Birdie-Lou
No, this can't be real, I can't be here. I was only in there once. I didn't even have to take tesserae because Bronson took it for me.
Bronson is here too.
My big brother has an arm around my shoulder and is trying really, really hard to be brave, except it must be hard because he's got to hate me for this. I've brought him away from Ma and Brent and Brent will have to take tesserae now because Bronson won't be there to do it. And Brent has never been a hard worker and the Peacekeepers don't like him, and he'll probably end up whipped or worse, and then what will Ma do?
And it's all my fault.
"Come on, Birdie," Bronson murmurs. "Dry up these tears, come on. You don't want to go and see the Gamemakers with your face all teary." And he dabs at my cheeks with one of the little towel-tissue things that the Avox put on our trays. I just look at him. Bronson is strong and tough and Ma always said he'd run the family like the man my Pa wasn't. Even though he looks so much like Pa, with the same square face and squashed-in nose.
The Peacekeepers got Pa last year, trying to sneak out. They said he was over on the other side of the fence before the towers got him.
When Pa's work partner stood at the door to our shack and told us that, Bronson ran outside and didn't come back for hours and I was worried about him. Ma went very quiet and pressed her mouth together so hard her lips went white, and when she finally spoke she said that my Pa had never thought of his family and what were we supposed to do now? And Pa's work partner hadn't had an answer and he'd wished us luck and done the peace gesture and went off humming a tune that the mockingjays sang for days afterwards.
It was a sad tune and it always made me cry.
And now the family relies on Bronson but Bronson is here and I shouldn’t have brought him here because even though he’s big and strong, I’m not and I’m going to die and then Bronson will die too.
"Is she still crying?" asks Palmer. He's sat next to Bronson, toying with a fork, and I can't remember how he got there and I don't want to like him anyway. He seems nice, in an odd sort of way. I can't see what Bronson does, but he does something and Palmer continues, "She's been crying for days."
His partner is pacing up and down between the tables.
The room is nearly empty now. Not long ago a man came in and told the companions that they were free to go because they weren't needed. The girl from Ten, the one who doesn't seem to know her left from her right and who is too happy and probably doesn't know what's going on, has just gone so there's only Palmer and I, and a girl who looks like a human version of the word 'cold' and a boy with shaven hair, sat at the same table but far apart. Their companions have both gone. The only other two are the pair sat at the table in front of me.
The girl is pretty. Soft-pretty, not like the Career girls. She has a soft-sounding name too, though I can't remember it. Her companion is a girl with a nose that looks more like a beak. The tribute girl looks concerned and has a hand on the shoulder of her tribute partner, who is glassy and staring into his lap. He's rocking backwards and forwards and muttering something over and over and he looks like he might be the oldest person here.
"Not anymore," Bronson says, and Palmer just nods and looks away.
Palmer is going to die too. And the four from Thirteen and the four from Twelve and...and Bronson and me. And I don't want to die.
My cheeks feel wet again and Bronson is patting my cheeks with the incredibly soft tissue-towel thing. He glares at Palmer even though it’s not his fault and I grab at his collar. My big brother. He still smells like home, like broken earth and plants. The only plants here are fake, even the trees in the training room. They look real but they don’t feel alive under my fingers, not like the trees at home that only feel sad. Especially the ones with tracker jacker nests in them.
Tracker jackers. Brent got bitten by one last year and I was working with him, holding his basket because I was too young to do much, and it was horrible. His arm was all swelled up and green and it was like he was going to burst and I totally forgot what to do. Brent nearly died and he was ill for weeks and couldn’t work. The Peacekeepers were knocking on the door every day and as soon as he could walk again he was back up a tree.
He thought I was a mockingjay for a while and wanted me to sing. The only song I could think of was the tune they’d sung when the man came to tell us about Pa, and it made me think Brent was going to die too and I couldn’t do anything but cry because it was going to be my fault.
And now Bronson is going to die and it is my fault and there’s no way out of this one.
"Well, see you later," Palmer mutters, and he follows the Peacekeeper out of the door. Bronson grips my hand. "What are you going to do?" he asks.
My nose is running. I sniff and mutter. "I don't know." What can I do? I can climb and sing and dance but none of those will impress the Gamemakers and they'll just look at me and see that I'm small and I've been crying and they won't care.
