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When I was a little girl my mamma told me there were four traits that made a lady: honesty, loyalty, dignity, and compassion. You think it’s funny? I guess it is, a little.
Can you be honest even if you’ve told a lie? If you never confess it, I mean, if you keep the lie, and let it carry on, build up strength until it’s so entrenched that even if you told, you might not be believed? Because it’s not like I’ve told many lies, in the grand scheme of things, because I haven’t. Not for a woman of my age. But those that I have told, well, they’re pretty embedded. I could tell you what they all are, every lie I’ve ever told, but what would be the point of that?
My daughter’s face, that was a lie I told. My best or my worst, I’ve never been quite sure. It was certainly the most believed. Did it ever occur to you it was a lie?
It never occurred to her anyway.
I did tell you a list of lies would be pointless.
My daughter’s face, my love of televised violence, that I never minded that I wasn’t pretty, that I loved him.
What does that tell you, any of it?
I still don’t understand why you want to know, really. It’s all ancient history, or will be soon enough. You seem keen enough to make sure things in this vein are forgotten, and everything is tangled up if you look hard enough. I was born in the Agate; I’ve always known that you don’t look too closely if a boy gives you a stone.
My mamma told me that too. When she was sick, towards the end. She told me how my father had given her fingernail gems when they were young, and she’d never looked at them through a glass, and she’d always been happy. I’m not sure now if she meant it as advice or a warning. Maybe it was neither. She was only twenty-five when she died, hardly the repository of wisdom I like to cast her.
In a lot of ways, that’s where this story begins. It would certainly be very different if she hadn’t died. But she did, and my father remarried. I know, I know, it’s the beginning of so many stories. This isn’t a story about his wife though. She was a catalyst, but I can hardly blame her for that, and there’s a lot I could thank her for. We were never close, not really, but then she worked long days, sixteen hours or so, and I was an odd child, as so many people said. Still, between her and my father, the event that defined my life the most happened. My sister was born.
Yes, my sister.
You didn’t know I had a sister?
Maybe I should have counted that as one of my lies. But then, if we count all of the things I never said, we’ll be here all day.
Why didn’t I ever mention my sister? Well that’s a complicated story. It starts with a pretty little girl. Aria—that was her name—was very pretty. Pretty and self-possessed, for a little girl. Her mother worked long hours, and I was a reluctant guardian, so she ran wild with the other children. I probably should have kept a better eye on her, but who wants their baby sister tagging along, and anyway, Aria never seemed the sort of child to get into trouble.
Wait. That’s a lie, and I did say my mamma taught me about honesty. Aria never seemed the sort of child to get into trouble and be unable to get out.
Obviously I was wrong or there would be no story, but this was the sort of trouble that wore a glittery coat and held beautiful children tighter than any mother any could.
You can’t really blame me for not spotting it.
My father did, but we’re not at that part of the story yet. Aria was eight when she first got herself into trouble and couldn’t get out of it, although none of us realised it at the time. She had a handful of shiny leaflets and a recommendation from a teacher who was tired of her running wild at break and then using the woebegone face to avoid punishment. They said it would give her polish—after all, she was such a pretty girl. Not the sort to end up in the Agate.
I was only young. Ending up in the Agate seemed a fate worse than death.
Oh, maybe there was some resentment there too, I can’t deny it. If life were a fairy-tale we all know who I would have been, after all, and it certainly wasn’t the main character.
The next few years were good ones. Aria ran herself wild at the Centre for Health and Wellbeing, and she did get her polish. Meanwhile, my stepmother managed to finagle me an apprenticeship at an engraver’s. Rarer than gold dust, for a girl from the Agate, but I had steady hands and a good eye, so maybe that was why I got it. Maybe not. My stepmother was beautiful herself, and at some point in her youth she’d picked up some polish.
Where did she acquire it? I never asked.
I don’t think you understand how this district works. Sorry, worked.
She’s long dead anyway, I don’t know why it matters.
Anyway, they were good years. Then one day Aria was in over her head, or that’s how it seems now. By the time we’d realised it, you see, she was pretty entrenched. I don’t know if they’d have let her leave if she wanted to, and she didn’t want to. Not then. Maybe she never wanted to leave, but I’m not going to believe that.
Because I want to? Maybe.
We left home within three months of each other. I did say my father never forgave me. Maybe he would have done in time, but then my stepmother hung herself two months later. Oh, there was an extra lie there that I had forgotten. I told the engraver’s son that I loved him, and I told him my sister had died and her mother had died of a broken heart. I don’t think these can really be held against me in the count to be honest. I did love him. I loved him for a long time. Maybe I said it, and it came to be, rather than the other way around, but I don’t think that makes it a lie.
As to Aria, well, I thought she was dead, or as good as. We didn’t despair because we thought she’d die on television in five years. I don’t think we ever even considered that. We just assumed she’d never make it that far. Maybe that’s unfair, but there were a lot of pretty children at the Wellbeing Centre, and we all knew why.
We did all know.
I heard on the radio the other month a tale from Four, about a monster in the deeps, who would sometimes swim up close to shore to wrap a tentacle around a child and drag it under, down where there was no light, leaving the family blinking on the shore, wondering where their child had gone. We never told stories about that. We all knew that monsters who take your children wore diamond earrings and ruby necklaces and emerald rings, whispered words like glory and wealth and potential.
Is that why I did it? Why I did what?
I did tell you I’d get to that lie. This is a story that needs to be told in order.
