At the Centre she just keeps working harder. Each week she picks a different kid to have an invisible contest with based on who the trainers are paying attention to; without being too obvious about it Lyme tries to beat their time when running or climbing, and she angles herself to get paired with them in sparring practice. The trainers notice but they don't say anything because it's not against the rules and they like to see initiative, a word Lyme has learned to love and can't help puffing up when she hears.
"What are you trying to prove, anyway?" one of the girls in her year asks her one day, getting all up in her face after Lyme beat her on the ropes course. The girl is big and strong and pretty, and this one got under Lyme's skin more, the need to win win win, and so she made it back down when the girl was still on her way to the top.
"That I'm better than you," Lyme sneers. She doesn't cock her hip because that's what the pretty girls do, she just stands up tall and square and curls her lip just a little.
"Better watch it," the girl says and stomps off, but the trainers saw. The trainers see everything, and Lyme gets a whole peach to herself. She eats it in the main common room, making loud slurping noises and wiping the juice from her chin with her forearm. It's a good day.
There are a lot of good days.
Madeline wakes up in the middle of the night because Pa is crashing through the house, shouting and throwing things and kicking things out of the way, things that clank and rattle and thud as they roll over the floor. "The place is a mess!" he screams. "What is this? I work hard all day and come home to a pigsty? Where do you think we live?"
Madeline's heart pounds, but she doesn't answer, just slips out of bed and makes sure everything in her room that's important is hidden, in the back of her closet or under clothes in her drawer or behind books on the desk. All visible open spaces in her room are clear, from the tops of her dresser and desk to the empty shelf running along the wall over her bed. She doesn't have that much anyway; Residential kids are only allowed to take a box of stuff with them, at least so the whispers go, and so Madeline makes sure there's nothing she cares about that won't fit into one with everything else.
It's a while before Pa crashes into her room and turns on the light by slamming his hand against the wall until he finds the switch; by then Madeline is back in bed and feigning sleep. "Wha-" she says, rubbing at her eyes theatrically. It wouldn't win Lyme any points in the Centre, but this is home and Pa is flaming mad and his face is all red from rage and probably drinks so she has to play it up a little.
"I'm sick of this place being a mess," Pa shouts. He has a garbage bag in his hand, the sides bulging out. There's a tear down one side where he shoved something in without paying attention. "You know the rules. Anything on the floor goes in the trash."
He looks around the room, but there's nothing, not even a sock. Madeline sits up slowly, composing herself, and when Pa whirls, she just looks at him, her face calm. "Nothing on the floor in the house is mine," Madeline says. She feels the same thrill of fear as the time the trainers first made her jump from one balance beam to the other, like the game of "floor is lava" she used to play as a kid only with stakes that matter. "The mess is yours."
That shakes him, but only for a second, and then the scowl is back. "Well, it's not my job to clean!" he says, pointing at her. "Your mama left so now it's up to you, little girl."
Madeline lets out a long breath. "No," she says. "It's not. I clean my messes. You clean yours."
"Are you disrespecting me?" Pa asks. He actually sounds shocked, which is almost funny.
Madeline will laugh later, but right now she can't. It's not the time for that. Different thoughts run through her head, the Centre and acting lessons and how to play for the cameras and read the audience and know what they're looking for - memories, the belt and the buckle and the pain, blood on her arms, her legs, on her back where she can't reach to clean it, standing in the shower so the water washes away the scabs - and she wants to keep hiding under the blankets but she can't.
Madeline slides out of bed and lands with a heavy thump. "I'm not," she says, keeping her voice level. It's the voice that the big kids use when they're practicing going in for the kill, low and calm and in the middle between the sing-song playful of chasing at the beginning and the crazy at the end. "But you're not a baby and I'm not your slave. You can clean your own messes now."
Pa's face contorts, and for a second Madeline is seven years old again as he drops the bag and pulls off his belt. Except this time he's drunk and it takes him a few tries and Madeline sleeps with a knife under her pillow that she stole from the kitchen. He doesn't even have the buckle open by the time Madeline has the knife in her hand, the handle tucked tight against her palm.