"Can't you come in with me?" I ask.
"Sorry, Birdie, the Peacekeeper said no." He sounds as sad as I feel. He's trying not to be but I can tell. He looks even more sad than after Pa died. Then he was head of the family. Now he's going to die too.
"What am I going to do?" I wail. Bronson grips my hand even tighter and hums under his breath.
"You're going to do what you do best," he mutters. "You're going to climb. Rue...you know the name, Birdie?"
I nod. I know of Rue. The little girl whose death helped start the rebellion, back before I was even born, before Bronson was born. Ma talks about her sometimes, like Pa used to. Everybody talks about Rue. About how brave she was, and about how her family ran the Eleven rebellion. Rue is a symbol of hope and freedom, but that can’t be what Bronson is talking about because he knows there’s no real hope now and definitely no freedom.
“Ma says she got an seven, Birdie. A seven. If she can do it…just go in there and climb.”
But I can’t do that! In training my hands went cold on the ropes and I couldn’t move them and it was scary because that was only in training and nobody was even watching me. And I needed Bronson to shout for me to keep going but I couldn’t then, and I won’t have Bronson with me now, and…
“Birdie-Lou Reeves to the training room, please.”
Bronson prises my hand away and pushes me to my feet.
"I'll see you back in the room," he says. While we were training in the morning, somebody put an extra bed in our rooms and Bronson's feet poke out of the end. He smiles a little and hums four notes.
I sing them back quietly, and then the Peacekeeper grabs my arm and drags me away.
"Name and district?" the woman snaps. She seems a very long way away, her and the rest of the Gamemakers. Thirteen, one for every district. Most of them aren't listening or even watching; they're laughing and joking with each other in high voices, tearing at enough food to feed my family for about two weeks. But the woman with the sharp hair and the male twins sat on either side of her look frozen, staring down at me like they're expecting something big.
Tears start to prickle the corners of my eyes. I feel hot. Not like being hot back home, where the sun beats down on my back and my vision goes blurry and still the Peacekeeepers shout to work harder. Then everybody is hot too, and you can see old women crumpled in the tiny pieces of shade with sweat running down their wrinkled chins. Here all the heat is on me and it comes from inside.
For a moment my mind goes blank. What is my name?
"Buh...Birdie-Lou Reeves," I say, looking at the floor so I don't have to look at them. "I'm from District Eleven."
"Get on with it!" someone shouts.
The tear starts to trickle down my cheek. I can't do this. They hate me, or they're not watching me, and all I'm really here for is to die. It doesn't matter what happens here. But I have to try anyway, for Bronson, for Brent and Ma.
I pull myself up onto the rope course. They scratch at my hands. It feels odd to be climbing in silence. Even at night back home there's noise, people shouting and calling and the mockingjays singing. Or Peacekeepers shouting from the towers, their spotlight spinning around so that it blinds for a moment, and the occasional gunshot that you have to hope is just a warning. Even though it's not really silence because the Gamemakers make a lot of noise.
By the time I get to the top of the course, my cheeks are wet and the tears on my eyelashes fracture the light into blurry rainbows. I turn away so they can't see and try and wipe my eyes with a hand that suddenly feels cold.
If I only think about the ropes...
There's no wind to stream through my hair or ripple my clothes, and my clothes are too tight to ripple anyway. They don't itch enough. And these aren't trees, they're just ropes and they swing and move under my hands and it doesn't feel stable. It feels like I might fall and I can't think about falling.
Hand, hand, foot, foot, jump, hand...
There's no more course left and there's quite a long way down with a mat. My heart quivers and my whole body runs cold, but I know that I have to finish this properly. Bronson isn't here to catch me. I'm alone and I have to do it myself.
For Brent. For Bronson. For Ma.
One swing and I'm soaring through the air, the ground rushing up to meet me. This was a bad idea! I'm going to land wrong and look stupid and it'll hurt...
My feet hit the floor and I roll, knocking my shoulder. The training room spins and I want to curl up here and cry, but they're still watching, those ones. So I stumble to my feet as quickly as I can and look at the floor, my heart pounding and my legs frozen.
"I...I'm going to go now," I mutter. Whether they hear me or not, I don't know, because I'm already out of the room and running down the corridor, looking for the elevator.
Tomorrow...