A/n: Sorry. Seriously. I promised updates and I've had this chapter written for weeks but I didn't update. Here it is. I wanted to do two chapters, but I need to revise the next and I just need to get this out.
We had dinner. Only a few bites each. Afterwards we watch the tribute parade.
Finch is dressed in an outfit that Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Games, describes as, "They're dressed as power plant workers!" which they are not. Finch is wearing a sleeveless, knee length dress covered entirely in huge sequins. Her headpiece, which looks like a huge baby bonnet, is covered in the same sequins. Our power plant workers look absolutely nothing like that. Instead, they dress much more practically in sturdy boots, pants, work shirts, and hard hats. The cameras are quickly pulled away from Finch to District 12. Whoever their stylist was sure stepped up their game this year from those ugly old mining clothes. Commence footage of the Tributes parading around the Capitol, smiles plastered to their faces; some real, some fake. Hard to tell which is which when your eyes are so full of tears you can't see straight.
After the parade, after the longest, hardest, worst day of all our lives combined, worse even than the time we all went without food for a week, we all go straight to bed without a word.
I can't sleep without my sister. Robin is also awake on her cot. Over on the boys' bed, Sparrow is passed out from exhaustion while Jay is lying on his side, face buried in his thin pillow, shoulders shaking with silent sobs, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure the rest of us are okay. It's pointless. We aren't. The three of us awake, lying there, pretending to sleep, pretending not to hear Mother's gut-wrenching wails through the paper-thin walls, pretending, pretending, pretending. I can't imagine school tomorrow. Having to get up and pretend again. And again. And again and again and again and again. Over and over. Forever.
The emptiness of the other side of the bed is too much for me. It doesn't smell of Finch. Finch didn't have a smell. She smelled like our district: faintly of smoke, sweat, and grime. We used plain soap, so when we washed, none of us smelled any different from the rest. Industrial and standard. Plain, ordinary, and unassuming.
It seems Robin can sense something is wrong, because she gets up off her cot and onto the bed next to me. I pull her in, holding her, my face resting on her shoulder, hers on mine. We don't let go. Just stay there, needing the comfort of another human being, needing the comfort of another. But Robin isn't Finch. Won't ever be. But she's what I have. I haven't been with her since the moment I left the womb, but we're still sisters. I let her embrace pull me into the realm of dreams.
School is as awful as I imagined. People, left and right, are giving me sad, pitying glances. If Finch were here, she'd glare at them. I hear the whispers.
That's the girl who's twin was Reaped.
Foxface's sister. Lara? Laura? Lain?
Poor girl. Poor, poor girl.
I feel awful.
They don't feel awful. Besides, I don't want their pity. I want to escape. Escape the side glances and the whispers and the words. The only person, besides my siblings, that proves of any comfort is Diana. We sit for the next few days in hopes of any word of the Tributes. As usual, there is none. Why should there be? Why should the Capitol interrupt their training? The more fight scenes the better, right? Right.
We get the training scores back Friday evening.
Our family watched Caesar Flickerman announce them in the square, where there will be comfort. Dina stands next to us. The Millers are nearby, although they look like they just got relieved from a shift in our sector's power plant like Father. Sevie, their daughter, who is still too young to work in the plants seems to be looking for someone, but her attention quickly shifts to the screens when the Panem anthem plays. I'm beginning to despise that anthem.
The scores are announced.
Districts 1, 2, and the other recruits, 4, score from eight to ten, with the little boy from 4 getting a 7.
Finch gets a five.
Average for this year.
A couple kids score threes. One boy even gets a two. Finch's district partner, Jayson Wilks, gets a four. But five seems to be average. I'm almost glad she got an average score so that she won't be targeted as a threat or killed first out of weakness. The tributes scores begin to blur and the whole world begins to blur and it takes me a moment to realize I'm crying. Silently. I'm in public. My tears are wiped away by my sleeve, as if my eyes were wet by merely cutting onions and not the fact that I was just practically told how high my twin has a chance of dying. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Jay, usually off to the side, is next to someone. Sevie Miller. She slips him a handkerchief and he nods in thanks. Then the District 12 scores are announced. Peeta, the boy, manages an eight. The girl, Katniss, scores an eleven.