I just want you guys to know that I OWN NOTHING, not the plot, nor the characters, or anything that Suzanne Collins wrote. This has a very similar plot, but a very different ending. Let me tell you something guys. I changed nothing except for a couple of characters. Gregor's gender has changed, and Ripred's, as well as Boots, simply for the sake of the plot. Let's see what happens, shall we?
Chapter One – The Fall
Emma had pressed her forehead against the screen for so long; she could feel a pattern of tiny checks above her eye brows. She ran her fingers over the bumps and resisted the impulse to let out a loud scream. It was building up in her chest, that long howl reserved for real emergencies - like when you ran into a pack of hungry wolves without your gun, or when your fire went out in the winter. She even went so far as to open her mouth and take a deep breath before she banged her head back into the screen with a quiet sound of frustration. "Ergh."
What was the point, anyway? It wouldn't change on thing. Not the heat, not the boredom, not the endless space of summer that lay out before her. She flipped her dark curly hair over her tanned shoulder. Sweat made her tank-top cling to her skin uncomfortably.
She considered waking up Diego, her three-year-old brother, just for a little distraction, but she let him sleep. At least he was cool in the air-conditioned bedroom she shared with their eight-year-old brother, Matthew, and their grandpa. It was the only air-conditioned room in the apartment. On really hot nights, Emma and her mother could spread quilts on the floor to sleep, but with five in the room, it wasn't cool, just lukewarm.
Emma got a handful of ice from the freezer and slipped it down her shirt and into her bra. Not the most appropriate thing to do, she knew, but there was no one around and it was boiling hot. She stared out at the courtyard where a stray dog sniffed around an overflowing trashcan. The dog set its paws on the rim, tipping the can and sending the garbage across the sidewalk. Emma's doe-brown eyes caught a glimpse of a couple of shadowy shapes scurrying along the wall and grimaced. Rats. She never really got used to them.
Otherwise, the courtyard was deserted. Usually it was full of kids playing ball, jumping rope, or swinging around the creaky jungle gym. But this morning, the bus had left for camp, and every kid between the ages of four and fourteen had been on it. Except one.
"I'm sorry, honey, you can't go," her mother had told her a few weeks ago. And she had really been sorry, too, she could tell but the look on her face. "Someone has to watch Diego while I'm at work, and we both know your grandpa can't handle it anymore."
Of course she knew it. For the last nine months her abuelo had been slipping in and out of reality. One minute she was as clear as a bell, the next she was calling her someone called Benita. Who was Benita? She had no idea.
It would have been different a few years ago. Her mom only worked part-time then, and her Papi, her father, who'd owned a major constructing business, had been off every other week in the summer. He'd have taken care of Diego. But since her father had disappeared one night, Emma's role in the family had changed. She was the oldest, so she'd picked up a lot of the slack. Looking after her little brothers was a big part of it.
So all Emma had said was, "It's fine, Mom. I don't really care about camp, anyway." She'd shrugged to show that at twelve, she was past caring about things like camp. But somehow that had made her look sadder.
"Do you want Matt to stay home with you? Give you some company?" she'd asked.
A look of panic had crossed Matt's face at this suggestion. He probably would have burst into hysterics if Emma hadn't refused the offer. "No, it's okay. I'll be fine with Diego."
So, here she was. Not fine. Not fine spending the whole summer cooped up with a three-year-old and her grandpa who thought she was someone named—
"Benita!" she heard her abuelo call from the bedroom. Emma rolled her eyes but couldn't help smiling a little.
"Coming, Grandpa!" she called back, reaching back in her shirt and tossing the melting ice in the sink.
A golden glow filled the room as the afternoon sunlight streamed through the partly opened shades. Her grandpa lay on the bed covered by a thin woven quilt. It was several shades of green and made out of a sort of scratchy wool and had intricate patterns through the middle. In his more lucid moments, he'd tell her funny stories about the quilt. "And my gran abuelo hid up in the tree day and night with the stolen sheep's wool, hoping that the hunting dogs would at one point leave so he could bring the wool home to my gran abuelita so she could make the quilt, the very quilt we sit on now, mi princesa."
