I've found the hardest thing to do lately is waking up.
Every morning I roll over, expecting my sister to be laying on the bed next to me. Every morning I stretch out my arms to wrap them around her sleeping body. When there's nothing there but the cold mattress, it's as if I've transitioned from a good dream to the most terrifying nightmare imaginable.
Only it's not a nightmare, I remind myself, this is as real as life gets.
When Katniss was here with us, if a horrific vision crept its way into my slumber, I'd crawl into bed with my mother.
Now that she's gone, I can't bear to leave in incredulous hope that she may have returned by the time I wake, and if I left, I'd have missed her.
Buttercup, my cat, mews hungrily from the windowsill.
"I don't have anything for you today," I tell him with a croaky voice and a heavy heart.
I can't afford to feed Buttercup anything more than absolutely necessary, and I watched him dine on a rat just yesterday, so he should be okay for now.
Gale Hawthorne has been bringing my mother and I just enough food so that we don't become part of the statistic that are District 12's citizens fallen victim to starvation. Although we are on the border of emaciation.
If it weren't for Peeta Mellark's father leaving scraps of baked goods at our doorstep every so often, I'm sure we'd have withered away months ago.
There's a gentle knocking on the door. I drag myself to the window and see that it's just Mrs. Hawthorne.
"Good morning, Hazelle," my mother greets bleakly, having pulled open the door.
"I brought you and Primrose some catfish stew. I know you'll be getting a ton of food today, but Gale just took Rory to the pond yesterday to go fishing, and, well, we've got so much fish in the house right now that we could gorge ourselves for the next few days and still have half left over."
I wander from the bedroom and watch my mother accept the pot of stew graciously, setting it down on the table.
"Thank you," she says.
But something strikes me- we'll be getting a ton of food today?
Oh.
I'd just about forgotten that today is the first day of the Victory Tour.
-
I pull on my skirt and blouse. The same outfit I wore to the reaping six months ago. Except there's snow on the ground this time of year, so I top it with a sweater that doesn't match too well.
Six whole months.
Last year, the outfit hung loose on my body. Now it's a bit more snug. Hazelle has told me that I'd gotten my growth spurt quite some time before Katniss did. At my age, Hazelle had said with glassy eyes, Katniss was inches shorter, and her chest was flat as a board. I wonder what my sister would say if she could see me now.
I feel hands smoothing down the back of my blouse and I gasp, jumping backward slightly into what I realize are my mother's arms.
"It's just me," she says, and I can tell by the sad smile she gives that she knows I felt Katniss' hands tucking in the shirt at first.
It's not until you've lost someone that you fully come to terms with just how many aspects of your life they'd once occupied.
"We're to be in the square at two," she tells me, and I nod.
At a quarter to then, the Hawthornes arrive at our house, and the seven of us dreadfully make our way to the Justice Building.
Hazelle holds my mother's shaky hand and murmurs things like, "I want you to be ready for this. Now, you remember last year, right? And the year before that? You know how this will go. Stay strong."
Hazelle herself is growing a little choked up with every word.
In the square, a crowd has already gathered. As expected, each has a falsely enthusiastic expression plastered on, but contorts when their eyes find either me or my mother to show their condolences.
Mayor Undersee ushers the two of us onto a platform. I recognize Mr. Mellark standing on the one opposite us. He's blotting his eyes with a handkerchief while a stern looking woman stands stiffly beside him, two grown boys in accompaniment.
In a matter of minutes, the city square is filled, but an eerie silence shrouds the district.
Only when the mayor's voice comes over the microphone to introduce last year's victor is the veil penetrated.
"People of District 12," he announces, "we are honored to be visited by the victor of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games today. I'll now give Cato the stage."
He steps down and a tall, blond boy takes his place.
I turn my head and find my sister staring back at me.
Katniss' face has been projected onto the screen behind me. My knees go weak, but my mother pulls me back up, and holds me to her side. She's very shaky though. My hot tears wet the sleeve of her dress.
