/
Chapter II
/
*Excerpts from "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins in this chapter. All credit goes to her. View Disclaimer in Section Titled "Disclaimer & Summary" *
/
That time, when I was crushing coal with my sledgehammer, waiting for Mr. Everdeen to set the black powder jute, I stroke hard and fell to the ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs. Sparks had flown, too bright and fast to be normal. I open my mouth in a silent cry, expecting to see Mr. Everdeen legging it to the manway—hoping for it—but he's still there.
Mr. Everdeen turns, his mouth in an uncharacteristic grim line amid his stubble.
"Live bright and long, Cole," when he speaks his voice trails slowly, like his words are embers to be set alight.
There is a sadness in his eyes, the grey too glossy. Almost robotically his hand rises upward and shoves me down the tunnel. In total blackness, the crimson flames leapt and exploded across the tunnel walls. It had a reflection the same as it would with a mirror; as hot as it burned, it was also breathtaking. There was a faint odor with a chemical sting, enough to make my eyes water and nose burn. I rolled to a stop and tried taking a breath. I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.
That's how I felt now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, clenching my fists as the original events loop in a film reel inside of my skull. Someone is gripping my arm, a girl from the Seam, and I think maybe I started shifting forward and she stopped me.
Everything works out in the end. I needn't interfere. Prim's potential death can be altered! Her chances of being killed early on is so remote that I'd not even bothered to worry about it. Hadn't I limited our interactions enough? Taken the tesserae, watched after the Everdeen's from afar? One decision. One reckless decision and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The odds had been entirely in her favor the first go around. But it hadn't mattered she still died in the end and Katniss…Katniss managed to make a life for herself, hadn't she?
Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair. And when I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her sides, walking stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see the same sad look Mr. Everdeen had in his eyes as he accepted his death and saved my life. It's this detail, the unnecessary death, that brings me back to myself.
"Prim!" The strangled cry comes out of Katniss's throat as the familiar scene plays out before my eyes and my body fidgets. "Prim!" Katniss doesn't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately allowing her a straight path to the stage. She reaches Prim just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of her arm, Katniss pushes Prim behind herself.
"I volunteer!" Katniss gasps. "I volunteer as tribute!"
There's some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn't had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute's name has been pulled from the ball, another eligible boy, if a boy's name has been read, or girl, if a girl's name has been read, can step forward to take his or her place. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.
"Does it get any better or what!" says Korben Beak as he shimmies to a rhythm only he hears. "Quiver Panem, this years District 12 female tribute is gonna set the stage on fire!" he excitedly says, beside himself.
"What does it matter?" says the mayor. He's looking at Katniss with a pained expression on his face. He doesn't know her really, but there's a faint recognition there. She's the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for her father, vaporized in the mines. I wonder if he really remembers that? The teary-eyed and determined little girl biting her lip to keep from shedding tears and being seen as weak. "What does it matter?" he repeats gruffly. "We have a female tribute, let her come forward."
Prim is screaming hysterically behind Katniss. She's wrapped her skinny arms around Katniss like a vice. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"
"Prim, let go," Katniss says harshly, because this is upsetting her and I know she wouldn't want to be seen crying. When they televise the replay of the reaping's tonight, everyone will make note of shed tears and be marked as an easy target. A weakling. Katniss wouldn't be caught dead given the Capitol that satisfaction. "Let go!"
I see Gale move and pull Prim from Katniss's back. She turns to see Gale lifting Prim off the ground and she's thrashing in his arms. "Up you go, Catnip," he says, in a voice he's fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward Mrs. Everdeen. Katniss steels herself and climbs the steps.
"Start drooling, ladies and gents!" says Korben Beak. "My girl here is the right size, right build, right face. Right on the spirit of the Hunger Games!" He's pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. "The most envied girl in all of District 12. The one and only female tribute of the 74th Hunger Games! This girl is perfect. What's my girl's name?"
Katniss swallows hard. "Katniss Everdeen," she says.
"Yesterday's unknown will be tomorrow's Princess of Panem, the girl on fire who's gonna burn up your every desire. A beautiful flame dancing with coals, catching and fanning outward! Let's give a big round of applause to our newest sexiest tribute!" trills Korben Beak.
To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know Katniss from the Hob, knew her father, or encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, Katniss stands there unmoving while the rest of us take part in the boldest form of dissent we can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.
