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It had been a cold winter in the Capitol. Snow covered the tops of buildings and icicles hung frozen in the air. It was a truly beautiful sight to see. Winter was fading now, and the icicles and snow all melted away, leaving puddles behind and bringing along the hopes of spring. It reminded Effie of her father leaving. He had left on the last night before the spring sun shone, and he had neither spoken nor written any words of goodbye. She was nine when he left.
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"Mother, I'm leaving."
Effie was eighteen plus two weeks on the day she left home.
Her mother looked up from the book she was reading and said, "I hope you find what you are looking for."
That was it. No goodbyes, no tears, nothing. Effie's mother had known that her daughter was planning on leaving for a long time. She had discovered one year previously that Effie had begun to pack her things away and discovered two weeks ago, the night before her birthday, that she had finished packing away everything she was taking with her. She had long since accepted that her daughter would leave her one day, and chose not to make a big deal of it when Effie finally did leave her.
When Effie boarded the train a few hours later, her last words to her mother were, "I love you and I hope you forgive me." She never could have said them to her mother's face, and though she tried to write several times, the words never came out so simply, and the letter, never put to paper, remained unsent.
Six months later, Effie got a phone call saying that her mother had died drugged, drunk, and alone.
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At first, Effie thought of her often. Effie, alone in her new apartment, often took to thinking of her mother when there was nothing else to do. Eventually she realized that, if she had stayed home, she would have been sacrificing herself and would never have been able to experience any other life than the one that was built around her mother. She stopped blaming herself for her mother's death, and one day she stopped thinking of her and all of the goodbyes that hung frozen on her lips like icicles in the winter's air, and allowed them to melt away with the promise of a better day to come.
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At nineteen Effie finds a paid internship working for the Capitol. She begins paving the way for her career as an escort for the Hunger Games, and puts her energy into her work and into finding her place in this life. One night she goes home to find a letter in her mailbox. When she opened it, she found a letter from her father, and all it says is that he has heard about her new job and that he would like to see her.
Effie bought a sparkling blue dress the next day and intended on writing her father back, but those words never came out either, and the dress remained hidden in the back of the closet and was never worn. Her father died two years after that. He died the same way her mother did. Effie never heard a single word about it.
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Every year, the night before her tributes were sent into the arena, Effie tried to say goodbye. But the goodbyes were never said aloud. Like all of the goodbyes she had ever meant to say, they remained locked away deep inside of her, never to be surfaced again.
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On the night before the Quarter Quell, Effie found herself being whisked away before she ever got to say goodbye to her two beautiful tributes. She loved them deeply, and had even thought up a speech for each of them. She had, for once in her life, planned her words of goodbye to her loved ones, but never got the chance to say them.
A few days later, she was taken into custody and put into a cramped cell where all of her goodbyes would ring in her head without ever stopping.
The saddest part of it all was that she had never gotten to say goodbye to Haymitch, who had been with her throughout her entire career. He had given her a brief goodbye speech on behalf of Katniss and Peeta, but they had never exchanged goodbyes of their own because they thought they would never have to.
Effie regretted that she had never said goodbye to anyone, and everyone had said goodbye to her.
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After the war is over and spring has come, Effie walks to Haymitch's house on a sunny afternoon and they sit in his living room for hours just talking. She tells him about all of her never-said goodbyes that have been locked inside for too long. Haymitch sat and listened, and when she was finished they went up to bed and slept the whole night through. Before Effie fell asleep, though, she promised herself she would always say goodbye when it was necessary and would never keep them inside ever again. The next morning she had breakfast with Peeta, Katniss, and Haymitch, and was grateful that she didn't have to say goodbye to them, her family, for a while to come.
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I want to say a big thank you to those of you who follow my stories. I would also like to say that I DEEPLY apologize for never updating "Stay with Me Forever," which was the sequel to "Stay Alive for Me." I had not updated that story in over a year, and I got on the other day and decided to delete the story because it wasn't exactly going the way I'd planned it to. I am re-visiting the idea of a sequel to "Stay Alive for Me," and I am hoping that it will be better than what I had and that I will finish it out this time. I am so sorry for inconveniencing you guys, and I hope you don't totally hate me! Thank you all so much and, until next time, take care!
-Kelsey