Drew,
The little girl flinched as another bomb went off above us.
"It's okay," I smiled again as I washed the blood out of her hair and ignored the camera's running.
When the bombs started going off in District Eight, I was immediately taken out of the fight. And, when I say taken out, I mean that Alecca had to literally pull me away from running back to the hospital I had been working at after they found out that I used to run a pharmacy.
But, as soon as I got here, I noticed Ramona, a patient that had been on her way to the infirmary before the bombs started to go off.
"Are you really Drew Ilium?" Ramona asked as I placed another band-aid on her leg.
"Yeah," I nodded, and her brown eyes continued to watch me.
"Is Oaklea really gone?"
I froze.
I couldn't count how many times I had been asked about him, but, every time, it hurt like the first time.
I nodded sadly, trying to keep from crying.
"Do you really love him? Or was that just for the cameras?" Ramona asked as she began to brush out her long brown hair with the hair brush Future had left around here earlier, before she had started getting nervous for Alecca and started biting her nails so much that I had to send her away because she was scaring Ramona.
"I love him," I felt my voice crack.
Ramona's eyes softened.
"How long has he been gone?"
I stopped and realized that I really had to think about it.
It was the day after my birthday, so it had been… four months? Five?
"Almost five months."
"You're mom's dead, too, right?"
For a second there, I thought she was talking about Oaklea being dead, but then I looked into her eyes and realized what she meant.
Her mom was dead.
"She died a few years ago," I nodded.
"My mom died when I was born," Ramona told me as she looked back to study the sewing machines in the underground design center that was now used as a bomb shelter.
"What about your dad?"
She nodded towards the ceiling.
"In the war."
I felt my heart break as I looked at the little girl, an orphan now.
I entwined my hand with hers, and squeezed it three times, something that my mom used to do to tell me that she loved me.
"Do you want to come meet Future, Ramona?"
Ramona's smile widened.
Future was like her hero since she was also an orphan who had done amazingly.
"My friends call me Ram-Ram," I smiled as I picked up the little girl because she wasn't supposed to put too much weight on her leg for another week or so.
"Okay, Ram-Ram," I smiled as I carried the seven year old girl away from the other patients to where Ramma was painting some chemical on Future's nails to keep her from biting her nails too much. Ramma looked up to me and then to the kid, knitting her eyebrows in confusion as if asking if I had gone and had a child who grew extremely fast in the last half hour.
"Futurina?"
Future hadn't been called Futurina in so long that she almost forgot that it was her name.
And, while Ram-Ram wasn't looking, I nudged Future with my foot.
"Hmm?" Future looked up at us, "Who's the Cutie?"
"This is Ram-Ram," I smiled as I set Ramona down on the floor and sat next to her.
"I'm Future," Future smiled at Ramona, hugging her knees as she turned to look at her.
As Ramona's face broke out into a wide smile, Future began to talk to her, and I quickly realized that The Strong One was nothing compared to Futurina Cabello to this little girl. As Ramma began to paint Ramona's nails the name dark brown as her eyes, I sneaked away from the three girls and headed towards the stairs that I had been banned from.
At the top of the stairs, I found the design center main office where Alecca and a few other soldiers were watching the skies for signs of progress.
"Anything on your side, Sesame?" Alecca asked into a walkie talkie.
"It's getting clear over here. The bombing is almost over, General Eviane."
Alecca told Sesame to let her know if anything happened, and he turned back to the stairway to get to the desk where he had a map.
"Are you going to bite me again?" Alecca held his clipboard over his shoulder, where I had bitten him when he pulled me away to the shelter and made me stay.
"You bit him?" a soldier looked up at me.
"Dang, you two are freaky," Loco shook his head as he popped a small piece of the white gum to help his addiction to cigarettes.
Alecca looked back to Loco.
"Are you sure he's the chaperone here?" Alecca asked as he looked back to me.
"I think you're the grown up here," I told him as I pulled myself to sit on the desk, hugging my knees as I watched the earth fly through the small windows.
"Has Future calmed down yet?" Alecca whispered as he sat beside me.
He didn't like to talk about Future in front of the soldiers below him. He thought it made it weak or something, though I always thought he did that because he just didn't want to be teased. But, in this way, I did follow his orders, and I didn't bring up Future.
I didn't listen to him in any other way. I might as well do this.
"Yeah, she met Ramona, and everyone's just in love with the little kid," I told him, knowing that my job had been to calm her down about him.
I gripped onto the desk as the ground shook again, and I noticed it was getting weaker.
