Young Maiden

Cora Davis, District 2

x

I will
Keep
Broken
Things.

Their beauty
Is
They
Need
Not
Ever
Be
'fixed.'

'I Will Keep Broken Things', Alice Walker

x

Most people don't know how a culling match goes, since it's not like a public thing or anything. The people who haven't trained themselves just know that it happens, long after the fact, when someone wins and someone loses.

Here's how a culling match goes.

Once you're twelve, that's the real business. You're reaping age now. It could be you on that stage in basically any other district. So they have to know that you've got it in you, so they start matching you off, to thin out the group.

You're not very big yet, but usually neither is the person you're set to fight.

Claudia picks the weapons. I think it might be random. Most things in the Center aren't by random chance, so it could also be on purpose. If it was on purpose, though, she wouldn't have picked my best weapon for my first ever match.

You're twelve. I'm twelve. I was twelve.

After a period of deliberation, our mentor holds up her bare hands from her usual vantage point beside the white combat plinth. The material is a little slippery under my sneakers. It's easy to clean, important since it's also got to be easy to see the blood, to know what's happening.

Bare hands, she's showing us - no weapons in the culling match.

Good luck for me, since I've never cottoned on to any particular weapon as my favorite the way some do.

Her name could have been Thalissa, the dark-haired girl opposite me on the fifteen-by-fifteen foot raised platform ringed by flexible white boundaries, behind which both the twelve and thirteen class years observed.

Might have been Thalissa. My memory isn't very good. I wasn't holding on to the world well when I was twelve. I was still taking pills, back then, but had the sense that it couldn't go on forever. They made me strong, and I knew that, so I wasn't scared.

Neither was maybe-Thalissa. You're not supposed to be scared. You're twelve, not a child anymore. I was twelve.

Claudia raises her whistle to her lips and I think I can feel her watching me. Maybe just imagining it. I knew, by then, that I sometimes had trouble with imagining things that weren't really happening. Just a little, in the corner of my eye, exaggerations of the real. But I wanted to believe that she was watching me in particular, so I did.

I held my stance… hold my stance... and watch Thalissa.

Maybe her name was Thalissa.

The next part is hard to remember, kinda fuzzy, since you're never focusing too hard on remembering things when you're actually in a match. So much is going on around you that it's hard to register much of anything. Sunlight, warm on my skin. The smell of chalk dust on top of sweat and the disinfectant they use to clean up the blood.

The Center is a beautiful space, with massive floor to ceiling windows that they embedded straight inside the mountain after they cleaned out all the corpses and wreckage left behind by the Mockingjay Rebellion. Mount Lupus got destroyed by rebels, pretty much, but they took what was left and made it a place for us to be proud of. Out of the darkness and into the sunlight.

The sunlight is so warm and pleasant.

Thalissa throws the first blow, but she must be hesitant to really try to kill me, so it doesn't hurt. Or maybe it's just the pills? I took two before the match, which is more than I usually take. I figure I'll be able to bring whatever wounds I get from the match to a few doctors, and eventually someone will give me more. For imaginary pain, pain I don't feel anymore. The doctors don't know that - Thalissa doesn't know that, or she would be smarter and try to kill me faster, would have gone for my throat and not my face.

I don't pause to spit out the blood. It'll come out of my mouth on its own. I turn with Thalissa's punch, feeling her momentum move her along with me, and push her with all my weight focused on my shoulder, stumbling, to the ground. Sort of. She regains her feet halfway through, wheels around to try to hit me again.

Sunlight glints off a pen in Claudia's hand, almost distracting me, but not enough to stop me from catching Thalissa's blow again and wrenching her to her knees by her elbow, not letting her stagger away this time. I aim a quick kick to her stomach, knee her in the face as I apply torsion to her arm until it breaks.

It might as well end here, but it never does.

Thalissa, once she's done screaming (briefly, to her credit), rolls away and scrambles to her feet, her left arm dangling in pieces.

Compound fracture. Messy. I hate getting my arm broken like that, it takes days to heal, and I'm not allowed in the Center while they're setting it.

"Up and at it," Claudia warns her.

Is she smiling at me? I don't want to look up and check, but I hope she is.