This, however, was not a lucid moment.
"Benita," he said, his wrinkled face showing relief at the sight of her. "I thought you forgot your money. You'll need it at the market."
Her grandpa had been raised in the mountains of Mexico City and had come to America when he married her grandmother. He had never really taken to it, and told her several times that he missed the town where he was born. Emma was a little envious that he could return to that place in his mind, because it wasn't fun sitting around the apartment all the time. By now the bus would probably be arriving at camp and Matt and the rest of the kids would—
"Em-a!" squealed a little voice. A curly head popped over the side of the crib. "Out! Me Out!" Diego clamped his tiny teeth onto a stuffed dog's ear and reached up both his arms to her. Emma lifted her brother out of the crib with an exaggerated heave, pretending that he was too heavy for her to carry. "Oomph! I think you're getting too big, Diego!" He giggled and the dog fell to the floor. She set her down to retrieve it.
"Be safe, lindo!" said Grandpa, still somewhere back in Mexico.
Emma took her hand to try and focus her attention. "You want a cold drink, abuelo? How about a soda?"
He laughed. "What is it, my birthday?" How do you respond to something like that?
Emma gave his hand a squeeze and scooped up Diego. "I'll be right back," she said loudly.
Her grandpa was still chuckling merrily to himself. "A soda!" he said, and wiped his eyes.
In the kitchen, Emma got out a glass bottle of Jarritos* and poured a glass of milk for Diego.
"Code," he beamed, pressing it to her face. "Yeah, nice and cold." said Emma.
A knock on the door startled her. The peephole had been useless for a good forty years. She called through the door, "Who is it?"
"It's Mrs. Cormaci, darling. I told your mother I'd sit with your grandma at four!" a voice called back. Then Emma remembered the pile of laundry she was supposed to do. At least she'd get out of the apartment.
She opened the door to find Mrs. Cormaci looking wilted in the heat. "Hello, you! Isn't it awful? I tell you I do not suffer heat gladly!" She bustled into the apartment patting her face with an old bandana. "Oh, my! Is that for me?" she said, and before she could answer she was gulping down the soda like she'd been lost in the desert.
"Sure," Emma muttered, heading back to the kitchen to get another. She didn't really mind Mrs. Cormaci, and today it was almost a relief to see her. Great, Day One and I'm looking forward to a trip to the laundry room, Emma thought. By September, I'll probably be jumping for joy when we get the phone bill.
Mrs. Cormaci held out the bottle for a refill. "So, when are you going to let me read your tarot, Missy? You know I've got the gift," she said. Mrs. Cormaci posted signs by the mailboxes offering to read tarot cards for people at ten bucks a shot. "No charge for you," she always told Emma. She never accepted because she had a sneaking suspicion Mrs. Cormaci would end up asking a lot more questions than she would. Questions she couldn't answer. Questions about her father.
She mumbled something about the laundry and hurried off to collect it. Knowing Mrs. Cormaci, she probably had a deck of tarot cards right in her pocket.
Down in the laundry room, Emma sorted the cloths as best as she could. Whites, darks, colors…what was she supposed to do with Diego's black and white shirt? She tossed them in the darks feeling sure it was the wrong decision.
Most of their cloths were kind of grayish anyway—from age, not bad laundry choices. All Emma's tank tops were just her old t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, and she only had a few jeans and skirts that fit from last year, but what did it matter if she was going to be locked in the apartment all summer?
"Ball!" cried Diego in distress, tugging on her skirt. "Ball!"
Emma reached her arm between the dryers and pulled out an old tennis ball Boots had been chasing around. She picked off the dryer lint and tossed it across the room. Diego ran after it like a puppy.
"What a mess," thought Emma, snorting with amusement. The remains of his lunch, egg salad and chocolate pudding, were still evident on Diego's face and shirt. He had colored his hands with washable markers that Emma thought maybe a sandblaster could remove, and his shorts sagged down around his knees.
Diego ran back to her with the ball, dryer lint floating in his curls. His sweaty faced beamed as he held out the ball. "Hey, buddy." she said, ruffling his hair.
