CHAPTER TEN: Deane Scythe

Biter feels comfortable enough to make a joke of Phinehas Gideon's style of speaking, mainly through the mouthing of his words. The mimic routine has very little entertainment value, but seems to entertain those around him, and unfortunately one of them is Thatcher. I give him my most disgusted look whenever he decides to look over at me. He hasn't in several minutes. Gordy is also entertained, but based on his look, I think it's for another reason and I am not interested in knowing the reason. Romulus Cane and Phinehas Gideon have been exclaiming their shock at the devastation of the electric fire, contributing to 50% of the deaths on the second day. They are enjoying the hopeless struggle of the female from District 3 who becomes a moving fire hazard in less than two minutes from the opening of the Games coverage. They're even making jokes at the expense of the poor Tribute, who didn't choose to be lit on fire, did not choose to be in this arena and did not choose to slowly burn to death in a building so far away from home and the comfort of her family and friends. I feel deeply sorry for her, but also apathetic toward her. She was stupid enough to get herself into the Games, and she was stupid enough to be in the region that the Capitol decided to firebomb; she was stupid enough not to run away from flammable materials like the wood of the townhouses and she was stupid enough not to look desperately for water or for another Tribute to end her life and prevent her from all that pain. And I feel related to her too. There are too many emotions I'm not interested in having: this is how the Hunger Games includes us all – through emotions like empathy and apathy interplaying on our foundational ideas of life and how we live it. I catch Thatcher looking at me and I decide that he's made his choices for allies today and I'm not one of them. This is to say, I don't look over at him.

We never got a chance to visually eulogize the slain female Tribute from District 8, so I decide to eulogize her personally, which draws on my own imagination (which is not a strong point for me). Her name was Notch and she left behind family in District 8. They lived in Jeffer City, and Notch's parents both worked in the electronics factory that gets shown all the time when the Capitol comes to District 8. She was an older sister to a younger sister, and the two of them were very close. Notch's younger sister will need a lot of help from her family in bearing the loss of her best friend and big sister. She might even blame the Capitol silently for stealing from her someone she loved so much. Tonight will be a very difficult night for her. Her parents were working today and that means that this recap, where Gideon and Cane are making fun of her death, is the first time that they are learning and seeing the death of their child. Her mother doesn't feel anything at this moment, not right away, and her father feels defeated, so the words I am imagining I'd say to them can't play on their inability to feel emotions in this moment. Actually, I don't know how I'd talk to them.

We've moved on to reviewing the full episode in which Knut hangs Labrys. Knut looks like an impressively strong teenage boy, and as the muscles in his arms ripple as he's strangling the female Tribute – who looks diminutive beside him – power is the word that comes to my mind to describe him. He is a raw and sheer manifestation of "power", and that is impressive to me. He is from District 2, mostly known for their manufacturing, but his ability to work with rope rivals some of the abilities of our cowboys in 10. Knut is more impressive to me when I consider that he was poisoned and dumped out a window in the previous episode and recap of the Games. He is still limping as he searches for victims in the building he drops into from the ground level window. As he looks around corners, I can see him wincing each time he shifts his weight. He must have landed on his hip when he fell out the window. Of course, it was Seeder – our guy – who shoved him, so the limping is the fault of District 10. Knut hears someone moving and becomes immediately still. The camera shifts so that we see Labrys walking out into the hall looking very unconcerned. The roof is falling in, exposing the splintered beams and in particular the central beam that rests at an angle on the far wall of the hallway. This is where she is going to die. That beam, sad in its brokenness, will become the leverage for Knut's rope to hang another innocent victim. And my mind wanders away from the episode, even as the killing is unfolding.

What sort of world are we living in? I don't know why that is the question I'm developing while watching these Games. Actually, I'm not even sure why it happens to be these Games that are eliciting these questions when I've had more than ten years of Hunger Games to watch. Why… what is so important about these Hunger Games that I am waxing introspectively more than other years? One of the simplest answers I stumble on is this: The Games were a spectacle that I bought into in past years when I knew that I was safe from them by virtue of suffering through this life I'm living each day. But this year, for some reason, I feel more irritated by the suggestion the Capitol is making about me and my life: it belongs to them, obviously, and I may be the one living it, but they are the energy that can quickly take it away from me. This isn't an original thought, obviously: they tell us that we aren't the owners of our lives every year at the beginning of the Games. In past years, it was easy to remove specific location and familiarity within the Games because the arenas were specific landscapes that had nothing to do with me and my life; this arena is different because even though it has nothing to do with my life literally, there is a strange metaphor present in the arena that has so much to do with my life. They are setting a stage that represents the environment of lots of folks outside of the privileged life I have been living, and perhaps the metaphor they're also setting up is one about the relationships of us, the citizens of Panem. They are suggesting that our relationship structures are crumbling, burnt out, rundown and are host to all sorts of dangers – most of which are deadly. But what they suggest most clearly is that the catalyst of these decrepit relationship structures is the folks who are actively relating. How we are relating to each other, the Capitol and the arena is suggesting, is detrimental to our survival. For those Tributes who are choosing to stay hidden, away from all the other Tributes, their ability to succeed and to live is reliant upon their ability to maintain isolation and wait for the barbarism of the other Tributes to result in their own destruction. The Capitol is telling us that we are isolated and we are so barbaric that we are destroying ourselves, and that is the best possible style of social relationship we can conduct. At least, this is what I think they are saying. And for me, what does that mean? I think it means that we are alone, naturally and irreversibly. Now, I look over at Thatcher who isn't looking at me. Can he deal with this reality? Are the Games something we play in life and that the Capitol actively mirrors with staging the Hunger Games? What if we stopped playing the Games? What would happen? It's a dangerous thought, but I know that he and I did it before we got here. Can't we do it again? The only thing we have to lose is our privilege as ranch-hands, right? So, we survived before and we were really young then, which means that now – being older – we'll be more successful if we band together and actively resist playing the Games in daily life. It's rebellious, for sure, but perhaps it's less of a threat when it's only two boys rebelling. I think if we were to resist the games together, Thatch and I could create for ourselves a much better life. What we need is to be together though. I can't do this alone.

