Alec turns seven and officially joins the Program at the end of the first week of July. The tributes for the Hunger Games have reached the Capitol and are on their third day of training, and more importantly, this year marks the last time Alec will ever stand in the square without a Centre bracelet on his arm. Selene and Creed wore theirs to the Reaping, black strands for the both of them, and Alec held a hand over his bare wrist and imagined joining them next year.
Two's tributes are strong and pretty and brave; the boy is even prettier than the girl, with a smile that makes the fluffy lady on the stage giggle and flutter one hand in front of her face. Alec watches him and wonders if one day he'll ever look that confident. Creed will, when it's his turn, as sure as the sun rises and the mountains endure; he'll stand up onstage tall and proud and every inch a Two, and for the first time Alec shakes off a flicker of relief that he won't have to live up to all of this.
His first day in the Program is rushed. The trainers are distracted by the Games, and there are no televisions in the non-Residential sections of the Centre compound but they have runners coming in to tell them what's going on now and then. Alec doesn't pay too much attention to that part, just concentrates on running fast and climbing high and doing everything they ask him to do. By the end of the day he's earned a brownie just like he promised himself he would, and the chocolate sticks to his teeth and all that sugar sits strangely in his stomach but it doesn't matter because he did it.
It's fun at the Centre, all the games and contests and trainers who smile at him and tell him he's a good boy and they're glad he joined. It's even more fun there in comparison to home, because Alec is finally in the Program but it doesn't matter because this is the year Creed is old enough to watch the Games.
Not old enough to sit and watch all the way through; nobody does that until they're actually in Residential, not really, but when it's dark outside and the broadcast comes on with the nightly recap, Creed gets to stay up with Dad and Mom to watch the coverage while Alec has to go to bed. Alec argues half-heartedly — he doesn't really want to watch, not yet, because Uncle Paul says Selene isn't old enough and if he thinks so then it's probably true — and Dad shakes his head but tells Alec he can stay up reading or playing quietly in his room instead until Creed comes up to bed.
It's not so bad during the pre-Games, at least. One night Alec stays over at the Valents', and he and Selene sneak in to watch while crouched behind the kitchen counter and peering around the corner. Except it's just a bunch of people in bright clothes and crazy hair talking a lot, and Selene gets bored and they head back upstairs to play a game of hide and seek in the dark instead.
He asks Creed about it the next day, and Creed tells him about a woman who had live birds living in a cage made out of her hair.
"But —" It's important to respect the Capitol and everyone in it and so Alec tries not to giggle, but it bubbles out of him. "Don't the birds poop?"
Creed's eyes go wide and he stares at Alec in scandalized shock before he bursts out laughing. "The broadcast didn't say. Maybe they're special birds that only go when she tells them to. Or maybe there's a special place for them inside her hair where nobody can see."
Alec cracks up even harder, and it's not polite to laugh at Capitol citizens but whoever heard of birds in hair. For the rest of the day they play at making the silliest fashions they can come up with and Alec almost forgets that Creed is taking another step without him.
The day after that, though, the tributes move to the Arena. The Centre is closed so the trainers and Residential trainees can watch the whole first day live, and that means all three of them have the full day to play for the first time in forever. Except that Creed keeps stopping halfway his sentences, too excited about getting to watch tonight, and every time he loses track or looks back toward the house Selene's face gets redder and her scowl gets darker.
"Let's play Dark Days," Selene bursts out finally, fists clenched, when Creed suggests they play Arena. "I don't want to play stupid pretend Arena if I'm not allowed to see the real one."
"You will soon," Creed says in his reasonable voice, the one that always makes Selene want to push him into mud puddles, and sure enough her eyes narrow. "I bet you can watch next year. Or maybe the one after that."
Alec steps in before Selene's thundercloud face turns into her picking a fight, because Creed won't fight back since she's younger and that will only make her madder. "Let's just play," he says. "Selene you can be the rebel commander."
Most of the time when they played Dark Days, Creed was the Capitol commander and Selene a Peacekeeper like Uncle Paul, which left Alec to be the rebel who got caught and tortured before execution. But Selene only plays the Peacekeeper when she's in a good mood and gleeful torture for the sake of justice sounds like a fun idea; now, with a fight boiling under her skin and rage making the purple V on her forehead stand out, that's not going to work.
