26
Summer dies without a whimper. Fall steals into Victor's Village on a cold wind, stripping trees and turning grass brown. The leaves don't even have time to change. Fall used to be Mom's favorite season, because of the colors. It used to be my favorite season, because it meant the Games were over.
I hide in my house, fading in and out of nightmares. Larvina comes over to force me to eat. Every week or so, she gets me to wash. Mostly she just reads while I stare at the TV. Sometimes she reads her books aloud. Her voice is soothing compared to the screechy Capitol accents on the television, so I usually fall asleep. She doesn't seem to mind.
For most people in District 12, life goes on. For some people, it doesn't. I get weekly updates from Donel and Elsabet, even though I don't want them. Tansy Linscott, the tailor's daughter, gets six hours in the stocks for wearing fur gloves. Her parents don't have a receipt for them, so Rook claims the fur was poached. Sumac Thwistle is whipped for stealing coal. They whip him so bad that Dr. Akensen says he won't walk again, which for a miner is more or less a death sentence.
For a while, Myralynn visits along with Donel and Elsabet, but she quits coming before the first frost. Donel claims that her parents are keeping her close to home since losing Maysilee. I tell him to stop making up reasons why people don't want to see me. I can think of plenty on my own.
To be honest, I'm relieved when Myralynn stops coming by. This way, neither of us has to pretend not to hate the other for not being Maysilee.
In spite of myself, I start looking forward to the visits from Donel and Elsabet. Larvina looks after me, but she doesn't make me pretend to be better than I am. I still feel some need to act normal in front of Donel and Elsabet, which I guess is good for me. Plus, Elsabet's stony refusal to notice Donel's flirting is just annoying enough to distract me from wanting to kill myself.
It turns out that the bottle of white liquor wasn't from Larvina, which I guess I sort of knew from the moment I read the label. When I tell her about it, she frowns and suggests that I have an admirer among the Peacekeepers. She doesn't need to bother with the hints – I know it was Rook trying to goad me into suicide. That's the other thing that keeps me from offing myself. I'm not about to give Rook the satisfaction.
I begin to understand how the other victors keep going. It's not that the pain fades, or even becomes bearable. It just becomes a part of you. You carry it around until it's as familiar as your own hands. Not because you can stand it, but because you don't have any other choice.
"So what do you do out here all week?" Donel asks one day as he washes my dirty dishes and Elsabet stares out the window.
"You're looking at it."
He frowns. "Maybe you should get a hobby." He slides a look at Elsabet like he's waiting for her to agree. She doesn't seem to notice. "Something to focus on. You know, to take your mind off things."
Take my mind off things. Right. I consider asking Donel if he's ever had a loved one murdered. It takes me longer than it should to remember Maysilee. I wonder if I'm his "hobby."
"I'll think about it," I mutter, watching my knuckles turn yellow and then brown again as I clench and unclench my fist.
Elsabet sighs and Donel looks at her like a puppy with its ears pricked up. When she keeps staring out the window, his frown deepens and he goes back to the dishes.
I glance at Elsabet. She's barely said three words to me since she found me swimming in my own vomit. Donel can get her chatting sometimes, but more often than not, she just stares at nothing, like she's forgotten the rest of us are even here. I figure she blames me for Maysilee, but looking at Donel's face, I start to wonder if there's something wrong with her.
"What are you doing, anyway?" I ask her when I can't take Donel's puppy-dog looks anymore. When she doesn't answer, I snap my fingers under her nose. "Hey!"
She looks up in surprise that blisters into annoyance. Donel scowls at me even as his shoulders slump in relief.
"What?" Elsabet snaps.
"What are you doing?"
She stares at me like she doesn't know what I'm talking about. I rap my knuckles on the books in front of her. She looks at them like she's never seen them before.
"Going over my father's ledger," she remembers after a moment. "We've had a lot of patients lately. I'm trying to figure out what supplies to spend money on."
"All the whippings?" I forget to unclench my fist, and my bitten down nails cut into my palm.
Elsabet shrugs, shaking off the last of whatever had taken hold of her. "That's part of it. The bigger problem is malnourishment. It's not easy to prescribe more food when no one has the money to pay for it."
I sit up straighter. This is something they haven't told me about.
"What about the extra rations?"
Donel shakes his head at Elsabet, but she's writing in her book now and doesn't notice.
"The last shipment was pretty much all spoiled," she says. "There were rats on the train."
The unfairness of this burns in my throat and my voice comes out strangled. "But the normal shipments? From Nine and Ten and Eleven?"
Elsabet shrugs again and makes a note in her book. "Smaller than usual, which means more expensive. Not many can afford it, since–"
"Elsie," Donel warns.
"– Since the mines closed after your family's funeral."
The kitchen is silent except for the scratching of Elsabet's pen. Donel is staring at the floor.
