The next morning, Effie went back to her apartment. Tears stung her eyes the second she walked through the door; it didn't feel the same anymore.

She noticed that the place was oddly clean considering the fact that it had been deserted for months. She saw a vase of flowers and a note sitting on top of the coffee table and rolled her eyes, knowing exactly who sent it. The note read:

'Effie,

I had your place cleaned so that you wouldn't have to deal with it; you have enough going on.

Stay well; I'll be in touch in a few days.

-Plutarch.'

She put the note down, walked into her bedroom, and sat on top of the bed, staring at the lavender-colored wall. After a while, she got up and opened the door to her closet; it was a walk-in the size of another large bedroom, and, for the first time, Effie felt overwhelmed inside of it. The clothes reminded her too much of Cinna and Portia; they reminded her of her days as an escort and her involvement in the Games. These clothes weren't her life anymore.

She began to take the clothes off of the rods and placed them in piles: keep, donate, re-work. She couldn't bring herself to get rid of Portia and Cinna's designs, no matter how painful it was to look at them. Then, there were pieces that she loved the fabric on and decided that a little renovation would make them more suited to her life now—whatever that was. When the last piece came down, she put back all of the pieces she was keeping, put the pieces she wished to donate or send to a consignment shop on her bed, and moved the pieces she wanted to re-work into her design room.

She remembered now why she loved having the penthouse apartment; it was incredibly spacious and had a lot of rooms inside. She had been able to buy it instead of renting it, and she had gotten it for a lot less than it was worth because no one would take it. For her, though, it was well-worth the investment.

Effie then moved into what she deemed the "vanity room," which was connected to the "design room" by a single door. This was her favorite room in the whole apartment; she had forgotten how much she missed sitting down at her dressing table and getting ready. It was painted white and was trimmed and accented in a bright fuchsia with the shag carpet to match. It was the only room that she had never re-done.

She sat down at the dressing table and began opening drawers; she placed all of the makeup that had expired or that she knew she would never use again onto the floor (being very careful not to break any of it lest it get into the carpet), and afterward she found an empty box, moved everything on the floor into that box, and threw it away.

The next thing she opened up was her wig closet; those, she decided, were all to be tossed. The wig fad had come and gone, and now everyone was beginning to wear their natural hair in elaborate braids or simply straight, wavy, or curled. Effie decided that she would have to make an appointment to get her hair shaped, as it was looking a bit limp toward the ends from not being properly cared for in 13.

Over the next three days, her old life slowly disappeared into boxes and trash bins. On the third day, she came across an elaborately detailed wooden box in one of her bedroom drawers. She recognized it as being a box that contained all of her favorite pictures.

Effie opened the box and sighed; she sat in the floor for what felt like hours, until finally she broke down in tears. There were hundreds of pictures that contained dead faces; Seneca Crane, Cinna, Portia… a huge part of her wanted to throw the pictures away so that she never had to look at them again. She let out a small gasp at the last picture in the box; it was a picture of her with Haymitch Abernathy, taken at the beginning of their first games together. Neither one of them was looking at the camera; Haymitch was drinking out of a wine bottle, and Effie was looking away from him with a smile on her face, apparently laughing at the situation. She remembered what had happened; she had offered him a glass, and he said "no, don't need one," which Effie had found both annoying and hilarious at the same time. She left that one out as she placed all of the other back into the box; she made a mental note to track down a frame for that picture.

It hit her then how lonely she really was. She had spent days trying to put the thought out of her head, but it couldn't be avoided any longer.

She was, for the first time since she was eighteen and had moved into her apartment, alone.