But I can say that I never believed in her. That was where the other lie came from though—that I loved the Games, the violence. I told my husband that. I don’t think he believed me—I wasn’t much of a liar back then. I hadn’t had the practice, I suppose. I made that lie true too, though. I watched every year. I thought I owed it, I think. If my stepmother and Aria at eleven had been polished, these children, and they were children, gleamed. It made me nervous. How much of a child do you have to cut away to make them gleam?
That year was the first year I watched properly. Oh, we always had it on in the house, and I’d seen bits and pieces, but that year I cared. The boy from Two smashed our boy’s head against the rocks on the ninth day, and the girl from Four speared our girl eleven days in, when the gleam was wearing away, revealing the wire core underneath. If there was any gleam left after that, it certainly wasn’t in the broken body left in the swamp.
I was happy though. I watched the Games every year, and I can’t say I enjoyed them, but I had a house and a husband, a job and for the first time in my life, I had a friend. And then a year after I left I became pregnant. It wasn’t exactly planned, but it wasn’t exactly unwanted either. It was a long winter and we were young and in love. My engraver’s son picked me up and swung me around when I told him, kissed me hard and promised to love us forever. He picked me flowers and massaged my feet and told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world. I was so happy. I was so young.
Of course, it wasn’t all diamonds. I had dreadful morning sickness and my ankles ached and I missed my family, but honestly and truly, I was happy.
That’s not an excuse by the way.
Or maybe it is. Maybe I looked back at those blissfully happy days, when he would massage cream into my aching hands after long days at work, and his father carved us a crib, and my new friend sat up into the night with me stitching new clothes for Sofie, and I thought, I cannot let them take this away from me. Maybe I looked at my family, my new family, and thought I would do whatever I had to so that they didn’t end up the way my old one did. Do you blame me? Can you really blame me for that?
They lasted a while, those halcyon years. Sofie was the apple of her father’s eye when she was born, and mine too. Maybe we let her get away with murder, but she was our little girl.
It lasted a while, I say, as if I don’t know exactly how long it lasted. It lasted until the summer of the 47th Games, when a pretty little girl in a pinafore with her hair in ringlets was Reaped, and a beautiful, lithe, golden girl Volunteered, her face serene but with a smile in her voice like she knew she was doing something she shouldn’t.
It was Aria of course. I assumed you’d already done the maths.
I’m not ashamed to say I became a little bit obsessed that Games. I watched every year, the least I could do, my husband already thought it was a little morbid, but that year I was ravenous for content before it had even started. I watched interview after interview as men and women in gaudy outfits assessed my sister’s chance of survival. The bookies gave her 7 to 1 odds as I recall. She scored a 9 from the Gamemakers, but the general consensus was she was flighty, wouldn’t go the distance.
It’s funny, but that annoyed me. I hadn’t thought she’d make it all the way, not really, but that was because no-one did. It wasn’t because she was flighty. Even as a little girl Aria wasn’t flighty.
I shouldn’t still be annoyed, but these things stick with you. I’ll never forget her scream as the One boy thrust his sword through her chest during the final showdown, or her snarl as she flung herself forward, further impaling herself before she ripped his throat open, but I’ll never forget so many more mundane aspects of those Games either. The red feathers a commentator was wearing as she talked about Aria’s grace in a fight. The mud, which they all slogged through for nineteen days, torrential rain hammering down all the while. More than one of them drowned in it. The wry smiles Aria and the Two girl, Diana, shared whenever Two boy bragged about his kill count around the campfire in the early days. The way the boy from Three died alone when a rockslide pinned his legs, leaving him to be nibbled by some sort of insect mutt for two days.
I still think that was one of the worst deaths in all of the Games.
The way Aria blew a kiss at Diana after slicing the boy from Seven from groin to throat, the blood mixing with the mud coating her. The way the boy from One threw threats around the campfire: I’m going to kill you; I’m going to peel your skin off and see if anyone comes running when you scream; I’m going to rip your head off and fuck your skull. Most of his threats were for Aria. There’s a reason the One alliances rarely lasted long after the pack broke, and it’s not because they were too stupid to see the advantage of numbers.
The way it took Aria four goes to stand up, struggling in the mud for long minutes next to a corpse, after the final showdown.
Aria thanked her district in her first Victor’s interview, as a proper One girl should, and her family, who had supported her in her desire for glory and service to the Capitol. They were in some interviews, actually, a glamorous couple, blonde and beautiful. They were very believable as her parents.
That was basically the last time I saw Aria. Oh, not entirely, of course, she was often on television, partying with a wide crowd. After all, the Capitol loved a girl with polish, and Aria had been polished until she gleamed. But she certainly never set foot in the Agate or came knocking at my door.
Did I go looking for her? Of course not. I had a husband and a daughter and maybe they weren’t aware of me, having left home as I did. And if they were, well, you have to understand, that gleaming girl, who caressed girls with fingers bloody from children’s throats, she was a One girl, and I would never have wished her anything but well, but she was hardly my little sister. My little sister liked giant games of tag and asking me to read to her of an evening. My little sister was dead.
Do you really still want to know about the lie? Is that really all you’re asking about? I spilled the soup. I told my husband that Sofie must have done it, she was always running wild that girl, but I knocked the handle of the pan and spilled the soup on Sofie and it ruined her pretty face. It was an accident, but I was too ashamed to tell anyone.
Were you expecting something darker? I was only an engraver. I don’t have any dark secrets.