we all love the stars
til they decide to start
devouring

Divya North (14)

District Nine

about a week ago

"You have everything?" Pippa called from the living room as Divya gathered up all of her things. Divya looked around her bedroom, making sure she had gotten everything she'd brought over to her biological mother's house. Once she was satisfied she had, she threw her bag over her arm and went out into the living room, where Pippa was, waiting for her on the couch. "There you are. Got everything?"

Divya nodded and went toward the door. "I'll see you next weekend," she said. She heard Pippa saying her goodbyes as well, as they did every weekend that Divya came over there to stay, and she started to leave. But as she was halfway out the door, she felt something tugging her back inside.

It was the last weekend she'd be staying at her biological mom's house before the reaping. That didn't sit right in her stomach. Even after the last two years, she still wasn't used to standing in that square, hoping, praying—

She went to her mom and wrapped her up in a hug, shutting her eyes for a moment. "See you next weekend," she told her. When she pulled away, she was smiling like she hadn't gotten sentimental. Because she would prefer everyone to forget that she did. She turned and walked out of the open door, shutting it behind her and letting out a breath. Okay, so that was over, thankfully. She hadn't even known where it came from. Yeah, she was a little scared of the reaping, but there was no reason to get mushy and huggy about it.

She didn't really feel like going home today, though, but Audez and Benjamin were busy and couldn't hang out. She didn't know if Audez's twin, Talissa, would be free, but she didn't often hang out with her alone, without her brother there, too. That might be awkward. But all that would be on TV would be old Games reruns—the highlights of victors' interviews, the best Opening Ceremonies since the second rebellion, the Top Ten Goriest Kills, brought to you by Benicius Waie! Nothing that Divya could be interested in for long than an hour at most, since all of it blurred into one eventually. And got kind of really sad once she started to actually think about it, too.

She knew she had to check in with The Dads before she could do anything, though, so she trudged down side streets toward home, wondering if Clarabelle would be free. Not that Divya really wanted to go see her sister. Last time they'd seen each other, they had gotten in an argument about… well, okay, Divya couldn't remember, but Clarabelle had called Divya a selfish bitch. Granted, Divya had also called Clara a heartless asshole, but, you know, whatever. But she kind of wanted to see her little nephew. He wasn't all that much fun yet, being mostly just a little noisy blob of a human, but she wanted him to like her. She was determined to be Fun Aunt Divya. By default she was Fun Aunt Divya since Kane's dad didn't have any sisters, but she wanted to earn the title anyway.

When she got back to the house, only Tamashi was there, and she assumed Rob was out talking to one of the rich landowners about moving to a new house. She dropped her bag beside the couch and flopped down next to her Papa, looking at the TV. It was just the normal week-before-the-Games shit, as she suspected. The Games Announcer was going over old Games, bringing his fresh comments to the events from years ago. It was probably the beginning of the program because he was talking about Talisa Longstaff's Games.

"Have fun at Pippa's?" Papa asked, looking over at her and drawing bored eyes away from the television. She nodded to him, leaning back into the couch cushions. "You'll have to tell her that next weekend we're going out on a trip."

"Oh, yeah," Divya said, sighing. She had forgotten that they were going out to the edge of District Nine next weekend, for Dad to make a sale to some Capitolite scientist who was temporarily moving to Nine for her research. They were going to have to make a good impression, and already that just didn't sound like a good time to Divya.

Papa opened his mouth like he was about to say something about her unwillingness to go, but then he just shrugged and leaned back against the couch. Something told her that he wasn't really a fan of the idea either. She knew well enough that people of the district judged Tamashi and Rob. She had heard it at school since she was younger, but she never understood why until she realized that it was Tamashi's transition, and how old they were when they adopted her. Which was stupid, and was just another reason why she hated spending time around the rich people of Nine who used Rob's real estate to move around to the nicer sections of the district.

On TV, she watched as Talisa killed the last person left alive in her Games, and stood victorious as the Games Announcer revealed her as the Seventy-sixth victor. After that, Benicius Waie came back onscreen to start talking about the next most-exciting victory of the new era. It was predictably the Eighty-first, the first year that two people could win, and she watched as district partners Nicolette Dion and Tan Nolan worked together to weed out the tributes. Divya hadn't been alive then, but she'd seen clips of that time, and she liked Tan Nolan even though he was one of the first Careers after the Academies fell apart following the Second Rebellion. He seemed confident and coordinated, but also he was always undeniably charismatic during his interviews. He just seemed like a people person—which definitely made up for reclusive, quiet Nicolette Dion, who'd never been anything more than an all-business kind of woman.

"We can change the channel," Papa said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. She wanted to shrug away from it—she didn't like cuddling with her dads as she had when she was younger—but she didn't, not wanting him to feel bad. He always got mushy closer to reaping time, even before she was of age.

"It'll just be more of this stuff," she said. Finding an excuse to get away from the couch, she stood up and grabbed her back. "When's Dad getting home?" She pulled the bag over her shoulder and looked back at Papa. They'd probably start making lunch soon if Dad was going to be home in time, which would give her something to do and would get them away from the repetitive, sometimes gross Games reruns, and would prevent them from having to be sappy together.

"He said he'd be back a little after noon," Papa said. She nodded and turned to go drop her bag in her room, knowing that meant that lunch-making was a go.

Tamashi had gotten up from the couch when she came back out. He'd changed the TV channel too. It was still playing Games stuff, but it wasn't reruns of the Games now. This channel was all about the evolution of the pre-Games process since two victors were made a thing, which was kind of interesting, so she paused in the living room. She watched the beginning clip, but the person running the show seemed particularly vapid, even for a Capitolite, and all they were saying is something about the two-person interviews.

