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When Max is twelve years old, he puts his hands in wet cement.
Ever since he was a kid Max felt the polar opposite to his district. District Six was about moving and transportation and trains and Max was a struggle against that. He was two feet, planted in the ground, learning how to cross his arms and not move before he learned how to run.
His father calls that push and pull, the dynamic ebb of a people who refuse to move and the hulking lump of iron that demands they do.
When Max is twelve years old, he puts his hands in wet cement.
It’s around age eleven when he starts to fear eternity. That’s when he really processes that one day he’s going to die and the whole world is going to keep on moving without him, that one day someone will think of him for the very last time and that’ll be it.
His grandfather calls that the second death .
His skin burns when he thinks about that. The very idea that Ross will be gone and his parents will be gone and everyone he knows is going to just vanish for the last time one day. His mom holds him tight and says that those are grown-up thoughts, and he doesn’t need to worry about them.
He doesn’t think that’s very helpful, and he lets her know, and she gets mad at him so he goes to his room and broods about it for the rest of the night. He tries to tell Ross at school the next day but his throat gets all tight and scratchy and his heart thumps loud enough that he thinks the teacher can hear it and he never manages to say it.
He forgets about it often enough to enjoy himself, but never enough to go to bed if there isn’t any noise in the background.
So then he’s twelve years old, watching the sidewalk be repaved, and he’s sticking his hands in wet cement at three o’clock in the morning.
Max stands there for a long time, watching the cement dry, washing off his hands, and smiling harder than he has in a while. And he’s thinking a thought so loud that his head hurts; Try and forget about me now.
He feels Ross on his skin when he’s riding the train. The echo of the hug they shared before the Reaping. It’s like tracks running under his skin, vibrating. Because he’s a tiny kid with no training and no idea what he’s doing and he just volunteered for a deathmatch.
And he doesn’t even regret it.
He’s so sure that he’s going to die, all day. Ryan Higa looks at him in this twisted up form of pity and Max had shouted at him until his throat hurt and then showered until his skin burned and he is so, so certain that he is going to die.
He’s laying in bed that night when he thinks about concrete.
This is your handprint, a little voice whispers. You are your handprint and life is wet concrete and if you don’t put something down then who the hell is going to remember you after?
He looks down at his stylist and says “Make them remember,” and she listens.
(“My name is Jess,” she tells him, later. Dolling him up for the Victory Tour, painting his skin in gold glitter and pressing a handkerchief to his eyes when they start to tear up. “In case you were wondering.”)
She makes him into something new. Brighter than bright, unnaturally red hair. A black suit, dark as coal. His eyes are glowing gold, like train headlights in the dark. He’s wearing a crown. The camera turns towards him and he lifts his middle finger up as high as he can. He refuses to be Ryan Higa, charming and quiet and smiling. He’s not NigaHiga. He’s Max. He’s a handprint. He’s two feet planted down and this year's only volunteer and he is fire and he is gold and he refuses to be unnoticed.
He holds his chin high in his interviews. He grabs the audience by the throat and doesn’t let them stop thinking about him. Ryan tells him he’s an idiot and the interviewer Austin looks at him with an odd, unreadable expression, but he couldn’t stop if he wanted. He’s scared of what happens if he dies, scared of fading out of existence, scared of the second death. But fear doesn’t play well for the cameras so he’s angry and stomping and full up of curse words.
He calls himself Mithzan, tells Austin he’s not worried about the competition, says he knows that he’ll win and practices grinning with all of his teeth in the mirror.
He feels like an animal. He feels like a king. Ryan says he’s going to get himself killed and Max digs his heels in further. I dare you, he tells the Capitol. I dare you to try and forget me.
(He doesn’t know what he’s doing, then. He doesn’t realize how different the ground is here, outside of District Six, away from home. He doesn’t realize until it’s far, far too late, that he’s digging his heels into cement. He doesn’t know yet that being remembered isn’t a matter of handprints. It’s a matter of statues.)