Chapter 11- Silver Bellcreek
"Tell me about District 9," I whisper to Beade, who sits next to me with her back against the rough wood wall. I can see her properly today; I think it's sunny outside, because the train car is so brightly lit. It turns out that the ceiling isn't one piece of wood, but slats nailed closely together, but not closely enough that light can't come through. Thin strips of light cover the floor, and we tributes who sit on it.
Beade gets a far away look in her eye at my question. "Before the war, there was the town, the proper district, you know, and then there was the grain fields that stretched for acres and acres. I didn't work there back then, I went to school, but my family worked at growing and cutting the grain." She looks at me, and smiles like she might cry. "We fed Panem. The rebels burned the fields later."
My eyes flick to where Oak and Tulsee sit together, plotting their rebel schemes. I won't talk to them, neither of them. I'll stay here where I can hate the rebels in peace. But hearing Beade talk about grain makes my stomach contract painfully; I'm so hungry, and so is everyone else. Do they want us to starve to death by the time we reach the Capitol?
The new girl, the one who arrived this morning, hasn't said a word yet. She's small and very, very thin, as though she hasn't eaten for weeks, with dark hair that falls around her pale face, hiding it from sight. She and the boy who came with her, have been sitting in the middle of the train car since they got on, hunched up and staring at the walls.
I'm curious to know who they are, but I'm nervous to ask them. They look fragile. I don't even know what district they're from!
"How about you? What's District 1 like now?" Beade asks, leaning her head on my shoulder. "Luxury district; is it all diamonds and furs?"
I laugh. "Not even close!" I say. "We don't even see most of the luxury materials in normal times, and nothing since everything happened. My father's a goldsmith, so sometimes I see some of the pieces he makes, but that's about it." I poke at my dress, the pretty dress that Mum gave me the morning of the reaping. The plum color is getting filthy from the dirt on the floor.
"It's been so long since I've seen anything pretty," Beade sighs. Her dress is of a dark gold color, but it's clearly thin and worn, and patched several times. I thank my lucky stars that I was born in District 1 and not any of the lower districts.
Suddenly, the new girl bursts into tears, burying her face in her knees and sobbing harder than anyone I've ever seen. Beade and I exchange confused looks. The boy reaches over and awkwardly rubs the girl's back, looking blank faced himself.
"Is she okay?" Cass asks from her place at the door.
"What do you think?" he snaps, turning to glare at her.
"Lay off of Cass; she's just asking what we're all thinking," Rigg says.
"Yeah, who are you anyway?" Glow asks. "Where're you from?"
Everyone in the train car has turned their full attention to the sobbing girl and the boy who looks as thin as one of the stripes of light that cross the floor.
"We're District 3," he says finally.
"So why is she crying?" Glow asks, readjusting his cuffs.
The boy looks at Glow like he's stupid. "Keek doesn't want to die any more than you do."
"So her name is Keek?" Beade says. The boy hesitates, then nods. "Who are you then?"
"Volt Wellhorn."
"Who says she's going to die?" Flick asks.
"It's a fight to the death, isn't it? Keek's fourteen, she's not going to be able to kill anyone, let alone you," Volt says, nodding to Flick. He's not wrong; Flick is one of the tallest and strongest looking tributes so far.
"I'm fourteen too," Cass says quietly.
"Yeah? You'll die as quick as we will when we reach the Capitol."
"Don't say that!" Cass says.
"We don't even know what we're up against when we get to the Capitol," Aldar says.
Volt looks at him, blank faced. "We're up against each other, obviously."
"You could be wrong," Rigg says. "The Capitol could just be proving a point. They might not make us fight."
"Do you really believe that, Rigg?" Oak says. "I've seen what the Capitol can do, and they're not going to be nice to us just because we're their little 'chosen ones.'"
"Just because you hate the Capitol doesn't mean that they're going to kill us!" I say. I have to stand up for what I think, and not let the rebels take over the conversation. If the Capitol wasn't going to be merciful, they would have executed all the rebels, instead of letting some go free.
"Just because the Capitol sees you as their pretty pets doesn't mean that they see the rest of us that way," Tulsee says, speaking up at last.
"District 3 was destroyed," Volt says, a hard edge coming into his voice. "The city was burned and blown up, and not by the rebels."
"The Capitol wouldn't do that! It's the rebels, they made you think that the Capitol did that!" I say, shaking with anger.
Oak stands up, her face contorted with fury and shouts, "My parents died to try and free you! Everything we did, three years worth, was to try and help everyone get their freedom. And now I see you, you Capitol pet, who hasn't known a hard day in your life, and I wonder if it was all worth it. The idea that they died to help you-"
"Oak, calm down," Aldar says, but she rounds on him next.
"Don't you dare tell me what to do, I swear, Aldar Grovepath. You did shit all in the war, and you abandoned us all to stay out of it."
"What else was I supposed to do? I wasn't going to follow you to the Capitol to die!"
"You should have; it would have made you a better person," Oak finishes, slumping back down beside Tulsee.
"The Capitol isn't going to kill us, you know," Tulsee says. "They're going to make us kill each other, and that's a far better punishment to the rebels, don't you think? They get to know that their children die for their crimes."
"So what are we doing here then?" Beade asks. "We're not rebels, so how come we're sitting on the train with you?"
Tulsee shrugs. "Collateral damage."
"And what do you mean by me never having a hard day in my life? You don't know what I went through in the war either!" I say. "I saw people die, I saw my school get destroyed, my district wrecked by fumbling rebels who thought they were doing the right thing. But they weren't! You were wrong!"
