"Get out of the way, baby," says a boy, Lyme's first week in the Program. He's taller than her, and he sneers down at her like that makes him better. Lyme narrows her eyes. "You don't get to use the rope in free time until you've got your bracelet."
Lyme doesn't want to admit she doesn't know what that is. She knows a lot about the Centre but she missed that part. Lucky for her, boys always like to talk about the stuff they think they know more about, even if no one asks, so she doesn't have to say anything at all. A second later he flashes his wrist in her face, and that's when she sees it, two ropes wound around his wrist, one blue, one black. "Yeah, this," he says. "You don't get one until you've been here a year, and then you get to use the rope and stuff."
Lyme crosses her arms. "Is that a real rule?" she asks him. "Or did you make it up just now?"
"Who cares?" he shoots right back. "Little kids don't get to do anything if we don't say so."
There's a trainer watching. The trainers always watch. They're everywhere, standing off to the sides with their clipboards and notebooks, and they look to see what the kids do and how they act and talk to one another. Lyme doesn't know what they want or what they're looking for, but the woman leaning against the wall glances at them now, and this is important.
Lyme hauls off and punches the boy full in the face.
Except unlike the boys at school who don't know what to do, he rolls with it so her knuckles don't crack against his cheekbone, and when he comes back he's got his fist ready. Lucky for Lyme she's got enough practice with that, and he doesn't get her hard either. She gets in close, stomps on the inside of his foot, and he howls and flails out with his elbow, catching her under the eye.
They scrap after that, hard and messy, and in the end Lyme has a nosebleed and a cut on her cheek, and he has a black eye and swollen lip. The trainer yells at them both to stop for now, take a breather and get back to their games. The boy looks Lyme up and down, probably waiting to see if she'll cry, but she just wipes her nose with the clean white uniform - the blood is bright, so bright, like a badge - and finally he grunts.
"Not bad," he says, like he's a trainer, like Lyme should care what he thinks, and she doesn't, but it makes her grin anyway. "Fine, you can climb it once."
Lyme's broken arm is still in its sling, and so she doesn't make it to the top, but halfway is more than good enough one-handed - she wraps the rope around her foot to keep herself from sliding down when she changes the position of her hand - and the boy is impressed when she hits the ground again.
She has rope burn on her foot, and it makes her totter as she walks away. "Pretty good," says the trainer, walking over. "But I can show you how to do it so you don't hurt your foot."
Lyme beams.
They play a lot of games at the Centre, and it's the best ever. Running games and throwing games and hitting games, games where they hurl balls at each other and don't get in trouble from the teachers if they hit someone in the face and make their nose bleed, games where they go into a big room full of tall blocks and low walls and the lights go off and they have to find each other and tag them with a gun that doesn't have anything in it, just shoots light.
Lyme is good at all the games. She doesn't win all the time - a lot of the kids here are big and strong and good at games too - but she does learn fast how to get better. She also knows how to strategize, a word one of the trainers uses once that means being smart about things instead of just running around and smashing, and she learns how to play the games without breaking the rules, but using the rules in a way that means she has a better chance of winning.
At school, Lyme never liked team sports, but she does here. At school the other kids were slow and stupid, and the teachers never let them have any fun, but here it's different. Here the other kids are like her, tough and mean, and even the enemy team will be made of kids who don't cry if she hurts them, and the kids on her team listen to her because she's good at strategy. They listen to her and they do what she says and they win, more and more and more, and even when the other teams pick up on her tactics and she has to change them she keeps thinking of new ones.
One time they give her a team of only girls and make them play ball war against a team of only boys, and they win that too. If that happened at school the boys would have a temper tantrum, but at the Centre it's different. Here the boys swear but it's just because they lost, not because of who beat them. One boy tries to stay something grumpy about getting his butt kicked by girls, but a trainer cuffs him on the head and tells him to leave that shit at home.
The Centre is everything Lyme wanted it to be.
Madeline is more like a dream than a real person, a bad, awful, uncomfortable dream that Lyme has to have every day until she gets to the Centre and is allowed to wake up.
Sometimes she thinks Madeline is an ugly, sad caterpillar, and the Centre is like the cocoon she found underneath her windowsill one autumn. At the end of it Madeline will be gone and it's only Lyme, but for now at the end of the day Lyme has to take off the uniform and put on the dresses and go back home to her parents, but it's not real and it's not forever.