Sure enough, the dangerous light in Selene's eyes fades a little, replaced with one that means equally bad news for Alec but at least she'll be happy about it. "Yes good," she says. "Creed, you be the Peacekeeper. Alec, you're my hostage."
Hostage is even less fun than prisoner — at least the prisoner gets to do things first — but Alec is the one who has to play with Selene for the next three weeks while Creed struts around and refuses to tell them anything about the Games, so whatever keeps her happy. "Okay," he says immediately, and throws Creed a pleading look.
Creed hesitates, then catches Alec's eye and gives in. "Sure," he says. "Lene, your base can be the shed, and you can keep Alec inside. I'll try to infiltrate from the trees."
Selene grins, showing the two sharp side teeth that Uncle Paul thinks are adorable but to Alec makes her look even scarier, and she grabs Alec by the arm and hauls him away to the shed.
The game has a pattern it always follows, just like Arena, which is part of what makes it fun. Today, though, Alec sits in the shed with a length of twine looped around his arms, snuffling in the musty air and listening to Selene and Creed fight outside. Why can't he ever be the brave commander or the reckless traitor? At least the rebel soldiers got good, dramatic death scenes — apparently to Selene everything, from being shot to stabbed to strangled to crushed in a rockslide, ends in choking — but it never works that way for prisoners or hostages.
After watching a moth batter itself against the window trying to get out, Alec shrugs off the rope. He has to stand on a box to reach the sash, and even then he has to push hard to get it open, but finally it slides up and the moth escapes outside. Alec gets another box, braces himself with his elbows and shoves as hard as he can, and finally the window rattles all the way to the top. It's a small hole but big enough for Alec, and he squeezes through and drops to the ground.
Selene and Creed crouch behind trees on opposite sides of the clearing, firing at each other with guns cobbled together with twigs and bits of string, and Alec sneaks past them, walking quietly and avoiding crunchy things on the ground like they're playing Arena after all. Sometimes when they play hide and seek and Selene is it she gets bored and wanders off instead of finding him, and Alec used to sneak inside to see Aunt Julia but he can't do that now. Not when there's a mandatory broadcast. If he can get to the treehouse then at least he should be able to hide until it's over —
"Hey!" Selene shouts, and Alec freezes. "The prisoner is escaping! Prisoners aren't allowed to escape!"
Alec turns around to tell her that prisoners can do whatever they want, and it's not his fault if the rebels had terrible security, when the rock hits him in the head.
"Selene!" Creed yells as Alec stumbles. "You're not supposed to throw rocks!"
"It wasn't supposed to hit him!" Selene protests. "He moved!"
Everything gets very dizzy, and Alec blinks, then blinks again. His left eye doesn't want to see properly — the blood runs into it, hot and stinging like sweat or shampoo but worse, and his vision blurs and he squints his eyes shut but it doesn't help — and the pain shoots through his head all the way down. Creed's arms come up around him and Alec staggers but he can't collapse, he can't. He'll get hurt worse than this at the Centre and the trainers will be watching.
"Count with me," Creed says. "We're going to count, okay, and every time we get to a three or a five or something that's times three or five we clap, okay?"
It's an old game but Alec nods. He counts along with Creed — he forgets to clap on three but remembers at five, and even remembers to clap twice at fifteen — and they're up to thirty when Aunt Julia kneels beside him.
"Thirty is a multiple of five," Aunt Julia says, and oh right, he only clapped once. "Creed, Selene, you two go to the treehouse. I'll take care of Alec."
"I'm okay," Alec says. "It's not bad. I'm not crying."
Aunt Julia sighs and taps Alec's cheek to get him to turn his face so she can see. "I know," she says. "You're very brave. Tell me what happened."
"I hit my head on a rock," Alec says immediately. It's not a lie, and in his memory Selene's face is white and her eyes wide before she ran off to get help. She didn't mean to hurt him; she never does. It's not her fault. "I'm okay, though."
"The rock threw itself, I suppose," Aunt Julia says mildly, dabbing away the blood.