"Don't," Madeline says, and Pa looks up. His face goes pale. It's a kitchen knife, made for cutting meat, not people, but that doesn't matter. In the Arena there are no promises for what the tributes get, and she's still in Transition but they've practiced with non-standard weapons already. "You don't get to touch me again."
"Yeah?" Pa challenges, but his hand stays. "Who died and made you boss?"
"Nobody," Madeline says, and she takes a step forward and bares her teeth. "Yet."
Pa's nostrils flare. "Are you threatening me, little girl?"
This is it. Madeline expected to feel more afraid, but instead there's nothing but an icy calm spreading through her. She shifts her grip on the knife. "Just try me," she says, and it scares her how much she wants him to. "Give me the chance," Madeline says, and suddenly she's not Madeline at all. Madeline is gone, Madeline is sleeping, and it's all Lyme now, Lyme holding the knife and turning her grin sharp like a wolf's and Lyme sliding forward one soft footfall at a time. "I want to. And no one would care because you're a deadbeat piece of shit, everybody says so. So no, really. Give me the chance."
Pa takes a step back, and yeah, it feels good, but Lyme knows not to push it. "You have to sleep sometime," Pa says, trying to gather himself.
"Yeah," Lyme says, and narrows her eyes. "So do you."
They stare for a long, long time. Finally Pa turns and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving the trash bag. Lyme counts to ten, lets out a breath, and then Madeline picks up the bag, opens the door, and sets the bag back down in the hallway outside. She climbs back into bed, puts the knife under her pillow - all with even, rhythmic movements, like she's being watched and graded on economy of motion - then bursts into hysterical laughter with both hands over her mouth.
Even if Madeline can never sleep in the house again - even if she has to sneak up onto the roof, or catch naps at recess or during free time to make up for it - it's worth it.
Lyme cuts her hair again, short and almost to the scalp. The trainer at the Centre takes one look at her, smacks her own forehead, and drags her into a room with lots of scissors and brushes and gets someone else to even it up for her. "You can have short hair without looking like you got your head gnawed on by a mutt," the trainer says, cuffing Lyme on the back of the head when they finish, and Lyme just grins and scampers off.
Pa isn't careful with the accounting either, and so Madeline starts intercepting the Centre packages and nicking some of the cash vouchers every month. Soon she's got enough that she can go out and buy herself clothes without having to steal them or beat anyone up. It's the first time she's had new clothes, not worn by anyone, that she actually wants to wear, and it's hard for Madeline not to spend an entire evening just taking off shirts and putting on new ones and rolling around in the feeling of being exactly who she wants to be.
Pa notices, obviously, but he just stares at her, his jaw clenched. "My dresses got too small," Madeline says, and it's not even a lie. She's hitting her first growth spurt, and the skirts that were below the knee are now three fingers above, which means she can't wear them to school. "Boy's clothes are cheaper and easier to grow into. Just thought I'd be practical."
He gives her a look that says she ain't fooling anyone, but Madeline just stares him down and finally he grunts and turns away.
They don't talk at all anymore. That suits Madeline just fine.
The first year Lyme is old enough to stand in the square with the other eligible Reaping candidates is the first time she's Lyme outside the Centre for long periods of time. But Madeline had the blue dress with the scratchy lace on the collar and under her arms, Madeline had her hair braided into pigtails and secured with ribbons, Madeline wore a pearl necklace that Mama gave her, and Madeline held on to her mother's hand and stood very quiet behind the barrier like all the other girls.
Lyme stands in the square, tall and proud, sneaking glances at the wrists of all the kids and noticing how they stand in bunches, all the ones with Centre bracelets. Lyme has cropped hair and fresh boy's clothes and five black strands around her wrist. Lyme got up and dressed on her own and took the train and made it down to the square before Pa even got out of bed. He's probably not even at the central Reaping location, he's probably just at the one closest to home. District Two is too big to hold everyone together like in Twelve, but most of the Centre kids make the trek into town.
