Chapter 13: When You Think About Me

I wave goodbye to our latest customer with a friendly smile as the bell tinkles behind her closing of the door. Through the panes, Mrs. Olsen's little granddaughter, only 5 years old, cranes her neck back to keep staring at me like I'm some kind of goddess. Or maybe a freak of nature, I don't know. Sighing, I shuffle around behind the counter, pausing briefly to cross through yesterday's date on the calendar at the wall.

Today is August 4th. It's been exactly one month since Reaping Day. One month since my best friend's boyfriend kissed me on Reaping morning, and I still got pulled with the man I had already fallen in love with, along with two others, into a death match. A death match from which I alone escaped. If my math is correct, it's been a mere fifteen days since I was pulled alive from the arena. I've been home for almost two weeks.

The morning after I burst into Kaydilyn's and my room and threw myself down on my bed, sobbing over the pain I brought to the Abernathys, a squad of Peacekeepers showed up at our shop (most Merchant families, including mine, live above their businesses). Within a matter of hours, they were able to shuttle most of my life and belongings out the door and up the hill across town.

District 12's Victors' Village is set high on a hill, ironically at the far end of the Seam. It's a deeply isolated place, there on the outskirts of the district – the electric fence bordering our homeland from the forest beyond is but a two-minute walk from my new front door. When we first arrived over the crest of the hill, I took in the dozen houses standing around me in awe. Six mansions with pre-manicured lawns bordered either side, an ornate stone fountain in the middle. Of the twelve spacious homes, only one has ever been occupied…. until now.

But when I asked one of the Peacekeepers moving my things which house belonged to Lucy Gray Baird, he blinked at me with bemusement. "To be honest, Miss Donner, ma'am, the Victors' Villages as a concept had only just been decreed around the time Miss Baird won. Construction commenced after she was pulled from the arena. By the time the Village here in Twelve was completed… Miss Baird had already vanished."

A chill passed through me, even though it's the dog days of summer. "So… our Village has been completely empty, all these years? No inhabitants whatsoever?"

The Peacekeeper grins at me. "Until you."

Next summer will be my first year as a mentor. And damn it, I'm bringing a kid home alive, if for no other reason than I won't have to spend years upon years living up here, all alone.

I am shaken by my thoughts when I hear the heavy tread of my father clopping up the stairs from the shop's basement. It's where we keep a lot of the vats to first warm the liquefied candy, before hardening it in an extra-large refrigerator. Catching my eye in one aisle as he's restocking shelves, he smiles at me. "Morning, sweetie."

I smile back. "Hi, Daddy." I check the till in the cash register, sorting coin from the odd sesterce note, usually only given as payment when a Peacekeeper enters our shop. Behind me, I hear Daddy lifting the hinged section of counter to join me.

"Hey." I glance up at him with an expectant smile. Daddy is scratching the back of his neck sheepishly, and looking incredibly nervous. "While we're on a lull, I wanted to ask you about something…"

"Sure," I chirp, perching up on the counter. "What about?" Then, it hits me, and I try to pre-empt the conversation that I imagine he and I have both wanted to have. I take his large, warm hand in mine, recalling fondly how they used to slip my sister and I treats – sometimes new confectionaries that Daddy had just invented. Kaydilyn and I were always the best taste-testers.

"Daddy…." I murmur. "I know when I was in the arena…" – he flinches at the word like it's a curse – "You saw me do…. horrible things. They're things I'm not proud of, but… you don't have to worry. I'm still me. I'm still your little girl." I smile at him, though I can feel that it's weak. I don't even know if I'm buying my own line I'm selling. I murdered three people, and personally witnessed the deaths of no less than six others. Beech, Opal, the boy from 6, the boy from 5, the girl from 9, Haymitch… They will all remain with me for the rest of my days, I know.

But to my shock, Daddy shakes his head. "It isn't that, dear."

I blink owlishly at him. "Then… then what's it about?"

Daddy sighs and looks away. He's rubbing the back of his neck again, so intensely that a little bit of dandruff flakes off and floats down to join the dust at our feet. "I wish your Mama were having this conversation; she was young once too. And boys, 'specially at your age, can be quite tempting, even Seam ones…"

My eyes widen in dawning comprehension. Oh no…..