"Ball!" he said, and then banged his head into her knee, on purpose, to speed her up. Emma tossed the ball down the alley between the washers and the dryers. Diego flew after it. As the game continued, Emma tried to remember the last time she'd been as happy as Diego was with his ball. She'd had some decent times over the past couple of years. She'd entered a few art competitions and gotten fairly high places, but never first place. She'd even been asked to demonstrate some art techniques in front of the class, one time. Things always seemed better when she drew; the pencil strokes seemed to carry her into a different world altogether.
Swimming was good, too. It made her seem more graceful than she really was, until she was focused on nothing but the feel of the water on her skin.
But if she was honest with herself, Emma knew it had been years since she'd felt real happiness. Exactly two years, seven months, and thirteen days, she thought. She didn't try to count, but the numbers automatically tallied up in her head. She had some inner calculator that always knew exactly how long her dad had been gone.
Diego could be happy. He wasn't even born when it happened. Matt was only four. But Emma had been nine and missed nothing; like the frantic calls to the police, who had acted almost bored with the fact that her dad had vanished into thin air. Clearly they'd thought he'd run off. They'd even implied it was with another woman.
That just wasn't true. If there was anything Emma knew it was that her father loved her mother, that she loved her and Matt, and that he would have loved Diego.
But then—how could he have left them without a word.
Emma couldn't believe her dad would abandon the family and never look back. "Accept it," she whispered to herself. "He's dead." A wave of pain swept through her. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true. Her father was coming back because…because…because what? Because she wanted it so badly it must be true? Because they needed him? No, thought Emma. It's because I can feel it. I know he's coming back.
The washer spun to a stop, and Emma piled the cloths into a couple of dryers. "And when he gets back, he'd better have a really good explanation for where he's been!" muttered Emma as she slammed the dryer door shut. "Like he got bumped on the head and forgot who he was. Or he was kidnapped by aliens….Aaand I'm talking to myself again." But who knew? Lots of people got kidnapped by aliens on T.V. Maybe it could happen.
She thought about the different possibilities a lot in her head, but they rarely mentioned her dad at home. There was an unspoken agreement that her dad would return. All the neighbors thought he'd just taken off. The adults never mentioned it, and neither did most of the kids—about half of them only lived with one parent, anyway. Strangers sometimes asked, though. After about a year of trying to explain it, Emma came up with the story that her parents were divorced and her dad lived in California. It was a lie but people believed it, while no one seemed to believe the truth. Whatever that was.
"And after he gets home I can take him-," Emma said aloud, and then stopped herself. She was about to break the rule. The rule was that she couldn't think about things that would happen after her father got back. And since her dad could be back at any moment, Emma didn't allow herself to think about the future at all. She had this weird feeling that if she imagined actual events, like having her dad back next Christmas or going to the art museum with the whole family together, they would never happen. Besides, as happy as some daydream would make her, it only made returning to reality more painful. So, that was the rule. Emma had to keep her mind in the present and leave the future to itself. She realized that her system wasn't great, but it was the best way she'd figured out to get through a day.
Emma noticed that Diego had been suspiciously quiet. She looked around and felt alarmed when she couldn't spot her right away. Then she saw a scuffed black sandal poking out from the last dryer. "Diego! Salir de alli*!" said Emma.
You had to watch him around electrical stuff. He loved plugs.
As she hurried across the laundry room, Emma heard a metallic klunk and then a giggle from Diego. "Wonderful! Now he's dismantling the dryer," muttered Emma, picking up speed. As she reached the far wall, a strange scene confronted her.
The metal grate to an old air duct was wide open, secured by two rusty hinges at the top. Diego was squinting into the opening, about two feet by two feet, which led into the wall of the building. From where she stood, Emma could see nothing but blackness. Then a wisp of…what was it? Steam? Smoke? It didn't really look like either. Some strange vapor drifted out of the hole and curled around Diego. He held out his arms curiously and leaned forward.
"No!" screamed Emma as she lunged for him, but Diego's tiny frame seemed to be sucked into the air duct. Without thinking, Emma thrust her head and waist into the hole. The metal grate smacked into her rear. The next thing she knew, she was falling down, down, down into empty space.
