I undress but I don't change. I lie naked on the cold tiling of the bathroom floor feeling the friction from the car bracing the tracks resonate deep in my bones, leading me further and further from home.
I imagine myself falling apart into large, invisible pieces and sinking through the tiles. Falling drip drip drip onto the tracks, taking the real Annie Cresta away - her hopes, dreams, unclaimed kisses and exultations- and leaving them in the past forever.
What I want is to cry- it seems appropriate to mourn the loss of yourself, of your future. I feel like I should scream until my very heart dislodges itself and stops beating from the sheer violence of my exertions.
But I can't.
I can only lie there, cold on the inside and without.
It's all exhausting.
"Annie what in the hell do you think you're doing?" My dad is standing at the door, looking repulsed. His face is bloated and sagged from the sea, like he was when he washed up on the beach all those years ago
I get up immediately and pull on the canary yellow pajamas. "Absorbing" I answer. I know he isn't there but I can't help addressing him as though he is.
"Is that the word they use for self pity these days? Absorbing?" he asks in his sailors husky voice, thick with criticism and love at the same time. They always wrestled in his voice, one winning out over the other on rare occasion. But he always used that tone.
"I just needed some time to think" I answer him
"what did I teach you young lady? About answering me?" he asks. He thinks im lying to him. "Say what you mean, Annie. What did you need time to think about?"
"Winning the hunger games"
"liar" he accuses. There are patches of hair missing from the sides of his head, where the fish got to him. "You had forfeiture on your mind."
"you always said that winning isn't everything" I answer, sarcastically with a shrug, tying my hair into an angry knot at the back of my head. I'm eleven years old again, speaking before I think.
Dad cracks a smile and my heart breaks "it's how you play that matters" he whispers. He comes in close and I can almost smell him, not the smell of rot and bloat but the way he always smelt before that - like musk and fish and the wet smell of the sea on his clothes. "You have to play."
"I can't win" I say "even if I do win, Dad."
"you don't know until you try." He answers me,
"I don't know if I want to" I say
"You're a Cresta, Annie. There's only you and Nauplius left." He answers "you have to"
And then he's gone and Finnick Odair is knocking on the door.
"Annie? Are you okay in there?" he asks, turning the knob and throwing the door open. He looks around the room. "who are you talking to?"
"no one" I answer "Just myself"
His eyes finally rest on me, first with concern, then with surprise as he surveys me a second time, head to toe with lingering eyes.
"You should get some rest" Finnick says finally, breaking his stare and turning around "tomorrow will be a very long day"
"I don't think I'm going to get any sleep" I reply, watching as he makes his way on out of the room to the train car door, taking the bottle with him.
"Try, you'll need it. " he answers simply, pulling the car door open and disappearing into the hall.