CHAPTER THREE
I sit in the room with our corpses, and I see Cato. I am sitting on his bed, right next to him. The Capitol surgeons fixed him up pretty good. I see his ghost waking, his eyes fluttering. "Clove….is that you? Aren't you dead? I am too…I am dead…." He starts. "Cato!" I say his name with joy and hug him. He looks startled but hugs me back. He asks me again if he is dead, and I start crying, but I don't know why. He wipes my tears with his strong hand, and he asks me why I am crying. "We are, Cato….all of the tributes have to live together forever here, and when the loving couple comes, they'll be with the other victors. We are in the Hall of the Tributes, of the row where you can see multiple training buildings, each holding the various dead tributes. Our building is number seventy-four, the number of our Games…" I stop crying, and I say, "I want you to meet someone…I think you'll remember Miele." Miele is Cato's little sister, who is twelve now. She resembles Rue so much.
I take Cato upstairs to the District 11 floor, where Thresh and Rue talk. Thresh stares at Cato. Rue smiles to see me and Cato together. Rue tells Cato everything he needs to do to get into the afterlife, and he asks Thresh if he is forgiven. Thresh asks him why he killed him, and Cato says he did it to avenge my death. I smile, and Rue does too. Thresh killed me to avenge Rue. Thresh nods his head and says that he forgives Cato. Cato asks me if he has to forgive everyone, and I say yes. I hope the tributes he killed are as forgiving as the ones I killed. Cato and Thresh, now buddies, walk to the elevator together, and they say they will visit each of the tributes Cato killed. "So…it's just me and my friend Rue now…right?" I ask. Rue smiles, then she gasps. "I forgot Clove, but once you die and everyone forgives you, you can visit any dead relatives or anyone who is in Panem that is dead, and you can also see anyone living through the crystal ball in the lobby." She tells me. I know who I want to see immediately. "Mom…..she died fifteen years ago, while giving birth to me." I smile and ask Rue to take me home.
We go to the lobby, where there is a teleporter to each of the districts, or the ghost versions, since we can't leave this world. I see the crystal ball in the corner and change my mind. Maybe I could spy on my dad first, since the ball is so close to me now. I head towards it and the ball asks me who I would like to see. "Ceaser Furhman" I say, and I instantly see a real life image of my dad. I try to touch it, but only the screen fades a little. "Ahh…finally I get that pesky little twerp out of my life. Yes! Clove is dead! I am free! She and Athena are finally gone! I am free! I hated those two anyway, and murdering Athena was exciting, but I let Clove go crazy in the orphanage, or did, until she was adopted. Either way, I am a free man! Yes!" I hear him scream. I instantly wish for a knife and feel one in my pocket. I love the room service here. I run back, with Rue behind me, then since no one is in my path, I throw it at the image of my dad. I fall to the ground, crying silently. Rue hugs me and says everything will be okay, and at least I can see my mom. "But he killed her! My dad killed my mother! But when? I have grown up hearing that she died the day I was born….but she wasn't…when was she killed?" I sob into Rue's tiny hug. "Clove….I know that knowing this is a big deal, but if you want answers, you can ask your mom. You can visit her in person, or in ghost." She smiles, and I do too. She is so sweet; she just cracked a joke to make me stop crying. It worked. "Come on, let's go visit your mom." She says as she leads me to the District 2 portal. As the training center disappears, I thank Rue. She is a perfect friend.