Thalissa gets her bearings, throws herself at me with unexpected turnaround speed. I've been distracted by two things: her bone, and if Claudia might be looking at me. Bones are just interesting, and they always break a little differently in response to different forces. I know a lot about my bones, and more and more about other people's.

She does something clever and has a go at sweeping my legs, gets a real good kick in at my kneecaps as she puts me off balance by focusing her weight on one shoulder the way I did to her, slamming it into my solar plexus. I don't fall as easily as she expects, though.

My talent is mainly in not falling down.

She hooks her unbroken right arm around my neck. There's a cruel move I could make, could wrench her broken elbow and make her double over, but that doesn't seem fair since I wouldn't double over if someone did that to me. I think it might make me look mean to take the obvious route, so instead I let my body go slack, bringing us both to the ground and rolling on top of her.

I'm not a big person, yet. Kind of scrawny, actually, but it must hurt her or at least knock the wind out of her a bit, because her hold on my throat slackens briefly.

Just enough time for me to bite a chunk out of her neck, which is a fair thing to do, since she had every opportunity to do the same thing to me but blew it.

From there, it's easy to extract myself from her grip - screaming, again - and get to my knees beside her prone form on the combat plinth, smiling red-ly. Hold her by the hair and slam her head down a few times to make sure she doesn't get up.

The whistle sounds once I find my feet, but I've been watching Claudia with laser intensity since I got my teeth out of Thalissa's throat. I already know it's over and I won.

That's how culling matches work. Two people of similar ages fight. One wins, one loses. If you win good enough, that's called a 'blood victory' and it means you finish the job, fair and square - you've proved you'd be a better volunteer than your match partner.

If you just win by a little bit, they get cleaned up in the medical facility and come back to training in a week or two for a chance to prove themselves for real, back to the lessons and the padded-weapon sparring matches and the strategy sessions.

If you lose too many times, or even once or twice by the time you're in your late teens, if you survive, you're out of the volunteer field and into Peacekeeper training. That's if you haven't tested or gotten pushed into Peacekeeping by then, as a lot of us are.

Back on the combat plinth, Claudia nods once to me, now that the match is over. There's no mistaking what that means.

I crush Thalissa's windpipe with my sneaker. But I don't weigh a lot, so it takes a few crushes to get it right.

When this happened, like I keep saying, I was twelve years old.

Now I'm eighteen. Have been since this winter. In a few hours, I'm going to volunteer for the Hunger Games.

I know exactly what I'm supposed to think about that. Proud for the chance to fight and die for my district, proud that I made it this far, humbled by the task before me.

Like I'm supposed to, I feel all those things.

But I also feel restless, which is what brings me to the Center early on the morning of the reaping. Early enough to watch the sun rise through the enormous windows, to be sure I'll be the only one in the facility, maybe the only one in the mountain except for the instructors who sleep here.

It's very quiet, and sort of dark. I flip on the lights so the shadows won't make me nervous, fluorescent bulbs far above me in the cavernous ceiling buzzing as they flicker to life. The sunrise is a subtle one, orange and hazy, typical for the central city of District 2.

I haven't lived here all my life. Sunrises used to always be clear and bright and abrupt, back when we lived in a distant mining village, long before I got recruited. Long before I was ill. The air was clearer there, I think. I've never gone back to the place I was born.

Before I started training, I was a very sickly child. Not that it's super obvious these days, over a decade later, save for the three jagged scars that run haphazardly across my stomach. They're messy enough to have been inflicted in training rather than beneath a surgeon's scalpel, but that's the way my body healed – without much direction or finesse, leaving huge stretches of vivid purple scar tissue stitching together milk-white flesh.

Deep scars, old scars, the kind that don't scrub out of your skin easily without fancy Capitol tech.

As a child… four or five, so right about when I was first getting noticed by recruiters... there was rotting in my abdomen and I lost a few chunks of organs to save my life. My doctors stitched and stapled me up as well as they could, and once I was back on my feet, mostly whole after years in and out of the operating room, not yet off my pain medicine, my parents accepted my invitation and pushed me into the proper year's training field.

Maybe it was too fast, and they should have waited till I wasn't taking pain meds.

