they were the one to come out alive.
That meant they had to kill each other, fight to the death. When Carissa explained this concept to me, I didn't think she was telling the truth. Maybe she misunderstood what the Games actually were.
"Kids…killing other kids?" I wondered, making sure I heard this right. She nodded her head gravely and grabbed my hand. "Why would they do something like that?"
"I don't know. Nobody knows."
When these children were reaped—or volunteered; the people in the upper-class districts wanted to be in the Games for some reason—they took a train to the Capitol, where they would be altered by their stylists for the chariot rides. During the chariots, they would be broadcasted to Panem in its entirety.
Then, for the next few days, they would train for the Hunger Games, honing their skills. On the last day, they would show what they had in store to the Gamemakers—who designed each Games—and they were scored on a scale from one to twelve.
On their final night in the Capitol, they would be interviewed by the current reporter. Sometimes, people had an interview angle, which could either help them or hurt them. It depended on how well they executed it.
The next day, the kids were shipped to an arena created by the Gamemakers, where they would murder each other. The bloodbath was the worst day, since they were all standing next to each other in close proximity. After that, they would become more separate.
Often times, alliances were formed. The tributes from the upper-class districts—1, 2, and 4—would usually be part of the Career group, which the others feared.
The Games lasted a matter of weeks, and when the victor was crowned, the trauma would never go away, even though they had left the arena.
Carissa explained that Rue was reaped for the 74th Hunger Games—the penultimate one before the second rebellion—when she was my age. She had the lowest odds; it was highly unlikely that a twelve-year-old girl from District 11 would win.
Good thing the Games aren't around now, I thought.
She was actually a lot more talented than they assumed. During her interview, she expressed her confidence that nobody could catch her. Rue managed to escape the bloodbath, and she hid in the trees for the first part of the Games. I learned that she worked in the orchards as a child, so she gained proficient climbing skills.
Then, she ran into Katniss Everdeen, the female tribute from District 12 and urged her to drop a hive of tracker jackers on the Career tributes pursuing her. Katniss killed two of them.
They formed an alliance until death did them part, speaking in literal terms. They created a plan to blow up the Careers' food supply, and although Katniss managed to destroy it, Rue was speared to death by the boy from District 1. Her ally was too late to save her.
Despite this, she sang her a lullaby, covered her in flowers, and held up three fingers to the screen—making a whistle. This led to controversy in Panem. I wasn't sure why people were so upset about it.
Carissa proceeded to tell me how this led to the second rebellion, though. So I supposed it was significant enough. She didn't go as in depth as she did with Rue's story, but she told me the fundamentals of it. (I would learn more about it when I became older.)
Essentially, the president at the time, Coriolanus Snow, thought of Katniss as a threat, and decided to bring her back into the arena the next year.
She managed to escape this Games, too, and the war began around this time.
Many people took refuge in District 13, and an army was formed among the refugees and the inhabitants of 13. There were several battles. Eventually, both the leaders of Panem and 13—Coin was just as oppressive as Snow—succumbed to undesirable demises.
When the government was overthrown, Paylor—from District 8—became president, and the Games were abolished once and for all.
A chill shot up my spine. I felt goosebumps prick up on my arms, even though the sun was shining bright and the climate was a far cry from frigid. It was difficult to process all of this information at once.
I had been lied to for twelve years. What I thought was true was all a hoax. I wasn't sure what had happened before the beginning of Paylor's presidency, because it didn't really come to mind that much.
Now I knew the truth, and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.
"So Mom and Dad lied to me?" I muttered, "Everyone lied to me!" Carissa grabbed my hand and stared me right in my eye, not looking away in the slightest bit.
"Listen to me. They wanted to keep you safe. You weren't supposed to know about it, because—"
"Wait, how did you find out about it?"
"We talked about it in school last year. But I was two years older than you when I discovered this. I'm not even supposed to be telling you about it!" Her voice began to tremble. "Listen to me. Mom and Dad didn't want to you to know about the Hunger Games for a reason. It's not fair that any of it had to happen, okay? But I guess we have to accept it, don't we?"
I'm still not sure what triggered me, but I broke down crying at that moment. Maybe it was because she said "not fair", or maybe it was "accept". Maybe it was because of the trembling of her voice. I don't know.
She pulled me into a hug and kissed my temple. When she let go, I wiped the tears from my face.
"We should get home soon," she stated, "Mom and Dad are probably wondering where we are."
We stepped out of the grass and headed back towards the road. The sky was still bright, but my intuition told me that the sun would start setting soon. As we walked in silence, I thought about my grandparents.
I would've never guessed that they had lost their daughter to death, but there's a lot you don't know about a person. I realized that I had made assumptions about them for years. I failed to form a strong relationship with them, to actually understand them.
You can't bring the dead back, and you can't change what happened in the past, but you can help the living cope.
It wasn't too late to start.
A/N: Please tell me what you thought about this story! Any feedback is accepted. I'm not really sure how I got this idea, but I think it evolved from the idea of a child of the next generation discovering what happened when their parents were young. It's been a while since I read the books, so tell me if I messed something up canon-wise. Also, this is based off the books, not the movies, so Rue has five siblings.
- Katrace