I don't know how, but I feel scared of meeting my mom. I have never seen her before, and I wonder if she hates me as much as dad did. Rue holds my hand as my home district appears. She has never been here before. I see the part of my huge district where I lived; it was called Colorado a couple hundred years before the founding of Panem. The Hunger Games take place in early August, so I walk around my city in late August. I see everything from my childhood here. I see the paved streets, with the school and training academy next to each other. Across the street is the mayor's house, with the peacekeepers training facility around the house. It is huge, so we had to take the train to school. The mayor and some high ranking peacekeepers use personal cars. About five miles away from the training academy is where the people live, in houses that once used to be called townhouses. Each house is joined with five others in one row, and then there is a gap before starting the next house "pod" as we kids call it. The neighborhood stretches for about five miles. On the opposite side of the school is the train station we use to go from town to town or to go to work. We used school buses to go to school. If you go a little bit further on the road with the train station (we call it Justice Trail) is the majestic Justice Building. There is a small ally stretching from the Justice Building to the train station used to deliver goods and tributes to the Capitol. There is a curvy road extending from the public train station (we call it windy lane) that takes you to the warehouses for the goods we produce. After that, the mines. There is a fence at the end of the windy lane so only workers come in. School used to make us take a field trip to the mines every year. One year, a group of kids there, I think they were twelve year olds, got stuck in a mine explosion. About ten of the twenty-five kids in the class died. Now we just tour the outside.
Rue asks me what I used to do in my free time. I told her that I barely had any. "Seriously," I said "Just look at my schedule: get up at 7:00, school bus comes at around 8:30, so I needed to be at the bus stop at 8:25, school starts at 9:00, gets out at 4:00, but training right after. Training bus comes 4:15, training starts at 4:30, it's a two mile ride, which takes five minutes, but we have to change into our clothes and warm up. Training ends at 6:00, by time I get home it was 6:30, then I had dinner. At 7:00, I would take out my horrible ninth grade masonry homework, really doing homework about quarry mines and about how the different kinds of stone look in a house sucks. After that, at around 8:00, I had to clean the house since my horrible dad just went to sleep, and that takes time when your dad just throws everything everywhere and wants the house spotless in the morning. 9:30 I usually finish, sometimes later. At around 9:45, after taking a shower, I take a break before bed. 10:00, bed." Rue just nods. "We have schedules like that at home, but without the training."
"Rue, I think that it is time to meet my mother….are you in?" I ask with a smile. She nods and jumps up and down when I tell her we will be using the train to go to the neighborhoods. The train is full of the ghosts of those who died while in District 2, all tributes revive in the Training Center. I talk to many of my mom's old friends, and after talking to some elders, we arrive. Almost half the bus gets off since this is practically the only residential area in our part of the district. I step off and sniff the air. It smells exactly like home. We walk down the lane and arrive at my house, the nice little house that is built of red brick and has the flower bed my mom asked to install when she was alive. After she died, I had no time at all to care for them. I go in and smile. I head upstairs to my room, my mother isn't home, so I will wait. I show Rue the room. The chandelier hangs from the middle of the room, and my bed sits on its perfect white drawer frame on the far left side of the room, next to the windows that bend with the wall. There is a small nightstand next to my bed, and a set of drawers on the wall with the bending windows. My closet is to my right, I am standing where the door is, directly in front of the bed. Rue just stands there, her mouth open as she looks at the house waiting for her. "Show me your house tomorrow." She just nods. I hear the door swing open downstairs and grab Rue by the hand. "I think she is home!" I say excitedly. We go down the stairs, but stop at the bottom when my mom hears us. She looks at Rue, and asks her name. when she changes her gaze to me, her mouth drops open and she runs toward me and embraces me. She starts crying, and I hug her tight as I cry too. "Mom…it's me, Clove…" I say in between my sobs. She lets go of me to compose herself and so do I. "Well, your little friend there is a guest, so why don't you sit down?" she says as she gestures towards me. We sit. "Can you start? I can't understand when, why, and who killed you…" she says, the tears reforming. "Rue, you can stay, it is okay…do we really look alike?" I know it's a stupid question. I look exactly like a fifteen year-old version of her, with the same light skin, the same dark brown jet-straight hair, the same grey eyes, the same freckles, the same tiny nose, the same short, skinny form. "Well….yeah! Can't you see?" she asks as I give her my sly smile I gave in the arena before throwing knives everywhere.
"Okay mom, let's start, but I assure you: it's a long story about just how I died…" I say.