Sometimes she thinks of Madeline as a girl who's got a disease and is going to die, and when Madeline dies Lyme gets to come back and try everything over again in a way that isn't terrible.
Either way, it's easier if she thinks of them as two people. It helps her keep the Centre out of the house and away from school, which is good if she doesn't want to get hauled down to the headmaster's office every day for fighting and playing too rough at recess, if she doesn't want to go to the Centre with bruises on her legs under her uniform pants because she forgot and mouthed off to Pa and he needed to remind her that when she's home she has to mind him or else.
Madeline is still not a good girl - she's sullen, she's angry, and resentment boils under her skin like somebody stuck a needle full of red hot poison and keeps trying to replace her blood with it - but she knows how to keep her mouth shut and her head down. She can wear the dresses and the hair ribbons without choking, and she listens to Pa and doesn't say a word no matter how much he yells.
Lyme, on the other hand, is different. Lyme can do whatever she wants. As the months roll past and her hair grows, the Centre teachers her how to braid it tight against her scalp so it doesn't get in the way, so other kids can't grab it and pull, and so that becomes part of the transformation on the train ride into the city. She changes her clothes, braids her hair, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, and when she's done Madeline is gone and Lyme is back. On the way home she does it the other way but it's okay, it's just a nightmare, and tomorrow Lyme gets to come back and remind herself what's really real.
For her tenth birthday, Lyme gets to test into the Transition group at the Centre, and when she passes - of course she passes - they give her a big slice of chocolate cake all to herself, and tell her to go pick out a weapon to try for the first time.
"Really?" Lyme asks. She's gotten better over the last few years, not jaded exactly but no longer gaping wide-eyed like a kid from the sticks every time the Centre gives her something shiny, but she's been watching the Transitions train with weapons for the past year now. She's sneaked into the supply room and looked at them but could never bring herself to touch any. "Anything?"
"Anything on the wall," says the trainer.
Lyme swallows and takes it all in, the racks upon racks of sharp, shiny things that she's finally allowed to touch. Most of the girls start with throwing knives; she's seen them in front of the targets, darting through the air and whipping the tiny weapons like birds, and that's great, but it's not what Lyme wants. It's too far, for one; she likes being closer, using her size and stretch to her advantage. Range weapons are for the pretty girls who can't take as many hits.
She strides over and picks up a club, a long stick of wood with a wicked metal end, spikes and sticks. It looks like it could really do some damage against the training dummies.
The trainer nods, though her mouth twitches. "You've picked yourself a tough one."
"Why?" Lyme asks, not challenging, but seeking out more information. There's a difference in the Centre. She hefts it, and it's heavy enough but not as heavy as the rocks she still has to haul around the shop with Pa.
"Maces and clubs aren't clean," the trainer explains. "A good sword will go right through, as long as you're slicing and not stabbing. Knives you can just tug right out, they're made to be used again. But a club or a mace is a one-hit weapon just because it'll take you so long to get it free you're better off just leaving it there. You sure you don't want to switch?"
Lyme frowns. "Well, maybe swords will be better later," she says. "But I picked this one. Might as well start with it."
The trainer is right. Her first strike isn't as strong as she wanted it to be - it's not that heavy to lift but turns out swinging it all the way around is harder than it looks - but even then it buries itself in the dummy's side and Lyme has to brace her foot against the base of the dummy before she can get enough leverage to yank the weapon free.
By the end of the afternoon her arms ache and her hair is stuck to her scalp with sweat. "The good news is, the sword will be easy by comparison," the trainer says, and Lyme wipes her face on her sleeve. "Here, take this and try it."
The first time Lyme swings the sword, she actually cries out before she can stop herself. The club fought her the whole way, weighing her down and glancing off the dummy at strange angles, but the sword is different. It cuts through the air in a clean arc, with the faintest whoosh of air that leaves a shiver down her spine.
Lyme stops and stares at the sword, and part of her knows it's just a cheap training weapon - they don't get the good stuff until twelve, one of the older kids told her once - but at the same time it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. She looks up at the trainer and doesn't want to let it go.
The trainer smiles. "So you've found yours," she says. "Everyone finds at least one early on they connect with. You'll have to be versatile, which means using weapons you don't really like, but you're allowed to have a favourite even if you can't always focus on it." She picks up another sword from the top of the rack where the longer, bigger weapons sit. "You can't use this against other trainees, not yet," she warns Lyme. "But you can go a few rounds with me if you like. You've got instinctive footwork, we can start with that."