The sun beats down on the back of her neck, and Lyme knows she should pay attention to the details but she's not thirteen yet - next year she'll be watching the whole Games from inside Residential - and now she's just impatient. The thing about the Hunger Games is that no matter what the people on TV say, it's not exciting to watch. If you watch they're just kind of awful, it's kids killing each other and most of the deaths aren't even good, they're just sad, starving and bleeding and freezing and crying for their mommies.
It's the Careers that make the Games, the Careers that make it more than just kids dying with no purpose, and all Lyme wants is to be there, to do her duty and fight and make everyone in Panem see how good she is, how smart and strong and clever and brave she is. The killing part - well, Lyme hasn't quite fixed that in her head yet, but they'd die anyway, right, and at least she can make it fast because a big girl like her isn't the kind who can get away with torture like some of the smaller, meaner ones - she can figure out later. For now it's about winning, and Lyme's mind jumps over the middle bit and skips to the part where she comes home with the crown and the applause and gets to live in a big house full of other people who are good at things and no one ever judges her again.
She barely pays attention to the tributes this year, a lithe, beautiful girl and the biggest boy Lyme's ever seen on the stage in all her years of remembering. She's too busy thinking about six years from now, when she can be on that stage herself, the first female tribute from District Two not to wear a dress, to stand up there as big and imposing and powerful as the boys.
She feels a little bad a month later, when it's Brutus, the boy from Two, who makes it back home alive with nine Arena kills to his name - five boys, four girls, not a new record but a tie for the standing one, and every one of them brutal. She didn't pay much attention during, what with school and training and work and everything else, and Lyme is twelve and that means studying for her Centre Exam every minute she doesn't absolutely have to do anything else. She doesn't have time for the Games, not this year; that's for when she's thirteen, safe in the Centre with the other Residential trainees, and can sit with the trainers and get the whole thing dissected down in ways they can understand. But then at the Centre there's an announcement that Brutus won it, and they stop everything and give cake and ice cream to all the kids and they don't have to train for the rest of the day.
Pa likes Brutus, is the only thing that throws a pall on it. Brutus is everything a Two and a man should be, Pa says once, gesturing at the TV. Brutus wouldn't let a girl boss him around or make him do his own cooking. Pa sends Madeline a sharp look when he says it, even though he long gave up the fight to try to make her do his chores for him.
Madeline rolls her eyes, and she uses Lyme's voice to tell him to go fuck himself. Pa hisses, but she just strolls out of the room, flicking the knife she now keeps on her at all times, and he doesn't say anything else.
Still, she's happy when he wins, of course she is, and she stands with the other Centre kids in the main square when he comes home, jostling adults out of the way who let them go when they see the crowd of perfect, pretty children too muscled and confident to be normal. Brutus sees them too, catches them in the crowd as they wave their arms with the identical black bracelets, and he gives them a small, private smile that's just for them.
The months coming up to Lyme's thirteenth birthday are a blur, her and the other twelve-year-olds. It's easy to tell who's coming up to their Centre Exam even without counting bracelet strands, because they're the kids off by themselves, muttering numbers and names and death counts under their breath because one of the tests is being able to rattle off any death in Hunger Games history that the trainers could possibly want to know. Lyme - there's less and less Madeline now, even at home - covers the walls in her bedroom with the names, all one thousand, one hundred twenty eight of them, dismayed that by the time she takes her test the ones from Brutus' year will be added on.
She doesn't bother studying any normal lessons at school, just bends over her desk, scrawled with notes and Games statistics, flashes her bracelet whenever a teacher tries to ask her a question she doesn't know off the top of her head. None of the other Centre kids studying for the Exam have to do anything in regular school; they'll be pulled out of it permanently in a few weeks, and if the Centre doesn't think it'll help them in the Arena then they don't need to know it, and the teachers just let them do their own thing. Soon Madeline won't even bother going at all.
Soon Madeline will be dead. Lyme can't wait.
