Wires
Cedara Holland.
Victor of the 24th New Games.
District 7.
When Cedara Holland is ten, she finds her first body.
Three years later, Cedara wouldn't call this uncommon. She's grown used to finding bodies in the strangest parts of town- blood leaking from smirks and scowls alike and similarly, she's used to disposing of them. Even after the Games, when she was practically guaranteed safety in her Victory.
But the body Cedara finds at ten years old is different because it's her first- almost like a first kiss or a first love or a first kill.
She's hiking with her dad and it's early in the morning because Cedara's always been an early riser. She likes seeing the sun rise, and especially enjoys seeing the pink strips of clouds as the sun cuts through them like a bladed knife.
Three years later, Cedara regrets waking up so early to go hiking with her father.
It's a foggy Monday morning and Cedara and Michael Holland are traipsing through the forest. Cedara still remembers the crackle of twigs beneath her feet, and the earthy smell of a forest right after it had rained, feeling nothing but serenity.
"So, you have a test in school tomorrow?" her dad asks her, and ten year old Cedara grins. She only sees his back cause he's ahead of her on the trail so she speaks louder so he can hear her.
"Yeah, we've got a spelling test," she says, blowing her bangs out of her face. Up in front of her, Cedara's dad stops. "But I know everything so I don't even have to study, though," Cedara continues. She stops behind her dad, and gives him an expectant look. "C'mon, let's keep going. I haven't even seen any deer yet."
As she says this, an odd smell reaches Cedara's nose, making her feel nauseated. She coughs, swatting at the air in front of her as if that'll make it go away. It's something in the dirt, and she begins to scuff at it with her boots to cover up the scent.
Cedara is distracted from this task, though, when her father gasps.
A dismembered head is lodged onto a tree branch like a stake. Cedara gasps too, out of shock, and her father tries to cover her eyes but she swats his hands away. He doesn't fight her back.
"Who…" Cedara starts, and while her dad is frozen she makes her way over to the head on the branch.
It's a woman. Cedara can tell by the lovely brown curls cascading down the woman's battered and bloody face, falling farther than her severed head. She looks almost like a mannequin with empty eye sockets but beautiful skin, and Cedara realizes then that she's not afraid. Where her throat ends, though, is too choppy to be that of a perfect, unblemished mannequin Cedara sees in the upper class stores sometimes. Cedara brushes the woman's hair away from her face and she's greeted by yet another shock- the woman's ears are missing.
A childish song fills the young girl's mind. Eyes and ears and mouth and nose, head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes…
"Cedara…" Cedara's father's voice shakes and he brings her into a hug. She tries to squeeze out of the uncomfortable gesture because while her dad is obviously frightened, Cedara's earlier feeling of serenity hasn't dispersed in the slightest.
Her eyes are still wide open as her father drags her back down the path they came, and she can't tear her eyes away from the woman's severed head.
Is something wrong with her? Why isn't she afraid? Why isn't she, at the very least, numb? It's like she's comforted by the sight of such brutality and she's only ten years old (almost eleven butttt her sister says she can't say that since it's two months away). Cedara has always wanted to find a dead body, but she's wanted to be the hero in that situation- not the boring observer.
Her father reports the body. The Peacekeepers find the man who did it four days later.
Cedara, against her parents' knowledge, attends the execution in the town square.
Two years, one month, and six days later, she's reaped for the Games at the mere age of twelve. Obviously, Cedara gets to see a lot more dead bodies, but this time, nobody tries to stop her from seeing them.
Nor does anyone stop her when she kills the dying boy from Ten in the finale with an arrow to the heart, and they don't move to cover her eyes when she decapitates him too.
Xanthe Marquette.
Victor of the 19th New Games.
District 9.
He'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy it.
Well, it was the second day of training and he'd be damned if he hadn't done it because of the shady looks the Careers kept giving him- him, one of only outer district rats that poses a fight this year. Xanthe is a true master in the kitchen, so he knows how to concoct such a deadly mixture that it can sweep twenty grown men off their feet. Bake a loaf of bread, add a dash of arsenic, and some other strong flavors to cover up the taste of true, unfiltered poison.