But the situation already looked kind of bad for my prospects.

I was sickly. Strike one. I was a late start - any later and they probably wouldn't have even taken me. Strike two. Even if that was where my story ended, frankly, it should have been game over for me when it came to the Center. Should have been funneled quickly and quietly from training for the Games into training to be a Peacekeeper, as the other culled trainees are, every few months.

But that wasn't my story. I won my first culling match, after all, like I said.

I won almost all the others, too, though some were messy enough to nearly kill both of us. Just a few times Claudia had to rule whether I lived or died. Just a few times I wasn't able to live up to my purpose.

Somehow, I never managed to stop taking pain pills, probably because they worked so well, helped me be so good. When my wounds were too healed to justify the necessity for heavy narcotics, I quickly started to find new ways to get them, stronger ones, even – feigned injuries, sometimes real injuries, taking my case to more than one doctor and pulling every heartstring within reach.

It wasn't that hard for an angelic blonde twelve-year-old with a badly bruised hip, claiming it was dislocated, to convince a few doctors to prescribe the medicine – not when she desperately needed it to continue training!

The Center turned a blind eye to my addiction for years. I performed more than well enough to make up for it – better, I think, because of my pills.

But then the nurse doing an eight-year-out inspection of the progress of my wounds found the growing stash I kept in my pocket, my pills never more than a few inches from my body.

I had a month's leave of absence from training to recover, strapped to a gurney, this time in the highest-quality hospital the district had to offer, restrained so my muscle convulsions couldn't leave a body count as I detoxed. They kept me alive, knowing that eventually, I'd take too many of the pills and lose my life for my troubles. I grew to accept that – it had to end. I hated it, but I accepted it, with time.

Clean, I resumed training. Not drug-dependent like I was before my detox, but not the same person I would have been without my pills.

The side effects of detox never really went away. The way I still can't feel things like I used to, I think, before surgeons ripped out most of my guts. The cold, gnawing emptiness somewhere in my chest is a consequence of the absence of the thing I once considered my only comfort. My hand still slips involuntarily to my pocket in times of stress, though I find it empty except for a few sticks of gum. They're there because without something to do when things get bad, I tend to chew at the inside of my cheek until it bleeds just to feel something.

I only really feel warm and full when there is sunlight on my skin. But to an extent, that's how it's always been. I love the warmth, I love the gentle burn.

That's what I'm thinking about as I watch the sunrise from the big white gymnastics mat in pressed up against the big window. How it feels, the mat underneath me and the sun on my face.

I wish I'd been able to feel it when Thalissa hit me, way back then, or really, when anyone else hit me. Could have made things easier on my parents if I'd learned faster. I think I'm feeling things wrong, pills or no pills, and I wish I could understand what makes people stay down when they bleed. I don't stay down. I won't till I'm dead.

I do try to understand. I pay attention when I get hurt, and when doctors patch me back together. When they do the same to other people, I'm always watching close. Like it's a puzzle I'll figure out someday.

Something to focus on if I win. A reward. Something new I might get to try if I win.

For now, I think it's probably best to stay how I am and not challenge things too much. That's how a trainee turns into a victor, after all. There's rules, and we know the rules well, and I follow them as best I can.

The white noise of the massive air filtration system and the buzzing lights overhead make it easy to forget that I am not the only person in the world. The sun finishes rising, like it usually does, in the smoggy distance, and hangs over the mountains.

"I thought I heard someone come in." A voice startles me out of my reverie.

In a second, I'm on my feet – it pays to be careful.

"That was me," I say clearly, glancing around to find out who I've disturbed and whether I've upset them.

Luckily, it's Claudia.

Aaron, our other mentor - much more recent, he won four years ago - has even less patience with me. I don't blame him. He likes a sure bet in a volunteer, was one himself. I'm weirder than he would prefer, and while sneaking in early to watch the sun rise on reaping day is hardly my worst transgression, I don't really want to get yelled at this morning.

He doesn't mind yelling at me for any particular reason, volunteer or not. Claudia saves yelling, and other things, for when I deserve it.

She likes me!

I smile at that thought, half-bowing to her as she approaches.