"Yes, please," Lyme says, even as the muscles in her arms scream.
Once they finish, the trainer makes Lyme hang up the sword herself, then runs her through exercises to do tonight so her arms won't seize. "Happy birthday," she says with a wink. Lyme grins so hard she's afraid her face will split right in half.
It's Madeline's birthday, too. That night after leaving the Centre, Madeline gets a new dress, a necklace that belonged to the grandmother that died before she was born, and her own saw at Pa's shop.
"Thanks," she says, and she loops the chain of the locket over her head, the pendant sitting heavy against her breastbone. It makes Mom smile, and Madeline doesn't care so much about that except it means they're more likely to leave her alone later.
As soon as she can she rips the necklace off, and she even checks in the mirror to make sure it didn't leave a brand on her skin. It didn't; but the training with swords that afternoon means the tops of her palms are scored with blisters and calluses.
She holds her hands against her chest, rubbing her thumbs across the raw skin to feel the sting and remind herself what's real.
Lyme liked her first few years at the Centre, but Transition is even better. She doesn't even mind sitting in the big room with the huge screen watching all the videos once a week, listening to the history of Panem and the generosity of the Capitol, because she's older now and it's easier to sit still. It's fun to watch the victors, too; they don't get to see footage of the Games yet, not until they're twelve, but they see videos of them when they were kids in training, and interviews with them after, talking about the honour of winning.
Winning is, of course, the greatest honour that any District Two citizen can receive, but Volunteering is the second. The Centre shows them the kids who Volunteered even if they didn't make it, because their sacrifice was no less great than the ones who made it home to tell their story.
It's easier and easier to imagine herself on that stage one day, talking about all the people who helped her get here, though of course Lyme knows she can't mention the Centre. It's a big secret, though she doesn't exactly understand why, and the Capitol knows but they allow the Centre to exist, and that's because the Capitol is good and protects the people loyal to it.
"The outer districts don't have Centres," says the trainer after one of the information sessions. "That's because they don't serve the Capitol as well as we do, so they don't get this privilege. Remember that."
Lyme will remember. She knows that as sure as she knows that rocks are heavy and swords are sharp and punches to the throat are more effective than the face because they don't hurt your knuckles after.
The trainees aren't allowed to use sharp weapons against each other, but they practice combat techniques using long lightweight staffs instead. It lets them practice the moves of weapon-fighting without the danger of stabbing themselves or their partner, concentrating on perfecting the craft before they go in for the kill. Instead of actual injury they mark points with strikes, against the head, limbs, and core, with double points awarded if their opponent's back hits the mat.
Lyme loves it. She's strong but she's also fast, even though she just keeps getting bigger and her muscles keep growing and she looks like she should be one of the kids who moves like an ox. She wins almost every match they put her in by letting the other person get one strike in, then jumping back in with two more so they can only ever play catch up, and never get ahead.
She knows enough not to get cocky, but there's nothing wrong with being confident.
The headmaster sends home a letter with Madeline, congratulating her for making it through an entire year without getting in any fights. He applauds the efforts of the teachers and the counsellors that went into such a feat, and encourages Madeline to keep it up next year.
She hands it to her parents and tries very hard not to laugh in everyone's faces. The only reason Madeline doesn't fight anymore is because it's boring compared to what Lyme gets to do after school. But when adults are happy that means they leave kids alone, so she doesn't say anything.
Mom gives her a kiss on the forehead and tells her she's growing up into a fine young lady after all, and Madeline bites down the retort because it doesn't matter. Let Mom think what she likes. She knows the truth.
She's eleven when the school pulls all the girls in her year into one room and sends the boys to another. That's never a good thing, and Madeline's anxiety only increases when the teacher at the front of the room says they're going to learn about puberty. Puberty is one of those things Madeline doesn't understand because she's only ever heard Mom say it, and based on her it's either a curse or the most beautiful thing in a young woman's life.
Either way it's one of those things that Madeline was promised she'd understand 'when she's older'. The idea of finally hitting an age when she's old enough for some of those scary future things makes her wish she knew how to throw up on command so she could fake sick and go to the nurse's office.