He almost forgets to add extra potassium to the banana bread. High levels of it in someone's bloodstream simulates a heart attack in an autopsy, and Xanthe's smart enough to know that the Capitol will kill him if they find out he killed their darling precious Careers and all the others at the first chance he got.
(Sure, it's cheating, but really, sue him! What can they do? Curse him, spit at his feet? He'll emerge victorious and that's enough regardless. If he's declared a victor, they can't do anything more than that.)
After all, that's what Xanthe's mentor, Ellie, told him the moment they stepped on the trains. Do what it takes. He's just following her advice. He'll let her take the fall if she has to, blame it on someone he barely knows.
They'd kill her if they thought she influenced what he was about to do.
Second day of training, the Nines get there early. He sneaks in the pan of banana bread into the salad bar for now, away from where the security cameras can see.
Xanthe's on pins and needles until lunch period, and is feeling so anxious he can't bring himself to eat. He ends up grabbing a slice of pizza- and, of course, a slice of banana bread- and sits down at a table with his allies. They're the only other outer district tributes that seem to have a chance this year. Everyone else is fifteen and below, except the girl from Eleven, who looks so frail that the wind could blow her over.
Sandia, Seven's female, takes a bite of her salad, but Xanthe isn't watching her. His other ally, Evans, is taking a bite of Xanthe's bread, and so are three of the Careers. It's not just those four who got a slice- so did another Career, and the same with the pair from One and the girl from Eight.
The girl from Ten finishes her piece in seconds, and Xanthe can hear her telling her allies how good it is.
Three, two, one…
Evans begins to convulse. Seconds after, the pair from One are dying too, and then the girl from Ten, the one who finished in moments, is screaming. Panic is spreading, and Xanthe is just doing his best to look shocked.
The boy from Four hits the floor, and his district partner seconds after. There goes Eight's girl. Xanthe watches them drop with satisfaction he doesn't let his eyes show. That's his competition right there- choking, dying, screaming.
It's just him, the girl from Six, the boy from Ten, his district partner, and the pairs from Seven and Eleven.
When they get to the real Games, he kills four of them, but the girl from Six kills herself in the finale and somehow he feels like that's his fault too.
Does he care?
Is it wrong that he doesn't?
Chevrolet Amsterdam.
Victor of the 13th New Games.
District 6.
When Chevrolet is fifteen, his closest friend Bennet Piston is pulled into the office and told he'll be the volunteer in two years. Six decides early, even with their backups- and Chevrolet knows this because he's told that he's Bennet's backup two days later. This is met with much celebration by both pairs of parents. After all, if Bennet goes into the Games, chances are that Chevrolet can volunteer the next year. If he's already the backup now, why wouldn't he be the best the year after, when the best is out of the pool?
Bennet's parents get him a car- and it's not just any car. It's a blue McKinley, and the newest model. The McKinley family lives right across the street from the Amsterdams, and owning one of their cars is already a sign of status in the district. And despite how Chev's parents love status- they host the New Year's party every year with hundreds of guests, all socialites- they refuse to get him one. Legal driving age in District Six is fourteen, due mainly to all the transportation District Six has, but Chevrolet's parents make a point to him that he can't argue. He can get a car if he's the volunteer. Not Bennet Piston, who has a billion cousins and siblings that can go into the Games as well. The Amsterdams are never second-best. Despite the celebration, Ramona and Thomas Amsterdam make it clear to Chevrolet that it's all just a formality.
So speed up to two years later, just a month or two before the reapings. Speed up, just like the blue McKinley Bennet lets him drive for the fourth time ever. They're both in the front seat- Bennet gets shotgun. Jett and Kiva, close friends, and Nathan, Bennet's boyfriend, are all in the backseat after leaving the party that was for you guessed it, Bennet Piston. Official volunteer now, and though Chevrolet doesn't remember drinking, but he knows he did.
Kiva Redhorn is crying and yelling at them to slow down, exhausted at one in the morning, but Jett, who is probably not completely sober like Chev, eggs Bennet and Chevrolet on. Nathan, for once, doesn't say a word to anyone. Chev later learns he was passed out in the backseat. There's excitement rushing through Chevrolet's veins, and then suddenly he sees the car coming
straight
towards
them.