"Just sitting in the sun, then, are you?" Claudia asks, glancing questioningly at the mat where I had been resting. "Back when you'd just been recruited, I'd swear you were solar powered."

"Did something change your mind?"

"No, the intervening eleven years have just confirmed my suspicions." She laughs.

Claudia was among the first victors when the Games were revived in the aftermath of the rebellion – the first from District 2. They called it the 77th Games, though it was really the 2nd since they'd been reinstated.

She was the driving force behind the shakedown of the Center's power structure that went on just before I started training.

Training in District 2 used to be very different – children were selected from pre-grade classes, essentially bought away from their families in exchange for a stipend, whisked off to a secure and secluded facility on the fringes of the district. Parents didn't know their children's fate until the year came for them to volunteer – if you didn't see your son or daughter on that stage, it was because they'd been shipped off to an equally secretive Peacekeeper training facility or killed somewhere along the way.

It's different now, better now. She fixed it for us, so we still get to live with our parents, so the families of District 2's trainees are celebrated, brought to the big well-developed central hub of District 2 along with their children, given a healthy stipend, better jobs, greater prospects for any other children even if they don't choose to put them in the field.

We still have culling matches, of course, but that's not a secret or anything. Just how things have to work to make sure the best people volunteer.

It's not like the instructors kill us much, and never without a good reason.

Training is an honest thing, one of the most honest parts of life. I like that about it, the same way I like the sunshine and the light.

"How are you feeling about today?" Claudia asks.

I search for the right words to describe the electrical energy shooting through my nervous system, crackling, palpable now that I can hear her voice and see her smile at me the way I always used to wish she would.

"Really good," I say, after a moment of thought.

The mentors have a lot of control over the culling process, Claudia especially, since she's the senior one, the one holding all the cards. She chooses the weapons and that might as well mean choosing who wins, and even if someone surprises her she can always keep the one she wants in the field with a shake of her head.

Nothing means more to me than Claudia's smile. It kept me alive when I came back from detox, fragile without the pills. Her wanting me back is the only reason I was allowed to return. Not like Aaron would have stepped up and demanded I jump back into training, after all.

I'll never stop owing her for all the times she's looked past my failures and picked me.

"So, what actually brought you in here? You know very well it's an off-day – most of the instructors went out for drinks last night and only a few have come stumbling back," Claudia comments drily, looking me up and down. "Are things alright at home?"

She's more my mother than my actual mother is, which isn't a big indictment of my mom or anything. My parents aren't as high-class as most of the tribute pool's. My mom does labor management for one of the big central granite quarries, my dad is a teacher, never having really been one for the mines. It's better for them now that they're in the central part of the district and not in the little village where we used to live, where they were just miners like anyone else.

I'm a little proud of that, of us being here specifically so I can train, or I would be if they seemed to think any of it was my doing.

Meanwhile, we've got enough sons and daughters of Peacekeepers sitting around to staff an entire regiment. It's not like they have better home lives than me - god knows, Peacekeepers are never at home - but they have a lot more money.

"Everything's fine," I tell Claudia with a shrug. "They're back home, probably still sleeping since the reaping's not for a few hours. I just don't really have much to talk about with them."

It shouldn't matter – the Center is my home, the instructors are my parents and my older brothers and sisters, the younger members of the tribute pool are my little siblings. That's all I need.

She frowns, which makes my heart feel like a vise has tightened around it.

"Well, I'm sorry," she says. "I'm glad you came here, though. You can never be too prepared for the Games, and I would have wanted to have a look at you before we put you on stage regardless."

"Of… of course I came here!" I say, louder than I was really going for, trying hastily to make her go back to smiling again. "This is my home."

She laughs, which makes me feel a little better.

"Then I suppose you've got a plan to get yourself cleaned up a little before the reaping? You look like you just rolled out of bed, Cora."

I flush.

"Sorry," I say.

"No, come along," she says, ushering me off the mat, towards one of the many doors that lead away from the main chamber of the Center. "We have clothing you can change into, I'll get your hair in order, and we can get any loose ends tied up before we get you in front of the cameras."

Relieved, I follow her into the hall, which has the feeling of a catacomb more than anything - dark, so I wouldn't want to be here alone, but I know I'm always safe with Claudia.

