{Heart on a Sleeve} [Rosetta]

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I a g o
I z a r – M c C l a i n e

•••

I had always followed the rules

[/color]. In school my hand shot up into the air for the teacher when the boys and girls scribbled stolen answers on their maths or spelling. In the counting room, I was the first one to whisper to my father when a man was trying to fudge the number of bushels stacked up in barrels behind him. When my cousins had wanted me to come to a party in the fields after curfew, I sneered at them to pack sand because I wasn’t about to have a mark on my record when the peacekeepers caught us. I bet they all thought that I did these things because it was easy[/color]. That it’s so easy to just try and follow the straight and narrow, as if I was the one swimming with the current, swept up toward the waiting shoreline. I stand now, staring out the window of the justice building towards the emptying street. The sun creeps higher, and burns shadows into the wall behind me.

They aren’t coming.

Was it disappointment that kept them, or my upheaval that wrote me out of their lives? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know[/color]. Their only son, willing to risk his life for a boy that was bound to die in the arena… was I worth less than the pig shit that we put on top of our crops? That because I had stood up for someone whose whole life had been about imagining stars, a boy that was innocent as a summer’s sunset—they already made plans for my remains to be brought home in a little urn? A funny word, remains.[/color] Am I to be swept up, neat and tidy, as though all I had ever been was a mess worth throwing away? Life here has been nothing but chasing after the brass ring. My father, the counter and manager for the crops that come in and out of the district, my mother the bookkeeper—we were above the rest of the common folk that suck their thumbs and press their faces into dirt.

It’s a lie.

I lay a hand on the doorframe. When I was little, I would march down the street with my father. Hup, two, three, four.[/color] People said I’d have made a great peacekeeper. Always colored inside the lines, too. Your golden boy, mom and dad! I wasn’t an Izar, for sure. Not like Benat, the boy that spent a week without a shower. Deval was no better—his moods came and went with the wind. Or little Sampson, that cried his eyes out at the littlest skinned knee, or whispered his words. I was perfect. All set to be mayor someday, right? Yeah, fucking right. Spending my whole life wrapped up on the same track, thinking that as long as I said yes and jumped when I was supposed to they’d shower me with oh’s and ah’s. Being good is its own reward, you know?

If I’d have been smarter, I would’ve rolled around in the dirt. I would’ve… stolen corn from the fields and stayed out late at night to cuss at the moon. I would’ve kissed the boy behind the hay bales at the District Fair last summer and I wouldn’t have thought courage was doing the right thing. I could have been like the rest of them, hogwash and shit for brains. I could’ve been happy.

There’s a knock at the door. I stiffen and bring my hands down to my sides. The knob turns, but the only face I find is a man I’ve never known. Dressed in white, the peacekeeper tells me that I’ve got to get to the train. I nod and move to collect my jacket. I start to wonder how many tearful sendoffs there’s been in this room but after a minute I think better of it. The less I think of this district, the better it will be in the end. They’re a waste of space and a waste of breath. I want to say that Sampson will waste his life away but I stop just sort of cursing him. The only good to come out of all of this is getting to leave. At least I’ve done that on my own.[/color]

Is the train supposed to make me feel like a lost puppy? All the bits of glass on fine tables, the carpet with designs and colors I’d only seen flashes of in pictures of the capitol, and the endless rows of puff pastries. Bile picks up at the back of my throat, and I feel ready to put a fist through one of the windows. How nice would it have been to flick a match and burn the whole place to a smoldering heap? I sink into a couch and cross my arms across my chest. The girl will be here soon. Her name gives the same familiar feeling of ringing in my ear—it means little. The only thing I could tell of her was that she looked just as run down as the rest of the rabble rousing kids of the district. I dig my fingers into the leather. She had better not be a disappointment[/color]. The last thing I needed was dead weight dragging me down to my death. At the sound of the door opening, I look up, hoping it’s our mentor and praying anyone else has something good to say. [/blockquote][/size][/justify]

[Rosetta]

Matilde"Scout"Watson

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I was sure my heart would leap right out of my mouth as soon as the train began moving. It surprised me, the smooth speed of it, the gentle transition from idle to moving. I rushed to the window. I pressed my nose to it. I fogged up the glass. I wiped it off. My eyes were glazed over, my mouth hanging open. I knew I looked stupid, but my heart was beating too quickly to care. I was trying to memorize it. The way the wind rustled the trees, sending golden leaves drifting through the air. The way the sunlight hit the shuddering crops and made them glow in the dying light. The way the children, free of burden for another year, run behind a fence and mothers and fathers cook dinner and whittle wood and smoke rises up and winds itself into spirals in the skies. I wanted to taste it. I wanted to touch it. But, I was separated by glass.