"District 1 didn't suffer!" Oak says. "You got to keep your pretty dresses and your fine buildings, and I know because I saw it. I went through by train, and I saw the damage done, and it's nothing compared to the other districts."
"The war was a mistake, let's just admit that and move on," Flick says, holding his hands up. "I've had enough of the pointless arguing."
Oak's eyes flash with anger again, but Tulsee grabs her arm and shakes her head. The two rebels fall silent, and so does everyone else in the train car. The only sound comes from Keek, whose muffled crying has continued through our argument.
I feel like crying too. We're days away from reaching the Capitol, and in the meantime the tension in this boxcar feels heavier than the hot and stuffy air. I want to get off; want to stop seeing the strips of light on the floor that bend odd ways when I look at them; want to stop smelling the stinking air that radiates from that horrid bucket in the corner. I want to look around and see sunshine, not unwashed and desperate tributes.
I want to go home. I'm the first tribute from District 1, which already gives me a place in history. Now, after hearing the others' words, and yes, even Tulsee's, it's made it more real that I'm going to have to kill the others to get home. I'm only sixteen, I can't do that!
I don't know what's going to happen. Beade leans her head on my shoulder again, and we all just sit in silence, listening to Keek's sobs peter out and become muffled sniffs. Just waiting for something to happen.
After a while, we start to slow down again.
"Great. New tributes," Glow says, stretching as best he can with his hands cuffed together.
"Wonder where we are," Rigg says. I look around the car, in a useless attempt to see outside, somehow. I see Jet instead, curled up on the floor and staring straight ahead. Honestly, I had forgotten about him.
"Everything is covered in black," Cass says, peering through a crack in the wall. "Even the grass is dirty."
"District 12, then?" Aldar says, yawning.
"That or 8," Flick says.
"They're still getting up and running again; it wouldn't be smoggy yet," Rigg says.
The train slows until it stops, and I don't really appreciate how loud the train is until it's perfectly still. The rattling seems to be engrained in my head, and I can feel the pressure behind my eyes where the sound has been lodged the past few days.
"I see the Peacekeepers coming!" Cass says, and we all become quiet again, waiting for the new tributes to board.
The lock is removed from the outside, and the door slides open, making Cass back up. She's gotten thinner over the past few days, and her eyes are more prominent than before. And she was skinny when she got on, too!
"So you're all still alive," says a tall Peacekeeper with a face hard as stone. I'm not one to be particularly frightened by Peacekeepers, but this one makes me nervous.
"Barely," Oak says from the other side of the train. "Might keep us alive better if you feed us."
"Not likely," he says, stepping aside, and the tributes are thrust forward. The boy is sickly pale, with shaggy black hair and a dangerous look in his eye. Like he might attack at any moment, even though he's so thin he looks like he might break in two if the Peacekeeper holding him squeezes too hard.
The girl on the other hand, is thin too, but with long pale hair that hides her face. I can hear her crying, and tears stain her light grey dress that looks as though it might have been blue once. My heart does an odd pang at the sight of her.
"On!" the other Peacekeeper standing by, a woman with steel grey hair, says, and the two climb in, albeit reluctantly. Keek looks up for the first time in ages at the girl. Great, we have another crier.
"Feed us, please!" Beade says desperately. "Please!"
In answer, the door shuts with a bang, and the lock goes back on the outside of the door. The new boy punches the door, then winces as he shakes his fist out. The blonde girl just sits there and cries, looking for all the world like a limp dishrag.
"Who're you?" Rigg asks, eying the duo suspiciously. "Where are we?"
"What's it to you?" the boy snaps, kicking the door this time.
"Save the attitude for the Capitol; where the hell are we?" Tulsee says, and the boy turns on her menacingly. Tulsee doesn't look intimidated; she stares the boy down until he breaks eye contact.
"District 12. Happy?"
"Will be when we find out your name. We're not enemies yet, you know," Tulsee says.
"Sanguin," the boy spits out. "That's Aldera."
Aldera doesn't look up at the sound of her name; she just keeps crying. Luckily, Keek's stopped, and is just looking blankly at the wall in front of her. Underneath us, the train starts up again, carrying on to whatever place we're going to next.
Volt makes a sound that confuses me at first, then I register it as laughter. It's an odd, croaking noise, but definitely a laugh. "So we have an Aldar and an Aldera now? How will we tell them apart?"
Without warning, Sanguin strides over to where Volt is sitting and punches him square in the face.
"Shit!" Volt says, falling to the side and clutching his nose; his fingers come away red.
"What the hell was that for?" Glow says, jumping to his feet. Sanguin stares Glow down, an odd expression twisting his face, before he apparently realizes that Glow is over a foot taller than he is.
"Just sit down, both of you!" Rigg says.
"Shut it!" Glow says, not moving.
"Oh, quit it!" Beade says. "I've had enough of this! Just sit down and shut up and don't hit each other anymore!"
I glare at Glow until he reluctantly sits down; Sanguin stands alone in the middle of the floor for a second more, then marches over to sit down in the corner, near Jet. Keek's started to cry again, trying to help Volt stem the blood flowing from his nose.
As I watch this scene play out, I realize just how right Tulsee was. We're all collateral damage in the attempt to punish the rebels. I still think that the Capitol was right to punish the rebels, and to show an example to the rest of Panem, but I'm not fond of being collateral damage myself.
I volunteered to be here, though, and it's better me than Flaire. Even though I'm collateral damage, I have to show everyone, the Capitol and districts combined, that it's those who remained loyal to the Capitol who come out on top.
I don't really have a choice now, do I?