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Effie Trinket has always loved beautiful things.
Her mother has a collection of angel figures spun from colored glass. Each year for her birthday Effie's father gives her another one. Effie isn't allowed to touch the angels but she's allowed to look at them. She looks at them for hours. Effie is a good girl and never touches the angels even though she really wants to. When she is six years old she decides that she will look like the angels someday. Same hair, same colors.
Effie is a plain child. Her mother is a model and frets over Effie's extreme ordinariness. She encourages Effie to hide her unremarkable features as much as possible. "Bone structure just gives some people a head start," her mother says. "It's what you do with your looks that counts."
Effie starts wearing wigs when she's 10 years old, because her natural hair is pathetic no matter what color it's dyed- limp in heat, brittle in cold, flyaway in the slightest of breezes. The wigs are uncomfortable, itchy and hot, but they're very pretty.
Effie is a worried child. Her father is a Peacekeeper of some rank- he's stationed in the Capitol and works office hours. Effie doesn't really understand his job—she's too busy keeping track of his rules. Most of them are "don'ts"- don't wear shoes in the house, don't slouch when eating, don't watch television other than Capitol history and don't even think about watching that until homework and chores are done. There is a chart on the wall listing the whole family's daily and weekly tasks and their daily and weekly schedules. Effie's favorite chore is wiping the dust from her father's mahogany desk. Everything is perfectly situated in its place down to the jar of paperclips, and the wood is so smooth it feels like silk.
For each task left unfinished and each mark on the calendar not kept there is an escalating and regimented prescribed punishment. Example sequence: no new shoes this week, no new shoes for birthday, write letter to class admitting fault.
There is no physical violence aside from the occasional spanking and neither of Effie's parents ever raises their voice. She never goes hungry, not least because one task is to finish everything on her plate, whether she likes that food or not.
Effie's father is handsome and strong. Everyone in the neighborhood respects the Trinkets. Effie's mother is beautiful and fashion-forward. Everyone in the neighborhood imitates what the Trinkets have.
Effie's favorite class in school is Historical Panem because it explains not only all the rules for good citizens to obey but also why the rules exist. The deep way they can explain things gives her shivers (in a good way!) sometimes: This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future. It's so comforting! She thinks the districts must be really scary, because the people out there are surely mentally deficient. Why else would they be reluctant to follow rules established for their own safety? The Historical Panem teacher explains that this lack of self-control and respect for authority is why the outlying districts are poor. Effie shudders at the thought.
She delights in planning birthday parties and school fundraisers for her classmates- and if they seem less willing to talk to her on the day than in the ones leading up to it, she tells herself it's good because she can make sure everything goes according to plan. She studies event planning for her vocational training, of course.
To her delight, fresh out of school she's hired by HGPC, the Hunger Games Planning Committee. Unfortunately, she's assigned to District 12, but it makes sense that one must start from the bottom and work her way up.
The planning is fantastic. She arranges the best train car and the best travel chefs for her tributes. When a new Training Center is built, she successfully argues that floor assignments should match district numbers, netting her tributes the penthouse. She coordinates events between the stylists and prep teams, the stylists and sponsors, the sponsors and mentor.
It's useless, though. Her aggressive lobbying for 12 hasn't won her any friends among the escorts, and she has no hope at all of getting away from 12 until someone in a better districts leaves. Even worse, no one from 12 is even a little bit appreciative of her months of hard work.
No one thanks her for how much faster their train is than normal!
No one thanks her for the amazing food- they just throw it up, even the drunkard mentor!
No one thanks her for getting 12 down first to the training room, to the opening ceremonies, to their interviews, to the launch rooms!
No one in 12 even smiles at her or mentions her wig's color or how well she's pulling off the latest fashion—she's always ahead of the curve courtesy of her mother, who now manages young models and helps direct their enhancement choices.
Effie tries to tell herself they just don't know any better because they're so uneducated, but she loves beautiful things, and District 12 is the ugliest, meanest place she's ever seen. Every year on the train ride down she tells herself she's mentally exaggerating how wretched it is, and is somehow startled all over again. Haymitch is a cruel drunk who always seems to know the best way to hurt her feelings and does so effortlessly, casually. Her tributes are invariably little heathens that eat like wild animals and wipe their noses and mouths on their sleeves. They never win either, never come close to winning. The other escorts snicker at Effie, and her face burns. Sometimes she thinks she'll be stuck with District 12 forever.
At the reaping for the 74th Games, she senses that her luck is shifting. First, a volunteer! Yana and Walburga get to see volunteers all the time with the districts they escort- they even had to work together to figure out a system for volunteering so the reaping doesn't take all day. Effie had given up hope of ever seeing one, and it was such a fantastically done scene she thinks even Haymitch might get some sponsors for the girl. What a lovely girl, what a darling sister she volunteered in place of- Effie hopes the girl will make it into the finals so her family will be interviewed.
And the 74th Games only get better from there! Both of the tributes are reasonably attractive, as far as she can tell- with the help of the amazing prep and style teams she'd personally recruited they even have a shot at being beautiful. They both have table manners and the boy in particular always says "please" and "thank you, Effie." True, they both falter in their good behavior sometimes, but they—or Peeta at least—always apologize after, admitting they're under a lot of stress, and she understands, right? Effie looks into Peeta's earnest blue eyes and relents.
