one two three drink {hannah/olete}

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

Teenage rebellion roars in my ears, an encore of "Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!" blaring throughout the nightclub. They chant for a girl my age with long blonde hair, sitting at a table, across from another girl with curly brunette hair. Arrays of empty shot glasses are laid out on each side of the table, and there is a line of full glasses, filled with vodka, in front of each girl. They are in a competition: who can down the most shots without passing out.

I'm betting on the blonde.

As I predicted, shortly after downing one more shot, the brunette suddenly goes limp and falls out of her chair and onto the floor, out like a light, landing with a thud. A wave of laughter and cheering circulates throughout the room as her friends quickly drag her to safety, away from the rowdy crowd of teenagers.

People clap and shout for the winner, who smiles crookedly in triumph, and kids begrudgingly hand money to one another, cashing in their bets. Once all the money is in the hands of the victorious betters, the crowd slowly begins to disperse. People go off on their own, dancing and drinking. I lost my friends somewhere in the crowd, and their faces are obscured from my vision by drunken teenagers grouped together in several clusters.

I take a seat at the bar and order a glass of whiskey. It is only my second drink, the first one being a bottle of beer, nowhere near enough to make me slip into inebriation. Once my whiskey has been placed on the table by the bartender, I grab the glass and take a sip. It trickles down my throat, liquid fire, and leaves a burning sensation in its wake.

(I love how it feels.)

The blonde who won the competition takes the open seat next to me. She is striking, quite the looker, with an hourglass figure emphasized by her tight black tank top. Her eyes are copper saucers, shining in the pale golden light, and her ivory skin looks softer than a daisy petal. The girl's long fair hair frames her angular face almost perfectly, shedding spotlight on all the right features. When our eyes meet, my heart flutters in my chest like a little dove in a cage.

She parts her full, rosy pink lips and says, "You're the O'Leary girl, right?" Her words are slurred and her breath smells of alcohol. I do not pay any mind to the scent: it hangs in the air all around me. It is a smell I have become used to, one that I do not abhor nor favor. The blonde girl giggles, and continues, "Or at least one of the O'Leary girls. There's a lot of y'all O'Leary kids. How many . . . six or somethin'? Damn, your parents need a hobby."

"Oh, they have a hobby," I answer with a mischievous laugh, my lips curving up into a crooked smile. (How mature of me to say.) "My name's Hannah, for future reference."

"I'm Reagan," she introduces herself.

She is very straight forward, and cuts right to the chase. There are no flirty glances or suggestive conversations.

"Do you want to make out?"

I burst out laughing and take another gulp of my drink—it blazes satisfyingly down my throat—and I tell her, "You're hammered." (I am sure she is already aware of that.) She is tempting and beautiful and I can't believe she would ask that of me, but I know better. Simple, innocent kissing can lead intoxicated girls down a different path, one I have yet to explore.

(I wonder if her lips taste like alcohol, what I would feel if I had kissed her—that familiar flame igniting in my heart or regret.)

"Like a fuckin' nail!" Reagan agrees cheerfully. "Are you not?"

I shake my head. "Nope," I respond. "I'm sober."

"No wonder you're no fun! C'mon, O'Leary, what other reason are you here other than get hammered?"

"Have fun."

Well, you won't have fun if you're sober, so drink up."

And I do drink up, finishing my whiskey so hastily my mouth and throat sting. But I am not even near toppling over the brink of intoxication, nor am I standing remotely close to the edge. (But fun and drunk are not synonyms.)

When I do not order another glass, Reagan sighs, and complains, "Don't be a buzzkill, O'Leary!"

I roll my eyes at her, and reply, "I'm gonna go dance and kill someone else's buzz." There is a note of sarcasm at the end of my sentence, which the intoxicated Reagan fails to catch. I hope I didn't offend her. (If I did, she probably won't remember.)

I make my way to the dance floor, pushing my way past drunk teenagers and weaving my way through the crowd. Music blasts throughout the crowded room, flashing with different colored lights—pink, blue, green, purple, red—and I make my way to the area just outside the center of the dance floor. As I am moving through the crowd, I nearly bump into a girl, whose face is unfamiliar to me.

"Sorry!" I apologize, raising my voice so she can hear me over the music.

W O R D S : 8 4 6

throw 'em back till i lose count

i'm gonna swing from the chandelier,
from the chandelier

❧

{ table: zoë }

[Cait]

[presto]

I don't know why I keep finding myself in crowded places of booze and lust for these night-time deals.

Perhaps it's the appeal of a palace of broken things, imperfect souls seamlessly meshing together for a night (or two, or three, or five, or ten) in search of something that only I can give. I like to think there's something more meaningful to the faint aura the clubs exude than the mind-numbing allure of unsatiated teenage rebellion. (But perhaps it's merely the knowledge Mum and Dad would disapprove.)

