Prim's Story, Chapter 3
As my mother and I are heading back home, I notice the baker from the Seam walk into the room where we visited Katniss. I thought nothing of it until my mother commented that isn't it odd that he's visiting Katniss even though she will be competing against his own son? I agree with her, but I don't say anything. I can hardly think, I'm so exhausted, and all my energy is spent trying not to trip over anything as we walk home. My mom senses this and drops the conversation without trying to get a response out of me.
Finally, you're doing something right, I think. I know it's a cruel thing to even think about my mother, but it's true. When my father died, I was only seven years old, and Katniss was only eleven. Neither of us were even near old enough to have to take care of ourselves on our own. But that's what we had to do. My mom went into some kind of awful depression when he died, like she didn't have the will to live, let alone the will to take care of her two kids who desperately needed her help.
When we finally reach our house, I head straight for the bed. The one that Katniss and I share, instead of my mother's, where I usually go. I want to be with my mother, to comfort her and have her comfort me, but thinking about the way she was after dad died has just made me angry at her for what she did. I must have been glaring at her without realizing it though, because when I look up I see her staring back at me with teary eyes. Her mouth opens, as though she's trying to say something, but no words come out. She rushes out of the room before I can say anything,
I want to call to her back as she leaves and tell her that it's okay, that I wasn't mad at her, but I don't. It would be a lie anyway, and today of all days there's no point in lying to each other. I look around the room and my eyes fall on our big beat-up chair. This was where my mother used to sit in those dark months, no, years after my father died. She would just sit there, blankly staring, all day and all night. I'm not sure if she even slept. In the first month or so Katniss and I were more considerate of her. We would go sit by her and talk to her, hoping to break through whatever was stopping her from being like she used to be. Even when we didn't feel like just sitting and talking to her, we would try to be near her all the time. About a month of this later, and Katniss couldn't take it anymore. We were in the middle of talking to her, pleading with her to just get up and be normal again like it used to be, when Katniss snapped and started screaming at her.
She said awful things, how she was a terrible mother and how she abandoned us and how she was supposed to take care of us, not the other way around. It scared me. I'd seen Katniss get mad before, but somehow this was different. Somehow after that I knew that she really, truly, hated my mother. Eventually Katniss had left. She went straight to bed.
But after Katniss went to sleep I saw something that I never told her about. I stayed with my mother even after Katniss was fast asleep. As soon as she had left the room, I saw a single tear slide down my mother's cheek. I looked up at her, still staring blankly off into the distance, and I saw something. There was pain in her eyes. Not physical pain, like when you fall and skin your knee, but a different kind. It was like she wanted to move, to get up, to help us, and to be the normal mother that she used to be before everything went wrong. She wanted to, but something in her mind was stopping her.
That's when I decided to give up. Somehow I sensed that no amount of talking to her was going to break through whatever barrier was in her mind. She had to do it herself, whenever she was ready.
I don't know exactly why I never told Katniss about what I saw. Katniss went the rest of the time from then up until now hating my mother. But I could never really hate her because I knew that it wasn't her fault that she wasn't getting up. She didn't have a choice.
"Come, Prim, we have to watch the Reapings now," my mother calls.
I almost forgot. Every year after the Reapings, that Capitol likes us to relive all the horror of the day all over again by making us watch a recap of it. And yes, just like every other thing in the districts that makes you miserable, it's mandatory.
When they finally get to District 12, the last one, I almost start crying again. I watch myself walking towards the stage before Katniss jumps in and volunteers. As soon as the Reapings are finished the program ends, and I go off into my room. I lie down on my bed, reflecting on everything that happened today. Thinking about it now, it seems like a lifetime's worth of stuff. How can all that be packed into just a few hours? How can… It doesn't seem…
My thoughts become just random blurs of words that I can't make sense of as I slowly drift off to sleep.
XX
THE END
Please review, I'd love to have your opinions! (Oh and P.S. I'm planning on ending this here, but if enough people ask I will continue writing from Prim's POV.)