"How many do you think have died today?" I asked, nodding towards the windows, and I suddenly didn't want to know.
"We'll find out in a few hours," Alecca answered as he stared at the sky, tightening his grip on the desk as the floor began to shake for the last time.
"They retreated," Sesame's voice buzzed through Alecca's walkie-talkie.
Alecca smiled at me and nudged me.
"You're officially free, Drew."
Free.
I hated that word now.
I would never be free.
Even if we won the war, I would never be free.
I would be The Strong One for the rest of my life, and that was a choice I had never been given to me. Madness consumed me without any warning sometimes, and I was supposed to always be strong and prepared. I couldn't be the weak one, and I couldn't lose my mind when that was really all I wanted to do.
My freedom had been taken away when I had been Reaped to go into the Hunger Games. But Oaklea had given me the illusion of freedom.
And now he was gone, too…
"Let's go check on Future."
Oaklea,
"Are you really Drew Ilium?" the little girl asked as Drew placed another band-aid on her leg.
"Yeah," Drew nodded, and kid continued to stare.
"Is Oaklea really gone?"
Drew froze, but she finally nodded yes.
"Do you really love him? Or was that just for the cameras?" the little girl asked timidly.
"I love him," Drew's voice cracked.
"How long has he been gone?" the little girl asked as she continued to stare at Drew, her eyes softening with pity.
"Almost five months."
"You're mom's dead, too, right?"
For a second, I thought she meant that she thought she was dead. But then the camera man did a close-up to the little girl's brown eyes, and I understood that she meant that her mother was also dead.
"She died a few years ago," Drew nodded.
"My mom died when I was born," the little girl didn't look at Drew but at the sewing machines.
"What about your dad?"
The child nodded towards the ceiling.
"In the war."
Drew's green eyes filled with sadness, and she smiled weakly as she squeezed her hand.
"Do you want to come meet Future, Ramona?"
Ramona's eyes lit up, and her smile spread.
"My friends call me Ram-Ram," Ramona told her.
I pressed stop on the video before it shifted to someone from District Thirteen talking about how Panem had killed that little girl's parents and forced little kids into becoming soldiers, and I slid Nicolt's tablet back into her pixel-print case while she continued to brush her teeth in the washhouse of the District Seven compound, where we were set up for shooting.
When I got here, nothing had changed much from the President's Mansion, only Rose wasn't here.
I was escorted here by peacekeepers, and prep teams had to spend a while on me to make sure that my hair wouldn't bleed through my fake blonde coloring. They squeezed everything I would need into a small closet, and I was locked in a room until I was told I could come out.
This time, I had a small house instead of just a room.
There was my room, with so many complicated locks that it must have taken weeks to get ready. Nicolt's room, set up with a communication center to keep in touch with the Capitol. The Prep Team room for Isis and Alixander, and an empty room to get everything ready.
"Damn it! Oakie, do you know where my mints are?"
I turned to see that Isis had come into Nicolt's room and was rummaging around for her cinnamon flavored mints, the only mints she really trusted to hide the smell of alcohol on her breath, though I really think she likes them because they make her smell like a bakery and are her favorite color of gold.
Isis was probably the only person here that I really trusted here.
I loved Nicolt and all, but I knew she still secretly held her loyalty to the Capitol because she couldn't control it. It was just the way that she had been raised.
But Isis was born in District Eight and was chosen to move to District One because she was genius.
And District One had given her the best thing in the world. They gave her love. Her first day on the job, working with the District Twelve Tributes, she met Roman. By the time they moved to District Eight Tributes, they were engaged, and they were married that Victory Tour with cameras all on them. Isis and Roman were happy for six years, even about to start a family.
But then District One took him away again.
And that was worse than them not giving the gift at all.
Isis hated the Capitol, maybe even more than I did.
"I think Nicolt had them in here earlier," I looked through Nicolt's pile of different green eyeshadows, and I found the little tin box of mints.
"You found them!" Isis happily planted a kiss on my cheek, and she used her sleeve to wipe away the golden lipstick stain on my cheek.
"You're welcome," I laughed as I handed her the little box, and she immediately flipped the top open, cinnamon filling the air, and forced three mints into her mouth.
She offered a mint, which I took, and I smiled thank you.
"You know, you're addicted to these things," I nodded towards the tin as she slapped the box closed and slid it into her silver skinny jeans' back pocket.
"I'm worse than Rose," Isis smiled, and my face fell.
No one seemed to understand just how bad Rose was.
