“Oh, hey, Kira. You’re back again? I guess that’s cool. What do you wanna do?” Lenore asks me.
I think for a moment. I’ve mastered all but tracking at the station, and I don’t plan on learning how to track down a tribute, although I’m sure that if I needed to for some reason, like to help Noor or Yule if they somehow get injured, I could do it. I guess I could just work backwards from covering tracks. I think that the main way a tribute can find a competitor is by following their tracks. But if someone doesn’t leave any tracks, then there’s no way for them to be located. I smile at the thought of remaining hidden in the arena.
“I’d like to learn how to cover my tracks better,” I tell Lenore.
Lenore’s eyes float around the space for a bit before she focuses back on me, and comprehends my words. “Okay, nice. So you’ve already been here like twenty-six times, so you already have a good handle on it,” she murmurs.
She begins to walk away, towards the biomes. After a while, she turns around. “Oh, sorry, I forgot about you, Kira. Come with me,” she says.
I follow behind her as she walks through the forest. “The best way to ensure that your tracks are covered is to leave none.” I mimic her actions as she jumps from rock to rock, avoiding leaves, climbing up trees, walking on moss. When she does leave an imprint in the soil, Lenore immediately scatters a handful of dirt over it, using her fingers to compact it into the ground.
“Go off and hide, I’ll look for you when I wake up,” Lenore states.
I move soundlessly through the forest. It’s as though I’m not even there. In the forest back home, the leaves always crunched beneath my feet, the sound of my laughter reverberated against the trees. I was anything but stealthy, although I wasn’t trying to be. Rather than scattering leaves and rocks over my tracks, I just use soil. Tributes will look out for displaced leaves and rocks, and they can easily lift them up to reveal a poorly disguised footprint. Finally, I scale a tree with thick boughs that offer an abundance of dense leaves. The tree is surrounded by many others, making it possible for me to still move, while someone is below.
After some time, Lenore comes looking for me. Each time she looks up a tree, I move to a different one, utilizing my stealth movements.
“Ok Kira, I don’t know where you are. You can come out,” she calls.
I reveal myself with a smile, climbing out of the tree.
“Never reveal yourself to anyone. But nice job. Oh, and remember that stealth can be applicable to fights as well. Your perception skills will make you more aware of what’s going on, and your stealth movements can help you to sneak up on a competitor,” Lenora says before she walks off.
As I turn away from the first-aid station, waving to the girl who’s the twin of the girl who killed my twin sister, I laugh at the coincidence of both of us being here. It was very odd though, to see the face of the girl that I thought killed Lakota. I know that I’ve forgiven her killer, long ago. But there’s still somebody who I haven’t forgiven yet, and I know that I need to.
I spot North at the melee station, and I smile. He’ll be nice to talk to. He was on the first day of training.
I run across the training center, approaching the kindhearted stranger from behind. Surrounded by lethal weapons, I realize that I’ll have to train with more of them today to ensure that I can defend myself. I sigh, but I call out to North as I come behind him. “Hey, North!” I greet, but when he turns around, I realize that it’s a different bearded man who just happens to have a similar build and hair color.
While I’m planning not to get into any big confrontations in the arena, my mentor keeps telling me that I’ll need to go to the first-aid station if I want any chance at survival. I suppose that she’s right, I’ve injured myself a few times at home just running around the forest, or climbing trees. And when she says that being weak and injured will only draw other tributes to me, I think that’s she right.
A woman smirks at me from across the room as she sees me approaching the station, a syringe filled with a mysterious purplish liquid held at the ready. I smile at her, and she sends an intimidating glance my way. I’m sure that she’s nice, though. Once you get to know her. Maybe she’s like Lakota, because Lakota was just like that. She seemed reserved and a bit intimidating at first glance, but she was really a kind soul.
Another tribute joins me at the station, and I look up at her with a smile. Though I immediately take a step back, her visage pulling a memory from my brain. She was the one who killed my sister, it seems. She must be a victor who was reaped, like Izara. I don’t remember much else from that game, because I stopped watching after Lakota’s death at this girl’s hands.
“Hi, I’m Kiya. So you won, right?” I ask her.
I find that I don’t feel any animosity towards her. I can’t, because she didn’t torture my sister, who didn’t even fight back. I can’t blame this girl for her death. I don’t have closure, that is true. I didn’t get to say goodbye. But I am not bitter.
Hopefully, I can just stay hidden for most of the game. It would be better that way, nobody would end up getting hurt, nobody would have to deal with the repercussions of killing so early on. Utilizing the skills that I’ve already learned at the station, I quietly move through the foliage, walking from toe to hell while very low to the ground. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, until I come to the edge of the little section.
Hopping out of the elevator, I head straight to the unarmed station that I visited with Noor on the first day. She showed me how to box, but I really don’t think that’s my style. It’s a little bit too aggressive. I learned how to disarm and opponent, and a few capoeira techniques as well, but there was so much going on in my brain with all the new material, and trying to memorize it, that I didn’t really end up absorbing much at all. With a small sigh, knowing that I’ll have to interact with Rex and his negativity, I step towards him.
“Hi, Rex” I greet him, though I’m unsure exactly if he remembers me.
I slither up to the roof, seeking out some peace and quiet. Violetta has been chewing me out for letting Pearl give me a bob. She thinks that it was Pearl’s intention to destroy my public image so that I have no chance of getting a sponsor and so that the other tributes target me for how ugly I apparently now look. She’s an asshole. I feel super confident now, especially when I have private training right around the corner. And also, my hair looks pretty cool. I checked in the mirror, and Pearl actually cut it evenly. I had expected for her to maybe leave me a bald spot somewhere, but nope. Everything looked great.
