Chapter VIII: Unimaginable

"Similarly to Canna, morphling is derived from an old drug used hundreds of years ago, during the Americana era. It's original form was an opium-based medicine called morphine. It was incredibly powerful, able to deaden even the worst pain. But, unlike the cannabis plant, morphine could kill. It was highly addictive, and people often bought it (or street versions of it) for recreational purposes. Like Canna, the original compounds were bastardized and re-arranged to form a much more powerful, dangerous descendant." –A Basic History of Substances, Volume Two, Panem Medical Press

The orderlies in the hospital have taken Beetee, Daddy, and I to a private waiting room to prevent us from being swamped by fans or media. I think we still managed to cause whispers in the emergency room as we were whisked down the hall upon arrival.

Daddy and Mommy hold each other in the corner by the door. Mom is shaking.

Beetee is sitting calmly in a chair closer to where I am, keeping an eye on me. He's watching me like I'm a bomb about to explode, but I'm looking blankly out the window, trying to arrange my thoughts into something more cohesive. None of us are speaking.

This room is white and hermetic. I don't think a single germ could exist in here if it wanted to. It's as if someone bleached Daddy's waiting room until it could reflect sunlight. Is this sterile place supposed to comfort us as we wait for news about my brother?

I don't feel anything at all. Is it shock? No. If it were shock, I wouldn't be thinking at all. But what else could possibly explain why I'm so numb? Is it because I've been in worse places than this? I can't see what's happening to Edison right now, and it's as if he's alive and dead at the same time. In the arena, I saw death. I nearly met death. Death was in front of my face. Maybe I know inside me that nothing could be worse than that.

If he lives, I'm going to make amends, I think. I'll help him get off the morphling, and maybe he can work with Beetee and I to make that tincture, and it will give him new purpose.

I can hear noises in the hall. A woman screams. A child cries. Doctors bark hasty orders at Healers. The occasional gurney rolls by.

I can feel Beetee's eyes on me. I don't care to look at him right now. We should both save our sympathy for Edison.

I can see my reflection in the window. I need to follow through with cutting my hair. It's presently well past my shoulders and down my chest. It's not worth taking care of at this length. Plume and Aloysius would be upset with me if I cut it; there wouldn't be enough hair left to style. But why should I care what two ditzes from the Capitol think? They will likely be too busy with this year's Tributes anyhow.

"Dr. and Mrs. Ohmstead?"

We all turn to face the Healer as one. I feel chills. The Healer's face tells us everything, and I don't need her to say the words.

The sibling of a Victor doesn't ever get the attention or priority the Victor themselves does. Panem has no need to sugar-coat Edison's story. All they need to do is omit the details and make the funeral small, which is typically District Three's custom anyway.

In Three, weddings and funerals aren't full of pomp and circumstance (as most of us can't afford to do it that way). Weddings amount to a signing ceremony. Funerals have a little more than that, but that's mainly to comfort the survivors. Death is the same for everyone, no matter their District. It is just the sendoff that differs.

In Three, bodies can be donated to research. While we aren't necessarily top in medical research, the human body has so much to offer many other areas of study. If someone dies due to a malfunction in some piece of technology, the body is autopsied and their injuries studied to see if there's some clue as to how to fix the machine that caused their deaths. Bodies are good electric conductors as well, so their use in the study of electricity and safety is also important. When one in Three turns nineteen, they sign a legal document that directs their next of kin on what to do with their remains.

However, Edison had been barely of age, and had not formally indicated where he wanted his body to go when he passed away. As a result, he has been cremated, which is the default. Out of respect, a person must say they wish to be donated while in life in order for the donation to happen.

For those left behind (Mom, Daddy, and I), we have a small ceremony to inter his ashes outside of the City in the public burial fields. That's where we are today.

It doesn't feel right that it's bright and sunny. It's the first week of spring. Outside the City, where the smog can't reach us, everything is crystal clear. It's easier to breathe, and the air doesn't smell like dirt. It's a shame that I can't appreciate it fully.

Mom and I wear black dresses, and Daddy and Beetee wear suits. Only a few other people are with us. Two Grave Tenders place the urn of Edison's remains on top of the marker that will indicate where he lies for the rest of the Earth's time. One of Edison's former teachers, Mr. Li, is here with his wife. No one from the Capitol or anywhere else in Panem are here, and I don't expect Edison will get so much as a minute of airtime on the Capitol Report. After all, I won the Games. He couldn't even make it to twenty. The Capitol doesn't know he exists.