I wait until the boys are mostly clear of the Feeding Hall, then I take Thatcher aside. "Grab your blanket and pillow, Thatch. We need to stay out in the barn tonight." Thatch looks at me weird, but I wave his pending questions away. "I'll say more in a few minutes. Just grab your blanket and pillow." He nods and heads off to the bunkhouse. I leave the Feeding Hall and look out at the glowing horizon beyond District 10. What is out there? Are there arenas like Biter said? Thatcher returns with his bedding and we head out to our barn. He sets up a spot in the back while I take silent council with the cows in their stalls. Thatch comes to my side. "Deane, what's up?"

"Look," I begin, quietly. "I don't want to play these games anymore."

"What are you talking about?" he asks. "What games are we playing?"

"The Games, Thatch," I try to convince him. "Don't you think that we're in as much of an arena here at the Ranches as those Tributes are on the T.V.?"

"No," he responds, flatly. "We're not in anything at all like that arena. I don't understand what you're saying."

"Look," I try a different angle. "It's the life we're living. Do you think you have any control over it?"

"No, but I'm okay with that, Deane." He answers. I'm not satisfied.

"You're okay with Mr. Burliss telling you when you have to wake up and go to sleep, when you can eat, what you can eat, and basically everything else about your life?"

"Yeah. I can't take care of myself, Deane, not without the work that we're doing."

"Okay, but who is that work for? Who is benefitting from it?" Thatch frowns and takes a step back from me.

"Deane, stop. Stop talking like that. Okay? It's not worth it."

"Thatch, we did it once, moving around from place to place, no one knowing we existed and no one caring, not even the Capitol cared. They don't care even now, and now, as people, we matter even less! We don't even get counted into the Reaping Day bowls more than once. The odds are always in our favor because if they weren't, people would ask questions."

"STOP, Deane. I don't like this line of thought." Thatcher has begun to sound scared.

"I know!" I say, urgency in my voice. "It's a scary proposition, but if you want to matter in this world, you have to live in it first."

"That's exactly what we're doing, Deane. We're living in this world. Don't throw it away."

"No, we're not living in this world, Thatcher. We're throwing away other kids' lives so that we can support an organization that doesn't care about us or even know that we are in existence. We're the slaves of this District, Thatch. Slaves. We have no names and no accountability for ourselves. But we did have that once, and we're older now so we can have it again."

"But where would we live?" Thatcher's reactions suggest that he's thinking about my proposition, at least. "What would we do?"

"I don't know," I say. "But it would be something we'd be doing for us."

"See," Thatch says in a voice that sounds defeated and tired at the same time. "See, that's just it. You have no plan for us except that we'd throw away all the protections we are living with, and when we do that, all we have going for us is fear and the drive to run away. If you think that's a better life for us, well I disagree, because like you said to Biter yesterday, the motto for our lives is 'Work to Live. Live to Work' and I'm sorry Deane but that plan is more concrete than yours." He sighs and shrugs as he backs away from me. I'm losing him. "If you want to run away, I'm not going to rat you out. See how far away from here you can get before sunrise, when they notice you're gone and send out Peacekeepers to find you. I mean, they'll come to me too, and they'll ask me all kinds of questions I bet. And I'm a pretty good liar, so I won't say anything because this conversation never existed between us, but how long will it be until you manage to get yourself caught? What if you do make it somewhere else? They're still going to round you up and ship you back here for the Reaping Day, and when you get registered then there will be no hiding." His eyes are so sad, but I know he's speaking truth. "So if it's my blessing you are asking for, well you're my brother and you have it, but I can't go with you if that's what you're asking." I have only one pitch left, and I didn't want to use it but I see that I have no other choice.

"We don't have to go very far, Thatch, but we have to go together. We're a family, and you're all I have in the world. And I need to keep you because when I lose you, I'll have nothing. We don't have to go very far. The Peacekeepers will think we're far away anyway, when they find out that we're gone. And that makes the Compound right outside of the Gaming Reserve the safest place for us to hide in. We can do it. We're young and strong and we can contribute to the lives of those Prairie Dogs. And suppose no one finds us? We'll be entered into the reaping bowls only once every year, or we'll be taken for dead and then there won't be any cause to sort us into the Hunger Games. We'll be…"

"Outlaws. That's what we'll be, Deane." Thatcher shakes his head. "You said you don't want to play the Games anymore, but what you're suggesting is just another type of Games that we'd be playing. I can't do it, Deane. Family or not, I can't do it, and the heartbreaker is that I want to do it because I do need you and can't live any kind of life without you in it. But this thing you're suggesting isn't life either. We'd be on the run all the time, even after the Peacekeepers gave us up for dead, we'd never be able to settle anywhere and make any sort of life for ourselves or for each other. We can't do it. I don't want you to do it either." He grabs my arm firmly. In his eyes I see that he is telling me the most sensible thing in the world, and that I need to believe him. My dreams of running away die there in the electric space between us.

"We're not at home here," I plead with him, but I can see it's futile and when he replies I expect to hear his answer.

"You're not at home here. I'm trying to make the most of what I've got. Let me do that same thing for you, will you, brother?" I nod without thinking, and I know it's not because I really agree with him: it's because he hasn't called me "brother" since we arrived here and decided together that we would look out for each other. Here we are now, years later, renewing that promise.

"Okay," I mumble. He offers me half a smile but it's enough for now.

"Okay."