The day of my grandmother's funeral was when I first saw her. Hair as fair as sunlight in comparison to our districts typical shadowy complexion, though in reality her mane shone a bold bronze colour. Her eyes were just as bright, a combination of both blue and grey, a blend I can only compare to the glacier blue waters of district four veiled by the curtain of faint fog that often blankets two. In fact, the only thing particularly ordinary about Helga Crete was the tone of her skin, as vanilla white as the rest of us, and perhaps drab, sensible choice of clothing. However, despite her averting dress sense and plain flesh, Helga was the sort of girl you couldn't help yourself from noticing, even when she is just one of hundreds of sombre faces, all bound together by 'grief'.
Of course, hardly of those who attended her memorial really would miss my grandmother. There were plenty more victors in the district to lavish with their attention and admiration. Barley any of those saddened faces really knew her either. She was one of those peculiar victors, who were not at all bothered by the fame or riches their victory presented to them, although I knew for a fact that she had volunteered. She had once told me it was to solve the financial problems for her family, who originated from one of the quaintest and poorest outer valleys. My grandfather had also grown up here, and everybody in the district knew that they had been sweethearts from a young age. When my grandmother sacrificed herself, my grandfather almost proceeded to forget all about her and join the peacekeeper force like his parents had always dreamed for him, but in the end his faith on her became restored and when my grandmother returned to the district after being crowned victor of the 13th Hunger Games, they married almost straight away. It had always been one of Panem's most darling love stories, and in my grandparents younger years I was told plenty of Capitol reporters would be present to film and interview them on anniversaries, holiday celebrations, and even the birth of my father. The fuss died down eventually, but the Landles remained a household name across the nation up until the day Edith Landle passed from an incurable disease that lay in her lungs, most likely to be caused from the decades she would smoke tobacco from a Capitol made pipe.
That day was the first time my grandparents had ever allowed me to be put in the public eye. Apparently, only dedicated fans of the Landles that lived outside the gates of our district knew of my existence, and even those who did were under the presumption I was in fact their second child. My mother was a disgrace, a loon and a whore, according to my grandfather, anyway. She enchanted my father with her erotic ways, and soon enough she became impregnated with me. My father denied fathering me at first, determined to pursue his own father's past dream to become a significant member of the peace keeper force, but when I was born there was no denying our relation. Skin as colourless as milk, hair and eyes dark like the feathers of a raven, I am told to this day the infant version of myself was the spit of my father when he was a babe. Not that is at all a compliment to me, as his parents and he simply fobbed my mother off with a two bedroomed shack that stood miles from the victor's village, a sack full of money and the instruction never to come in to contact with the Landles ever again. She kept her word. Three days later, her body was found in the shack, limp and lifeless, two angry red scars painted across her wrists. I had been a Landle ever since.
My father still joined the force. He occasionally sent letters and photographs to my grandparents and me, for we were in no need of money, but not once did he address me as anything other than my first name. To him, I truly was a foolish younger sibling, nothing more, nothing less. I'd always called him by his first name, Cliven, or Clive for short. Not even my grandmother, who I adored and admired so dearly, would mention the existence of my real mother, or even breathe her name, for that matter. I was always a Landle, and therefore, when the Landle's ship had finally sunk, I went down with it.
Helga Crete was standing tall among a crowd of other angel haired citizens. If your locks are fair in district two, you are almost always assumed to have a close relation to a merchant, as no mine bred citizen can afford to have hair so spotless. As she grabs my attention, I am also awoken to the even blonder child that stands a few feet away to Helga, his piercing eyes, and dull grey and as sharp as a sword, trained on her. Cato Kingsley. I knew of him. His father was a successful blacksmith, his sister a peacekeeper in an outer district and he, a treasured member of two's training school, at just nine years old. The Kingsley's lived on top of his father's spacious workshop in the centre of town, and were all perceived as reserved, friendly, selfless folk, who always played by the rules. All of them bar their eldest son, that is. One couldn't help but have a fascination with his ruthlessness, his sense of fierce sense of self assurance and his impulsive attitude towards life. Back then, I could only describe him as unpredictable and bold as a mighty wind. That is before I really knew him though.
The second time I saw Helga Crete, Cato Kingsley was with her once more. This time the pair stood side by side on a stretch of spacious greenery that bordered the inner valley my grandfather and I had just moved to. When a victor dies, by law their family must evacuate from the victors village and seek shelter elsewhere, and not long after the service, that is exactly what we did. The field lie beside the wide mine that sections of the valley, and seems to stretch for miles. There was never a piece of land so sensational back in the victor's village, just a perfectly trimmed strip of green, punctuated by a grand fountain. The thought of so many possibilities, so much unlimited freedom, sent a spark of exhilaration up my spine.
Cato seemed suspicious, to say the least. Once again, his poisonous eyes were at work, evaluating every inch of me with great caution. However, Helga seemed relaxed and amused by my arrival, a wide grin dominating her face. A couple of seconds after hitting me with her magnificent beam, she came bounding over to my grandfather and I, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.
"Hello, I'm Helga!" She began, her voice light and frothy. "I should really know your name, but I'm afraid I can't remember it…" Helga paused, acknowledging my reluctance to converse. "Mind telling me it…" She prompts. I shrug, silently weighing up my options. I'd never been very good at friends, or people in general for that matter. But Helga did really seem very nice, and I was dying to learn more about her apparent friend…
"It's Clove." I mutter, to ashamed to meet the girl's eyes. I had given in to the temptation of human interaction, I had been weak. Helga's grin returns, as if mocking me. "Nice to meet you Clove, I'm sorry about your mother." I shrug again, embarrassed not to mention infuriated by her pity but also too polite to shoot her down. "That's Cato."