Tamashi had sandwich stuff spread out on the counter and she hopped up on top of it. He turned to her as she dragged a plate and the bread over to her, beginning to make hers. "So what did you two do this weekend?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Same stuff we always do," she answered. Honestly, her biological mom's house got kind of boring sometimes. She didn't want to sound spoiled, but she was kind of used to the money that the owner of the only real estate company in Nine had, and Pippa was much less fortunate. She made it by, but like normal people in Nine did. Divya lived comfortably with Rob and Tamashi, with a tablet in her room, a TV in the living room, snacks always in the cabinets. Her mother had a little TV in the living room that barely worked, and only ran the Games when they came on. She was always tired when Divya was there from working all week. It wasn't awful, and she would never stop going, but the weekends she was there were never eventful. "What did you and Dad do?"

"Nothing fun without you, Div," he said, smiling over at her.

She rolled her eyes. "I've never said you can't do anything fun without me," she said, although she remembered the last time they'd done something exciting while she was with Pippa. She had complained about it then. So maybe that was her nonverbal way of asking them to be bored while she wasn't around to enjoy it with them.

"We wouldn't want to do anything fun without you, anyway, Divya," Papa said.

The boy that was reaped with her seemed rigid. He walked like his shoulders were strained against weight placed on them, and he stood between her and the Peacekeepers the entire way as they were herded into the Justice Building.

She had never had problems with Peacekeepers before, but she never did anything to attract attention from them. She liked to get into shit, yeah, but she and her friends were smart, and they never did anything really stupid. But she knew that some of them, the ones trained in Two harder than even Careers were—those weren't to be fucked with. And maybe she had fucked with them a little bit when she screamed at them.

She couldn't help it. Her heart felt like it was crushing inward again as she thought about her name being reaped. She shut her eyes for a couple steps, but it only took her back to the moment where she'd yelled towards the camera.

Divya couldn't even remember what she said. That it wasn't fair? That they were awful? She didn't know, but the Peacekeeper who had grabbed her by the arm had left bruises in the shape of his fingers. This guy—Kyle was his name, she was pretty sure—he was just protecting her from that. That only made her want to cry again.

"In there," one of them said, pointing for Kyle to leave her and go into his room. They walked another few feet, and without him behind her, she now felt that same rigidity he walked with. Maybe it wasn't so much weight on his shoulders as it was fear. He had volunteered, but he wasn't a Career. He was probably just as scared as she was. The Peacekeeper opened the door to her room without a word and she walked in, glancing back at the helmeted figure before the door shut again.

This was surreal. She was pretty sure that her head hadn't caught up with her body yet. She knew it hadn't when she started yelling. Everything was a few steps behind where she actually was in space and time, and she was reeling while she waited for them to catch up. The room felt like it was spinning a little bit.

Divya was still standing in the same spot when her family came in, all of them at once—Dad and Papa, followed closely by Clarabelle, and a tiny little Kane who was crying. He was so little, he didn't know what was going on. He was probably just hungry or scared of all the commotion, but she felt sick to her stomach. Like she had caused her baby nephew to cry over this. Even Clarabelle's husband, Ica, came in, a hand on Clarabelle's back and a hand hovering near Kane as her shoulders shook.

"Div," Papa said, coming over to her and putting a hand on her arm, looking at the bruises from where she'd been grabbed. She gasped, not out of pain, but only just realizing that she was crying again. Probably had been since she came into this room.

"Where's Pippa?" she asked, wanting to see everyone, needing to see everyone. "Where are my friends?"

"They're outside, hon," Dad said, coming to Papa's other side and looking down at her with eyes softened in pain and sympathy. He had the kindest eyes in the world. She had never understood how she managed to talk to the cruelest, richest people in Nine when he seemed like a man who was incapable of relating to that kind of harshness. His personality was smooth edges that seemed susceptible to that sharpness and those pointy corners. This seemed like the knife that had finally managed to puncture.

Maybe she was just thinking about herself though. Maybe she just wasn't thinking at all.

"Divya," Dad said, running a hand through her short hair. Her lips quirked up in a half-second smile, a twitch of her face between the crying. He let out a breath, lips closed together to concentrate the air. "Div, I love you. More than anything else."

"Except maybe spaghetti," Papa added on, his smile heartbroken, and she laughed a little bit as she wiped at her eyes.

"Maybe my last meal will be spaghetti," she whispered, but the joke didn't land. Not even with herself this time. It was too real, too self-deprecating.

"Divya North, don't say that," her sister said as both of their fathers shut their eyes and tried to blow past that remark. Now her sister moved in front of her, their dads stepping out of the way for her. "Divya, you're a scrappy girl. It is not unlikely for a fourteen-year-old to win. Especially if you stick with that big guy—he seems nice."

"I'll have a partner that's not from Nine," she reminded Clarabelle, looking up at her. "The Quell, remember?"

That sunk into Clarabelle's head. She sighed. "Well, the kid seemed nice anyway. They never said they were banning alliances not between partners," she told Divya. "I—" She breathed in, like she was sucking that sigh back in slowly, forcing herself to remain positive where her fathers could only make small attempts at jokes. Clarabelle had always been hard, but maybe now she was trying to make that pay off.

Clarabelle put her hands on Divya's shoulders, like she was going to shake her like she always said she would. It ran through Divya's head that she'd handed Kane over to Ica when she came over, although that wasn't important. Instead of getting angry, she just smiled softly at her little sister and said, "If all our arguments tell me anything, it's that you're stubborn enough to come home, sis. And I'd be really sad if you didn't."

There was a lot of hugging before they were gone, and she watched her family disappear back out to Nine. She hadn't moved from where she was standing.

this ones kinda shorter but i wrote half of it on my phone and it's been a week so i just wanna post it. divya is from EllaRoseEverdeen! no chapter question today lads lmk what you think