Daddy's blue eyes – so much like mine – trap me in their gaze at last. "Your mother and I were very disappointed at what transpired between you and the Abernathy boy. I thought we raised you better than that, Maysilee! Certainly, you've always seemed to be more cautious about…. sexual relations than your sister – not that Merle Undersee isn't a fine, upstanding boy; he's all I could have hoped for for Kaydilyn, and what I still hope for you…" He shakes his head to clear his rambling. "But to willingly lie with a Seam boy, and do it on national television….."

"Do you think I planned it?" I blast out, and Daddy's voice trails off, a little in shock. "Haymitch had just saved my life, and…"

"I don't care if he had gotten down on his hands and knees and proposed marriage right then and there!" Daddy thunders, his face rapidly turning red, and then purple. "He took advantage of my daughter – my daughter! My little Maysie Bird!" Tears prick at his eyes. "Why did you let him? Was it pity, was that it?"

I gawk at my father in abject disbelief. "What Games were you watching?" I gasp, and were it not for the heatedness of the conversation, the rhetorical question would make me laugh. "As I recall, I kissed him first!" Daddy reels back in horror slightly, as if this is news to him. Perhaps he repressed that little bit of information.

"Because he saved your life? So you thought you'd open your goddamn knees for him?"

I let out a tiny gasp of horror at his vulgarity. Daddy never swears – never. And I've certainly never seen him this angry, at least not with me. Kaydilyn's antics have required him to come down on her, more than once, but this….

"Were you in love with him?"

I almost miss the question, but I still glower at him. "For the sake of the dead, and for Haymitch, that's none of your business…."

"Answer the goddamn question, Maysilee Katherine Donner!"

My full name gets me. I gulp, tears leaking from my irises. "Yes," I whisper helplessly. "But he already had a girlfriend – married her in secret in the Justice Building, come to find out…"

Daddy throws up his hands. "I can't believe you! Wanting, lusting after trash like that…."

I flinch, my expression contorting with rage. Getting right in his face, I hiss, "Haymitch Abernathy was just as much a man as you are! More, even!"

Daddy's eyes nearly pop. "You watch your language, young lady!" He wags a finger in my face.

"No, I won't!" I shake my head firmly. "Yes, Haymitch was Seam – who the hell cares?!" (Daddy goes white). "What I said at my first interview, about how people in this district don't get along – it wasn't just some meaningless prayer for peace like we watch on those Capitol beauty pageants, Daddy! I meant it! I meant it when I advocated for Haymitch to sit for the advanced courses, and yes, part of it was because I was already falling in love, but part of it was because I knew he deserved a chance! If we hadn't been Reaped, maybe I would have confessed my feelings to him, and if it was unrequited, I would have suffered in silence, but moved on happier and better for having loved him! He was a good man, Panem bless him – a little insufferable and gruff, perhaps, but smart and loyal and even kind!" Fuming in my passionate defense, I turn and undo the ties at my dress. Behind me, I hear Daddy choke.

"What…. what are you doing?"

But I don't remove my dress all the way. Just open the back so that Daddy can see the ugly red scar slashed across my spine. Not even turning around to look at him, I explain softly:

"When I woke up in the hospital…. Brutus, my mentor, said that if Beech had thrown me into that obelisk any harder, if the fracture had been an inch or two deeper… it would have severed my spine, and I would be dead." Sewing my dress back up, I turn to face him. "And if that had happened, Haymitch would probably be sitting up there in Victors' Village, not me. He may have been Seam, Daddy, but so was Beech – and they both placed runners-up in a Quarter Quell. Hell, Lucy Gray Baird was Seam, and she won it all! That deserves respect. And I will honor Haymitch and Beech and even little Gilla Callan for the rest of my life."

The tinkling of the bell signals a customer, and I quickly tie my dress back up, turning away from Daddy without waiting to gauge his reaction. A Peacekeeper officer salutes when he sees me.

"Miss Donner, ma'am, I was tasked to find you when you were discovered to not be in your residence at the Village."

I nod to him deferentially. "As you were."

"Ma'am, a change in command is taking place today. The new Deputy Head Peacekeeper and his squadron would like to make your acquaintance."

I nod. "Thank you, Captain. I'll come to the Village straightaway."

The Peacekeeper beams, holding out his arm. "May I escort you, miss?"

"Thank you. I'd be delighted," I curtsey, looping my arm through his and leaving Daddy probably still staring after me.

The Peacekeeper, whose name is Remus, chats amicably with me the whole way through the Seam and up the hill to my mansion, where a posse of Peacekeepers are waiting for me.