"Here," she says, unlocking the door to the closet that holds garments for our simulated interview practices. "One of these should work."

I rifle through the dresses, which I've never been allowed to do before. They pick for you, mostly, whichever instructor is supervising interview practice. I don't like most of the dresses, which tend to be very tight and restrictive, which makes me nervous, but it's not like you can complain and say 'I want to wear something else'.

Like, I know it's for my own good to practice in the kind of clothes I might actually have to wear.

For today, though, I look for something a little simpler. I don't have much of an eye for clothing, but there's a kind of soft green dress, simple at the top and loose in the skirt, that catches my attention. The material is soft, but not too soft. I pull it off the rack and show it to Claudia.

"Does that look right to you?" she asks, a little sharply - just a little - and I put it back immediately.

"No," I say quickly. "Just looking."

"You're on the right track," she says, still a little sharp but not scary. "Loose is fine, but green makes you look sallow."

Now that she says it, I know she's right. My hair is yellowy blonde, my skin very pale. I should be in, uh, pink, probably, or something to balance that out. Bright? I dunno, really, but I can sort of guess what she's getting at.

I pick, instead, a peachy dress made of cotton, I think, decorated with yellow flowers. I look up at her to judge her reaction. She nods.

"Good," she says.

I change out of my shorts and shirt before she can change her mind while she fetches a brush and a can of hairspray.

"Okay, hold still now," she warns me. "You need to look the part, Cora, you know that."

I feel so bad for forgetting that. Of course I need to look good. I can't believe I was so stupid, wanted to creep out of my parents' house without being noticed more than I wanted to do my job, my job, I'm so stupid.

She quickly and brusquely braids my hair around my head like a crown. Claudia is good at so many things that you wouldn't expect. I hold still and try to properly enjoy the feeling of someone else touching me, which almost never happens unless their hands are balled up in fists - it's warm, like sun, like light…

"There," she says. "I just can't have you looking like some kind of District Eight urchin."

"I'm sorry," I say again.

"Don't worry," she tells me, half smiling. "All better now."

I smile too, like usual. Claudia wouldn't send me in if she didn't believe in me. She ushers me over to a mirror in the dressing room, to see how the pretty dress hangs around my knees and how the pale pink almost makes it look like my skin has some color in it.

I'm not so much looking at the mirror, though, as I am at her next to me. Shorter than I am, though I'm pretty tall. Her black hair, which is textured in a way that's uncommon for District 2, is in a tight bun. She has a strong jaw, a squared-off face, looks like she might be much older than the just-over-thirty she actually is, but the muscles all up and down her arms say that whatever her age, she could definitely rip your head off your neck if she wanted to.

"You really think this is good?" I ask quietly, looking back to myself.

Next to her, I look so fragile, even more in the fluffy cotton dress.

She smiles the whole way.

"Cora, look - you look like the model of a miner's daughter, which you are, aren't you? Someone anyone in District Two would be proud to call their representative. We can't just send in Peacekeepers' children, you know. It's especially important this year, they're saying, to inspire pride in the majority of the district, for them to see themselves in you. Wouldn't you be proud to see this girl tear her competition to shreds?"

"Like, nationalism-pride?" I ask, studying my face again.

"Yes, though you don't need to name it," she laughs. "A little ham-fisted, it sounds, when you say it out loud."

"Sorry," I say again. "But if that's what you're going for with the volunteers this time, for us to like… look like what District Two people think they look like, or, uh, wish they look like, how come… Marcus?"

He's literally the least District 2 candidate in the field – not that it's a bad thing or whatever. His parents are both Peacekeepers, and one from out-of-district. It's hard to be the embodiment of District 2 when your father was born and raised in District 6 is all I'm saying.

She shrugs. "He'll win if you don't. Cold, but true. I have faith in you, but winning takes precedence over what the Capitol wants in the end – and we did take a gamble with you, you understand. Aaron always wants a safe bet."

Marcus isn't just a safe bet, he's the safest bet. Beautiful, brilliant, built like a god. A quiet sort of ruthlessness comes with Peacekeeper parents, and he has it in spades.