Alec's least favourite part comes next, the sting when she cleans the cut, and he hisses and grits his teeth but still doesn't cry. "I didn't say she threw it," Alec says. Aunt Julia lets out a soft 'ha' and he backtracks, fast. "Anyone! I didn't say anyone threw it. I hit my head. It's fine." He opens one eye to see Aunt Julia raise one eyebrow, and Alec winces. "I didn't tattle, I'm not telling on anyone."
"No, you didn't," she agrees, and Alec's shoulders sag just a little. "You did get cut pretty bad, though, I want to put in some stitches. Come inside and we'll get you fixed up."
"But the Games are on," Alec whispers. "It's mandatory."
"The Games will survive if I take a few more minutes to make sure you're all right," Aunt Julia says firmly. Her voice says there's no point in arguing so don't bother, and Alec doesn't. He does protest when she picks him up, but she gives him another 'don't start' face and he stops in the middle of his sentence. "Good boy," Aunt Julia says, and carries him into the house. She's the shortest of Dad and Mom and Uncle Paul but she's strong, and Alec leans his head against her shoulder and closes his eyes just for a second.
Alec doesn't like getting hurt, nobody does, but he doesn't mind being patched up later. Aunt Julia's hands are gentle and competent, and she keeps him talking enough to be distracted while she stitches up the cut but not so much that it turns into chatter. Slowly the pain goes away, and Aunt Julia is calm and careful and Alec doesn't cry but he's pretty sure if he did she wouldn't get mad. She explains to him what she's doing, about the anaesthetic and why they use ice and how the stitches work, and by the end Alec forgets he was ever hurting.
"I wish I could be a doctor," Alec says, watching Aunt Julia put away her tools.
She pauses, gives him a quiet sort of look. "You could be."
He shakes his head. "I'm going to be a Peacekeeper."
"Peacekeepers have medics, too," Aunt Julia points out, and oh, he hadn't thought of that. "But we're all done here. Why don't you go head back outside."
Alec would much rather stay here in the kitchen for the rest of the day, but the Games are playing and Aunt Julia might take time out to help him but she has to watch. After the first day it's not so important that everyone be in front of the TV all the time, but for the first day those are the rules. "Thank you," he says, and hops down from the table.
Selene is sheepish when Alec comes back outside, and she sidles up to him and hands him a handful of summer wildflowers, dirt still clinging to the bottom of the stems. "For your recovery," she says, her gaze shifty. Alec takes the flowers, and Selene's shoulders drop a little in relief. "We made an awards ceremony for your bravery in a time of war. Creed made you a medal out of an acorn, it's a surprise, c'mon!"
Alec grins. "A surprise, huh?"
Selene rolls her eyes and grabs his arm. "So act surprised! The Centre will teach you how but for now just pretend, don't be such a Twelve."
The last of the pain in his head ebbs away, and Alec laughs and lets Selene drag him out into the forest.
Later that afternoon Dad stops by to pick them up and say hi to Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia. He stops at the sight of Alec, and for a second Alec thinks he has something on his face before he remembers the stitches. "What happened to you?" Dad asks.
"I hit my head on a rock," Alec says, and this time it comes out confident. It's still not a lie, and it's not Dad's job to punish Selene so he doesn't need to know. "I'm okay. Aunt Julia fixed me up."
"Oho," Dad says. "And were you brave?"
Alec looks over at Aunt Julia and can't stop his eyes from getting big and scared. He didn't cry — he didn't! — but it did hurt and he had to close his eyes like a baby, and Dad says he should always be strong and he's not sure if what he did today counted. But Aunt Julia only rests a hand on Alec's shoulder, comforting and not squeezing. "He was very brave, even through the stitches."
"Good," Dad says, clapping Alec on the back. "Come on, then, it's time for supper."
Alec lets out a breath once Dad turns his back, and wipes his hands against his pants. Aunt Julia's eyes are on him but he doesn't dare turn around to see what her face is saying, and he follows Dad and Creed back home without a word.
That night Alec intends to stay up and wait for the broadcast to finish, but his head hurts and it feels better when he closes his eyes. He doesn't mean to sleep, but one second he's in bed thinking about how soft the blankets feel, and the next he's falling off a cliff and wakes up with a jolt to find Creed crawling into the bottom bunk with him.
