Chapter Text
At breakfast, I am unusually quiet. Haymitch keeps getting up to puke. That means Jetta has to talk to Effie Trinket, which is two things she doesn’t like at once. I heap several rolls from District 12 on my plate and stare at them. They are made in 12’s style but they aren’t our rolls really. They were made in the Capitol, even I can taste the difference and I don’t usually have to eat tesserae bread. I rip them apart and dunk them in hot chocolate, watching like it’s the most fascinating thing I have ever seen. Really, my mind is elsewhere.
There are two things I consistently have nightmares about: getting picked for the Hunger Games and my mother. I hadn’t really thought of it until now but deep down I might be more afraid of her than dying in the Arena. It's how I learned fear.
My mother isn’t evil. I’ve only recently started to understand her a bit better. When I was little, she was unpredictable to me. I kept looking for the thing I could do—wash up, keep my station clean, always be polite to neighbors—that would keep her from getting angry. I never found it, because she’s not really angry at me. She’s angry at the world and her children are just the only people she can take it out on.
There are good things about her: she is very smart, especially with numbers. She completely changed the accounting system at the bakery. I am pretty sure that if my dad didn’t have her, he would’ve had to sell it because he does not have a head for business. The problem is actually that she is too smart. Her father was some kind of official at the Justice Building, and he was going to pay for her to get some accounting certificate that would’ve secured her an even better job there. School in District 12 only teaches the basics and about coal, so it was an extra expense that most people can’t afford.
But my grandfather died when she was 19, her training incomplete and suddenly my mother had herself and my grandmother to look after and no job. The Capitol wouldn’t give her a loan so she could continue her studies. She would’ve had to go into the mines, except my father needed a wife. It probably seemed like a solution to everyone’s problems from the outside. My father got a wife. The residence came with the bakery so my mother and grandmother didn’t have to worry about being exiled to the Seam from Town My father was too tender-hearted to kick the old woman out, even though Ryen says she was mean as a striped snake.
My parents’ marriage was not a love match. It was a business arrangement. Michel once asked me if I thought mother liked women. That had never occurred to me, but I already knew she didn’t like my father. After that I watched her and tried to figure it out. As far as I can tell, the only person she loved was her own mother, who died when I was little, leaving my mother alone with a houseful of Mellarks.
I must have been four or five when my grandmother told me, in her scratchy and deep voice, that some women aren’t meant to be mothers. That my mother never should’ve had children. It was a difficult thing to hear at the time, since I was one of said children. It scared me to think I wasn’t supposed to be.
Now that I am older, I think she was right. My mother shouldn’t have had children. She would’ve been happier if she swallowed her pride and moved to the Seam to work in the mines. Maybe she could’ve worked her way up to an above-ground job counting the coal. Maybe she could find a person she did love and been content. Or maybe she’d have been happier alone. I’ll never know.
All I know is if I get married it will be to someone I love (Katniss Everdeen). And if I have children, it will be because I want them. Not to pass the bakery on or satisfy someone else’s wishes.
None of that will happen now.
I fiddle with the bread some more. I can feel Haymitch’s eyes on me. I think, bitterly, that he is only trying to help me win because he knows the life of a victor is a lot like being a small child with an unpredictable, angry parent. The Capitol can do whatever it wants to you and you just have to put on a brave face and glad-hand some potential sponsors.
Come to think of it, I don’t think Haymitch is much of a glad-hander. That’s probably why he wants me. Our tributes die quicker without sponsor money.
I know I should follow my heart, that is what my mother’s life has taught me. The problem is, I don’t know what that is. I don’t want to die but I also don’t want to kill anyone or become a victor. There is just no way to reconcile it.
I have no answers when Jetta and I clamber into the elevator for our second full day of training. Tomorrow the Gamemakers will give us our scores. I should really know what my strategy is before I go into my private session.
“What should I do?” I say aloud. Jetta gives me a look. “Haymitch wants me to ally with the girl from District 4,” I explain. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“He hates you,” Jetta confirms. “She’s always glaring at you.” But then she adds, “But I bet if you are nice to the boy, Dallin, she could come around. She is always trying to protect him.”
I look at Jetta and feel remorse. I want to protect her, but I can’t. I guess Marina and I have that in common, at least. “It’s cruel that they make us spend so much time together,” I say, unsure it’s a thought I should voice aloud. “Getting to know each other only makes it harder.”
She nods. There might be tears in her eyes. I look away for her sake. The elevator opens, revealing the training floor. All the other districts are already at stations. We are the last to arrive. I note that Marina and Dallin are throwing knives. Clove from District 2 is sneering at them from the shelter station. She obviously wants it to be known that she is the best knife thrower here.
“Want to come to edible plants with me?” Jetta asks, motioning toward the station. I do. There’s a test to take on what is safe and what is not. Jetta does much better than I do. I haven’t even heard of half these plants. The instructor walks us through the answers. Jetta studies, then she wants to take the test again.
“I don’t want them to say I am stupid,” she explains. “Every year there is a kid who eats something bad or drinks water they shouldn’t and the announcers act like they should have known better.”
I nod. I know what she means. She doesn’t want anyone to be able to say she deserved to die. Because she doesn’t. None of us do. And when we go out, it is the Capitol’s fault and no one else’s. Just like it wasn't my fault my mother hit me when the bread fell in the fire.