No one but me.
And I was feeling sick about the fact that I felt sorry for her.
Why did I feel sorry for her?
I hated her.
She was the devil in heels.
So, why did I feel sorry for her?
"What are we doing today?"
"Nothing. They're writing your script because of the new promos from District Thirteen," Isis shrugged as she brushed invisible lint off her shiny tank top.
I suddenly felt sick as I thought about the video I had just seen.
"You saw them, didn't you?" Isis golden eyes softened, and she led me to sit on the bed, where she hugged her knees, ignoring Nicolt's rules about no shoes on her expensive pastel pink bed spread that cost her not getting the pixel-print high heels she wanted so much.
I nodded, and Isis wrapped me up in a hug, her sequined top scratching at my skin.
"I swear, I wanted to cry and adopt that little girl the second that aired. And Drew…" Isis trailed off.
"I miss her, Isis," I began to tremble as I tried to block out my tears.
"I know, Baby, I know," Isis rubbed my back.
"I can't do it anymore, Isis. I can't do it," I told her she tightened her grip on me.
"Come here, Oak Tree," Isis pulled me through the maze of alarms and out to the door of the house, which was at the edge of the compound.
"Excuse me, Miss. Beaumont is not allowed past this point without clearance," a guard stopped Isis as soon as we got out the door.
"And what do you think I am?" Isis reached inside her boot and brought out a small ID, flashing it in front of his face, "Beaumont is already late!"
I wasn't sure if the ID had the right level or not, but Isis was intimidating enough that I would have let her go if she had shown me a card for a milkshake shop.
"Alright," the guard moved aside, and Isis pulled me through the compound to the gate where there was a hole that I realized was to get out because no one wanted to get in.
She motioned for me to go first, and she led me through the forest of trees to show me the main village.
She finally stopped behind a pine tree, and she nodded towards what she wanted to show me.
Sickness. Death. Pain. Broken hearts.
Everything.
And I knew that the Capitol had caused it all.
"Do you have any idea how much I want to set you free out here?" Isis dapped her eyes with a tissue.
"But you can't…"
"I can't," she agreed, "Nothing would work out, and it'd be worse…"
I nodded, knowing she was right.
But there was something about standing there.
It made me yearn to run, to just run away and forget everything. To wash the dye out of my hair and take out my contacts. To go home and bring Drew back from the danger. And to just hide away where no one could ever take us apart again.
To just be there for Skye and Taylor. To make sure that Robin finally told Skye that he had been in love with her since he had first seen her at the Chariots. To be there for Drew again. To make sure that, when she woke up screaming from her horrible nightmares, I was there to wrap my arms around her and calm her down. To make sure that there was someone there who she could just tell the truth to, no watering it down to make sure that someone didn't freak out.
And I knew that I couldn't.
That it would never work out like it did in my dreams that I hid away where no one could find them.
But it felt nice to think about.
"This is what we're fighting for, Oaklea," Isis told me as she looked out to the people of District Seven again, "To end this. Just this."
Isis wiped away a few tears from her eyes, and I stopped and stared at one little girl with her brother and sister.
The two older siblings were opening a store, and the little girl held on to her sister's long skirt, saying something up to her.
I felt my heart break as I thought about how she was just like Drew.
My Drew…
If it was at all possible, I began to miss her even more.
How was it that I had only known her for a few months but yet I couldn't live without her?
"Thanks, Isis," I didn't look away from the village as I thanked Isis.
"Thank you, Oak Tree. You gave me a reason to keep on," Isis looked at the golden wedding band that Roman had given her six years ago, "To make sure that you didn't have to go through this."
"I think you'll find someone, Isis," I told her.
"Yeah right," Isis rolled her eyes, "In my entire life, I have loved two people. My mom, who raised me alone. Roman… and…"
Isis bit her tongue.
"And?"
"An old tribute. Probably killed by the Capitol, too…"
I decided to let that lie and nodded.
"Come on," Isis stood, brushing the dirt off her completely reflective outfit, "We need to get back before Nicolt has a panic attack."
I nodded in agreement and took her hand as she offered to help me up.
Isis led me back to the compound in silence, and I still thought about that little girl in the street.
Drew had Ram-Ram.
And I had that little girl.
I loved Drew. I loved Skye. And I already loved Taylor, though I had never seen her before.
But there was something about that little girl that made me want to fight.
The rest of the rebels had the Mockingjay. And Panem had the Jabberjay.
But I had that little girl to make me want to keep doing this.