A Million Pieces - Hunger Games (Catching Fire & Mockingjay)

Chapter 6

He finally manages to sit up, and I don't think twice. I run. Away from the man shouting insults at me. Promising to kill me. The man who is convinced that I made a deal with the Capitol. That I have let them kill my family.

As soon as she sees me, tears staining my red cheeks, puffy eyes, hair messed up from the wind, Coventina opens her arms to me. Without thinking twice, I walk straight into them.

And I stay there. For good.

Coventina manages to coax what happened out of me. And she flat out refuses to let me go back to my father. She says there's enough room in their house for a young girl, as tall and gangly as I am, and that there is no way I am returning to my house.

The relief that floods me makes me feel so twisted and awful that I force myself to protest and argue with her, simply because it's what I should be doing. Because it was what Talise would have done. Even though it's the opposite of what I want to do.

Coventina must recognise this, because she finds a compromise; she will regularly check up on my father, bring him food and make sure he is okay, as long as I stay with them. My eyes leaking and my heart bursting with gratefulness, I agree immediately.

She is the one to discover he has disappeared. It happens only a few days after the incident, so every once in a while I wonder whether Coventina actually had something to do with it. I don't know that I want to find out. I also don't want to address the relief I feel that he's gone.

I dedicate my time to finding my place in the Rivera household. At first, I am uneasy. I feel like an intruder, like I don't belong in this place bursting with love. I bring everything from my old house in the hope they might find something useful. To my great joy, Coventina is delighted with the old baby clothes I bring for their newborn. She brushes my hair and tucks me into bed. Adrian doesn't mind when I skip school and find him on the beach. On the days that I do, he helps me hone my skills with knives. Caspian walks with me to and from classes, and invites me to have lunch with him and his best friend, Finnick, when he returns victor. Soon enough, Malila reaches for me as often as she does with anyone else. One day, they've simply become my family.

Finnick and I become fast friends, bound by Caspian, by the Games, by our similar personalities, and by our love of dried seaweed. We all spend a lot of time at his house in the Victor's Village, where he and his family never need for anything but company. There's something behind Finnick's eyes that haunts him, and he never wants us to leave, especially at night, but for the first few months after his Games, he seems happy.

It is during his Victor's Tour that Snow makes the demand. Finnick, still young and naive, refuses. When he comes back from his Tour, both his parents are dead. An accident at sea. It takes Adrian's life too, since they were all together on the boat, like they had been every day for years. To this day, I thank the world that Coventina escaped the same fate, only because she was staying home with baby Malila. Otherwise, she would have been out on that boat with them.

Finnick stays with us for the first few weeks, confined to the couch I had been so attached to when I had first moved in. When it becomes clear that he is part of our family, he invites us to live with him in the Victor's Village. There, we will have more than enough space for all of us. We love him too much to let him live alone with the new darkness that surrounds him. A week later it's done.

Finnick eventually starts smiling again and he learns how to hide his darkness. But never again does he refuse Snow. He starts working in the Capitol during the next Hunger Games. When it's Caspian's turn for the conversation with the President, he doesn't go through the same lesson. Snow's message to Finnick was clear enough.

Caspian gets his own house in the Victor's Village, but the idea of separating isn't even suggested. The houses are so big and we are all so close that the second is never used.

Annie Cresta is the last addition to our household. She becomes friends with Finnick after his Games - how it happened, I don't know - and eventually, he shares her with us, albeit a little reluctantly. She's shy at first, and she sometimes makes strange sounds or says unusual things. But soon enough, she too becomes part of our family.

A whole five years since we moved into the Victor's Village, she comes to live with us. The occasion is the Seventieth Hunger Games, in which her cousin participates. To everyone's delight, her cousin returned victorious. But only a few months later, Annie finds her body. Suicide. Auntie Tina doesn't waste a minute, and days later, Annie joins me in my room. Just like that, we become inseparable.

Caspian and Finnick could support us for ten lifetimes with their earnings from the Games, but we still work, sharing the fortune with District 4, particularly the neighbourhoods we had come from and the friends we had. We slip them food and money and better nets, spears, and knives. They thank us, and we say we would have died of boredom if we didn't keep busy.

These are the happiest years of my life, even though I miss my sister so much it physically hurts. But I have built myself a family. I love Auntie Tina like a mother, and soon enough I've known her for longer than I knew my real one. Malila is the little sister I never had, and it feels so good to take care of someone for once, instead of being taken care of. Finnick casually starts calling me his sister, and over and over again he proves he deserves the role of my brother. I feel guilty about Talise when I start thinking of Annie as my sister, but our whispers and giggles and tears shared in the dead of night help me push past any shame. And of course, there's Caspian. And he is everything.