When, finally, the last of the District Eleven fence had faded away, I turned. Ardal’s pocket watch was burning in my pocket. I didn’t want to take it out. I didn’t want to cry again. I didn’t want to clutch his jacket. I didn’t want to feel Bertie’s arms around me, Carlos’s kisses on my cheek. I didn’t want to relive my voice, pleading, begging, “Ardal, please do something. Don’t let them take me.” I didn’t want to touch my good hand to my split knuckles. “Carlos, please apologize to Stanley for me! I didn’t mean to punch him.”

Because I thought that would fix it.

They took me away like I was some luggage they needed to load onto a train. A shipment to the Capitol. I knew I could punch and I could kick. I knew it would do no good, but that wasn’t the reason I numbed myself down and stumbled forward, head down, eyes down, face down. I just didn’t want to disappoint Ardal, is all. Not on the last day he’d see his baby alive.

I wished I could erase the image of him sobbing at my feet from my mind forever.

The train was mocking me. So smooth. Like everything is okay. Like it’s all okay. My District Partner has to be around here somewhere. I know it. And our mentor-but who cares? I dragged my feet down the corridor, touching each door, feeling the smooth, sleek grain under my fingers until one felt just right...slightly warmer, smudged, as if someone had touched it.

I knew he’d be behind it. Iago. My district partner. The boy who will go into the Games with me with the same amount of knowledge of District Eleven…not that will this help us or anything. But, maybe, a familiar face, a face glanced at in the back of a classroom, in the school yard, will set my heart at ease. My palms were sweating when I gave him a little wave. He was just sitting there, waiting. Expecting me? My heart gave another shudder as I felt down to my pocket to make sure the pocket watch was still there. It was and I traced my fingers across it as I said, “I’m Scout if you don’t know.” Ardal told me introductions were important. Even to someone who just might kill you.

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[Deleted]

I a g o
I z a r – M c C l a i n e

•••

I look at her the same way I look at the mangy dog that Deval and Sampson keep. I’m Scout if you don’t know.

[/color] It is funny how instantaneous a judgement forms. I hate her. She is everything that I would expect of a district eleven girl—slovenly, hair free falling over her shoulders, and probably smelling of the fertilizers that they put down in the fields. What I want to know is whether or not she’ll be brave enough to survive the first day. At the moment she’s about the only lifeline that I have, and a faint one at that. Standing before me like a bug before a boot, it takes all I have not to mock her out of existence. It was a shame we had shied away from what they used to teach: that girls like her should be seen and not heard, and seen even less than they were heard. I cross my arms and turn my head away from her.

“Yes, it’s a pleasure.” I lie. The first of many for her, I’m sure. They taught me to mind my manners around girls, that it was polite to treat them as I wanted to be treated. Well she wasn’t any more a girl than I was a boy: we were stuck on this train with one objective, and sooner or later it would be her or me with a knife through our chest. Benat was lucky enough to have been spared the choice of having to kill his own district partner. She’d fallen after the bloodbath, just like almost all the other district eleven tributes before her. In fact, as pathetic as Benat had been, I couldn’t remember a year when anyone thought my home district had shown promise. We had no Wednesdae Drummond, no Aria Wolfe, and no Yaa Valero. Instead we were relegated to the early faces in the sky. The thought is enough to make me look back at Scout.

“I’m Iago Izar-McClaine.” I clench and unclench my fists. “And I guess… we’re stuck together, aren’t we?” I think about the tribute pairings in the years past, and it occurs to me that I can’t think of a single set that worked together. Belle and Benat didn’t seem to do more than look at one another in the bloodbath. Nightshade didn’t even look back when Xavier was chopped to bits. I cross my legs. She still didn’t look like much. [/color]“I didn’t stand up for my cousin just so that I could get fucking knife in my back.” I narrow my eyes. At the least I was one of the older tributes, but I imagine the other trains are full of sniffles and dreams and all sorts of ridiculousness. There was—what[/color]— a four percent chance that any of us would be coming home?

“And please,” I say, shifting in my seat. I wonder for a moment if I’ve ever come across her father in the silos but think it better not to ask. “If you’re going to cry, so help me god I am going to open up one of these ridiculous windows and throw you out face first.” It comes out tart but it’s the same voice I use with Sampson when he asks me whether or not I want to play out in the mud. I drum my fingers hard against the leather and chew my bottom lip. Waiting was not something I did well.[/color][/justify][/blockquote][/size]