One of the Grave Tenders, a very tall man with oddly light skin for our District, reads a few words out of respect before lowering the urn into the hole under the marker, with only a few words and Edison's last school identification photo engraved into it:

Edison Jonas Ohmstead

February 8, 2561-March 23, 2580

Son, Brother

No one ever said we were a wordy people in District Three.

After the ceremony, we take a private monorail back into the City, which only takes about thirty minutes. No one speaks. Mom cries and Daddy stays with her. I haven't said a word to Beetee, nor has he to me, but every so often I catch him looking at me with concern.

I haven't cried once since the hospital, and I'm not sure if that means I'm heartless, or if I never really loved him. More than anything, I just blame myself for his death. After all, he started using morphling because of me. I yelled at him the day before he passed. He was the one who hunted and took me away from that Canna club. I was the last person he interacted with before he took that fatal dose.

When we arrive at Victor's Village, Beetee finally addresses me.

"Tea?"

I look at him, and I realize for the first time since the Games, that I don't want to be around anyone, including Beetee. I think it's because I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed because it's my fault Edison is dead instead of applying for his inter-District passport to start his life.

"No," I say, barely audible, going up the stairs to my apartment alone.

"Wiress? Wiress!" Beetee calls after me.

He has nothing to worry about. I won't kill myself or anything, but I still feel like being alone.

I don't like admitting it, but being a Victor comes with advantages. Some are more obvious than others: I don't ever have to worry about being homeless or starving. I don't have to worry about being Reaped. I get to experience "the Capitol Lifestyle" at least once every year, or more if I wanted to. I can have as much money, jewelry, or other priceless items I could want. I can get away with using illegal morphling and Canna without the threat of arrest.

One of the few advantages I like to use is access to otherwise-forbidden music and books. Granted, the Capitol never brings me these, but in Three we have many archivists who have access to so much of the world's past that all I need is to ask and provide some kind of payment, and within a week or two, a music player or novel from hundreds of years ago will be delivered to me.

I decide to put on a music file from the Americana Era. The entire file is from a musical play about one of the Founders of the Americana Era government. I can't find much to read on the man, as even the best archivists in Panem can't find everything, especially from so long ago, before the apocalyptic events that brought America down in the first place. The music isn't particularly to my taste, but some of the individual songs resonate, especially the sad ones.

There are moments that the words don't reach

There's a suffering too terrible to name

We push away what we can never understand—

"—we push away the unimaginable," a voice finishes.

Of course, it's Beetee. He must know I almost never lock my door, though I wish he'd respected my request in the first place, at least for tonight.

"I like that one too, though my preference is for the first half of the album," he continued. "More upbeat."

"I told you to leave me alone," I say softly.

Beetee walks into the library and sheepishly puts his hands in his pockets. He's still wearing his suit from the memorial. I have been out of my dress for hours.

"I think you know why I can't do that," Beetee says.

"You can do anything you want," I reply. "If you're worried, I won't harm myself. I won't take any Canna either. I don't want it ever again."

"No, that's not it…well, not all of it," he answers, looking around before taking a seat on the foot rest in front of the chaise I occupy. "Wire, you know how I feel about you. I can't in good conscience leave the woman I love alone at a time like this, especially when it may be may fault your brother died in the first place."

I don't know what part of his word make me tense up all over, whether it's "it may be my fault" or "the woman I love" or just "woman." I still hate when anyone calls me that.

"What makes you think that?" is all I can muster.

"Edison was your big brother. Imagine watching you come home and have another boy the same age take over the role, and take it away from what is rightfully his own job," Beetee says softly, as if each word exacerbates his guilt. He wrinkles his forehead, as if holding back a cringe or a grimace.

"You didn't," I say. "He was protective of me, but we never had any of the conversations you and I do."

"Exactly."

I feel like I've been hit in the chest as the realization comes over me. Edison was jealous of Beetee? Of watching him care for me in a way Edison couldn't? But why did he never tell me this in life? If he was so upset, if he had only said so…

"It wasn't you," I murmur. "You didn't inject morphling into his arm."

"Maybe not, but maybe—"

"—just stop!" My voice is raising in volume, and my face is beginning to feel hot. "We'll never know, so why ask? I just want to rewind the world to a year ago and run away from here before my name was pulled. Before I knew what misery was. Before—"

-before I knew you.