"She was in her family's business, Deputy Head Cray," Remus reports.

A Peacekeeper with golden hair and a beard neatly trimmed steps forward, takes my hand and kisses it. "Miss Donner, a pleasure. I am glad to meet a Victor. Your district is currently going through a regime change in terms of high command, and I wanted to meet you before beginning my new commission."

"I am happy to receive you, sir," I nod. "I only wish your new commander was here as well. Private Remus here seemed to suggest all in high command are being reassigned."

"That is correct, miss, and yes, my apologies on behalf of the new Head Peacekeeper. She is currently on assignment, could not leave the Justice Building. She hopes you understand."

Suddenly, in the distance, I can hear gasps and screams of horror going up. They seem to be coming from the direction of the Square. Breathing deeply, trying to soothe my racing heart, I turn back to Cray. "Commander… may I ask the nature of the Head Peacekeeper's assignment?"

"Just a domestic disturbance, ma'am, don't let it trouble you…."

But it is at that moment that I almost swear I feel Haymitch at my side. Intuition helps me the rest of the way.

"Stand aside, Commander." My voice has dropped several octaves, and Cray actually complies. Once he does, I am in my house in seconds, yanking my trusty naginata off the mounted display rack on the wall, then tearing back out of the house and the Village.

"Stop her! Stop her!" I hear Cray scream to his men, but my arena training kicks in and serves me well; I outstrip the entire squadron with ease and reach the other side of the Seam in ninety seconds flat. I only seem to fly faster through Town, sprinting until I reach the Square.

I hit the shadow of the Justice Building just in time to see a female Peacekeeper with flaming red hair and the Head's insignia on her breast whip off a hood from over the head of –

"LACKLEN!" I scream.

Lacklen turns at the sound of my voice, but before he can speak -

BANG. A pistol presses into his temple and fires, dropping him.

A wailing Rhona Abernathy is next, executed in a similar fashion.

My vision swims red, tunneling in on the new Head Peacekeeper, who smiles wickedly as she turns for the district fence just beyond.

My sights only widen just enough to take in a terrified Indigo…. Abernathy (neé Hardy) strapped to the chain mail before the Head Peacekeeper flips the switch.

Screams assault my ears. The smell of burning flesh inundates my nostrils. Everything is red again as I stare down the Head Peacekeeper, with her back to me, giddily watching as Digger is electrocuted alive.

Tribute… on the attack. Kill…. Kill…..

I dash forward, naginata windmilling. Over the crackling of the electricity, the Head Peacekeeper can't hear me coming. Doesn't even have time to turn around.

I draw the blade across her neck. She gargles in stunned shock, hands clasping for her throat as she falls to her knees, and then I am on top of her. I bring down my weapon again and again wildly until I can no longer feel movement beneath me.

Stepping away coolly from the Head Peacekeeper's corpse, I only note then how my throat feels raw from my own screaming that I didn't hear. Rushing to the fence, I cut the power, then race forward to extract my lover's wife from the barbed wire.

I nearly wretch onto the cobblestones, but force my eyes to witness the gruesomeness of it. A good portion of Digger's flesh has melted off, but thankfully, not on her face. Her body is still sparking and I have to leap back for a moment to avoid getting shocked myself. I manage to remove her from the fence enough to cradle her in my arms.

Incredibly, despite taking the amount of voltage she did, she is still alive, but only just. Blinking back tears, I croak out, "I am…. so sorry…."

Clarity descends on me. It was a set-up. The whole desire to meet with me in the Village was a set-up. Cray had to make sure that Remus lured me away while his boss went about murdering a dead tribute's family.

Indigo is shaking violently, but her Seam-gray eyes – the color of storm clouds – entrap me.

She is quite lovely, really. Not in a conventional sense, or at least in the way that we Merchants would describe beauty, but I can see why Haymitch would fall for her. Slowly, Digger reaches up a shaking hand and traces my lips. I wonder if she wishes to know what they feel like, these lips that were pressed against those of her dead husband.

"He talked about you," I murmured to her. "It's OK to go. Go be with him."

She nods, but barely, still gazing at me with something I never thought I'd see from her, never thought I deserved: love. "I…. forgive you…." she rasps out. A moment later, she falls limp in my arms, the storm in her eyes clearing once they no longer see.

Choking down a sob, I tenderly close Digger's eyes. A thundering of boots makes me glance up, stand. Cray and his men nearly crash into each other as they stagger to a halt, gaping at the body of their dead Commander in shock.