He's not sober enough to turn quickly, and they smash into each other. Bennet's blue McKinley?
Destroyed.
Chev wakes to sirens before anyone else does. There's blood everywhere, and he's in the middle of it. Kiva is gasping for air in the backseat, and it sounds like she's dying.
And, distantly, Chevrolet knows how bad this will be if anyone finds out.
He switches seats with Bennet's unconscious body, and when the hospital workers come and save them, one of them has already died from the accident.
Everything was a blur until Chev woke up in the hospital. Kiva kept insisting that he had been the one driving, but she had gotten a severe concussion, and Jett and Nathan both didn't remember a thing. Chev, with no head trauma, was easy to believe. Bennet had been driving, and he had driven them into another car.
Not Chevrolet.
Yes, he killed Bennet Piston. On April 26th each year, Chevrolet remembers once again. He remembers the car wheels slipping, he remembers the shattered glass, and he remembers the blood dripping down his best friend's head.
Gail Timmons.
Victor of the 17th New Games.
District 10.
Sometimes Gail wonders.
She has wonderful friends- well, just Isobel- and a wonderful family, but sometimes she wonders if she'd be at peace dead in the arena.
Because right now, Gail can't think. All she sees are her seven kills, every minute of every damn day. And she remembers their names, too. Names from a Victory Tour she did her best to block out. She went looking for their names after she won, and now they've stayed in her mind ever since. Angora and Lance, both only twelve, were frequent in her nightmares, blood leaking from a head wound or a slashed throat, respectively. Then Claire and Melenia had both been fourteen- just the unlucky ones. They would come next. Lavender, fifteen- drowned. Sebastian and Angus, her fellow Careers and the only remaining ones after they reached the top five? Killed in their sleep.
Seven.
Isn't it supposed to be a lucky number?
She hates the irony so, so much.
The light in her life is Isobel, but Gail, fresh out of an arena with a shattered mind and a broken heart, sometimes has to remind herself that Isobel is a friend. She makes Gail talk about what Gail knows she's supposed to need to talk about instead of pushing it away- like the seven she murdered.
With Isobel, there's no hiding what Gail did. It's laid bare, stripped apart, examined, as if her experiences are undergoing a medical operation, and Gail knows it's meant to help her. But sometimes it feels exploitative even though it's not- Gail knows it's not. She doesn't know much but she knows that and that's why she'll do whatever Isobel asks her so she doesn't lose her only friend.
And yet, she can't not feel guilty, as if she's forcing Isobel to stay even though she's a completely different person compared to before she left for the Games. Gail gets resentful on days Isobel doesn't show up- happening more and more often now- or on days when she did but didn't say anything to distract Gail from the voices of the seven. Sometimes, she yells at her friend to leave, forgetting that Isobel is seven years younger than her and not nearly as…
Broken.
"How did you feel when you did it?" Isobel would ask, her voice hungry.
"Did what?"
"Killed them."
Gail would pause, then make her reply as brief as possible to escape the conversation, but long enough to satisfy Isobel. "I don't know. I didn't think about them when I did it, though. Just about… surviving."
And then, on another occasion, "Did you ever just want to give up?"
It was a question Isobel already knew the answer to.
Gail knows she was just trying to help. She was the one person- besides Gail's immediate family- that hadn't backed away in fear of her. And, believe her, Gail had tried to make more people stay. She would put on a pretty smile, crack a few jokes like she did before she sold her life away, and pretend she hadn't been broken as easily as the delicate china Gail's family had used for her first dinner back at home. She had dropped her plate, and it cut her hand open. In the end, her brother had helped her back to reality.
But the blood.
She feels like an addict. She's just struggling with the drug of her choice- not wanting to heal and hurting the people around her, too.
Talking about it would help her heal. Isobel had said so in the past, and Gail trusts her more than anything.
(Tell me why it feels so wrong, then, Gail. Tell me why you've never hated yourself more.)
(It's... somehow my fault. I know it has to be.)
Wires by The Neighbourhood