I am able to stop myself before I say the rest of it, because blind speech driven by emotions won't help either of us. Plus, I know in my heart it isn't true. Instead, I change directions.

"He would walk me to and from school. Sometimes he'd watch me when both Mom and Daddy were working. But we never spent real time together. He was more like a bodyguard to me. I never knew he liked doing it. I always thought he thought it was his duty."

"I think there is something you should know," Beetee says. "I talked with him after he brought you home the other night. He was high, so I'm not sure how 'in his own head' he was. But I mentioned his ambitions to travel to District Two and start a career there, and how now, more than ever, it was possible for him."

"He could've left any time he wanted."

"Right," he continues. "But he told me that staying here for you was what he needed to do."

And suddenly, it's my fault, even if no one sees it that way. It was me this whole time, shirking him at every turn, ignoring that he even existed. Before our argument that led me to run off into the city, I'd only spoken to him a handful of times, and all this time I've been thinking he was avoiding me…was I avoiding him instead? Was I pushing him away like I'm always pushing Daddy away?

My fault. It really is my fault.

"W…why would you tell me this?" I feel a cold rush go up and down my spine. I feel sick to my stomach. I must be getting pale, because Beetee's look changes from sorrow to instant regret. He has said too much, and he knows it immediately.

"I didn't mean to say it like that. I'm sorry, Wire. I'm so good at figuring things out with logic and facts, sometimes I can't process the effect—"

"—get out," I say quietly. "Please. Just go."

"Wiress," Beetee begins. I stay quiet and look at him indignantly, but he doesn't finish his thought.

Maybe it's the look on my face that scares him, or maybe it's that he's still processing the weight of his words, but he gets up off of the foot rest and leaves me silently, going out the door and back upstairs. Maybe he'll visit tomorrow. Maybe he'll never speak to me again. Somehow, in this moment, I don't care.

Unimaginable.

It's not as warm as it usually is for this time of year. It's gray and windy, though it doesn't feel like rain will fall. It may yet get hot, as it's only about an hour after dawn.

I'm on the roof overlooking the City. As usual, smog and dust obscure much of the sights, but I want to be here right now, getting a good look of my home. There's a kind of security to a city. It's closed in, yes, but is that a bad thing? Maybe for a country person, but for me, it's the best kind of environment I can think of. Even the Capitol seems more open than the dense, tightly-packed Inner City.

It's been almost four months since I've spoken more than ten words to Beetee. He's left me alone, and I haven't sought him out, though that will inevitably change after today. My birthday was about a month or so ago. Sweet Sixteen, as people from the past may have called it. Beetee came down for the small dinner Mom and Daddy prepared for me, but he spent most of his time talking with Daddy. Mom bought me a new dress, and Beetee must have coordinated, because he procured a pendant in the same dark green as the dress. It's a real stone, emerald, I think. I have little experience with jewels, but I accepted the gift gratefully, and it did make Beetee smile when I tried it on.

The weight of Edison's death has lifted only a little. He stands among the dead bodies of my dreams now. Sometimes I even dream he is my partner in the Games, and all I see is myself beheading him, or watching as he drowns, or worse. When I wake up screaming, for a moment, I'll swear I hear footsteps bolting around directly above me, as if Beetee has shared my nightmare. But after a moment, the footsteps retreat, and he is back in his own bed again. I feel as if I know what is really happening…he hears me and starts to check on me…then remembers how I refuse to see him.

Mom is the only one I see now, and I will confess, having her playing a closer role in my life has been a good thing. I have always underestimated or dismissed her. She's a plain woman who isn't particularly warm, but having a female to confide in has been such a benefit. Mom never blames me for Edison. Mom never brings up the Games. Mom never refuses when I offer to read to her, and when I do, she listens intently and discusses each passage with me, even if I think she wouldn't otherwise be interested. Mom talks to me in a way I can relate to…a way I could never share with anyone. Sometimes I want to cry and scold myself for waiting sixteen years to let her into my heart.

I hear the door creak open behind me. Speaking of Mom, she's here now.

"They're here," she says softly. "Beetee is almost ready. It's time."

I turn to look at her. She isn't dressed or made up, because she isn't going anywhere today.

I am, however. Today is the day I've been dreading since the Victory Tour.

Today is the Reaping for the 45th Annual Hunger Games, and my formal debut as a Mentor. Today is the day my nightmares become solid reality.