It's a weird kind of camaraderie, looking at other kids and seeing the same harried, shadow-eyed exhaustion on their faces. They pair up at lunch and recess, quizzing each other on the deaths, until it becomes a twisted sort of playground game that's all too real.
"How many deaths by blunt force trauma?" she asks the boy who's her unofficial partner today.
He screws up his face in thought. "Just the ones that ended instantly, or the ones that bleed out later?"
"That would be blood loss, then," she snaps. "Don't be stupid!"
"Right!" He hunches, then closes his eyes. "One hundred seventy-six." She nods, and he lets out a breath. "Go through all the starvation deaths by Games year, backwards."
There's one more test included in the exam, even harder than the others - you're allowed to slip up on the death list questions if you catch yourself, it's not an automatic fail - that decides it all. It's the one they don't talk about, though the trainers have already taken them into the room filled with animals in cages and what they're for.
Some of the kids have practiced, and it's common enough that the trainers don't crack down on it as long as the kids don't get themselves caught. One of the big kids offered to show Lyme, but she said no; after the first one they'll tell her how to do it right, how to deal with it properly, and there's no point in practicing a bunch of times the wrong way.
That's all it is, it's not like she's nervous. Lyme knows what the Centre is, what it's for, what its graduates go on to do. She's not stupid, and she is prepared. Madeline isn't so sure, but Madeline won't be the one doing it, now will she.
Lyme just hopes they give her a knife. According to some of the older kids, they don't always, and one girl looks her up and down and says "You're big for your age, they'll probably want you to do it by hand."
She picks up some rocks on the way home and keeps them in her pockets at all times, and whenever she has a minute she takes them out and squeezes them until her hands bleed in the hopes it strengthens her grip. She grabs sticks from the backyard and practices breaking them in quick, clean gestures. One time she chooses a stick that's too big, too green, and instead of snapping it twists in her hand, the bark splintering and the wood inside warping, and no matter how much she wrenches it side to side she can't make the pieces come apart. In the end it's a mess of torn fibres and jagged ends, and it's just a stick - it's just a stick - but Lyme turns and vomits into the grass anyway.
The weird thing is, Lyme got rid of all her horror that time out back in the yard with the sticks. When it's time to do it for real, her throat tightens and her stomach jumps but then she does it and it's done, and she's sitting there looking at the tiny little body in her hands and it's over, it's over, it's dead, and she should want to throw up but she doesn't. She just stares at it and thinks how easy it was. If it'll be this easy next time. Her legs shake a little when she stands, and she can't look to see what they do with the body when they take it away, but it's over, and she takes a breath, then another, and another, and she's not sick at all.
Lyme aces the rest of the exam, the physical and the sparring match and the weapons test and the history test, and she goes right through the odd-numbered female deaths and all the deaths by drowning and the years where over half the deaths were Arena-related without even a hiccup. It's like every part of her brain not related to the testing disappears until she's sharp and focussed, and it's only at the end when they tell her she's made it, she's in, that she realizes how fast her heartbeat is, and when she shifts her shoulders her shirt sticks to her back.
They give her a week to say goodbye to family. "Do I have to take it?" she asks, looking at the paper she'll make Pa sign tonight or else she'll stab him in the leg.
The trainer raises an eyebrow. "No," she says.
Lyme lets out a breath. "Good," she says. "See you tonight."
In the end she doesn't even bother with the box of things she's allowed to take with her. There's nothing in that house she ever needs to see again. She does wait to say goodbye to Pa, even after he's already signed the paperwork under threat of being knifed in his sleep, just because it would feel strange if she didn't. Like leaving a splinter lodged under her fingernail.
"So," Pa says. He's awkward, which is a new one, but she doesn't know how else to class it. He keeps shifting, scuffing his foot against the floor like he's a kid who's done something bad, and he rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "This is it, huh."
"Yep." She's not sure what she wants to say to him, and she's sure not going to cry into her pillow tonight, but it feels weird. There's a thread of connection between them that she wishes wasn't there but she can't just walk away with it still there. She has to cut it, or rip it out, or something.