"Hey," Alec says, blinking in the darkness, but Creed doesn't answer. He curls right in under the covers like he used to do after a nightmare when he was really little, and he tucks his head in against Alec's shoulder and doesn't say a word. "Hey what happened?"
Creed exhales slowly, and his hands tighten against Alec's back. "It's not what I thought."
"The Games?" Alec asks, his heart tripping. Creed isn't supposed to be like this. He's supposed to be strong always. "Creed, what happened? I won't tell Dad, I promise."
The little clock on the table beside the bed ticks more than one hundred seconds before Creed shifts. "It's the fighting," he says. "It's not like when we play Arena. Not at all." After another one hundred ticks he sucks in a breath, shaky and almost but not quite wet. Alec rubs his back, terror thrilling through him. What is it like, then? "There's so much blood, Alec," Creed whispers finally.
Alec frowns. They've all seen blood; one time last spring Selene stole a knife from the Centre and they were playing at five-fingers and she accidentally sliced the tip of her finger off and she didn't even faint, though she did get wobbly. Alec helped Aunt Julia hold the compress and listened to the lecture about weapon safety and it wasn't that bad. He didn't even freak out when he fell out of the tree and saw the bone sticking out through his arm.
"It's fine," Creed says, shaking himself, and he pulls away. "It's fine, I'm fine, don't tell Dad, okay?"
He climbs back up to the top bunk and fakes sleep-breathing until Alec gives up and stops calling his name.
"He said blood," Alec says in a low voice. Selene has another dagger stolen from the Centre even though she's not supposed to be allowed near weapons yet, and she keeps flipping it over and over in her fingers, eyes intent. "Lots of blood. How much blood can there be? It was just the first day!"
It doesn't help that Selene and Alec still don't know what the Hunger Games are, really, not yet. There's fighting, and weapons, and it's good to be smart and practical and strong, but other than that — Dad just keeps saying he'll know when it's time, and the one time Alec disobeyed and tried asking an older kid at school he only laughed. The bigger kids think it's funny to leave the younger ones confused.
"I don't know," Selene says, her voice thoughtful. "But Creed doesn't get scared easy, so it must've been awful. Maybe somebody got chomped in half by a mutt! I bet there are mutts big enough to do that."
Alec tries not to think about it but too late — giant teeth sinking in, tearing and ripping and bones crunching — and he shivers. "Well I don't know, but he didn't sleep much last night. Dad's talking to him right now because he was all weird at breakfast. He didn't want to eat anything."
"Lucky." Selene blows out a gusty sigh and makes the knife disappear into her sleeve — or tries, but she misses and it falls onto the grass. "Ugh!" she mutters, picking it up and glaring. "It can't be that hard, Petra can do it!"
Petra, if Alec remembers right, is one of the girls in Selene's year who apparently hates her for absolutely no reason and is super mean and rude and stupid and also has a stupid face. Alec is Selene's friend first so he doesn't say anything, and when she complained at the dinner table once Dad told her that competition will keep her sharp and she should be grateful. He looked at Alec when he said that, but Alec pretended to be very busy cutting up his broccoli.
"You're trying too fast," Alec says. "It looks cool when it's fast but you need to go slow while you practice."
Selene rolls her eyes and shoves the dagger at him. "Fine, then, you do it, if you're so smart."
The Games still have Selene buzzing and looking for a fight, but at least the Centre isn't closed today. The seven-to-nines go for their session at two, and as long as Alec can keep Selene busy until lunchtime then they'll probably be safe. The good thing about taking a rock to the head is that Selene thinks for a few more seconds before pushing him.
"Okay, well, I don't know how to do it," Alec says. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do and then you can watch me and maybe that will help."
"Fine," Selene says with another exaggerated sigh, but she does tell him how to hold it without getting too impatient, and that's pretty much a win.
That night before bed Alec drinks three big glasses of water, so he's awake, squirming and curling his toes, by the time the broadcast finishes and Creed slips into their room late at night. "Are you okay?" Alec whispers.