(Perhaps I'm not so different from those rebels.)

I'm no Queen, nor a Princess, but I grew up in a castle of paper walls and paper beds and paper flowers and paper hearts I could never extend fingers far enough to shred.

Destruction, never as an answer in a monarch of perfection, and so I mended instead.

It's my specialty, giving.

It's what got me here in the first place, even when I have to fight to remember which evening tragedy was healed just a few minutes ago (or was it seconds? hours? weeks?). But the feeling never changes, no matter how many hearts I try to heal.

The never-ending supply, evident in a thousand teenage rebellions confined to one simple room, and they're all too far gone to witness their own becomings. Beautiful tragedy.

From some darkened corner of a blazing fire, there is water. Wet, against my skin, seeping through the folds of fabrics as the stench of alcohol snakes through my bones and a man comes lunging, infuriated at the remnants of his own personal poison scattered across the floorboards.

Perhaps, if I was drunk, too, we would have fought. Quarrelled until he threw a punch and I ducked beneath his incoming arm, running from the room as I threw a $5 at his feet (and that's the only way to defeat a drunk - bribery). Instead, I smile, curtsy, and walk off in the opposite direction, already swiping at the beer stains upon my shirt.

It would have to be hand-washed, by myself and only myself. There could be no more Mums to do the washing when you spent every second night roaming those forbidden streets in search of empty souls, and when was it that my life became a tale of too many lies? (I can't remember that, either.)

Sometimes I miss her velveteen touch, faint against my cheek when I buried my head into ivory dressleeves ('dresses with sleeves - always sleeves, Olete - modesty is perfection') and I wouldn't lie to myself about that.

Dancing, lights, movement of strangers and I'm amongst it all, too out of place but too tired to care. Floating gaily, on a cloud of my own, sinking and flying and juggling the thought of returning to a warm bed, success still sitting sweetly on my lips as I'm smiling, shifting through the crowd, searching for the exit.

Coming face-to-back with a stranger who almost sends us both tumbling.

I feel a growl forming on my lips, preparing for the ghost of a past, misguided deal as I turn to face -

(a girl)

- and an unfamiliar one, at that.

'Sorry!'

I scoff.

I feel myself drinking in every detail of her. Not fuelled by desire, but rather, curiosity. Watching the way her long hair tumbles over her shoulder and searching for the secrets concealed beneath that waterfall of brown. Focussing on the way her soft facial features react to each noise, each touch, each breath.

Who would she be when we came to strip all of that away?

I wonder what her eyes betray of her.

In this fading light, mine gleam.

'You look a little out of place. Strayed too far from home?'

It was a lie, in the end; I knew the girl. An O'Leary, but names mean nothing to me - in my world, we can only be equals, working towards a common goal: feeding our hearts, quenching our desires. (I'm a good person, I promise that.)

I can't read the hollowed features of her face to gauge what might lie beneath the surface. But we all want something in this life, and we're lost within our minds, gears whirring in sync with human instinct, searching. Yet in a spinning room of laughs and sobs and screams it seems we could be the only two in the world - a world of our own, the soberity contrast of alcoholic suffocation, the light against the dark.

With the glances she steals around the room, it's not impossible to guess which dreams keep her awake at night.

She holds a key not yet claimed; it locks her away from the world she wishes to belong to.

(A night just beginning, and I'm a good person, I'll help her, I promise.)

'We're going to have to do something about those big, wild dreams of yours.'

[/presto]

olete bene

BY CHELSEY

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

We are all here for the same reason. Everyone who has a heartbeat, no matter how steady or wild, in this room crave rebellion. They desire it, want it, need it, the same way an alcoholic craves their precious amber liquid. Some of these are in a gridlock of a power struggle against their parents, or wish to spark anger within their caretakers as revenge for punishing them. And me, I do it for the adrenaline rush and the satisfying burn of wrongdoing. I found myself at the bottom of a shot glass, something that had slipped through my fingers in my early youth, snatched away from me by pitifully low self-esteem.

I found that the fire no longer consumes my delicate phoenix feathers. I am the fire, recalcitrant and unrelenting to any force of power. No longer will I be ashes left to blow away in the wind as nothing more than gray dust. And my inferno will never be snuffed out by any merciless tides, no matter the magnitude of its power. No, I am too strong for that now. I rebuilt myself from the rubble, the ruins that I was left in over and over, and now I am an unbreakable structure of titanium that scrapes against the skies and casts shadows over what once sent me toppling into despair and insecurity.

This girl I collided with in the chaos of the dance floor—who scoffs at my apology—does not remind me of the teenagers I am accustomed to seeing in a place like this, a place that roars with, "Fuck you, Mom and Dad!" (But do I belong here? Do I blend in with the mass of teenagers alive with blazing insurrection?)