It's not much clearer even after the lecture, other than Madeline knows she doesn't want to have anything to do with it. All kinds of gross changes in her body, lots of bleeding and pain and for what, so she can make babies she doesn't want?
At the end of the first lecture, the teacher lets them write questions on a piece of paper and put them in a big box, so nobody has to be afraid. Madeline hesitates, but this teacher isn't one from their school - she's come in from the big city - and so she won't be able to recognize Madeline's handwriting. Madeline hooks her arm around her paper to hide it, and writes, "Do we get a choice?"
The teacher picks her question out of the box third and reads it out. Some of the girls snicker and glance around to see who wrote it, but Madeline isn't the only one sitting pale and tense in her seat. She can't be the only one wondering.
"Unfortunately," the teacher says, and oh no, "this is something that happens to all girls, and if it doesn't, that likely means something is wrong. But it's nothing to be afraid of."
Madeline tunes out after that, because she doesn't need to hear some strange lady talk about blossoming and womanhood and all these stupid things that Madeline will never, ever understand. She's heard enough. Whether she likes it or not, whether she wants it to or not, her body is going to change and try its best to make her into a baby-making machine, and it's up to her to keep it safe, to make sure no boy ever comes near her to do it.
Except she doesn't know how. The teacher doesn't tell them how babies get made, just talks a lot about conception and fertilization and eggs and sperm and all kinds of things that as far as Madeline's concerned have nothing to do with the human body. There are diagrams of inside organs, but nobody tells her how the stuff from inside the boy's body gets inside the girl's. She knows it's something to do with Pa and the candles and the blanket out behind the shop, but she gets the impression the teachers wouldn't like it if she asked. She's even less sure she wants to know at all, except how do you stop something from happening if you don't know what you're supposed to stop? Sex makes babies, but what is it?
Madeline doesn't have a lot of friends at school anymore, but at recess most of the girls clump together in giggling groups, warding off the annoyed, curious boys and talking about what they heard. Madeline hovers around the edges, not wanting to draw attention to herself, and finally one of the other girls asks the question that's been chewing on Madeline's brain.
"But I still don't get what sex is," the girl says, exasperated. The others point and 'ooh' at her, but she just folds her arms. "Yeah, laugh all you want, but you're just pretending. You don't know what it is either, you're just faking it so you look cool. If you do know, you'll tell us."
That actually works; the girls stop laughing, and their eyes flick back and forth, shifty. Finally one of the older girls rolls her eyes. "Fine, you babies," she says. "Since you're all know-nothing babies, I'll tell you what it is."
Madeline listens in horror, and the longer they talk about it - the others fill in the gaps with things their parents have said when they're not listening, or what they've seen in movies they turned on by accident or caught the sitter watching late at night - the worse it gets. One of the girls darts into the side door and comes back with a crumpled pamphlet from the health office, the one for the older kids, not for them, and the cartoon diagrams show them exactly what sex is all about.
Pa did that, to Mom, without asking, just to get back at her dad for being snobby. And now either Mom has learned to like it, or learned to lie to herself enough that she doesn't go crazy, because Pa still asks for it all the time. A thousand conversations that didn't make sense before suddenly slot themselves into place.
This is what her parents say is going to happen to her someday, because she's growing up to be a woman and that's what happens.
"But why?" Madeline bursts out, and they turn to look at her, startled. She doesn't talk in school anymore; they probably can't remember the last time any of them heard her voice. "Why would you let anyone do that to you?"
It can't all be forced. Can it?
"Because it feels good," says one of the girls. She's in their year but she's turned twelve already, and she knows a lot more. She lowers her voice. "You can try it for yourself," she says. "You know, with your fingers. It feels good." The other girls squeal and rear back, but she just rolls her eyes. "I'm serious, you babies, you can 'eww' all you want, it's true."
Madeline scrambles away from the group and heads for the grass track, running and running and running until the end of recess. As they're lining up to go back inside, the older girl stops her. "Hey," she says, laying a hand on Madeline's arm. "It's okay to be scared, that's what the nurse told me. But try it for yourself, you'll see, you'll like it."
It sounds crazy, but that night Madeline jams her door closed with books and rocks stolen from the back yard, and she tries it. It does feel good, in an uncomfortable sort of way, curling in her stomach and shooting all the way down to her feet; what's worse is that it feels incomplete, like an itch she can't quite reach, like there's more waiting but she doesn't know how to do it.