Then the iconic salute happens. The moment when District 12 acts in true solidarity and courage. A shift has occurred since Katniss stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems the District recognizes and respects her as someone truly precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to Katniss. It is an old and rarely used gesture of District 12, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.
Katniss's face is closed off but I recognize the mask she wears when she's in danger of crying. Fortunately, Haymitch chooses this time to stagger across the stage to congratulate her. "Look at her. Look at this one!" he hollers, throwing an arm around her shoulders. He's surprisingly strong for a drunkard. "I like her!" His breath reeks of liquor and it's been a long time since he's bathed. "Lots of…" He can't think of the word for a while. "Spunk!" he says triumphantly. "More than you!" he releases her and starts for the front of the stage. "More than you!" he shouts, pointing directly into a camera.
Alfred always thought Haymitch's character was pitiful, traumatized, and led down by survivor's guilt. His drunkard actions and support of the rebels were both a cry and a plea, but as I see him in person, I can't help but acknowledge his drunken defiance of the audience and taunting of the Capitol. As Alfred's memories show, it's the stupidly brave ones that get the ball rolling. As if reading my thoughts, Haymitch opens his mouth to continue but then plummets off stage and knocks himself unconscious.
He's a mess, but someone I know will have Katniss's back. With every camera gleefully trained on him, my eyes stay trained on Katniss as she takes a subtle deep breath and composes herself. She puts her hands behind her back and stares into the distance. Katniss looks at the hills she climbs every morning with Gale. For a moment, I foolishly yearn to save her…from what I'm not sure…the idea of her tainted innocence…from taking another's life…but I know all of her future trials shape her into the heroine who inspires thousands. Who am I to take that from her? Who else would have stepped up for Prim?
Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Korben Beak is trying to get the ball rolling again. "What an exciting day!" he warbles as he attempts to straighten his clothes, which has lifted off his shoulders. "But more excitement to come! It's time to start licking your lips ladies and gents, for it's time to choose our male tribute!" Clearly hoping to contain his wardrobe malfunction, he plants one hand on his shoulder as if fanning himself as he crosses to the ball that contains the boy's names and grabs the first slip he encounters. He struts back to the podium, and I don't even have time to breathe in relief for the anticipated events when he's reading the name. "Cole Wise."
Cole Wise!
Fuck, fuck, I think. It's Peeta's role, not mine. Because I recognize his significance to Katniss, to her rise as the Mockingjay, the rebellion, and as her lover. I have avoided associating with the boy. How could this happen? Cole Wise.
No, how can I fix this? Can it be fixed? Fuck, the odds are not in my favor today.
Katniss watches as I stiffly make my way toward the stage. All towering height, lean build, hacked dark hair, and honey-brown eyes. The shock of the moment is registering on both our faces, the struggle to remain emotionless is difficult, but her grey eyes show the reluctance I've seen so often in our brief sightings of each other. Yet I climb steadily onto the stage and take Peeta's place.
Korben Beak asks for volunteers, perhaps Peeta would volunteer and set events back on track? In Alfred's memories Peeta is brave and kind, he does anything for Katniss because he truly loves her. This is his chance, why the hell is he hesitating? He doesn't step forward. No one does. He has two older brothers, I know, I've seen them around the bakery, but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other holds onto Peeta. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What am I in comparison to Peeta but an orphan with speech disabilities no one but Coup would miss?
The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year at this point—it's required—but I'm not listening to a word.
Why didn't he? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn't matter. Peeta Mellark and I are strangers. Not even neighbors. One of us speaks and the other can't. My only real interaction with him is from a screen and book page. That's not to mention my interactions with the Everdeen's…Katniss especially. She's probably suppressed it. But I haven't and I know I never will…
It was during the worst time. Mr. Everdeen had been blown to bits in the mine accident three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The guilt of his loss had only worsened, and would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with stress responses. Why didn't you run? Of course, there was never any answer.
The district had given the Everdeen's a small amount of money as compensation for his death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time Mrs. Everdeen would be expected to get a job. Only she didn't. She didn't do anything but sit propped up in a chair or stay huddled under the blankets on her bed. I always thought of her as the worst kind of mother, I understood her grief—hell I'm guilty of having caused it—yet I still pull my weight to take care of her girls. Once in a while, she'd stir, get up as if moved by some urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. Her character would only begin to redeem itself later on, but as a mother she failed her daughters. No amount of morphine and half-assed attempts would change my opinion of her.