After the spectacular opening ceremony as the escorts chat, Effie can't help but gush about them, the Girl and Boy on Fire. Most of the escorts are snide about it, like they think they deserve Cinna and Portia more than 12 does, but the escort from 4, Filly Hooper, lingers in the hall behind the others. "Effie? I'm happy for you really, but… don't get attached." Effie doesn't really know what Filly means by that—she is very attached to her work already, and has been for years!
Of course, she learns what Filly had meant. Buzz and media time and a good training score get an escort's hopes for a victory up, and it makes it harder to watch when things go wrong for tributes in the arena. Watching Katniss flee from a wall of oncoming fire and exploding trees, Effie's breath sticks in her throat. Is it just her or are the Games more brutal this year?
She doesn't realize she's spoken aloud until Haymitch grunts, "They're this bad every year, sweetheart, trust me." Flustered, but not sure why, Effie snatches up the empty bottles on the suite's tables and chairs and carries them to be binned.
Effie feels a keen sense of betrayal when Peeta, that nice polite boy, allies with the tributes from 1 and 2. What about Katniss? Was it all a lie? But she'll be so heartbroken when she finds out! Admittedly she looks more angry than heartbroken in the shot, but Effie knows she's just trying to be strong. As strong as her feelings of betrayal are, still greater is Effie's shame when it became clear that Peeta had joined the alliance to try to protect his love. How could she have ever doubted him?
She is as caught up in the drama of the Games as anyone, how could she not be, but after returning her history-making victors to district 12, something strange happens. She's at dinner with her parents and her mother comments, "My favorite scene was when Katniss cleaned Peeta's wound and fed and lay with him. Effie, I can't believe you didn't have them autograph a still for me."
It bothers Effie, and she's not sure why.
A school friend calls and says Katniss drugging Peeta was the most romantic thing she'd ever seen. A neighbor asks her if there will be any auctions to spend time with the victors, like Finnick Odair sometimes does. "Neither!" Effie cries without thinking. "Why would they need to single mingle? They have each other."
The man is disappointed. "Neither of them, then? Well, let them know I'd make it well worth their while, and I'm not the only one."
Effie pushes down a sudden and inexplicable feeling of protectiveness and asks, "Which one?"
"Either, both," the man shrugs.
It takes Effie a while to figure out why these comments and others like them bother her, and when she does figure out the reason, it's a little embarrassing. She's been getting… possessive of her tributes. When her mother casually refers to Katniss and Peeta by their first names, Effie has to bite back the urge to say, "You don't know them, Mother." When her mother talks about her favorite scene, Effie knows that "scene" is the wrong word. A scene could be stopped, reset and tried again. Katniss believed she was watching her true love die before her eyes. It is disrespectful to treat it as anything else. Effie knows it would be treasonous to say so though, and keeps her thoughts to herself.
She has to do the same with the friend who thought it was so romantic, how Katniss drugged Peeta and went to the Feast for his medicine. It was one of the most powerful moments Effie has ever seen in the Hunger Games- barring, perhaps, the lovers' decision to live or die together-but Effie cannot call it romantic. Katniss was wild-eyed, not starry-eyed, and she was so very frightened and desperate. And if she had failed, Peeta could have woken to realize that not only would his death not save her, but that their feelings had led to her own death.
Effie tries to banish these confusing thoughts, telling herself that everything worked out in the end and now Katniss and Peeta can have their happily-ever-after.
Except they don't. Effie thinks maybe they really were born under a cursed star to have won just before this particular Quarter Quell was staged. It's a forgone conclusion in the Capitol that it will be Katniss-and-Peeta in the arena again, not Katniss-and-Haymitch, and while a few romantic souls think the lovers will find a way to win together again, nearly everyone in the Capitol is speculating whether Peeta will be able to give his life for Katniss before she has a chance to give her life for his.
"No, they'll both win and have their wedding and have a big family!" a girl screams at her boyfriend.
"That's be so lame," her boyfriend says, shaking his head. "It'll be way more hardcore if one of them actually follows through and dies for the other. Or better yet, if they're the final 2 again and one of them has to kill the other!"
"They'd just do the same things as last year, eat the berries together," the girl insists.
The boyfriend laughs. "No way will the Gamemakers put Nightlock in the arena again this year."
Effie lies awake at night thinking about it. How could Peeta possibly go on without Katniss? How could life without him be any kind of victory for her? And Haymitch- she may not be very fond of him, but she's worked side by side with him for years. When the tributes are reaped, it isn't just her district that keeps her up and worrying. Finnick Odair always smiles at her and doesn't even tease (much!) when her ears go pink, and Chaff always calls her "Miss Effie." One of Beetee's medical alert inventions saved her father's life after his heart attack while patrolling late one night.
As much as she tries to ignore it, a small and persistent voice going right down to her center whispers to Effie over and over again, "It isn't fair. It isn't right. This isn't how the Hunger Games are supposed to work."
In the weeks and months that follow, Effie doesn't understand anything. Why is Panem breaking its promise to its Victors? Why can't Katniss and Peeta live out their lives in peace, coming back as mentors only? How can there be a District 13? Why is Katniss saying such terrible things about the Capitol and betraying them? Why is Peeta disavowing his love, when he's always stood by her before? Why is he so thin and shaking?
She waits for the world to start making sense again, she waits to wake up and be in her own pink bed, hazy with dreams, but she wakes again in a cell. Who are these people? Why do they keep asking Effie all these questions she can't understand, let alone answer? Are those human screams echoing from somewhere in these stone tunnels? They can't be, can they?
Why does no one come? Why won't they tell her anything? Why won't they give Effie her wigs, or at least one of them? Don't they understand? She's followed all of their rules. She needs to be beautiful.