Mom was right. It's happening, and there's nothing Madeline - or Lyme - can do to stop it.
She makes it out of bed - her feet twist in the sheets and she nearly falls - and down the hallway to the bathroom before puking all over the sink. Mom wakes up and runs to ask her if she's all right, but Madeline can't answer her, just cries and cries and curls into a ball, pressing herself into the corner between the cabinet and the wall. Finally Pa comes in, picks her up and carries her to bed, and Mom sits next to her on a chair and strokes her hair, telling her it'll be all right.
It won't be all right. Not ever. Not when Madeline is finally old enough. But crying herself to sleep is a baby thing to do and right now Madeline really, really doesn't want to grow up, and so she does.
The next day at the Centre, Lyme finds a trainer. "I need to know how to protect myself," she says. Her eyes still hurt from crying, and her face feels tight and painful.
The trainer's eyes dip down to her neck and arms, the first places bruises from Pa usually show up. "That's what we're teaching you," she says.
"Not from that." Lyme's breath hitches in her chest, and it's weak and stupid but she presses her hands below her throat to try to force herself to calm down. She glances around, but there's nobody in hearing, and she can trust the trainers. She can always, always trust the Centre. They promised. "They told us about puberty yesterday," Lyme says in a whisper, and each word feels like she has to rip it out of her skin. "And babies and - and sex. That's what I want to protect against. I don't ever want a boy to do that to me. I won't be like my mom." The panic rises again, and she digs her fingers into her skin. "I can't."
The trainer's cheek twitches. "Come with me," she says.
"But weapons training is supposed to start in five minutes," Lyme says. You never, ever skip weapons training.
"Just this once," the trainer says, using the 'don't question me' voice, and so Lyme shuts her mouth and follows.
The trainer takes her to the nurse's office, where the nurse introduces Lyme to another piece of Centre magic - this time straight from the Capitol, is there anything they can't do - called birth control.
"All the girls who go into Residential take it," the nurse says. She lets Lyme hold the package, a small cardboard sheet with thirty tiny pills attached to it. "We can't have a quarter of your training interrupted with cramps and bleeding and everything else. All the female tributes receive an injection when they first arrive in the Capitol, too. You've never seen a tribute messing around with tampons; that wouldn't be good TV at all."
The hand squeezing Lyme's chest slowly loosens its grip. "So if I stay, I never have to worry about babies or any of that other stuff ever again?"
The nurse smiles. "That's right. The last thing we need is for anyone in the Program to waste time worrying about something we could easily prevent. We want you at your best at all times."
Lyme used all her crying up last night; now she just grips the chair until her hands hurt, and swings her feet like she's a little kid again. "But the other stuff, the - the sex stuff. That won't help with that, if a boy wants it and I don't."
This time the nurse raises her eyebrows. "Well, are we teaching you to fight, or aren't we?"
Lyme smiles.
Mom and Pa are fighting again. Madeline lost track about what this time - money, the Centre, sex, Pa's drinking, that woman he got caught with the nights he said he was working late - and she wouldn't even bother to pay attention except that for once Mom is shouting back, and Madeline can count the number of times that's happened on one hand, though she needs two for the broken bones afterward.
Their voices carry up through the floor. "I should just walk out that door and leave you," Mom yells. "I never should have gone with you in the first place. I should've just sucked it up and gone back to my old man!"
"And done what, suck dick for spare change when he cut you off for being a slut?" Pa challenges. Madeline flinches because she knows what all those words mean now.
"He told me he'd forget the whole thing ever happened if I got an abortion," Ma shoots back, and that's a word Madeline still doesn't know. The way Mom spits it out, the way Pa's stunned silence floats up from the first floor the same as the loudest cries, tells her it must not be a nice one. "But no, I couldn't do that to the baby. I thought we'd be better off with you. And look where that got me!"
Pa's still shocked, but he gets his control back enough to use his threatening voice. "You wanna say that again?"
"I'm still young!" Mom says, like she's not even listening. "I could make something of myself, go somewhere far away and do something. I don't know why I stay here with you!"
"Because you know the truth," Pa says. "Because no matter what little castles you build for yourself in your head, you know none of them are real. As soon as you step outside that door you become exactly what you are, a woman with no skills and no education who got herself knocked up at fourteen and has no idea how to take care of herself. You run away, you'll come back in a week, begging me to take you back."