"What?" I choke out.
"It was just for a week," Donel says, like that will make me feel better. He doesn't know what the loss of a week's wages mean to a mining family.
"After my family's funeral? Why?"
Elsabet finally looks at me, and there's a glimmer of pity in her blue eyes.
"There were rumors of some kind of conspiracy to blow up a mineshaft, so they closed down the mines for a week. To protect the miners." She rolls her eyes. "Larkin says it's because they didn't like seeing so many of us at your mom and brother's funeral – you know, miners and merchants together."
"Larkin Everdeen?" I ask, grasping at the one part of this story that makes any sense.
Donel turns back to the dishes. Elsabet's eyes linger on him as she answers.
"Yes. He's visited the shop a few times since Heath."
When I don't say anything else, she goes back to writing in the ledger. Donel dries dishes with a furious intensity that might be funny if I didn't feel so sick.
People might be able to avoid the Peacekeepers' whip if they keep their heads down and wear the right clothes. But no one can escape starvation.
I remember five years ago, when bad weather and pests ruined the harvest in Eleven, and we suffered for it in District 12. I remember chewing mint leaves until my tongue felt like a withered leaf itself. I remember Vernie crying at night because he was so hungry, and Dad crying in private because he couldn't feed us. I remember the chorus of gurgling stomachs that was the background to every class period, when we were too hungry and scared to crack a smile. I remember kids whose skin got tighter as their eyes got bigger, whose hair turned rough and brittle, whose stomachs swelled until they stopped coming to school at all. If Rook is looking for a way to subdue the district, I'd say she found it.
As soon as Donel finishes the dishes, Elsabet stands up to go. Her eyes have already lost the clarity they had while she told me about the troubles in the district. I can almost see her fade away.
"I have a job for you," I tell her. She frowns.
"I already have a job, Haymitch," she says, tapping her dad's ledger.
"It's not much. Give me a piece of paper."
She purses her lips, but gives me one.
"And a pen."
She rolls her eyes and hands one over with a dramatic sigh. Donel is watching us with a puzzled half-smile.
I don't linger over the list. I remember the staples that Mom always bought first when Dad brought home his paycheck.
I hand the paper back to Elsabet and she runs her eyes down it, her brow furrowing.
"What is this, your shopping list?"
"That's right. I don't like going into town. The stocks are depressing. I figure you're down there anyway – you could bring me what I need. Both of you."
Elsabet hands the list to Donel and folds her arms.
"I'll pay you," I add. I wiggle my eyebrows at Elsabet, trying to make her understand without me having to say. I don't doubt there are microphones in this room. Maybe cameras, too. I silently will them not to ask what one person wants with four sacks of flour, ten gallons of milk and five pounds of butter.
Luckily, Maysilee's friends aren't idiots.
"You want us to bring it by every week?" Donel asks casually. Elsabet shoves the list into the bottom of her schoolbag.
I shrug. "Or whenever it looks like I'm going to run out."
Donel nods slowly. "We could do that. Right, Elsie?"
"I suppose we're up here every week, anyway," she says, her eyes bright with excitement and fear.
I tell them to have the vendors put the orders on my account and hand them a wad of bills for their trouble. They leave the house looking about as shifty as a goat in a dress. I hope they manage to get their expressions straight by the time they get to town.
My plan works. Three days later, Elsabet and Donel show up with a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, some ground beef, a gallon of milk and broad grins. They look like dopes, but I can't help smiling, too. For the first time since I came back to Twelve, I don't feel completely helpless.
As Elsabet unpacks the food, she keeps shooting me glances like she's not sure she understood my instructions and I'm about to start asking where my six dozen eggs are. All I say is, "You forgot the booze." Elsabet rolls her eyes.
Donel makes lunch as the two of them fill me in on the gossip that doesn't involve mutilation and death – who's dating who, who's broken up, who got caught kissing behind the slag heap after swearing they weren't an item. I can't put faces to half the names they mention, and I don't really care about any of them, but it's nice to feel like our district is a place where people do dumb, trivial things, like fall in and out of love, and not just a place where children starve as their parents bleed in the stocks.
As the weather gets colder, Elsabet spends more time with her father's patients. The grain shortages mean there's not as much for Donel to do at the bakery, though, so he starts making deliveries on his own. Unlike Elsabet, he knows how to follow instructions and brings me a small bottle of general store booze.
"Don't tell Elsie," he says. "But I understand about needing to take the edge off."
I was already glad to see him, but this makes him just about my favorite person alive.
"I know it won't fix anything," he says later, after a long afternoon of staring at the television and passing the bottle of weak liquor between us, "but do you think a hobby or something would help you? I mean, I honestly don't know how you keep from going nuts up here."