Creed pauses while climbing into bed, head and torso on the top bunk and the rest of him hanging down. From Alec's point of view it looks kind of like one of those big mutts Selene was talking about chomped him in half. "Yeah, I'm okay," he says. He doesn't sound it at first, the sentence curling up at the end like a question — are you asking me or telling me Dad likes to say — but then he lets out a big breath and tries again. "I'm okay. Dad talked to me about it and explained everything."
"Was there more blood?" He doesn't actually want to know the answer, not really, but the question pulls itself out of him like Aunt Julia's needle drawing the stitches thread through his skin.
"A little." Creed's legs disappear as he makes it the rest of the way onto the top bunk. "I can't talk about it though. You'll see, okay?"
"Okay," Alec says. He lies on his back and stares up at the slats supporting Creed's mattress, and part of him wants to try to make a joke, or talk about his day at the Centre, anything to pretend like everything is normal and Creed isn't moving even further away, but it doesn't feel right. The tickling feeling from needing to use the toilet doesn't help either.
This time, at least, Creed falls asleep first.
Alec is in the middle of a dodgeball game a few weeks later when one of the trainers bursts into the room and shouts for them to stop. For a second Alec almost breaks form to complain because his team is winning — the other side only has two players left standing and Alec has gotten three outs so far just by himself — except that the air inside the room practically crackles.
"Two won!" he announces, and the whole room explodes. Alec and the rest of the kids cheer, and the trainers don't because they're grownups but they do grin and clap each other on the back. There's no more dodgeball or races or anything else after that, just a big party where they all get to come into the commissary and have ice cream while the trainers tell them what happened.
The winner is the boy, Devon, the pretty one with the wide brown eyes and nice smile. He won with only seven (seven what Alec doesn't know, and the trainers don't explain it for them) but that doesn't matter because he won fair and square, nothing embarrassing like an avalanche or an earthquake that did the work for him. Devon won and he's coming home and now Alec will get to have Parcel Days when he's actually old enough to remember them.
"I can't wait to watch tonight," Creed gushes on the way home, and Alec only thinks a little bit about tripping him so he'll cut it out just for five minutes. As the days went on Creed had gotten less and less weird about watching — sensitized is the word Dad uses — and for the last few days Dad had to take the clock off the wall because Creed kept looking at it all through supper. "It's going to be so exciting."
Alec thinks about fresh strawberries right there in the kitchen where he can eat them without having to push another boy down and make him cry first, and enough milk and butter and eggs for a real cake. It helps him put some of the annoyance away, though he can't help but snort just a little. "Are you going to pretend to be Devon all the time now?" Alec asks.
Creed actually hesitates, which Alec didn't expect. "I — don't know," he says. A shadow falls over his expression, drawing his eyebrows together, but it's not the kind that makes his shoulders hunch and his feet scuff the ground. "I think Devon is a different kind of Victor than I'll be."
"What?" Alec blinks. "How?"
"Okay, this is a secret, don't tell Dad," Creed says, giving him a warning look, and Alec draws an x over his heart with his finger. "Devon — kissed people a lot. A girl and a boy. Dad didn't like that very much, he kept making that face." Alec doesn't need to be told which face. "I think I'm going to skip that part."
"Huh," Alec says, making a face even though he tries not to because Devon is their Victor now and Victors demand the utmost respect. "Do you think you have to kiss people in the Arena?" It's such a weird thought that it sets off the giggles, and Creed goggling at him in horror only makes it worse. "Do you think in Residential they give kissing lessons?"
Creed stares blankly for a full five seconds before trying so hard not to laugh that he ends up screeching instead. "That is the worst thing I've ever heard," he says through his fingers. "I hate you! I'm going to watch the finale tonight and it's going to be awesome and I won't be able to stop thinking about kissing lessons!"
"Ha ha," Alec says, and he does his best Centre-approved grin, pulling his lips back just enough to show the sharp teeth on either side of the front ones.
Creed shoves him into a tree, Alec knocks him back into a bush, and they end up coming home half an hour late covered in dirt and sticks. But the best part is they don't even get in trouble, because District 2 has won the first victory of the 60s and that's way more important than grass-stained knees.
The next two weeks rush past fast and hazy. All the grownups all over are in good moods, from the trainers to Dad to the shopkeeper who gives Alec an extra scoop of ice cream when Selene convinces him to stop on the way back instead of going straight home. Selene tells Alec he should use it to get away with things that Dad would normally be mad about, but it feels wrong to use a Victor that way and so he doesn't.
