It's all over very quickly. The end, and the beginning.
The beginning is quiet, it's all cotton and glass and straight lines, and when it's my name they call I walk up like I knew it was coming. Volunteer's not a thing we know here.
A thing we knew, I mean.
It's not a thing we knew there and that's why the quiet, that's why the great stretches of nothing as I climb the steps and wait for it to start being over.
/
I don't know the boy they call. Or maybe I do, but I'm not looking at him.
/
I don't see him right away. I remember all these things, these snatches, and I know he's there at the edges but I can never turn my head fast enough.
/
They dress us up in gold for the parade. Wheat and sun in our hair and it makes me ache. The boy next to me, with a name I will never know, he cries and they laugh, sharp and high and wild.
/
The knives are where I see him first. He's not very good at throwing them but the shift of his shoulders as he bends to pick them up is strong and makes me stumble back. There's a boy behind him, small and wilting, waiting for a turn, but he just throws again, the blade sinking deep this time.
/
We don't have his kind of name in 9. I learn it that night, when I'm supposed to be asleep. John. On the screen above my bed, he climbs the steps and looks out, and I wonder if he's shaking the way I did. The camera's too close to be sure but I think from the way he won't cry that there's somebody he wants to come back to.
/
They make us wait outside until it's our turn to go in, one by one. We're both near the end so soon it's just seven of us there, staring down at our knees. The girl from 12 is next to him and she looks so nervous I think she might throw up and when he doesn't move, doesn't even look at her, I think I hate him a little.
/
Out in the arena it's cold and white at first. But then the clock counts down and it's red, big slashes and stripes of red. I don't know what I do. I can never watch this part.
And then someone's hooking my elbow and dragging me away, out of the flat and into the hills, snow and low trees, and our footprints are gaping and ragged behind us. I don't look up until we're across the trail and into a notch in the rock. And it's him. Of course it is.
The parkas they gave us are thick but not so thick you can't feel the air biting through, and I'm shivering when he dumps his bag on the ground and rubs my arms.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"What?"
"Are you hurt?"
"No," I say, and I mean to ask him why, why all this, why the hand at my elbow, but I never get around to it.
/
We don't say much else that day. The snow, falling now, slowly like dust, it muffles everything but the cannon fire, and soon we know how many of us are dead.
Snow - that's a word I know now. I didn't, then. We don't have it, down in 9, and I remember it hurt my eyes, the sun and all that white. I had to close them now and then and I wondered, I remember wondering if that was what he was waiting for. If I'd close my eyes and never open them again.
/
He kills someone the next morning. The neck, with a jerk and a twist. And I stare, I stare at his bloodless hands and I get ready to scream.
He hauls me up, tugs me in an traps my mouth against the bright scratch of his jacket.
"Don't," he says. "You see that?"
There's a hatchet on the ground, silver and sharp, with an edge of new blood. Somewhere above, the cannon goes off. I nod into his chest.
He waits, and then pushes me back. The body is by my feet and I think
I think
I think I step on her hand.
"They won't be far behind her." He picks up the axe and wipes it on her hair. "We need to go."
The trees gather together in the crease between hills, but the snow there is red and there's smoke flickering above the branches. He takes me out onto the plain instead and there's a yell, almost close by, but nobody comes.
In the middle there's the cornucopia, glittering and blue and more ice than I've ever seen before, a hundred times over. You can see right through it to the other side, where the edge yawns wide and black. We go in, and my whole body is shuddering as he nudges me back to where the ceiling is lowest.
"Won't they see us?" I ask.
"Yeah. But we'll see them, too."
The cornucopia is empty. All that's left is the boxes everything came in, and it's stupid, I know – they play it on the highlight reel later and laugh – but I climb inside, and I swear it feels warmer.
And he smiles.
/
In the night there's a storm. The world outside blurs and fades and there's not enough room in the box for him, too, so he leans against the edge and balances the hatchet on his knee.
"What will we do in the morning?"
He shrugs, and doesn't answer. I cup my hands over my mouth and let my breath warm my cheeks.
"Did you know her name?"
He looks at me. "Who?"
"The girl. The girl you killed."
A long quiet. "No." Then, "What was it?"
And I realize I don't know either.
Later, there are cries in the dark, and, drifting on the wind, the sweep and slice of a knife.
"Margaret," I say. "That's mine." I think he probably knows it already, but I say it, and it sounds so hard, all edges and corners, out here where it was never supposed to be.