I arrive at the roof, and the wind whips at my frame. The torrents that the breezes create are loud, jarring. My now shortened strands of hair whip around my head like a small cyclone as I stagger over to the edge of the roof, looking out over the Capitol. Below are the bustling streets filled with people whose hair is similar to mine. They all look like ants, but I know that I’m going to be an ant under a microscope once I’m in the arena. I lean on the edge, my elbows digging into the hard cement, as I dip my head over the rails. The streets wind below like veins and arteries in the human body. The citizens are the little cells that travel through them, heading this way and that-to stores and salons and restaurants. The rebels were the virus in the Capitol, and the Capitol’s immune system won. Sometimes I like to root for the virus. But I don’t know who I should have rooted for in the war, and I didn’t know back then. It sucked. I shouldn’t have had to worry about that. I shouldn’t have to worry about that now. I had enough going on.
My absolute favorite part about all of this is that I have no idea how to feel or who to blame. I want to have a concrete emotion about this but I don’t. I feel angsty and nervous and confused and then I feel a moment of relief but then I just feel horrible again because I finally get to live but I don’t even know if I’m living right. Like how do you live right? Everyone’s always telling me I need to live my life to the fullest and I don’t even know what that means. This is amazing. I love when I can feel my sanity unraveling into a twisted spool, but I can’t access it and unroll it and see it in all its awful glory.
There’s nobody I can blame for this. I always have someone or something to blame, but I can’t now. Do I blame the rebels because they started this whole thing? Or the Capitolites because the rebels started this whole thing because of them? Or the rebels because they lost? Or the Capitol because it’s doing this whole murder death children survival game? I don’t think I would even care that much if I wasn’t in it. I would just ignore it, forget about it, like I did initially. Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t care about any of this if I had just been left out of it. Maybe that’s kind of messed up, but why should I have to think about this? Why should I have to worry that children are going to be slaughtered by each other? But I do. Because I’m going to be one of the children who is slaughtered well people watch on television. I’m making history because I’m a member of this. Awesome.
This would all be much easier if I just knew my standing on this whole thing. If I knew whether or not I want to even go home. I might just feel relief in death. My life has been a total mess. My parents love me but I treat them like actual shit because every single time they say something to me, a bitter response is what comes to the top of my head and I can’t ever refrain from uttering it. It’s exactly like watching a car crash and being unable to do anything to stop it. If I just knew what was after death-if I knew that I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this anymore, with not knowing how I feel, with not being able to control my emotions-I would be able to choose. But the universe doesn’t like to make anything that easy. Especially for me.
I remember the hospital vividly. I remember those sterile rooms covered in white tiles. I remember the way that blood looked on the tiles. So dark, so deep. The contrast made it so pleasing to the eye. The liquid glinted under the light bulbs overhead. Everything smelled like hand sanitizer. What a great scent. When I woke up, I felt nothing. I was just a mind, just a conscience, just a collection of thoughts. And there was a moment, when the sterile room I was in was suddenly fluttering from my vision, that I felt something I have never been able to pinpoint. It was a feeling of relief, I know that much. I couldn’t feel my body but I could feel sunny warmth, and it felt good. But I never knew what prompted it. I didn’t know if I had finally accepted death or if I had been suddenly saved. I’ll never know and I’ll always just wonder about that feeling-about that confusing fucking feeling that I have loathed so much-in order to know whether I actually want to be alive.
I slide my legs over the ledge, letting them dangle as I sit there. The wind whips at my hair, at my cheeks, at my clothing. But I feel numb. The weather is temperate. I’m not cold but I feel numb. Great. Maybe Pearl has paralyzed me too. But I know she hasn’t.
And then a gust of wind, a swelling gust of summer wind, comes from behind. In the moment it’s like when you shift your movement ever so slightly while holding a mug, surprising yourself. The mug slides, it slips, out of your grasp and you fumble to catch it, but it shatters on the floor. I’m falling and I’m looking upwards. My hair is tickling my cheeks-I can feel that.
I can only feel my hair against my cheeks because it’s not part of me. I can understand it because it isn’t as complex as me.
I can’t collect my thoughts as I’m falling but I feel a sensation traveling from the top of my head through my spine to my toes, and it’s freezing, chilling. I imagine a cat raising its tail and scrunching up its spine. I feel alert, not lazy, lackadaisical, fuzzy, like when I was in the hospital. And then I know that I wish to live-I have an intense desire to live because it’s what I’ve never done before. I’ve been dead for a while.
I land on concrete and I expect my body to shatter from the sheer force. I expect my ribs to be broken, splintered, piercing my heart. I expect death to come instantly and I’m angry, I’m pissed at myself because it took this for me to finally understand that I actually want a shot at living. But I have feeling-more feeling than just the tickle of synthetic hair against my cheek-all across my body. I’m on some sort of safety mat below. I awkwardly get up and enter the building again.
I know that I want to live and it sucks because I also know what I have to do to achieve that. Great. I just hope nobody saw what just happened. And I think I might be in some state of shock right now because I just thought I was going to die. Nice.
h2o: just add water | swimming pool | lola + apricot
I’m just really glad that my parents made me get a waterproof wig. I didn’t understand why they wanted me to get it in the first place. I mean, why would I ever want to go swimming? But now I need to be able to swim so thanks mom and dad. Your constant badgering for me to buy a waterproof wig has finally payed off.
I remember swimming as a child. I loved the way the chlorine would fill up my nose and the way my eyes would sting and not work properly. It was really a super fun time. I would definitely recommend it. But I don’t want to rely on my childhood swimming skills for the arena, because I would rather not drown. I know I’m going to end up dead, I just don’t want to be a corpse floating in a river.
I dangle my legs in the pool, and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spot Apricot. “Hey, what’s up Apricot,” I say to her.