Pa bites his lip and glances around the room, and for a second he looks lonely, a guy in an empty house with everyone gone except him, but there's not an ounce of sympathy left inside her. Not even now that the only bruises on her body are the ones other kids at the Centre put there. But it's not anger either, she's surprised to realize; it's something else, something less sharp and ragged. Anger feels like the jagged edge of a soup can after she saws at it with their half-broken can opener, likely to catch on things and cut and infect. This is like a whole lot of nothing. Her literature teacher would probably call it 'apathy'; he tried to explain it once and she said "so it's a fancy word for having no fucks to give?" and he just sighed at her.
It's not that exactly, but it's close. After years and years of looking at Pa and feeling the hate boiling up inside her until it presses out her eyeballs and oozes through her pores, now it's nothing. It's not forgiveness - no, he'll never get that, he doesn't deserve it, and ah there's the anger flashing out for a second - it's just that she doesn't care. She's leaving. He'll never be part of her life ever again; even if she washes out tomorrow she'll go into the post-Program dorms set up by the Centre until she's old enough to support herself. This is it.
All those years of living in fear and rage, they all sit behind her, and all she can think is that he used to look so big, so strong, and now she sits and calculates six different ways to kill him just with stuff lying around the room.
"My little girl, all grown up and off to kill people," Pa says, with an edge to his voice, but he's trying too hard, he's fishing, like the days he wanted to get on Mom's nerves because he liked seeing her twitch.
"And you get paid for it," she says. She's not playing that game. "Lucky you."
A muscle in Pa's cheek jumps, and that's enough. She has nothing else to say to him, and staying longer isn't going to help her find it. She catches his eye and stares him down. "Next time you see me, you won't recognize me," she says.
Pa snorts. "I believe it. I already don't know who you are anymore."
That, weirdly enough, gets a reaction, like she held a match too long and it burned down and stung her fingers. "You never did," she snaps, and leaves him behind.
One time in history the teacher mentioned that in olden times stopping outside a town and shaking the dust off your shoes was one of the strongest ways to insult someone, something about how they were so unworthy you didn't even want to be connected by walking on the same dirt. It sounded melodramatic and silly, but as she walks away across the line of Pa's property, she stops and looks back, and something makes her pick up her feet and pound them against the ground until the soles of her shoes are clean.
It helps, but it doesn't really stick until she makes it to the main Centre building and the doors shut behind her. Even the air inside is filtered - with so many kids inside, they're fanatical about making sure they don't all get sick from someone's runny nose - and when the door shuts, there's a low hiss that marks the pressure change and that gets her in the chest.
Lyme gives the permission form to the head trainer. "Good," the woman says. "We've got your name change forms, if you still want to do that. All you have to do is sign and we'll send it off."
Lyme sucks in a breath. "And then what?" she asks. "That's my name everywhere?"
"Yes." The trainer smiles, and it's not huge and effusive or anything, but it's real. "It'll be on every document about you for the rest of your life. If you Graduate, that'll be the one on record at the Capitol and used in all coverage."
Lyme snatches the pen so fast she slams the tips of her fingers against the desk by accident, but she doesn't care. "And I'll never have to wear dresses, right?" she asks, looking across the desk. "I was promised."
"Everyone has to try out different looks," the trainer says. "In the Capitol the tributes don't get to choose what their stylists do, but the mentors do have to okay it, and we do go with the image that suits you best. I don't think dresses will be the way to go."
It's not the easy guarantee they gave her when she was seven, but Lyme is older now, and not so naive or desperate. She knows that her life belongs to the Centre now, to the Capitol and to Panem, but all she needs is their word of honour to try. "Okay," she says. All she has to do is build her image early, so that by the time she has stylists they won't be able to put her in a dress without it clashing horribly. That won't be hard.
"Welcome to Residential," the trainer says, and it would feel anticlimactic except Lyme already had the ceremony where they made her recite the pledge and her promise to serve the Capitol until the day she died, so this is just a formality. "I'll show you to your room."