I'm not quite like that. I don't think Marcus has ever felt weak a day in his life. I don't think he's ever been cold or unwanted or hungry.

And that's a type of strength, I guess.

"I do understand," I say.

"I know you do. More than you let on."

That makes me feel a little better. I smile at Claudia - not the mirror image of her, the real her, right next to me.

"What's on your mind?" she asks.

"What else should I know, before the reaping?" I ask. "I… have I learned enough? Am I going to be good, do you think?"

"I should hope so," she laughs, turning towards the door, leading me back out to the corridor, kicking my discarded clothes into the corner of the room as she passes. "But I'm glad you're asking now. Aaron and I will have to be more hands-off once we get to the Capitol, leave you and Marcus mostly to your own devices since we'll have stacked meeting schedules. You'll have to get to know him a little better, get used to working just with him rather than with us."

I blanch at this.

I don't think Marcus likes me very much. Last time we got matched against each other, I beat him, but didn't kill him, obviously. It wasn't that long ago.

Like, I don't have a lot of what I'd call friends in the Center. Neither does he, of course. The people who get all buddy-buddy with other trainees are usually the ones who get matched up with their friends to be culled. It's safer to play things cool. Culling matches can be challenging enough without it being someone you care about, or someone who knows your weaknesses.

No one seems that interested in talking to me, luckily, so even though I'm an open book my secrets stay close to my chest.

Maybe I'm seeing an enmity that isn't there. I hope it's just my dumb brain and not reality, because I want Marcus to like me almost as much as I want Claudia and Aaron to like me. As much as I want the whole district to like me.

But not enough to lose to him on purpose. I don't like anyone that much.

"Cora, you know your role," Claudia reminds me, seeing my discomfort. "You know your training. I wouldn't have kept you in to this point if you didn't. You'll make me proud. Or you'll fail."

She shrugs.

I struggle to match her pace, to not walk ahead of her even though my legs are longer and I like to walk fast, wanting to hear the rest of anything she says.

"Just remember who's on your team," she tells me. "I'm your team. Marcus is your team. No one else will bring our district victory."

"So no one else matters," I say quietly.

We all remember how much better things were the year Aaron won – my parents were home more, the food was less expensive and more varied, the grocery shops were well-stocked and the available weaponry and training at the Center expanded greatly.

That's what I want for my district, and I want the credit for it, too – I want them to know I'm worth something, that I'm worth the investment all these years, that the expense of all those pills, the occasional vial of morphling, the institutionalization, the detox, the rehab, all of it was worth it. I have value, I earned a happy ending, I'm good. I want them to more than like me. I want them to love me.

There's a lot of things I want to feel, but loved is probably at the top of the list.

Maybe that's what the Capitol wants, what the district wants – a tribute who truly does it for them, for their love. That's what they'll get from me. District 2 has given me so much. The Center is the only home I've ever really known. It's time to give back. It's time to prove that I'm not the waste of space and resources that I often feel I am. That I've often been made to feel I am, belted down in a dark corner of an overcrowded hospital as I detoxed.

It made me stronger, I'm sure of it. Made me better. I just have to convince them, thank them for not giving up on me.

I can earn their love. Win it. For keeps, fairly.

As we enter the main chamber, the sun streams through the window wholesale, cutting through the smog of the city. No more shadows, no more darkness, just light and heat and clarity.

"I'll need to head in and join the preparations for the reaping," she tells me.

"Okay," I say reluctantly. "Thanks, Claudia. I'm sorry I made more work for you."

"Don't be so quick to apologize," she chides me. "It's practically all you've said. We worked on this."

"Sorry," I say again, which makes her laugh.

"Chin up," she says. "A little personality never did you any harm. Enjoy your sun, but don't be late to the reaping."

"Yes, Claudia."

I dip into another half-bow before she can walk away.

"Don't mess up your hair," she warns me as she leaves.

I won't mess up. I can't mess up. It's so close. Claudia likes me, I know she does because she picked me, but once I win - she's going to love me.

Everybody will.

They have to. Fair and square.

x

There's an extent to which I should issue a disclaimer - anything you read in the first person has the potential to be biased, misinformed, or (unlikely, but possibly) a straight-up lie.