He does take advantage a little in private, because Dad says they only need to do the exercises they think they should have to do, and one night Alec skips his wall-sits entirely. Later that night he slips out of bed to prop himself against the wall so his brain will stop yelling at him, but it was nice to relax for a little while after dinner without his legs hurting.
"What do you think of Devon, Dad?" Creed asks at dinner one night. He ignores Alec's rolled eyes — he knows exactly what Dad thinks, staying up to watch and discuss the day's events every day for the last month — and puts on his best mature face like he's not almost bouncing in his chair.
"He was a little unorthodox," Dad says, and Alec has to swallow his mouthful of green beans really fast so he doesn't laugh. 'Unorthodox' is what Dad says when he doesn't like the way somebody does something but they're more important than he is and so he can't complain. That must be the part where Devon kissed everybody, even other boys. "But a strong Victor, I think. No tricks, no Gamemaker assists, just a good, solid win. You can see the quarries in him, too; it's good to have someone go back to our roots."
Their last Victor, a girl named Artemisia, who won when Alec was too little to remember anything except the treats on Parcel Days, is not as Dad-approved, Alec has learned now. Pretty much every time she's on television she's unorthodox, except that one time Dad admitted she's the best swordsman he's ever seen in his life, and he never says things like that so it must be true.
"What's he like?" Alec asks. He's not allowed to ask about the Arena and he isn't going to push it no matter how many times Selene wheedles for details, but the Games are over. Devon is a Victor now, not a tribute, and Alec is expected to get to know his Victors.
"Ah," Dad says. He goes to pour himself another glass of water and stops halfway, lowering the pitcher slowly like he doesn't notice he's doing it. "Well, Alec, I can't answer that yet. We've only seen him before."
Alec frowns, but he doesn't have to ask what that means because Mom answers. "The Arena changes people, Alec," she says. "That's not bad; important things change us, and that's just what happens. We're the same inside, at our core, but the way we react to things can be different. Victors don't always seem like the same person on the other side."
This he didn't know, but it makes sense; Alec likes to think he won't still be shy and scared of being yelled at after he's finished at the Centre. "Like how?" he asks. It's a lot of questions, and normally by now he'd be skirting close to getting a look telling him to be seen and not heard, but maybe Selene is right and now's the time to push, just a little.
"Well, that Artemisia, for one, she acts the same now as she did before," Dad says, and he laughs and shakes his head. "If the Arena changed her, she hasn't shown it. Brutus, on the other hand, he was solid going in, and he's been solid since. I'm not sure it does change people exactly, Dora, more that it strips away the extra and leaves who you really are underneath. If anything, I think Victors are more true to themselves after than they were before the Arena."
Mom gives Dad an indulgent sort of smile that's one eyebrow away from turning into 'watch it, mister', and Alec and Creed exchange furtive grins. I'm the teacher, she told Dad once in a calm voice that made Alec want to hide in a cupboard in case she turned it on him, I don't like to be lectured. "As neither of us have ever gone through an Arena this is all speculation," she says, and Dad raises his hands and drops it. "But I was thinking of Lyme. Before the Arena she was very angry, almost sullen, barely gave more than a few words in the interviews. Now —"
"Yes," Dad says with an emphatic nod. "You're right there. Now she's a fine young mentor, and she has a way with sponsors like no one else in her generation. Very personable in her interviews, quite the commanding presence."
"It let her prove herself, I think," Mom says. "It couldn't have been easy, looking the way she does, but now she's a Victor and no one will ever question her."
Dad nods, more thoughtful this time, and this is the most Alec has heard them talk about the Arena or Victors that he can remember. For a minute Alec wonders if they're going to keep talking as though he and Creed aren't there, but then Dad glances at Alec and the faraway look in his eyes fades, his usual sharp attention snapping back. "That was a long answer to your question," Dad says. "The short answer, I suppose, is we'll see."
"Maybe when you're a Victor and you've proved yourself you'll stop being such a know-it-all," Alec whispers that night.
"Maybe when your face is a Victor your face will stop being such a know-it-all!" Creed shoots back.