I was experiencing an anger-guilt split. Katniss's mother locked herself in some dark world of sadness, but at the same time, she left her daughter alone to deal with the loss of her father, Katniss lost both parents that day—and I caused it…At eleven years old, with Prim just seven, Katniss took over as head of the family. She had no other choice. I watched as she bought their food at the market and struggled to cook it the best she could while keeping Prim and herself looking presentable. Because if it had become known that Mrs. Everdeen could no longer care for them, the district would have taken them away and placed them in the community home. I'd grown up with the home kids. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, and the hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward made me wish for the CPS from the Before. This travesty should never have happened to these children. Sweet, innocent children who should be bright-eyed and full of contagious laughter, who play and cause mischief at every opportunity, who extend trust and kindness without hidden motives. The community home in District 12 has crushed and layered hopelessness onto them in layers of coal dust. Prim would have been the same if Katniss and I hadn't covered their tracks.
But the money ran out despite my interventions and we were slowly starving to death. There's no other way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could hold out until May, just May 5th, I would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious grain and oil to feed my mentor's daughters. Only there were still several weeks to go and we could well be dead by then.
Starvation's not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn't seen the victims? Older people who can't work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the street, you hear the wails from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the body. Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It's always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But they never mention the cannibal cases…not openly.
On the afternoon of my encounter with Katniss Everdeen, the rain was falling in relentless icy sheets. I had been in town, trading my nuggets for some threadbare blankets and burnt bread in the public market, and was heading home. Although I had been to the Hob on several occasions with Mr. Everdeen, I was too reluctant to let a young girl like Katniss venture into that rough, gritty place before she could protect herself. The rain had soaked through my work shirt, leaving me chilled to the bone. For three days, I've wrestled with the coal-dusted hunting jacket I'd scavenged from the collapsed mine. By the time the market closed, I was numb and hardly felt the rain. I didn't touch the hunting jacket for fear I would destroy it as I did its treasured owner. Besides, I had no right to it.
I couldn't go to the Everdeen household. Because there would be no Mr. Everdeen with his warm eyes and Katniss's gentle humming, but a mother with dead eyes and daughters with hollowed cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn't walk by that home without the acrid scent of burnt matches and rotten eggs cloying my nose, my hands scrapped, and the memory of fire scorched into my eyelids.
I found myself stumbling into a mud puddle along a lane behind the shops that serve the wealthiest townspeople. The merchants live above their business, so I was essentially in their backyards. I remember the outlines of garden beds not yet planted for the spring, a goat or two in a pen, one sodden dog tied to a post, hunched defeated in the muck.
All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. But it never crossed my mind to go garbage picking. As hungry as the Everdeen's and I were, I couldn't bring myself to cross that line. A bone from the butcher's or rotted vegetables at the grocers, I was a human being, and no matter how desperate I was, I was a man not a beast.
When I passed by the Everdeen's, the smell of dried mint leaves was so overwhelming I felt dizzy. The smoky fire from damp branches rose from the back, and white clouds spilled out the kitchen door. I stood ensnared by the heat and the sweet-woody undertone of dried mint until the rain interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life. My mouth goes dry as I wait for the dizziness to wear off.
Suddenly a clatter startled me, and I looked up to see Mr. Everdeen's youngest, staring at me, fiddling with her fingers and trying to find words to say and not quite meeting my eyes for more than a few seconds. The situation was awkward, and I had no experience from Before to help me. As I carefully slicked my hair back and backed away, I noticed her, a girl with dark hair, olive skin, and familiar grey eyes, a silent sentinel behind her younger sister's back. I'd seen her at school. She was in my year, but I didn't interact with her. I'd stuck with Mr. Everdeen mostly in the mines and around town, never in the presence of his girls. It was too dangerous. Prim went back inside, stuttering a goodbye, but Katniss must have been watching me as I made my way around the backyard that held their goat Lady and hesitated by the fallen wooden fenceposts. The realization that I'd have no better opportunity to release some of my guilt had finally sunk in. My knees locked and my chest tightened as I trained my eyes to the muck on my boots. It was too much. I was too reckless and confident and was to blame, oh, so guilty. Let her hate me and blame me for my foolish actions, I thought. Or better yet, let her rage against a body that shouldn't exist right here beneath the rain.