"You look a little out of place. Strayed too far from home?"

(And so she confirms my inquiries.)

Perhaps I do not appear to belong here, among the crowd of wild teenagers, with dark eyeliner rimming their empty eyes that they try to fill with alcohol and ruffled hair from dancing until they drop to the floor in a drunken slumber. Do I still look like the little girl with lace dresses and braids that the Capitol adored? I know I am not her anymore. She was a feeble a sapling standing against a dark, whirling tornado and had insecurities hiding behind her confident stride and sweet, dimpled smiles. And I am strong and beat to my own drum no matter how thunderous and nonrhythmic it sounds in silent room. I am not her, I am not her, I am not her.

Am I?

I stare at this girl, studying the smooth planes of her face and the depths of her gleaming dark eyes. She is a stranger to me, someone I have not once laid eyes on. But has she laid eyes upon me before? And yet she speaks to me, posing a question that I do not know how to answer. Am I truly out of place? Have I strayed too far from home and everything I am familiar with? (The softness of my bed's pillow, my parents' gentle chiding at my foul language and nighttime activities, Colgate's smiles and encouraging words—"Chin up.") Perhaps I have wandered too far from those comforting things, but I have not left them behind.

The girl parts her lips again before I can find the words to reply. "We're going to have to do something about those big, wild dreams of yours."

My dreams, she now speaks of, as if she has seen them with her own eyes. (Maybe she can see them behind my eyes that harbor so much.) There are many of them, lingering in my head, the ghosts of hope. I would not characterize them as wild or anything more than simple. (But my definition of wild is very different from others.)

The Reaping haunts me and invades my peaceful sleep. Its claws rake through my tranquil dreams of summer lemongrass and rosy sunsets and rip them apart, stealing the glow of the sun away and replacing it with an endless dark sky, empty of the silvery moon and starlight. My name, etched neatly in black on a white slip of paper often surfaces behind my eyes when I close them to drift away into sleep. (Because we all know that the Capitol loves to force the Victors' families into the Games and watch their blood rain down when they fail to win.)

And it's just my luck that Marbles and I are the last O'Learys among the white slips in the bowl.

My greatest dream, desire, wish, and hope is that the Capitol will allow me to live, that they will never project my face into the sky of the Arena. But if they let me go, will they do the same for my little brother?

(Perhaps that dream is indeed too wild after all.)

Is life truly too much to ask for? Maybe it is in the Capitol's eyes. If they desire O'Leary blood to pool onto the dreadful Arena ground, that is exactly what they shall have. There are whispers of rigged Reapings that I can only hope are false. And if the Reapings are not rigged, perhaps fate will turn against me as it seems so fond of doing.

(My wild dream could one day be a broken one, like a mirror punched by the powerful fist of the Capitol's lust for blood.)

"If rebellion is out of place here, then I suppose I am," I say to the girl at last. My words are steady with politeness, something I have learned to do regardless of my haywire emotions. "My wild dreams are getting out of the Reaping unscathed, so I guess those are going to get smashed to pieces. That's what they're going to do with my dreams, to answer your question." My tone begins to sink into bitterness, but not towards the girl. The bitterness is only fueled by my loathing of the Capitol and their heinous, precious Games.

"Who are you, anyway?" I ask her. "I'm Hannah. There you go, now the random klutz who bumped into you has a name." I leave out my last name, as I always do when introducing myself. I wish for people who meet me to know me for me and not to view me in the shadow of my Victor brother. We share the same blood, but not the same excruciating memories of the Arena and glory victory. And I do not want to hear her or anyone utter the words, "Oh, you're Colgate's sister," the moment after I speak my name. (Because "Colgate's sister" is not a word that should solely define me. The Capitol does not seem to care about that, though.)

I find myself marveling in curiosity, wondering who she is and why she would strike up a conversation with me. Most people in this setting just spill slurred, incoherent, pointless words out of their mouth, grab my arms and pull me into crowd of dancing people, demanding that I enjoy myself, or try to kiss me. But she must be sober, as I am.

Why are you interested in me?

Most people would have just moved along without another word, but her, she stands her ground and converses with me.

W O R D S : 1 1 9 6

i'm gonna live tomorrow

like it doesn't exist,
like it doesn't exist

❧

{ table: zoë }

[Cait]

[presto]

War makes the world go around.

All of our beginnings are marked with a struggling. Even times that date back long before our footsteps first kissed the earth – times we can only read about, passed on through word of mouth and reverberation of ear. We’re brought into the world fighting and screaming, and what follows are years of searching, and evasion

Teenage heartbeats are fantastically predictable, the hum-drum of rhythmic solitude. Some people thrive in the chaos of fight or flight, reaching outwards for a way into the parts of their selves they’ve locked away. Some people let themselves simply be. Throwing away years as numbly as the money they drink down with candy-coloured fizzers and streams of amber. All tragedy, and all beautiful in its omnipresent vulnerability.