My blue eyes flash hard, emotionless. Without any way to make it look less deliberate, I cross over to the prone corpse of Rhona Abernathy and dig through the folds of her dress until I find what I had hoped she would have on her. My fingers close around the object, and I stuff it in my pocket; I can tell Cray notices, but he doesn't try and stop me. He doesn't, seemingly isn't able to, say anything at all. "Bury the bodies with respect. Congratulations, Commander – you've just been promoted." And with my naginata hanging limply at my side, I trudge out of the Square, across Town and the Seam, and up the hill to the Village, as a light rain begins to fall…


I don't let anyone see my tears until I am in the safety of my own mansion.

Why would the new high command in Twelve target the family of a dead, silver medalist tribute? Who gave out such orders? I imagine it might be more urgent were Haymitch here, the Victor in place of me, but even then, the logic doesn't add up.

It still doesn't add up in the days after the murder of the Abernathys, during which I am as skittish as a deer, just waiting for some other shoe to drop. Perhaps Mama and Daddy and my sister are next. The new school term begins, but I don't attend: as a Victor, I am exempt from school, unless I have an explicitly different prerogative to finish my education. Mama doesn't seem to agree with my decision to not graduate, but I don't care. I fill my days helping around in the shop. Every tinkle of the bell, I think, is a squad of Peacekeepers, ready to rip away all the ones I love too. Every day that my sister comes home from school alive and unharmed fills me with immense relief. According to her, Glen Everdeen has now joined our circle of friends – an addition that my twin makes clear she doesn't approve of – during the common lunch period. Danny Mellark doesn't seem to like it either, especially since Glen appears to get on the most famously with Belle, out of all of them.

As summer turns into fall, though, no Peacekeepers come for my family. Or the Berryhills. Or the Callans. I keep waiting for Cray to bring down charges on my head, for attacking an officer of Panem or somesuch thing, but nothing happens. The more time goes by, the more I realize that, as a Victor, I am blessed with near unlimited power within the confines of my district. I literally murdered the Head Peacekeeper in broad daylight – and I got away with it.

None of this, however, still explains why a second-place tribute's family was sentenced to death. I turn the question over and over in my mind as I putt around my empty house.

"Why did they target you, dear?" I ask Haymitch, where he is seated at my kitchen table. On my sofa. In my bed, holding me, though we don't make love. I see him everywhere, whether awake or asleep.

Take a lot of chances with your feelings…. No one really knows what you feel…

"Come on, Princess – think," he'll say to me. "Why do you think they would want to go after me?"

He laughs cruelly at me when I can't immediately come up with an answer. At how I can't seem to do much of anything except go into Town and perform mindless work at the family store for a few hours.

Fixing is the only way you're dealing…. Tell your pretty head if it gets real…

In the arena, Haymitch did something…. What did he do that would piss off the Capitol even beyond watching him die, hands brushing but still just missing the Victor's Crown….?

Finally, on a tempestuous day in late fall, after I wake up screaming from a nightmare to the patter of rain on my roof, I believe I come to something of an explanation.

It has to do with something I remember from our second-to-last day in the arena. Something I didn't fully notice and had thought was inconsequential at the time, right before we heard the District 5 boy scream.

Haymitch had been absently chucking rocks over the edge of the cliff. I distinctly heard a sizzling sound… and he was just beginning to tell me he found something when we were interrupted.

He found something…. what did he find…? I rack my brain until I'm nearly in tears. Repeatedly, I can see Opal's axe sailing back up over the cliff to bury itself in Beech's skull, but I can't make the connection as to what it means. And Haymitch…. gods above, I miss Haymitch so much!

Behind me, reclining in the easy chair, Haymitch does nothing to help me work it out.

And you… take it so slowly. And your eyes…. look so lonely…. but it's only…. When you think about me.

The sizzling sound. The axe – coming back up….

Coming back up…. after Beech tossed it down. Almost like it… ricocheted….

And then I get it. I gasp.

The only thing that would make a weapon ricochet like that…. is a forcefield. Somewhere beneath those cliffs, at the edge of the arena, Haymitch accidentally discovered a forcefield… and then turned right around and used it as a weapon.

Of course. Now it's so simple. Now it all makes sense. In taking us to edge of the arena, Haymitch reached something the Gamemakers and the Capitol didn't want him to reach, found something they didn't want him to find, and then used that something in a way they didn't want him to use it.