There was another clatter in the backyard and I heard Katniss moving again and the sound of a gate, and I vaguely wondered what was happening. Feet sloshed toward me through the mud and I thought, It's her. She's coming to drive me away with her fists. But she didn't. We stood shoulder to shoulder. Her hands were clenched into fists, from anger or nerves I could never tell because she was always hot and cold with me.
She was speaking, "Why are you here, Coal Tongue? Why now? You never bothered before."
She began to crack her knuckles and glare at the rain pouring from rusted metal roof sheets.
The girl never even glanced my way, but I was watching her. Because of the familiar eyes, because of the weight of responsibility that she wore on her too-young shoulders. What would Alfred have said? Alfred's customer service surely would have served me well here. I couldn't imagine speaking my mind to the girl whose father I got killed. The girl took one fleeting look towards me as if checking that I was still there, then, her attention turned back to the rain, she turned in my direction with reluctance. I quickly thrust the hunting jacket at her, and slosh back down the road, glad for the spreading distance between us.
I stared ahead in disbelief. I had a semblance of a plan, a workable charade, except for the genuity of a voice. Did I mean to thrust it upon her? No, not really. Because she deserved better than that. Mr. Everdeen deserved better than that. Before I could second guess myself I sloshed back towards Katniss, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly around the girl, and bowed my head in apology before walking swiftly away. The heat of her perplexed gaze burned into my skin, but I bore it silently, clinging to my decision.
By the time I reached home, the rain had lessened somewhat, but the slosh had invaded my floors. When I dropped my wet purchases on the table with a depressing 'splat', Mina's inquisitive nose reached into my empty pockets, but I thwarted her aside and made her sit in the drier area. I scrapped what muck I could from my boots, the black stuff sloshing off with a wet gritty sound. Alfred joined me at the table with a faint smile, we sat in silence. It was a start, a small piece of penitence and closure.
I put my clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a deep sleep with Alfred's memories filling my dreams with vibrant colors. It didn't occur to me until the next morning that the girl might have misinterpreted my actions. Might have questioned why I had her father's prized hunting jacket, knowing it meant everything to her, and then returning it without asking for anything. But I dismissed this. It must be the only direct interaction between us. Should I have done it differently? She didn't even know me. Still, just returning Mr. Everdeen's hunting jacket was enough of a kindness that it alleviated some of the guilt. I couldn't expect much to result from my actions.
I ate a slice of bread and fed Mina the leftovers and headed to the school. It was as if spring had come overnight. Warm sweet air. Blue sky and chirping birds. At school, I passed Katniss in the hall, her cheeks had more color to them and her eyes looked less burdened. She was standing by Gale and didn't acknowledge me in any way. But as she collected Prim and started for home that afternoon, I found her staring at me from across the schoolyard. Our eyes met for only a second, then she turned her head away. I dropped my gaze, conflicted, and that's when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year thriving within coal soil. A bell went off in my head. I thought of the hours spent shadowing Mr. Everdeen in the mines and I knew how the Everdeen's and I were going to survive. There was more than coal to be found in the mines, there was gold.
To this day, I can never shake the connection between Katniss Everdeen and the hunting jacket that belonged to my only solace, and the dandelion that reminded me that I had purpose in this new life. And more than once, I have turned in the school hallway and caught her eyes trained on me, only to flick away with pursed lips. I feel like I owe her a life, and I can only give her mine in penitence. Maybe if I had been faster, Mr. Everdeen could have supported Katniss the way she deserved, and I'd be feeling less conflicted now. I thought about it a couple of times, but dwelling on the what-if's helped nobody. And now it only added to the unraveling of predetermined events. Because we're going to be thrown into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to save Katniss when Peeta was the one she felt indebted to? Somehow it just won't seem sincere if I'm playing into the whole star-crossed lovers act if she's trying to slit my throat in her father's name, you know?
The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Katniss and me to shake hands. Hers are as steady and warm as Mr. Everdeen's. Katniss looks at me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a vice grip. Maybe it's just her way of taking early control and demoralizing her opponent.
We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays.
Ah, fuck it, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone will kill me before Katniss is forced to.
Of course, the odds have not been very dependable. I'll just have to make my own.
/
~ PLEASE VOTE, COMMENT & FOLLOW~
/