We are cyclones spiralling out of control, and we are strong.

(If we let ourselves be.)

There are lost souls – the ones that forgot what it felt like to fight in never-ending wars, the ones that let the water lick the flames off of their broken, smouldering bodies, before they even gave themselves a chance to fight the fires. Those are the dancing dreams that fill my head with their cries at night, at darkened times of day. A conjoined, collective echoing. It never fades, for there is never enough bravery in this world for them to seize.

And they are the ones that I’m entitled to promise more, for.

And I do.

And yet

for some people, there is no saving.

No liberation, and it feels like a twisted fate. Magnets, drawn, you’re a bird.

You’re a bird.

Clipped wings and broken beak and ruffled feathers, staring through the mess of all that is now, because of all that once was.

“If rebellion is out of place here, then I suppose I am.”

Staring at a caged bird, with slender, elongated focal features marred by commitments and war, eternal war, more war than I would have the pleasure of grazing the surface of in a lifetime of life-bettering barters. “My wild dreams are getting out of the Reaping unscathed, so I guess those are going to get smashed to pieces. That's what they're going to do with my dreams, to answer your question.”

I don’t quite believe her.

Because a girl with so much promise cannot simply long for life. I know her without knowing her – a hurricane; a girl content to change faces with the weather; a girl tired of that monotony.

But I’ve been wrong before.

And I want to believe there’s something else she could wish for. A way to discard all those masks she no longer wishes to wear, so that the only one remaining is one of war – one of spitting fire and gleaming eyes and all the rebellion she felt that she needed to be strong, be remembered as something. That was the plan, that was always the plan for a girl, lost within a cocoon of herself.

But I’ve been wrong before.

I can feel her eyes on my own, hear the questions they hold a home to. (Why are you interested in me?)

(Because, my dear, you’re dying.)

(Some wars aren’t won, no matter that you never gave in.)

(Some dreams aren’t meant to break free of their glass barriers.)

I can’t speak, for moments, and so all there is to fill the white void between our faces are her lingering words and the roar of music in my ears, monotonous syncopation marching in time with those heartbeats, still predictable. Still tragedy.

“Hannah.”

There is a light – her heart, somehow pure and white, ablaze and fighting against the dark, droning rhythm of a place neither of us belong to, not really.

“I’m Olete.” My eyes flicker from her face, just for a moment, content to make shapes out of the criss-crossing patterns of the carpeted floor. I catch my breath, and I’m sorry.

I gaze around the room, watch her slowly do the same.

“This isn’t rebellion. Rebellion is animosity in the face of war.” My voice is soft, airy, floating above the madness of the party. Urgent all the same. “And these people? These are just repeated habits. The rebellion disappeared a long time ago.”

(So no, you don’t really belong here.)

In another time, another chance at fate and twisting paths, I would give her the world. A promise of safety, a liability to live out her dreams without standing beneath the pretence of countless masks and family glory in the form of ghosts.

I think it’s too late.

Because something about the world grew cold when she bumped into me and hitched an apology over her shoulder. Something about our meeting, a collision of two worlds, felt bitter. The girl who could dream, the girl who could bring dreams to life.

A sigh of a vision, a kiss of death.

I freeze

frozen

watching the air between our faces combine, split, touch again. Disappear.

“There are wars coming.”

I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel anything for her out-of-place heartbeat. She wants to be free.

Of those versions of herself she’s fallen out of line with.

Of the commitments, those labels.

Of the reaping.

And I can’t grant her that.

And I’m sorry.

One mistake too many.

“Hannah? Can you do something for me?”

I grasp her small hands between my own, squeezing them gently, as if to instil warmth back into her cold bones. Back in her eyes, we’re swimming together, suspended on a string where she hangs off of every word. Perhaps she felt something in me. An understanding of what I bring, and maybe her heart is yearning for me to speak the words she can only dream about, I’ll keep you safe.

My voice catches on the thought.

“Go to the bar, order another drink. Find the girl you were speaking to before. Live, in too many senses of the word. Take back the world. Earn that mask of teenage rebellion, but don’t wear it for any longer than one night.”

Nobody can fight a war with doubts and second-guessings of should-have-beens, could-have-beens, would-have-beens.

A small smile finds its way to my lips, but I can’t sustain it.

“And next time you bump into someone, don’t apologise for it. Don’t apologise for anything.”

(You’re better than that.)

(You’re stronger than any of these silenced hearts.)

Pushing past the crowd, making for the door, I feel water pricking the corners of my eyes.

(And I’m sorry.)

[/presto]

olete bene

BY CHELSEY