Three months into her stay at Residential, Lyme is sparring with another trainee a couple of years older when her gut spasms and clenches and she goes down hard, gasping with one hand pressed to her stomach. "The hell?" Rosslyn pulls back, her fists up in case it's a feint, but Lyme can't even picture feinting right now, not when it feels like her insides have turned to liquid fire. "I didn't even hit you!"
Lyme just shakes her head, and the trainer calls the match. "I don't know what happened," Lyme grits out, but this is the Centre, and in the Centre if it's not broken, you walk it off. "Give me a minute, I'll be fine."
Rosslyn crouches next to her, her hand on Lyme's shoulder, and Lyme would have knocked her away a few years ago but she's lost that reflex and now she doesn't care. Then something in Rosslyn's face changes; her eyes go wide and she glances down, but everything hurts too much and Lyme has missed a step. "Can I take her to the nurse?" Rosslyn asks, and Lyme is about to get mad when the trainer pauses, then says yes with a face that says 'oh'.
Rosslyn walks Lyme there, which is ridiculous. Lyme glares at her; this whole thing is embarrassing. She probably just ate something bad earlier and it's only hitting her now. "You don't actually have to come with me," she grouses. "I'm not even bleeding."
"Yeah, that's the thing," Rosslyn says. "Actually you are."
"What?" Lyme touches her face, checking her nose and mouth, but her fingers come away clean. "Where?" Rosslyn raises her eyebrows, and Lyme's stomach churns in a way that's not because of whatever's happening to her. She stops walking. "No."
"It was gonna happen someday," Rosslyn says, shrugging. "Don't worry about it. You put up with it just this once, you get, like, a week off to lie around and hate everything and eat all the food, and then you'll get pills and never have to worry about it again. Just be glad you weren't on the ropes course or something."
This doesn't sound like much consolation, and Lyme picks up the pace to get to the nurse's office faster even as the cramps get worse.
The nurse is businesslike at least, gives her a brisk talk and some supplies and tells her it's nothing to be ashamed about, and Lyme doesn't know how to tell her that she's not ashamed, she's horrified and scared and betrayed and furious. She's heard the lectures, she's read the pamphlets, she knows everything about it, but Lyme always thought, in the back of her mind, that if she didn't want it enough then it wouldn't happen. Every time the other girls who bragged theirs had started or sighed because theirs hadn't, Lyme would cringe and whisper a prayer that it would never happen to her. That she'd be the exception.
That she wouldn't have yet another piece of proof that her parents were right about her and what her body will do whether she wants it to or not.
The rest of the week, Lyme will be happy to forget. She spends half of it in the shower just so she can sluice off the blood and not have to think about it collecting and congealing and rotting, and even though she knows it's not true she swears she can smell it and everyone else can, too. She doesn't like to leave her room even to go eat because it feels like everyone knows, even though the boys are thirteen and stupid and probably think pads are for soaking up blood from when you get stabbed.
She's happy when it's over and she gets the pills that mean she will never have to deal with this for the rest of her life. Once again it's Capitol magic that lets her have this, the Capitol with their doctors and scientists and people who understand that this isn't a beautiful, natural thing like one of her teachers tried to say once, it's gross and weird and some people never want to think about it. Lyme is happy to serve the Capitol when they keep giving things to her like this; it only seems fair.
Even better, the Centre separates the boys and the girls. They still practice sparring with each other because they have to - their bodies are built differently, and most boys and girls have separate skill-sets from each other - but for the most part they're kept apart. Anyone caught getting too friendly with the opposite sex gets pulled aside for the harsh reminder that one day they might have to stick a knife in that other person, and the last thing a Career needs is complication.
There are a handful of secret romances, and a few more friendships, between the boys and the girls, but for the most part everyone is too focused. It's fine with Lyme; with all the things her body has been doing to her, the last thing she needs to worry about is keeping boys away. Not that they try, when she's big and scary and there are lots of other, prettier girls to stare at before the trainers catch them and give them a smack.