The fuzzy alcohol cushion around my brain keeps me from getting mad at him. I take another swig from the bottle and shrug.
"There aren't many hobbies to be had in District 12."
Donel snorts. "You Seam kids just don't know how to relax."
"Guess we're too busy trying not to starve to death," I snap – or try to; my voice comes out slow and slurred.
Donel shakes his head and laughs, and I realize that he was just teasing. After a moment, I laugh too. We laugh and laugh at the sound of our own laughter, and then we laugh some more. By the time we stop, tears are running down my face and Donel has the hiccups.
"But don't you victors have to – hic – do something?" he asks. "You know – hic – like some big talent or whatever?" He waves his hands in the air like he's waving at a crowd, or maybe dancing. Since recent victor talents include ballroom dancing and singing, I guess it could be either.
"Pretty sure my only talent is getting people killed." I slur. "And maybe getting drunk."
"I would love to see you slag-faced on Ceasar Flickerman's show," he laughs. "Ceasar would be all, 'Tell us, Haymitch – hic – what inspired you to – hic – take up drinking?'" It's actually a passable impression of Ceasar Flickerman.
"Well, Ceasar, I guess it all started when I killed two people. That definitely made me want a drink. But I'd say the real moment of inspiration came when my girlfriend, mother and brother were murdered because of me. After that, it felt like the obvious choice."
I realize that Donel isn't smiling anymore, and the tears on my cheeks aren't from laughter. Embarrassed, I take another pull from the bottle, wiping my face on the back of my hand.
I wait for Donel to tell me that he's sorry, or that drinking isn't the answer, or just to get embarrassed and leave.
"You really need a hobby, man," he says instead, and takes the empty bottle out of my hands.
I struggle to swallow the lump in my throat. It slides down and settles into the ball of pain that lives in the middle of my chest, relentless as a toothache.
"What do you do for fun?" I ask.
He blows across the mouth of the bottle, making a sound like machines groaning under the earth.
"Bake, mostly. Write sometimes. I can play cards."
"You could teach me how to do that."
"Which one?"
"Any of them."
Donel refuses to bake drunk and insists that you can't really "teach" someone to write, so cards it is. He has a pack in his pocket, and they look so comfortable in his hands that I'm pretty sure he takes them everywhere he goes. The paper is yellowed and the symbols are drawn by hand. I'm a little surprised at a merchant kid owning something so shabby, until he explains that his brother made them.
"The English teacher?"
Donel rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. "Yeah. He does other stuff, too."
He starts teaching me a basic two-man game that I instantly forget the name of. I forget most of the rules too, so pretty soon he demotes me to Solitaire. That's a little easier. Donel rests his chin in his hands and watches the cards through half-closed eyes, correcting me whenever I go wrong.
It's comfortable, and for a few moments, I almost feel at peace with myself. Then Donel goes and ruins it.
"I love Elsabet," he announces out of nowhere.
I feel my face twist into a grimace. Apparently Donel is a confessional drunk.
There's no nice way to tell him to shut up, so I just say, "I know."
Donel's eyes widen in drunken dismay.
"Do you think she knows?"
"Yes."
His shoulders slump. After a moment, he nods.
"Yeah. I think so too."
I put a card in the right spot. Then I put another card in the wrong spot. Donel doesn't notice.
"We've kissed a few times."
A sigh gusts out between my lips. "Look, Donel – you're a good guy, but I really don't want to know."
He nods again, like he expected this.
"This thing with Everdeen won't last," he says a few minutes later.
I groan and slump forward onto the table. Maybe if he thinks I've blacked out, he'll stop talking.
"I mean, he's from the Seam. No offense."
"None taken," I promise the table.
"I don't even know why she likes him."
There doesn't seem to be any way out of this except for through it. I force myself to sit up. "Are they actually dating?"
"No."
"Then why worry? She helped his friend Heath after he got whipped – he's probably just trying to be nice."
"You think?"
"No idea. But you two have been friends for a long time, so she obviously likes you. Everyone from the Seam always thought you were an item."
Donel looks thrilled. "Really?"
"Sure." It's sort of true – most kids in the Seam don't give an owl's hoot about the merchant brats, but the little group of girls at school who always seemed to know who was dating who thought they were a pair. A few Seam girls even claimed to be disappointed, like any of them could turn a townie's head.
Donel leaves before dark. When he comes back a few days later, he doesn't bring any liquor, and we don't talk about Elsabet. We play cards for a while, and I get a little better.
"You know, you don't have to be alone up here all the time," he says one afternoon. "There are people who would want to see you."
"Oh yeah?" I scoff, pretty sure he's joking, but not sure why he thinks it's funny. "Like who?"
He shrugs, eyes on the cards.
"Just kids from school."
"What, they miss having someone to punch?"
Donel lets it drop and, like an idiot, I assume that's the end of it.
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