"At least you'll have a mentor who can tell you smart things to stay instead of 'your face'," Alec says.
"I hate you."
"No you don't," Alec says, grinning, and Creed says hmph but doesn't argue.
Dad and Mom take Creed and Alec into town the day that the victory train returns to District 2. Selene and her parents are there too, and the crowds are excited and chattering and the whole mood of the square feels like the first day of school. Uncle Paul lifts Selene onto her shoulders so she can see above the heads of the adults, and she leans forward with her arms crossed on the top of his head and grins down at Alec.
Creed is too mature for that now, or something, even though a year ago he would've been clamouring for Dad to do the same. Alec should follow his example and be mature too, except that everyone around him is tall and strong and if he leans back to see over their heads the only thing he sees is the bright blue sky above them. The train platform is invisible behind the sea of bodies, and Alec's stomach tightens. His first chance to see a Victor — what if he misses it?
"Joseph," Mom says, chiding. "They can't see."
Dad glances down, and in the distance a train whistle sounds. His mouth twitches. "Go," he says. "Head to the platform and wait for us there. We'll find you after."
Alec doesn't wait for a second suggestion; he and Creed tear off through the crowd, ducking arms and elbows and skirting legs until they reach the front. They're not the only kids with the same idea — there's a smattering of others milling in front of the adults, most with Centre bracelets — and Alec exchanges an excited grin with a girl a little older who has two black strands and one blue around her right wrist.
When the train hisses to a stop, the conversations in the square drop down to whispers, the sound shivering through the crowd and making the hair on Alec's arms stand up. The carriage door slides open and Devon steps out, dressed in white and almost blinding against the sun, with his mentor behind him. He raises a hand to wave and everything explodes, cheering and shouting and fists pumping in the air, and Alec usually tries to be dignified but now he's yelling too.
The funny thing is, Devon actually changes. Getting off the train he looked normal, handsome and proud like any Victor, but when the people call his name he stands a little straighter and his shoulders drop just a bit. His smile shifts too, widening to show his teeth, and that's when it hits Alec that before the smile hadn't quite touched Devon's eyes. Before he'd been happy but exhausted, and Alec knows what that looks and feels like, trying to be good when all you want to do is lie down and sleep until everything goes away.
Devon was a Victor when he stepped off the train, but the people make him better, somehow, and Alec is a part of that. A warm glow sits in his stomach, and he cheers even louder until his throat rasps.
After a while Devon's mentor steps forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. Devon nods, but then he moves to the front of the stage and kneels down, holding out a hand toward the shortest kids at the front of the crowd. For a few seconds everyone freezes — this is Alec's first Victor but it feels like Victors don't kneel, they don't crouch down below eye level and smile at kids — but then one of the girls darts forward and reaches up to slap his hand in a high five.
Devon laughs, and after that Alec nearly falls over as all the kids rush the stage. Creed, for all he's mature and grown up and too old to get excited over things, is right there with them, and when Devon touches his hand Creed's face goes red and he actually giggles, so there. Alec waits until most of the others have finished, feet glued to the concrete, until Devon shifts and braces one hand on his knee and that means he's getting ready to stand. Alec wrenches himself loose and runs to the front, and Devon's eyes crinkle and he holds out his hand low enough for Alec to reach.
Brutus wears the same face Dad makes when Selene steals two cookies instead of one and pretends she miscounted, mouth trying to frown and eyebrows all unbalanced but eyes laughing. When Devon finally stands, Brutus snorts and jerks his head toward the door.
Creed appears at Alec's elbow, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. "Snow above," he breathes. "We touched a Victor."
"Yeah," Alec says. He can't stop staring at the empty platform, and he keeps checking his hand to make sure some kind of mark or tattoo isn't forming on his palm.
"I changed my mind," Creed says, leaning back and staring at the Justice Building and its perfect white marble. "When I'm a Victor I'm going to be just like that."
"Only not as pretty," Alec says, because he has to, and Creed steps on his foot because he has to and everything is wonderful.
They stand there shoulder to shoulder until Mom and Dad come to get them, and they might be too old for this but when Alec reaches over and takes Creed's hand, Creed doesn't laugh or pull away.