axel's no good very bad beach day

[calla]

( 91st )

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Never fall for a brunette, I guess.

There's a pinwheel superglued to the back of my skull, puttering around and around wind-mill style, the motor's running but there's no one home. The horizon's purple, dark like a bruise because the sun isn't all the way up yet, it's shy. A blushing bride or something.

Aleki said I should move to the Capitol. It'd make all the press and the events easier. Apparently there's a role in a new movie she wants me to try for, something about a snake and a sword, and I told her I'd think about it but I'm already thinking about saying no. I don't think I'd survive there. Not for real. There's just something about the buildings and the concrete and the cameras on every corner, on every face, on every stage.

I stood up on that stage and lost my marbles and the producers thought it was so great that they ferried me off to another show and replaced the marbles with a bunch of smaller more colourful marbles. 

More palatable that way. People like it flashy. Aleki said I'm gonna be a superstar but I kinda just want those original marbles back.

I thought it'd be fun but after the first week there I just wanted to go home.

Sometimes my brain feels like a whirlpool. Marbles in a vortex. There's a long string of seaweed washed up on the shore and I poke it with a stick I don't remember picking up. For Solstice a few years ago we wrapped fresh seaweed around sticks like this and then stuck them over the fire and pretended like we were eating gourmet kelp delight from some fancy Capitol place.

After the show wrapped I went to a restaurant in Saturn City and they served little bits of crab wrapped in seaweed and gold flakes and it tasted fucking disgusting but everyone was acting like it was fine and okay and normal even though things weren't fine or okay or normal and I had to get up half way through and sit in the bathroom stall and stare at the lights until my eyes started to burn.

That's just how life is now.

I think Annisa tried to kill my goldfish while I was gone.

Carly's dead and the guy that killed her might win tomorrow and he'll have to come to Four and smile at Annie and shake her hand and I'll just have to be okay with that. In the span of a year I've had to become okay with a lot of things. I had to learn what an NDA is.

But it's not like we were a thing anyways. It's not like she was my dream girl because according to the self-reflective book that was in the waiting room of the dentist's office, those don't really exist.

Maybe none of us really exist. Maybe the world doesn't exist. When some guy's got his hands in your mouth everything gets a little more existential.

The tide takes the seaweed back.

Wolf's lucky because he's not a brunette. He's got that candy floss hair. Or maybe he doesn't anymore. I dunno. It's not like anyone kept in touch after Young Love ended. I guess getting older sometimes means that your friends are actually just acquaintances because it's too hard to keep up any kind of relationship beyond that. I'll miss you becomes I'll call you becomes sorry I missed your call becomes call me back becomes dial tone, nada, nothing.

Annie said that Talon's my age. We might become friends. Could. Maybe. Probably not though, because I'm not a victor, no matter how much production wanted me to be, I live in the right house but my blood's a different colour - more Axel than Morrisen, more screw-up than son. I'm the screw and they wanted a nail because they're the hammer and you don't hammer in screws but you do hammer in nails.

I'm the kid with the pies and the kazoo and people thought that was cute in the same way they think a puppy cute. But then the puppy grows up and it sits on the beach by itself and spirals and worries about the moral ramifications of eating seaweed. It starts asking questions and getting weird and its brain skips circles around a park bench and starts to cannibalize itself.

I'm stuck here reading the shit written in the sand, my shadow's the shape of unicycle, fan-favourite except I've never been anybody's favourite. Everyone that hates Annie just seems to hate me a little bit more.

Thanks for that one, dad.

Anton used to tell me I was adopted because he was an asshole and Annisa used to tell me that was bullshit, because it meant that out of all the kids out there, I was the one that got picked, and that was laughable.

That's not where it starts, but that's for sure where it gets worse. I don't know why I am the way I am. I don't think any of us do. Maybe I'll go back to school and become a philosopher and then I'll be able to figure it out and everything will be fine. Maybe I'll be able to figure it out and then things still won't be fine. Maybe I'll never figure it out.

Maybe I'm just a stupid piece of seaweed who had a crush on a girl that's dead now.

Kinda pathetic.

[calla]

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I think some people hate me because I'm famous now. I always used to know when people hated me just because they hated Annie. That's how Annisa was, and the Sublinos, and basically every person in Ten. But it feels different now, because now it's about me.

Not her.

I thought everything about me would be about her until one we both died. And then even still - here likes Axel Morrisen, cousin of the 80th victor, the only person that didn't seem to vitriolically hate her.

Except even that's harder now. And it's not even puberty doing it, it's not the mood swings or the adolescent rebellion. When she won, I was too young to understand it. I knew objectively what had happened and what was going to happen, it wasn't like I just thought she'd gone on vacation or something. And I thought that she'd came back the same but now I know she didn't.

I don't see her that much anymore. That's not her fault. It's like when she's in the Capitol, I'm stuck here, and when I'm in the Capitol, she's back home recovering from having to send off another pair of kids to die. The thing is this - I don't see her that much anymore but even when I do, it's like she's not even there. It's like someone scooped my cousin out of her body eleven years ago and just left a shell behind to fight and grow and pretend to be normal.

I thought that if we'd learned anything at this point, it'd be that none of us are normal.

She wants me to meet Storm Adroxis when he tours through but I don't want to. I'd wanted Carly to come out alive so bad that I hadn't even rooted for the tributes from our own district - let alone Carly's partner. I think that if I ever met Storm I'd have to be cruel to him, and I don't want to be that, so I don't want to meet him.

I'm pretty sure the only reason I don't hate him is because I've never met him.

I thought about leaving before he came, but then that just got me worried that we'd be at the train station at the same time and I wouldn't be prepared enough to have the nice script queued up.

Is that stupid? Aleki said that it's easier to know what to say when you think of everything as a script. They carried flashcards around when I did that interview circuit after PGT because I'd end up sitting there way too long trying to think of an answer to the questions I got. But Aleki said that that's not actually how it works. The interviewers don't want the answers that are actually mine, they want the ones that are pre-written and pre-approved because then they already know what to say in response. Then they know the script.

I said that made sense. I didn't want to ruin anyone's career by catching them off guard and accidentally saying my favourite colour wasn't aquamarine.

Except I still when remember one of them told me that I was going to be more popular than Annie at the rate I was going, but I didn't have anything like that on my script so I just sat there and pretended like I didn't hear it. Other people heard it though. I don't know if Annie ever heard it but I really hope she didn't.

I think it's something she could end up hating me for.

But her name would still be on my tombstone, even if mine wouldn't be on hers. That's just how it is. I miss people even though I see them every day. I miss the house I grew up in even though I could go visit anytime I wanted. I used to idolize my cousin except I have no idea who she is now and I'm too afraid to ask. I'm too much of a coward to even say hello to Storm Adroxis, because after everything, I'm too worried that I'd be mean to him.

Anton used to say that someone screwed my head on wrong when they were making me. When I flunked out of Career training, that's what Dad blamed it on. I was born with a kind of softness that couldn't be taught, but it couldn't be stomped out either. I know that's why Dad hates me so much, at least that has nothing to do with Annie.

Maybe if I hadn't latched onto her like I had, I would've turned out more like how everyone wanted. I wouldn't have had a second home to run to or a shoulder to hide behind. I would've just had to deal with whatever I got, just like everyone else.

I think I would've turned out more like Annisa that way. Pretending to hate everyone without really hating anyone at all.

I don't know if I'm pretending now. I don't know what the difference would feel like.