"Maybe I'll take my chances!"
"Maybe I'll let you!"
Madeline knows what's coming, and she stuffs the pillow into her ears to muffle the sounds until she falls asleep.
The next morning at the breakfast table, Pa is gone, and Mom is mutinous despite the bruises. She slams the pots and cupboard doors as she makes the food, and the plate actually cracks when she drops it in front of Madeline. The eggs are cooked so hard the edges are black and Madeline's knife won't even cut them, so she shoves the rubbery mess in her mouth and swallows it whole.
"Mom?" Madeline says, watching her without moving her head. She's never seen Mom this mad, not the following day, anyway. Usually Pa's managed to persuade her to behave by them. "If you leave, will you take me with you?"
Mom stops. "What makes you think I'm leaving?"
"I heard you last night." Madeline tries to imagine what it is that got Mom this mad. "Is it because of Dad and that lady?"
Mom freezes, her fingers digging into a drinking glass like she thinks she could dent it. "I'm twenty-six," she says, like that means something. "I'm twenty-six, and all I've ever done is give him everything he wants, when he wants it, whether I want to or not, and what does he do? He goes off with some slut who was ten years old when his daughter was born!"
'Slut' is a new word for Madeline, but she finally realized it means a girl who lets a boy have sex with her. 'Prude' is the word for the girls who don't. The Capitol likes the first better than the second, but it's not the Capitol out here. Being a slut, Madeline has learned, is something that's only okay if you have money, like dying your hair purple and putting diamonds on your eyelashes. She doesn't understand it, but she's trying.
"If you leave, take me with you," Madeline says again. She doesn't like Mom but at least Mom doesn't hit her, and if Madeline has no respect for her as a victim who never learned to fight, the pity and disdain she feels is still better than the outright, burning hate she has for Pa.
Mom sighs, and she puts down the glass and runs a hand over her face. "I'm not leaving, baby girl," she says. Madeline tries not to curl her lip at the nickname. "But if I do, sure, I'll take you with me."
Madeline eats her cereal, content. She goes to school, aces her test on history - it was on the Dark Days, and the Centre has a lot of information sessions on that - and wins three out of three sparring matches at the Centre. Pa's in a foul mood at the shop but Madeline doesn't care, and she's humming to herself when they walk home and find the house empty.
"Kate?" Pa hollers, but there's nothing, no answer. He runs into their room and immediately bursts into a flood of swearing; Madeline follows, keeping out of range, and peeks through the door just enough to see the dressers upended, the clothes in Mom's half missing.
Madeline lets Pa whirl around and whack her across the face because that gets it out of his system, and then she's safe to hide in her room and disappear. She sits on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, while Pa rages downstairs, smashing every dish in the house and slamming the doors over and over and over. His footsteps stomp around the house like a monster.
"You liar," Madeline hisses, staring out the window. Mom said she'd take Madeline with her. Sure she hadn't said the words 'I promise' and they didn't write it down or anything, but she said. Now there's no chance, no way for Madeline to go anywhere until residential, and no one else to take Pa's anger. It's all up to her now. "You're a fucking liar!"
Pa doesn't call her down for supper. It's good, because Madeline couldn't eat anything anyway.
Pa's gone to the shop when Madeline wakes up the next morning, same as always, except this time the house is quiet and cold and doesn't smell like breakfast. It throws her for a minute - Mom must be sick, or maybe Pa hurt her bad enough she can't get out of bed - but then she remembers. It's lucky she wakes up at the same time every morning anyway, just out of habit, or she might have been late for school.
Mom is gone, and no matter what Pa says, Madeline doesn't think she's going to come crawling back. Maybe Grandaddy had been mad at Mom when she wouldn't have the abortion, whatever that meant, but after eleven years, he'd probably just be glad to have her back. Especially if she came without Pa and the baby he forced on her. And Mom is young, like she said - twenty-six sounds awfully old to Madeline, but Mom didn't seem to think so - and maybe she can learn something new, do something with herself. Maybe she won't bother going to Grandaddy at all, but will head right into the city and make her fortunes there. Who knows.
Madeline should feel something. It's the kind of thing Mom would have said, if she were still here, that good little girls should feel sad when their mamas run away, even if those mamas never said I love you unless they wanted something, even if all they ever did was push dresses and hair brushes and jewellery like they mattered. It's still Madeline's mother, and that means something.
