Super Short Story! Number 1: Liberty Day
When it came time for Bo Mellark to take speech class during her course of her education, she merely sat in the back and let the elderly Mrs. Effie Moss ramble on about posture and smiles. She was a product of the old Capitol and Bo heard from her father that she once worked in the Hunger Games. He never went into many details about before the revolution. And the single semester she suffered through half-written speeches and, as Mrs. Moss put it, lack of presentation, was not enough to weasel much out of him. Her mother was never interested sharing tale either, but her father was much more liberal with the information.
By the closing of the term, Mrs. Moss approached her and kindly said with all her well-practiced posture and smile, “Dear I believe you are falling behind for this grading period, I may have yet need not to release you next year!”
Bo rolled her eyes. But Mrs. Moss was more than a push over, all she needed was a little work. “Mrs. Moss,” she began pleadingly, “I am so sorry, it’s just I struggle so much!” At this the elderly woman shook her well placed curls, as if it wasn’t entirely Bo’s fault for being so naturally charismatic as she was. “Is there any way that I could possibly pass for the spring?”
Mrs. Moss bit on her bright pink lips thoughtfully. Then after a second her face grew a little too animated for a normal human being’s excitement. “I know! It’s perfect! You are the daughter of the Mockingjay!” Suddenly Bo wished she never opened her mouth. “Your mother has been resisting for years…but you! You can open the Liberty Day’s festivities the week next! Oh, this will be just so exciting! Maybe a just a little bit of your father will shine through! Just wait until the governor hears! I’ll phone him right now…”
Bo’s fake smile, that Effie claimed she never mastered, melted away into a scowl.
When the day came, the streets were packed, large television screens everywhere playing patriotic videos and live streams from other districts, food stands, carnival games, kids with firecrackers, live music, the whole nine yards, like every year.
Except she wasn’t in the crowd with her friends or begging for more pocket money from her father at the bakery stand, she was on the stage. With many cameras pointing at her face. It was close to sunset, it was ceremonial that under sunlight on Liberty Day, there would be mourning and reflection. But come sundown, the celebration began. A new day, as the politicians who first created the events, claimed it to be.
But before the real celebration there was always a keynote speaker. An old rebel of 13, a freedom fighter from the Districts, an old Hunger Games champion, people of that nature that fueled the revolution. Her mother was always considered to be the top of the list to invite to be the keynote speaker. But Katniss had resisted for years. And as those years went by, the number of freedom fighters dwindled. Her mother, and her father when they got really desperate, was in high demand to be the keynote speaker.
When they got her that was almost as good.
The man with the largest headset motioned for her to walk forward from the shadow of the stage towards the lights. She did so and then the countdown began.
“They call my mother the Mockingjay,” She practically breathed.
A short intake of breath.
“But I disagree.” Another pause. “She never was, nor ever will be the Mockingjay.”
No one sound could be heard throughout the District 12. She doubted there was sound anywhere in Panem.
“She was the Jabberjay.” Bo spoke to the crowd as if she had a personal point to make, “It was the old Capitol who made her, and she is much a product of the Capitol as the man once known as President Snow. She was no hybrid of freedom and enslavement. My mother is enslaved.” She swallowed hard.
“Once by Snow, then the rebels, and now; by her past. Not to say she is resistant to her freedom or delusional, just slow to warm in her liberty. “
Bo found her mother standing hand in hand with her father, she smiled discreetly at them.
“Besides,” she proclaimed, “We are the Mockingjay!”
“Something that the Capitol never intended to exits. But we do exist. Something that was uncalculated. Something that was an unforeseen consequence. Something whose fathers backfired on them. Something that was the first to inherit their freedom.
“And it is still ours.” Another, final pause. A smile and then: “Mr. President, if you will.”
Behind Bo Mellark thousands of fireworks burned into the sky. Tonight was not one for mourning, she saw that in her mother’s face, and tonight was for living.
And the crowd of howling and cheering citizens completely agreed.
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