I cannot look away from Katniss.
Cato's words are redundant. Every victor utters the same thing every year. I thought it would be different this year, under these circumstances, but it's not.
Stil, my eyes do not avert from Katniss. She looks wary and untrusting in the image, and I almost find myself smiling, because it's like she's right there, nothing but a foot away. I can reach out and touch her if I want to.
For this moment of delusion, I feel like my sister is not gone. I feel as if she has just decided to spend half a year in another district. Off visiting our father, maybe. And now she is back, alive and well and standing with me.
The fantasy is suppressed when her death replays over and over, rapidly, in my mind all of the sudden. The knife entering her head. Her bow clattering to the ground. The cannon. The feeling while watching it unfold of: there is a mistake. The cannon has sounded accidentally. Katniss is not dead. Katniss is still a contender. Katniss will retrieve the bag marked with a 12 and she will return to Peeta- whose life will not end in the cave, and they will win the games together. After all, if two tributes originate from the same district, they may both be crowned victor.
But the hovercraft comes, and my mother struggles for her breath, and I struggle for my sanity. Minutes later, Gale staggers into the house, and he holds me, and we wail and we cry together. And my mother shudders against the wall. That's the first time I'd seen Gale cry.
-
Cato licks his lips after every sentence he recites from the paper in his hand.
"From beginning to end, the journey was a difficult one. Standing here before you today has not come to me without a great price," he reads.
Cato is anything but genuine. His tone is teeming with boredom and insincerity. He probably just wants to get back to the train for lunch.
The frigid January air has frozen tears to my cheeks, but new ones well up and leave their salty trails on my face. Between the disbelief and the cold, my head is spinning.
I don't look at Katniss again. But her face- her face untouched by the games, her fate undecided, her future conceivable, her homecoming a possibility- her face has burrowed into my constant thoughts.
This "Victory Tour" is almost as bad as the day her body came back to the district, though I could not bring myself to look at it then.
The dank wooden coffin was traumatic enough.
When Cato retreats into the Justice Building, preparing to board the Capitol's train, the rigidity of the crowd disbands, and people shuffle quietly.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and upon turning around, it's a peacekeeper with bright red hair who's offered the gesture.
He doesn't say anything, and neither do I, but his eyes bore into mine as though they're searching for something that just isn't there.
-
The mayor's daughter Madge approaches my mother and I just as we're leaving the square. The feast's attendance might be mandatory, but she can't take much more of this, and neither can I. Madge's eyes are red.
"I couldn't believe it, you know?" She makes a noise that sounds like laughter. Only it's not. She's crying, "I couldn't- still can't believe it at all."
She slips a parcel into my hand, which I unfold the paper to find a bunch of runty strawberries.
"Thank you," I say, "these look delicious."
"Of course. She used to bring them to me- a long time ago."
Katniss' strawberries were always ripe and full and juicy, incomparable to these. It's been half a year, but by the way people are talking, and acting with such generosity, it feels like the day after it happened, all over again.
-
I distract myself with the way the snow crunches under my boots. Her boots. Her boots that fit me, and the way that they fit my feet makes me realize that after all, and even though she was so strong in my eyes- everyone's eyes, she was small. Sixteen, but small and fragile as a child when everything else is taken out of consideration.
Amidst the vast blanketing of white pokes out a small yellow flower. A dandelion. That can't be right, it's hardly Spring.
I stare at it's blatant contrast inquisitively, as I think my sister would have done the same. She'd had a questionable infatuation with dandelions, and I still wonder why to this day.
The brisk wind penetrates my skin, but I stand here, feeling like nothing can bother me too terribly now. Now that I've been told Katniss is watching over me. From wherever she is. Up in the clouds or someplace preposterous like that, maybe.
I'd always known that defeat is not something Katniss Everdeen accepts.