Madeline digs deep, like the Centre tells her to when they have acting lessons - pretend you just won a lot of money in a contest; pretend your favourite toy got thrown away - and searches inside herself for the kind of feelings that would make her a nice little girl. She thinks of Mom's hands, always soft when they held the ice to Madeline's cheek after one of Pa's rages. Mom's fears when she talked about what would happen to Madeline if she wasn't careful. Mom's cooking, which if not amazing was at least not terrible, and how she never forgot that Madeline hated onions and always tried to hide them inside her casseroles instead of putting them on top.
Nothing. No tears, no hitched breaths, no secret well of sadness inside her. The harder Madeline looks, the more it's like scrabbling at the remnants of a fire with her fingers and burning her hands on the hot coals at the bottom; the only thing she finds is anger, sharp and bitter and twisting. Mom left her. She left Madeline with Pa, even though she had to know what would happen, and she didn't care.
Madeline didn't love Mom, so it's fair enough that Mom didn't love her, especially since Madeline ruined her life by being born and sticking her with Pa. It makes sense. But there's not loving your kid and there's leaving them behind, and maybe Madeline was stupid but she didn't think Mom hated her that much.
Well. Now she knows, for all the good it does her. Madeline gets up, pulls on her clothes, and almost makes herself an egg for breakfast, but stops with the pan in her hand, her mind agog with horror. With Mom gone, that means Pa will expect her to do all the chores. Chores are a man's work, and now all the cooking and cleaning and everything else that Mom did all day while Madeline was at school, that's her job now, because Pa wouldn't do it before and he sure won't do it now that he's mad.
Madeline puts the pan back in its drawer, rips a chunk of bread from the loaf with her hands, and gnaws on that dry. Her stomach turns. How is she supposed to go to school, and the Centre, and help Pa at the shop, and still keep the house running? There's no way to do it all, but she knows what Pa will do if she doesn't.
For the first time, Madeline actually understands the fear that drove Mom to scrub the bathtub at three in the morning because she woke and remembered she hadn't done it. Unless Madeline quits school, the Centre, or sleeping, there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything Pa will demand her. She doesn't really like school, but faced with the idea of having to give it up, now Madeline thinks of the boring building and the chalkboards and the stupid, useless students with panicked affection.
She runs, arriving at school well before the morning bell. For the first time in years, Madeline makes her way across the little kids' playground to the primary wing of the school, and she walks through the hallways, looking at the tiny water fountains and low shoe lockers until she finds Mrs. Sullivan's classroom.
Mrs. Sullivan looks the same - four years moves differently for grownups than kids, Madeline has found - and she glances up from her desk with a surprised smile. "Madeline!" she says, but one glance at Madeline's face and her expression goes serious. "What happened?"
It's stupid. Madeline should go, it's not like Mrs. Sullivan is her teacher anymore, but she bursts out the whole thing, twisting her hands in her skirt. "He'll make me quit school," Madeline finishes, digging her hands into her hair. It's long again, and with a wrench in her gut she wonders if she could cut it now that Mom's gone, or if Pa will just ratchet back even harder into having a girl around to take care of the house for him. "He says there's no use in my being educated anyway."
"He won't," Mrs. Sullivan says, furious. If she weren't so dark Madeline guesses there would be red spots on her cheeks. "It's illegal to keep children out of school. You're allowed to take the afternoons off for the Centre, but he can't keep you home. This isn't District Twelve!"
Madeline doesn't know what that means either, other than school has told her District Twelve is dirty and terrible and they should be grateful and privileged to live in District Two. "Are you sure?"
"Talk to the Centre," Mrs. Sullivan says. Her mouth is in a thin line whenever she's not talking, and her hand shakes. "They'll help you. They give your father a stipend to take care of you, that means he can't just do as he likes."
Madeline doesn't hug grownups, she never has, but Mrs. Sullivan makes her think more about it than any other person alive. "I will," she says.
"Good." Mrs. Sullivan smiles, and she still never touches Madeline without permission but she does point to her bicep. "You're getting strong."
Madeline looks at her arms; when the light hits them right, her muscles cast a shadow. She can lift more than any girl in her age group at the Centre, and more than the lankier boys. The big ones from the quarries can still beat her, but they're not as fast. "Thanks," she says.
