The phantoms poked their way into the light at the worst times. Never did they come at night, when I was alone in the samey rooms of my new home in District 4's Victor's Village, where everything had a detached feel of being both too large yet oddly claustrophobic, all white plaster and pastel pink and blue fabric wall decorations. Nor did they come in my lonely cabin on the train, complete with its walls that seemed so thick they would silence bloody murder, let alone a teenager shrieking in his sleep (or at least mute it—more than once I'd heard yelling coming from Pontus's cabin that was either him warring with the demons of his past or somehow running out of the booze that ran river-like through every Capitolite square inch I'd set foot on.) No, those vile memories liked to emerge and wave at me in stupid, simple times like this, a mostly-normal car ride to the Training Center before Caesar Flickerman's Victory Tour interview.
I was watching the ocean of faces blur by the car as we cruised through the Capitol streets. Half the city seemed to be out there, watching, waving, all smiles and glee and shouts in trying to peer through the car's navy-tinted windows and catch a sight of me. Like I might suddenly fall for one of them mid-drive and jump out of the window to profess my love right here and now. I didn't even bother to wave back or even smile, window tint or not; five-hundred thousand of the same faces dulled the impact of all that enthusiasm.
One face did stand out, however. It was a little girl, probably no more than eight, her hair already dyed a gaudy forest green and a clover (a flower? Something else? I hadn't yet gripped the intricacies of Capitol fashion, and the only thing I did know was that it was green) tattooed on her cheek. An older woman—her mother, perhaps—stood at her side, one hand clasped around the girl's and another waving at me. The girl didn't wave. She scowled, her eyes meeting mine as if she could see right through the window tint. Light green. Sea green, if I wanted to pin down the shade. Anger in that scowl. Maybe she didn't want to be there, or maybe the fads of the Capitol hadn't sunk in yet at her young age. But all I saw were those eyes, that look, and words not my own nor hers slipped into my mind.
Look at you and your gifts. Chosen as the victor already. The rest of us never stood a chance, did we?
I never should've trusted you. We never should've been allies.
You do what you want, Finnick.
I turned away from the window violently enough for Mags to notice in the seat next to me. Without hesitation she gripped my hand, her expression that grandmotherly look I'd gotten used to, all understanding in the straight line of her mouth so that words were not necessary between us. Just her presence. The existence of someone else who knew the thoughts that haunted us.
In the first days back in District 4 after the Games, I'd pondered absurd scenarios. Beryl and I had been the last two tributes standing. What if the Hunger Games weren't a fight to the death, but merely a contest of strength wherein the victor was crowned by skill and prowess, not mere survival? A sport, not a battle? Those first days in that tropical arena, she and that oafish lout from District 1, Triteia and I from 4, those idiots from District 2, nothing binding us in our tentative alliance but our mutual background as districts from where tributes were trained, not randomly selected as I understood they were from the other, poorer districts on the eastern side of Panem.
The arena, the Games, they were nothing like training, and there we were, thrust into the middle of it with the understanding that five of us wouldn't make it out. Was it so odd that our feelings might run hot? She was beautiful, capable, strong-willed, and when faced with the end, is it such a crime to want to walk into the black with someone else hand-in-hand? We'd never said anything to each other, of course, and had I tried I'm sure she would've laughed at me. But I know this: I hadn't wanted to kill her. And I imagine that many victors, if not most, had had one fellow tribute, or perhaps more than one, whom they'd felt the same way about. Not love, no. I hadn't loved Beryl, and I'm certain she hadn't loved me. I doubt we ever could've called each other lovers, not even in an idyllic timeline. But a friend, or a companion? I could've called her that. Something more than just a temporary ally until our precarious truce had expired at the end.
Yet I'd driven my trident into her gut anyway, same as I'd done to both the idiots from District 2. In the end, all that separated her from the other twenty-two was that she haunted my thoughts, and they did not. Her last words before we fought. Her scowl. Her eyes, sea-green.
"I'm good," I muttered to Mags, ashamed that even she saw that moment of weakness. All victors do it, I told myself. It's not shameful. But I'd been telling myself that since the Games ended, and I still hadn't accepted it. You're supposed to be a victor. Proud. Stoic. That kind of thing. Manly, not a baby.
Mags knew better, and she did not let go of my hand until we reached the Training Center.
In the days before the Games, I'd thought that Caesar Flickerman intentionally styled himself to look as offensive as possible to any normal person's eye. As if to prove my assumptions correct, now he leered at me with eyes veiled by violet contacts, his hair a brilliant golden ponytail that dangled below his shoulder blades, his suit-vest so white it made his sparkling teeth look sullied. It was as if some abyssal Gamesmaker in a lair below the Capitol was tasked with producing Caesar Flickermans year after year, and this model was his gaudiest, shiniest, most spotless production yet. Adding to the nauseous visage, Caesar bellowed a hearty laugh as soon as the cameras on the velvet-lined stage before the Training Center went live. I caught his expression face-on, complete with the black hole of his throat surrounded by stark white teeth as if some void was swirling below that caked-on makeup exterior that would swallow me whole if I slipped up tonight. Just the thing to put me at ease in front of the crowd.
I'd prepared answers for a whole litany of interview questions; naturally, Caesar went off-script as soon as we started. "I want to show something, just a testament to your success as a victor," Caesar said, reclining in his highbacked, leather-lined chair. "You've sent a standard, Finnick."
He gestured to the cannery-sized video board behind us, where over the next five minutes there played a compendium of Capitol crowds shrieking, cheering, and chanting for me. Me, me. Finnick Odair. Victor. Give us the pretty boy. We want him. If only I could have him all for myself, one Capitol boy no older than me said. I'd never let him go. Repeat times a thousand across the city, in different words, from different mouths, but the tone the same. Lustful. Like so many people drugged and dreaming. I want Finnick. I want him.
I wanted only to slide into my seat and fall through the floor where no one could look at me.
"The Capitol's idol," Caesar said, grinning, all teeth. "They love you, Finnick. From here to District 12, all eyes are on you. How's that make you feel?"
I sucked in a breath. Held it. Saw all those lusting eyes, on camera, in the thousand-strong crowd before me. Let the breath out. Then the night began.
When I'd answered seemingly every question Caesar can conceive, he treated the nation to a recap of the Sixty-Fifth Hunger Games. Two hours of death, violence, misery, and every other emotion packed into the arena. I was half-asleep at this point from both exhaustion and a growing weariness at his questions, and much of the recap went the same way. But I knew what was coming, and as it grew near a worry sparked in me, rousing me from drowsiness.
With less than fifteen minutes to go in the broadcast, the recap reached the climax. The sandy clearing. A ring of palm trees all around beneath a perfect sky, powder-blue and cloudless. The smell crept back to me, dreamlike: Salt in the air, a nutty scent drifting in from the treeline that by then I'd known came from a ripening tree fruit that had comprised most of my diet for nearly two weeks. Something else. Feelings beyond the five senses: Panic. Anxiety. The tension of battle. Something more, deeper. Heartfelt.
And there she was. Beryl, clad in a vest of scarlet and black, her dark hair tangled and salt-encrusted. Her sword blade perched on her left bicep, the point angled at me, weapon poised and ready. Scowling. Sea-green eyes narrowed. You do what you want, Finnick.
I looked away from the screen. Heard the points of my trident impale her. Heard the crowd cheer.
And I shut my eyes, my hands wrapped in one another, wishing I had something, anything to steady their shaking.