They are all teenagers in the Program, though, and the trainers aren't stupid. Lyme finds out fast that sex is encouraged just fine in the Centre, as long as it's between the same gender and doesn't interfere with training. She hears it from one of the older girls, who winks at her and says she's had half the girls in her year and it's way more fun than messing around with idiot, sweaty boys.
"Girls smell nicer," she drawls, sprawled out on the couch in the common room with lazy confidence. Her foot presses against Lyme's thigh, an imposition that Lyme would've gut-punched a boy for. "I dunno, there's tons of reasons. Maybe once I'm out I'll try boys again, but for now I don't miss it."
Lyme feels like her head just got stuffed with expanding rice; she's never heard of this before, not with Mom and Pa and everyone telling her one day she'd grow up and marry a boy just like that. No one told her she could be with girls instead. This is the sort of thing they should teach in school, never mind all the dumb stuff about how to have babies and all the diseases you can catch if you try.
The other girl - her name is Astra - gives Lyme a wink, then her grin sharpens. "It's not for everybody, but most people at least have a phase here. Did you want to try?"
Lyme tries. It's - well, it's weird. It's weird, and things are squishy, and there's just so much girl, everywhere, she can't get away from it, and it's like all the strange parts about doing things by herself only multiplied. Afterward she's furious, though Astra doesn't seem offended, just sits back and leans her hands against the floor while Lyme throws spear after spear into the dummy across the room.
"It's okay," Astra says after a while. "Not everybody likes it. It's not a big deal. A few years here and you can have all the boys you want."
"I don't want boys," Lyme grits out, and her eyes sting and she blinks hard and nearly wrenches her shoulder out on the next throw.
Because the thing is, she does. She's seen them, pretty boys with their lean muscles and cocky grins, and she wants to shove them into walls and make them stop grinning. She wants to dig her fingers into their forearms and pull their hair until they hiss and make them beg like Pa used to say all good girls do in the end.
But that's not how it works. Girls don't get to do that, not with boys, and Lyme wants to like girls, she wants it so hard that she tries it a few more times with different girls, but it's disappointing and awkward and strange every time. Lyme can't fist her hand in a girl's hair and yank it, not when a boy would do the same to her if he had the chance, and it doesn't take long before she gives up entirely.
It's not like there isn't enough for Lyme to do anyway. She'll get over it. Whenever she notices the slide of sweat down a boy's neck and imagines scraping her teeth against his throat, Lyme throws herself into training even harder. Her sword-work improves at such a drastic rate that a trainer asks her if she's been sneaking out at night to practice.
"Nope," Lyme says with a grim smile. "Just motivated."
Residential is harder, meaner, and there's less time for fooling around or bullshit, though of course there is a lot of that. The training kicks up, and the trainers stop pretending they're there for anything other than to teach the trainees how to kill. There's no more sports, no more games, it's just training now, and Lyme collapses into bed at the end of the day with aching muscles and no desire to do, well, anything. She's seen some of the older kids messing around after free time, the hour before dinner and the two hours before lights out, and she has no idea how they have the energy to do it.
Except that near the end of her first year, when the chime rings that announces the end of the afternoon session, Lyme doesn't feel like going back to her room and crashing for an hour. They were practicing ranged weapons, and she dislikes range because she's better up close, and she's itching to spar or move or get her hands around someone's throat.
She's looking around the common room, fingers twitching at her sides, when one of the girls in her year gives her a nudge. "Hey, can you show me that throw you do with your shoulder, you know, the one you beat Cameron with?" the girl asks Lyme. "I watched you do it but I can't get it right."
"Sure," Lyme says. It's not about size, because no matter how big she is there will always be someone bigger; it's about speed, and leverage, and even a girl half her size could do it right if she learned. "We'll need more floor space, though."
One of the new thirteens is passed out on the couch, head tipped back, snoring like the chainsaw of a lumberjack from Seven in the middle of a forest, and Lyme rolls her eyes. "Newbies," she snickers on her way past.