Trigger Warning: This chapter deals with some pretty upsetting issues, including grooming. It's probably one of the darkest chapters I've written so far.
Courgette Leland, District 11
"Playin' tortuous games.
It goes: Lens. Light. Fame."
TV on the Radio, Red Dress
Normally in District 11, when someone's best friend went into the Hunger Games, they came back in a box.
Brock Eska didn't count. When he was reaped, he didn't have any friends. Fourteen years later, he still didn't, unless you counted the whiskey bottle.
When my best friend, Courgette, was reaped, I thought she was going to die.
The parade was rarely the worst part of the games but that didn't mean I didn't hate it. I hated the idea of dressing someone up to die. All the girls at school usually loved it. When we were thirteen, they were all cooing over Luka Starkwain. I didn't mind that they did but it bothered me that they treated me and Cour like aliens because we didn't care about pretty boys.
In her chariot, Cour didn't look like herself. She was wearing some red silk underwear strung with tiny bejewelled apples. I think it was supposed to look sexy but it just reminded me of Apple, the girl from last year's games who'd killed herself by stepping off the podium too early. Everything about the Hunger Games reminded me of death in some way or another. They'd put some chemicals in Cour's hair to make it straight and makeup all over her skin to make her paler. She looked like a doll instead of a real girl.
The smile on her face was obviously fake.
I spent the training days worrying. Courgette got an eight, which seemed to suit her well. My friend could climb trees like Stallie Burton and she'd won more fights in the school playground than I could count. I could never picture her killing someone, though. I could never picture her actual winning.
In the interview, I could hardly recognise Cour. It was like she was possessed by an evil spirit. She was in a tiny, red dress which showed far too much of her skin. She spent her interview pouting with full, crimson lips and batting shimmery eyelashes but I could see in her eyes that she was scared. I tried to imagine how Cour must've felt, half-naked in front of the entire country, having got it into her head that she would only survive if if she turned people on. I wanted to break through my TV screen and tell her that she didn't need sponsors to survive, that she already had all the skills she needed to win and she could just be herself. But I couldn't.
Whoever was whispering into Cour's ear - it couldn't have been her mentor, since Brock was too far beyond caring - they had her under their control.
The moment she launched into the arena, I knew she'd win. The arena was an orchard, like home. Perfect for the girl I'd grown up with. Whenever I pictured Cour in my head, I pictured her covered in mud, with twigs poking out of her wild, dark hair. She'd always loved the outdoors. She knew everything she needed to keep herself alive. She knew which fruits were edible and which were deadly. She knew how to avoid tracker jacker stings.
I watched tribute after tribute succumb to hunger and poison and stings and wept with joy.
Courgette wafted through the orchard like a nymph, plucking poisonous fruits from the branches and slipping them into other tributes' bags when they weren't watching. I was grateful for my friend choosing to become a poisoner. She never saw the tributes that she'd killed, never watched the life leave their eyes.
Until her final victim found her.
The boy from Nine was strong and smart, smart enough to find the poisonous fruit tucked into his backpack and throw it away, laughing. The moment it was just him and Cour left, I knew he'd kill her. But when he found her and pressed his knife to her throat, she just batted her eyelashes, licked her lips and asked him if he was hungry. I saw the look in his eyes, his will crumbling. I saw his hesitation.
He stood there, stunned, as Cour raised a handful of fruit to his lips and made him eat.
Normally in District 11, when someone's best friend went into the Hunger Games, they came back in a box.
Not my best friend. She came back in a tiny, red dress and she wasn't really my best friend anymore. I didn't understand it. Her life didn't depend on being sexy anymore but she still didn't go back to how she used to be. Courgette never came looking for me. She never invited me over to her house in Victor's Village. She never spoke to me again.
Every year, she'd go to the Capitol and, every year, she'd come back looking a little different. Either her waist was thinner or her chest was bigger or her skin would be lighter or her hair would be a completely different colour. Soon she was unrecognisable. I'd never get the wild-haired girl with mud stains on her knees back.
It was only when I was an old woman, with a husband I'd never loved and kids and grandkids I'd never wanted, that Finnick Odair made his speech on TV and I realised what they'd been doing to Courgette. By then, it was too late for me to mend things between us. The peacekeepers had already shot her dead.
This chapter turned out pretty dark. I took inspiration from some of the things I'd heard in the news about influential figures in the film industry using their power to take advantage of actresses. I also decided to leave many of the things Courgette was forced into to the imagination, to keep this as T-rated as possible. Cranberry, the narrator, can only tell what the Capitol are doing to her friend from what she sees on TV, which doesn't give her any concrete evidence of Courgette being groomed. I think it's pretty disturbing from her point of view because she has to watch her friend change without ever fully knowing the reasons why. To be honest, this chapter is disturbing from anyone's point of view.
Victor prostitution as Finnick describes it in Mockingjay hasn't been invented yet but that won't stop certain Capitolites from preying on vulnerable tributes like Courgette. If it makes you feel any better about the dark themes in this chapter, Courgette won't have to mentor and be used by the Capitol for too long. There's a certain canon victor who'll allow her to retire and give her some time to recover from her experiences, even if she never reconnects with her old friend. As well as this, she lives long enough to become involved in the rebellion and contributes a little to the Capitol eventually being taken over.