The Centre agrees. They're not babysitters, which is why Madeline isn't the only one who comes through the doors with bruises that don't get put there while behind their walls, but they do have an interest in their kids not being taken advantage of. They tell Madeline not to worry, that Pa can't keep her out of school just to be his servant, and if he tries they'll get someone to call the house and set him straight. Madeline doesn't care so much about being hit now that she knows how to take one and keep fighting, but the thought of doing nothing but cooking and cleaning in her spare time was enough to terrify her, and this lets her breathe again.
For a few days she doesn't have to think about it. Pa doesn't talk to her at all when she comes to the shop after the Centre - later, now, by an hour or two every day now that she's in Transition - and he stays out late even after he sends her home. Apart from those few hours where they work at the blocks in silence, Madeline doesn't see Pa at all, which suits her fine. Maybe he's waiting for Mom to come home; maybe he's given up. She doesn't actually care. She's just glad she doesn't have to deal with him.
Except that around a week after Mom left, Madeline checks the fridge and all the cupboards and finds that the food is gone. It hits her that Mom must have done all the home budgeting and shopping herself, what with Pa out at work all day, and just like the cleaning - the dishes piling in the sink, dust gathering on every surface, the laundry sitting in an increasing lump by the washing machine - Pa hasn't even thought about doing any of it himself.
Madeline can't figure out how Pa is feeding himself; she gets by with nicking things from kids' lunches at school, an apple here and half a sandwich there, not enough that anyone will yell at her too much, and from the snacks they give her at the Centre, but there's nothing for breakfast or supper, and Pa has to be eating somewhere. She follows him one night after he leaves the shop, and he goes right for a bar and stays there until late. They must have food there, and that's why he hasn't bothered.
Madeline makes up her mind not to do a lick of work on Pa's behalf, but she has to have clothes to wear, and she needs to eat. And so, after she gets home the next day, her stomach gnawing at itself, Madeline takes only her clothes and towels and does a load of laundry, putting everything back in her drawers. That night she waits up, doing training exercises from the Centre - shadow boxing, stretches, sword patterns with Pa's discipline ruler instead of a weapon - until footsteps sound outside and Pa stumbles home.
"I want money for food," Madeline says. He stares at her, bleary, his hand still on the knob, either having forgotten it's there or not wanting to let go in case he falls. "The Centre gives you a stipend. You have to feed me."
"I don't have to do nothin'," Pa slurs, his lip curled. "Why don't you go on and run off after your Ma and leave me in peace?"
Madeline stands her ground. "Give me the food tickets, then." She read the paperwork; she knows it's not just money that arrives in the big envelope every month, because not a few parents would spend it on anything but their kids if it was. "You're not using them down at Shady's."
It's true; only some places will take the tickets, and the bar isn't one of them. Pa scowls at her, and Madeline wants to shift to an aggressive stance, crossing her arms and turning out her feet, but she doesn't. If she can do this without a fight, even better; that's something the bigger, nastier kids at the Centre don't understand. You don't always have to do it with punching.
"Fine," Pa snorts after a long staring match. There's defeat in the slump of his shoulders that Madeline has never seen before, and she'd feel bad for him except - no, she really doesn't, not even enough to pretend. She keeps her expression neutral. "Take the tickets then." He heads into his room and comes back with a handful of coloured paper - there's a certain amount for bread, milk, vegetables and meats, portioned out so the kids have a balanced meal at home - and throws it in Madeline's direction. They flutter to the ground like leaves in the dead autumn air; he grunts and goes back to his room.
Madeline gathers up the tickets, spreads them out on the kitchen table, and makes a list with the paper and pen Mom used to keep in the drawer by the phone. There's no way she's using her tickets for food that Pa can steal; she'll keep what she can in her room, and anything that needs the fridge she'll just buy for one day at a time. That means no milk for breakfast, but Madeline can deal with that. If she really wants it later she can rig up something and keep it in the creek out back, like the time her class went camping.
She's not cleaning anything she doesn't touch, either. As the weeks pass, Madeline cleans her dishes, washes her clothes, and tidies up all her messes while leaving everything else alone. It means parts of the house have a neat dividing line but she doesn't care, let it look stupid. The only thing Madeline compromises on is the garbage, taking out anything that might rot and smell, but she leaves the bottles and cans alone, picking around them if she has to.
Pa doesn't say a word.