Helga jumps in, interrupting the awkwardness and pointing at her companion. "He's going to show me how to throw around some knives, because I'm absolutely useless at it, and I've another audition for the training school next week."
I nod in response. I had already been enrolled in the training school for over a year, I had passed on my first audition when I was seven years old, the opening age for recruitment. Knife throwing had been my speciality from the age of four. "You're in the training school, right? Cato said he's seen you around, says your good with a knife." She proceeds. I nod again, ever incapable in social confrontations.
"You don't say much, do you, Clove?" Helga tilts her head absently mindedley to one side and stares at me with fierce concentration. The sound of my voice startles her.
"No, I don't." I reply in a monotone. I notice Helga's eyebrows arch in to a slight frown and see her press her lips together in frustration, before returning to her sunny, unfazed persona.
"Come, if you like." She says, intertwining her gaze with mine. "I can use as much help as I can get!" She adds, throwing me a mischievous wink before running back to Cato, who is still hovering around the opening of the field. I run after her.
Since that day, I saw Helga and Cato's face almost every day. I soon learnt that Helga lives in the same valley as I had transferred to, in fact, her shack is only a couple of doors down from ours. Her household consists of her elder brother and drunken father. Her mother had somehow escaped from the district when she was a new-born with a lover. Helga is not keen to discuss her mother's departure, but is more than eager to converse about anything else, her favourite topic being the Capitol. "One day, you mark my words, I'll escape from this sordid place like my mother and live a life of luxury, and you wait and see, Clove!" She announced to me once, whilst we were grazing lazily on the field on the afternoon of the annual reaping we were both still too young to participate in. Seeing my sour expression, she quickly proceeds to add "And of course you can come visit, whenever you like!" I force a smile. As if I'd ever want to live there.
Cato is lot less talkative than Helga but just as charming. Although he certainly has a menacing way about his nature, whenever he is addressing someone he respects and admires, he is the most charismatic soul one had ever come across. Unfortunately, at the beginning, I did not fall in to that category. It took months to earn Cato's respect, but something inside of me was yearning for it, and I am not the type to give in when things turn difficult and tiresome, not if I want that thing enough. And I certainly wanted Cato's approvment. Helga is nice enough, but nothing was at all, and still isn't, challenging about her, nothing at all thrilling or bewildering, whereas Cato has always been full of the latter. I will always remember the day I received his acceptance. His respect. It is probably the fondest memory from my childhood, despite the fact it did not have much competition.
Helga and I were ten years old and after what seemed to be her hundredth try, she had finally passed her entrance exam and had been enrolled in the training school alongside Cato and me. He was eleven at this point, and training harder than ever as he was well aware this time next year he could qualify as a tribute. "The instructors at the school say you're an idiot if you volunteer before the age of at least fifteen, but there's always the chance of being reaped, and I would rather be slaughtered than have any do gooder volunteer in my place." He grows as we made our way to the field. "One day, I'll go into that arena and emerge victorious, you wait and see, but I'd rather build my strength up first, y'know?" Helga nods fiercely, bouncing on her toes to catch up with him. "And when I win, I'm going to claim the biggest house in the victor's village as my own and then…"
"All the houses are the same size." I interrupt from behind them. Helga shoots me a warning look, and Cato's face begins to redden with rage, but I continue. "I should know, I'm the only one out of the three of us who has actually lived there."
"But I doubt you were ever observant enough to notice" Cato replies "That the second from last on the far left corner is at least a good few meters more land than its neighbours." I begin to protest but he interrupts. "And that the fourth house in is several centimetres more wide than the others." I shake my head in bewilderment.
"How do you know that?" I awe.
"I am very perceptive. It's a gift." Cato explains. I scoff and I notice Helga, who almost always took Cato very seriously back then, supressing a laugh. "What?"
"The way you said that, it was funny." I pipe up.
"How?"
"It just was." I shrug. "Another gift of yours, I presume." This time Helga fails to contain herself, and bursts in to a whirlwind of brilliant laughter. Even Cato cannot help but smile.
"Okay, whatever you say, Clove."
He had never addressed me by name before this point. He'd spoken at me on many occasions, but never properly to me, and that was the indication that our acquaintanceship was beginning to sail in to the waters of friendship. Just a simple tactic change was all that did it. No longer did I decide to be afraid of his reaction to my participation in discussions, I finally broke the vow to say as little as possible when in his presence, waiting like a foolish child for him to come to me. He would have never came to me. He was too good for me. Everyone was back then, and still is to this day. He is Cato Kingsley, for heaven's sake.
The inevitable happened two years later. On Helga's twelfth birthday, Cato took her to the broken tree that is located at the back of the field, and pressed a kiss upon her lips. I was at home, because it was raining something terrible, and I had never been a fan of bitter weather. A few hours later, after the kiss that is, just as I was beginning to wash up the plates from me and my grandfather's evening meal, I heard an eager rappa-tap-tapping echo in the direction from the front door. And of course, there she was, my ecstatic best friend who had just been kissed for the first time. I knew straight away what had happened, and I still to this day don't know how. I would like to state that I was happy for my friends, my only friends, and that I embraced their romance with open arms. But if I stated that I would be lying, because deep inside I could feel a harsh ache and a wave of sadness soaking my face. Of course, I knew I'd never be adequate enough for Cato Kingsley, but it hurt that Helga Crete, of all people, was.