And because Haymitch didn't live long enough to see the Capitol punish him, the Capitol did it anyway to convey the message to the only other person who is still living: me.

I collapse to the floor of my kitchen in tears. Oh, Haymitch, my love… I'm so sorry… Forgive me, honey, forgive me!

Dizzy and sick, I crawl towards the landline – one of the few people in the district who owns one - climb up the wall to support myself and nudge the phone off its cradle. Hands shaking, I still somehow manage to concentrate long enough to dial the correct number for the District 2 Justice Building.

"Hello, operator? I need a patch through to your district's Victors' Village. Brutus Barsetti's extension, please."

"To whom am I presently speaking?" the secretary drolls, bored.

"Maysilee Donner, District 12. I need to speak to Brutus Barsetti, please! It's an emergency!"

"All right, Ms. Donner, let me just transfer you…."

I hear the dial tone for an agonizing minute or two. And then his deep bass voice comes on the line.

"Hello?"

"Brutus, thank the State! I figured it out!" I am full-on weeping now.

"….. Maysilee?"

"They… they killed his family!" I sob. "Haymitch. Because he discovered a forcefield below the cliffs, didn't he?"

Brutus's silence on the other end tells me all I need to know. Another horrid thought strikes me.

"Did you know?"

"That Genius found a forcefield? Yes. That the Capitol would punish him from beyond the grave? No. You called me the day it happened, remember?"

I did, in fact. And poor Brutus has been my off-and-on counselor ever since. Frankly, he's taken the role better than I imagined he would. Other than the number of my parents' shop (one of the few Merchant businesses wealthy enough to afford a landline phone connection), his is the only other number I really know. I practically have it memorized, outside of the extension.

"I'm… I'm scared, Brutus! I see him every night in my dreams! And Beech, and Opal, and Gilla and all the rest of them! And it's just gonna keep happening, again and again, every year, just from another vantage point! Oh, what do I do? What do I do?..."

"Are there any pills that you can take? Sleeping ones, at least?" Brutus inquires. "That best friend of yours, maybe she can fork you over some Xanax or something…"

I shake my head vehemently. "I'm not going to get addicted to pills, Brutus." I've come to learn that every Victor has his/her vices – some of them healthy and productive, most of them not. A girl from District 6 who won six years ago while Kaydilyn and I were finishing Lower School got addicted to morphling. I've seen her on TV hopped up on the stuff every year since. I don't want to end up like that. The only thing I might be able to turn to is my talent…. which is just making candy, and that's decidedly of the more kid-friendly variety.

"Everything's getting scarier, Brutus! I can't do this anymore!"

"You have to," he tells me grimly. "For your district. Otherwise every other kid who comes after you is going to keep getting another out-district Victor on loan. I know you're still grieving, little darling, especially for Haymitch, but getting upset and then not taking active steps to salvage your mental health is only going to make your recovery longer and worse. Calm down!"

"I can't!" I wail.

"Then try!" he presses back. "Find some way to cope! If you're willing to stay strong and find a healthy way to do it, all the power to you. Keep making those sarsaparilla candies. Pop a few sleeping pills in moderation. Get yourself a boyfriend and break your bed in with him – sex is actually a pretty good coping mechanism…"

I blast out a strangled laugh, my face beet red. The laugh quickly turns into a sob. "If Haymitch were still here…"

"Well, he's not…"

"…. I could have him in my bed every night…." Actually, that probably couldn't, wouldn't have been the case – even if Haymitch and I could have both come home alive and even if I had tempted him again, he would never have betrayed Digger. I whimper. "But he never loved me…"

"You're a damn liar, Maysilee Donner! Haymitch did care for you – and if he were here, he would tell you to go on living! That's what you have to do – you still have plenty enough people to live for, as I do. We're more fortunate than most in that way, you and I. Look: just a few more months, and you'll have to head off on the Victory Tour – and as your mentor, I'll be there with you every step of the way. Dolly, too. Just hold on till then, little darling. Just hold on till then…."

I nod shakily. "I will, Brutus, I promise."

"And hey, if sleeping around floats your boat again, my bed is always open."

I laugh again. "These calls are strictly for counseling, not phone sex," I chide him, though it lacks any bite. "Thanks, Brutus. For everything."

"Take care of yourself, kid."

I hang up.


A/N: Song credit: When You Think About Me by Jon Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls.