The piano gives a musical sigh as I open the cover and sit down on the piano bench that has
molded itself to the shape of my bottom over the years. Throughout the years of my lonely
childhood, when the silence and the oppression of bad memories' hauntings had threatened to
smother me, I have climbed onto the piano bench and buried myself in my music.
I put myself through a series of drills. First finger warm-ups, then etudes, then my scales. It's
tedious, dragging these all out drills when I could play them in my sleep, but I want to disappear
into the notes, the way I can if I sit long enough at the piano and concentrate on the music.
My fingers traverse across the beams of black and white, hitting the four sharps of E Major
flawlessly across six octaves. I imagine with each rendition of the Major scale, my life, my
troubles and worries, are all being lifted and carried away on the wind, until there's nothing left
but the music. I admire how the piano can sound so many different levels of volumes—from
pianississimo to fortississimo. And that's before I've added in the dimension of the damper
pedal, blurring notes together and letting them hang in the air like soft sighs on a summer
evening.
The pieces I've memorized until they are a part of my soul sound out under my fingers. My right
hand flies over and back over my left hand, plinking out notes before a heavy sforzando on the
left side of the piano, then a swirl of an appoggiatura, all the while the left hand playing out a
steady bass. The piece progresses from Major to minor, before a series of chords swirled by
the damper pedal indicates the left hand bass changing to a bouncy staccato of chords. Then
for the finish. I pound my fingers into the keyboard, mixing my chords and damper pedal until
the final three chords in fortississimo. Each one pounds in my blood, as I finish the finale with a
flourish.
I sit back, my heart pounding. I stare at the piano, remembering the afternoon following my first
day of school…
Eleven years ago
I sighed. I was through with this. Living my life in a silent home, with caged-away parents and no
answers. I wanted to know what bad memories haunted my mother. I marched into my father's
study and asked him, "Father, will you please tell me what bad memories haunt Mother?"
I wasn't going to settle for evasion or ambiguity this time. I stood with my arms crossed, waiting
for a proper answer. Father sighed, and then sighed again. "Okay. Get a chair, because it's a
long story."
I sat down, and Father began. "You see, when your mother was a young girl, she had a twin
sister. Her twin sister was named Maysilee. Your mother, her sister, and Mrs. Everdeen were
the best of friends. Then one day, Maysilee went to the Hunger Games."
"What are the Hunger Games?"
"That's another long story entirely."
"I want to hear it."
"Okay. Over sixty years ago, there was a Capitol and thirteen districts. The districts rebelled
in what was known as the Dark Days. The Capitol defeated twelve of them and destroyed the
thirteenth. In punishment for the rebellion, every year an event known as the Hunger Games
would be held. Each district would send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and
eighteen as tributes. The twenty-four tributes would participate in a fight to the death. The last
one standing was the winner. The winning tribute's district received food and money for life."
I sat in my chair, horrified by this. "Your aunt Maysilee was chosen as a tribute for the Fiftieth…
She went there and… well, you know that the Hunger Games are on TV each year, right? Your
mother saw her twin sister there… and the memories she has of that are so horrible that your
mother is still in bed, fifteen years later."
"Did Aunt Maysilee win?"
Father sighed. "It was a District Twelve victory… but not by your aunt."
"The boy tribute won?"
"Yes."
A long silence passed. I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer, "Father… what happened to
her in the Hunger Games? Did she—"
I faltered at the look on my father's face, a twisting of his features into a grim mask of pain,
showing scars many years deep. I backed away, and fled the study without another word.
The rest of the story filled itself in for me over the next few years. Our educational curriculum
being saturated with the Hunger Games, of course, I learnt that the victor of the Fiftieth Games
was the local drunk Haymitch Abernathy. Did he kill my aunt? I wondered, fear bubbling in the
pit of my stomach. I also found out that the year Maysilee went, twice as many tributes went in.
Which meant she faced 47 competitors, not 23. No wonder she died in there.
And I watched the next Hunger Games in secret, despite Hestia and Lyre's best efforts to keep
me out. That was the Sixty-Fifth Hunger Games, the year Finnick Odair of District 4 won. I saw
the extraordinarily handsome boy rained down in sponsor gifts, saw him mangle his victims with
his trident, saw the Capitol slobber over him in the weeks afterwards. I wondered if my aunt had
been killed that way, with a trident.
And finally I understood why my mother was in bed. Watching the Hunger Games was enough
to make me want to hide in bed all day. But I had to be strong for my mother. And so I was.
Since then, the question has haunted me. How did Maysilee die? Every Hunger Games, I watch
and add more gory images to my mental catalogue of the possible ways she suffered and died
in the arena. Strangely enough, there are never any replays of the Fiftieth Games, despite the
fact it's the year our own victor won. I'm glad for this, since Mother doesn't have to relive seeing
her sister die, but at the same time I want to know how she died.
I can't explain why I want to know this. To bring an end to the constant worries that plague me?
I don't know. It wouldn't make me happy, knowing the answer. But it would end my gruesome
imaginings… bring a sense of closure.
But I've never had the courage to ask anyone. I stare at her portrait on the mantle, wondering
how this girl who looks so much like me died. I sit by my mother's bedside, injecting a dose
of morphling into her bloodstream. I watch Haymitch Abernathy dragging himself drunkenly
through the streets. And the question torments me, like a fly attacking the strawberries, how did
Maysilee die?
Present Day
Looking back on my childhood, I don't think I ever really had one. I practically raised myself, in
my silent somber home with ghosts of past memories, watching my mother suffer and seeing
my father so distant. I didn't laugh or run with joy. I may be the mayor's daughter, but my life has
been just as hard as the lives of those who live in the Seam.
In this way, we're all equal, I suppose. None of us have escaped the oppression of the Capitol.
Katniss and Gale lost their fathers in the mine explosion five years ago and were forced to begin
feeding their families. I never knew my mother, lost in trauma from the Hunger Games. Even
other townies, like Peeta, Delly and others, who always have enough to eat, grow up in the
reality of starvation and watching the annual Hunger Games.
What I think is that the Capitol has arranged it so carefully, with tools like the two-faced gift of
tesserae, so that we only see our own differences. Differences between those who manage
to get dinner on the table on a regular basis and those who go to bed many a night with their
stomachs rumbling. Differences that divide us, make us weak within. Differences that if we set
aside, who knows what we could accomplish?
I never understood what good comes of the merchant and coal miner division. All it does is
infuse hatred into people's everyday lives, into their deepest thoughts and feelings. Hatred
that simmers in the gray eyes of Seam people and in the blue eyes of townies. I hate that the
Capitol influences every bit of our lives. It's bad enough that they kill our children and starve us.
But what I always thought is that despite oppression and cruelty, people's hearts remain pure
even in the darkest of times. Apparently not, though. As seen in the fight I had with Gale this
afternoon.
All of it does nothing, however, but ensure that the odds of establishing a unified rebellion
against the Capitol will never be in the districts' favor. In the end, the class differences and
internal hatred that contaminate our lives only benefit the Capitol even more. No matter which
way you look at it, the Capitol always triumphs.
It doesn't have to be that way, though. I stand before Maysilee's portrait and whisper, "Things
could be different. The Capitol doesn't always have to win. Could it all be different?"
There's no answer, but I desperately need one. The ridiculous question flaps against my soul,
the fleeting thought I've buried deep within myself, the naïve fantasy I tried to quash long ago
but has persisted on. The hope has burned in me as long as I've known that the Capitol is evil.
It's a foolish wish, an idealistic wish, a quixotic wish, but it continues to burn with a passion
unrivaled by any other: Could things be different?
