Lessons Learned // [78th D8 Train]

[Deleted]

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Gillian Imberline

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My Gilly –

It took all of two minutes for us to push our way through the crowds and into the justice building. I’ve heard it said that a mother’s strength in times of crisis is not to be trifled with, and more than a few men discovered this following the reaping. We didn’t stop to stare at the portraits of old mayors, at the marble floors, at the bust of Shelby sitting outside the heavy wooden doors at the end of a long hall. The peacekeepers pointed to the left when we told them you were our daughter. I gave one glance at the door holding the boy and—I prayed. Prayed that he could take care of you, that whatever harm may come to either, let not blood shed between those who’ve walked the same earth.

You were at the windowsill when we pushed through the heavy doors, head buried in your arms and hair covering your face. You looked the same as one of your dolls tossed on the floor, discarded as though your need had come and gone. The world has come to call, Gilly, a powerful, unrelenting world that grinds souls to dust underneath a heavy wheel. I couldn’t speak, because what is there to say? We couldn’t lie and say that this won’t hurt, that we may never see you (unless it’s tucked away in a pine box, ready to be placed beside all your brothers and sisters that never were).

“I’m scared.” You turned your head to face us, eyes all puffy from tears. Except you had nothing left to cry, and now—drew on strength from those that loved you most. “What am I supposed to do?”

“We love you,” Peter said, and in the light of the afternoon sun, he wraps his long arms around your tiny body. “We love you, we love you, we love you… promise you…” He wept like a child, body shaking, strength gone enough he knelt down next to you.

“Listen to what Shelby tells you. Trust yourself—you’re smart, you are.” The words come to me, and I’ll always wonder where I found strength. Perhaps it’s a woman’s curse just as much of a blessing, that she will never stop protecting her child even in the face of unimaginable sadness. Even with through tears, you nodded your head and looked at me, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed—the determination I’ve always seen—the rhythm of your young heart changing tempo, bracing for change. “Don’t forget to be kind, that bravery and foolishness are a step apart. And that there’s no shame in running away, no shame in anything, except if you lose yourself.”

There was a knock at the door, and just as sure as we began, it’ll be the last time I saw you before you’re plastered on a screen. I press your stuffed bunny forward, along with the book where we’ve pressed wildflowers. “I know you can only take one but, I thought you could choose. I just didn’t know what you wanted.”

“Keep me in your heart for a while,” You said, and with two little arms, you hugged us both. You took the book, and held it tight against your breast. “I want to think about all the times we pressed these together, Momma. It’ll make me feel better having you closer to me when…"

But the words end, and the door opens. Just like that, it’s not my story to tell for you, but your own.

⚜

You liked the carpets on the train most of all. You spent a few minutes brushing the carpet back and forth in the hallway, marveling how the pattern changed. Back at home, your old floorboards creaked and moaned, and needed sweeping every day. Nothing about the opulence of the train reminded you of home, and you imagined it was supposed to unsettle you. They did a pretty good job of that, you thought, because even though all you’d eaten that morning was a cup of oatmeal, your stomach was turning over and twisting up on itself. Despite the lingering smell of fresh cookies and cake further down the hall, you wanted only to watch the train station and the men and women running back and forth. Perhaps if you stayed motionless, life would not move forward, and you could have stayed here in purgatory forever.

Alas—

The whistle sounded, steam hissed, and as much as district eight had been a dream, it faded into the great beyond. You were left clutching an old leather bound journal across your chest, both arms folded tightly atop it. Between its pages are what you’ll use to remember—your mother, your father, the boys and girls from school, summer afternoons when you didn’t need to help with stitching, and you walked along the forest’s edge—a book of lessons, old and new. You wonder if anyone has a pencil or crayon that you can use to help keep track of all that you’re supposed to learn.

Would the boy that didn’t fear death teach you his secret? He was so serious; you wondered if he’d even speak to you. Did he want you dead just as much as everyone else? Was he like the careers, willing to gut you and tear out your eyes for sport? Most importantly, would he play dominos with you, or euchre? Here you discovered a secret, that as long as you asked questions, your stomach couldn’t twist itself into knots. Rather, it grumbled and rumbled, and made you realize that the smell of sweet cakes at the end of the hall were lovely after all.

“Hello,” You said, cracking open the door so that you could squeeze your head through the frame. You stared over at a table stacked high with all sorts of foods you’d never seen (but are willing to try—for the sake of learning). “Can I come in? Please?” Even in the face of unrelenting terror, you, Gilly Imberline, would not forget your manners.

⚜

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

[presto][/presto]

This is the first train ride to the Capitol during which I have been sober enough to draw a memory that will last longer than the call of midnight.

I have not slept; I have not eaten; I have not found myself in any state other than bare existence.

The reaping of the day before had engrained itself into my mind, but I still asked Adessia to let me replay the scene until I could watch it without my heart dropping to the bottom of my ribcage. It took hours. It took countless cries to the silent night and an offering of hymnal to the sunrise to not catch my breath at each name drawn. At three, I woke up with the remote in one hand and the other still clenched.

Survival is a moth I have caught in my fist and forced to the light— he is no longer alive in his need but incinerated by the flicker of flame.

This morning, I walked quietly. My steps did not echo on the staircase; my hand did not hold tight to the rail. I am bones hiding in retreating disguise— the skin will be gone and I will be forced to come to terms with whatever faith I have left.

There are one and three steps left to the door— I am a weary traveler headed toward the oasis. The girl from this morning is small. She can be hidden in my small shadow. This is what it means to be withering away. Her voice is quieter than mine, and it angers me. Her voice carries more weight than mine because soon it will be forgotten and I will be the one left to speak for the remembrance of both of us. How wrong her heart will sound on my tongue— ground up by my teeth and stuck in the crevices. Her body may fit inside mine but it is not made to take up residence there.

The room is empty when I arrive. I am hoping that neither of them will make face until later in the morning, when I have shaken the ghost from my body and bid her farewell until nightfall. Until then, she and I will converse at the table like old friends, like those who fought the war but remember different battles. She remembers the bugle’s call of victory; she remembers marching the streets with the flag etched across her chest like identity. I remember the nights we went hungry; I remember the blood-stained ink in which we wrote our letters home.

The morning that I returned to my home after the Seventy-Fifth Hunger Games, I took the pine box that my parents had bought for my body and burned it to ashes in the place where Cha’s hammock once stood. There is gasoline in my veins; when I think about opening the skin I think of setting the world on fire. There would be no suffering in the world if the world did not exist to begin with.

I pull a pastry from the table and set it on the plate in front of me. There, it has no future of being eaten but only stared and picked at. It is nothing but convention that compels my hand to do these sorts of things now, and where is the surprise? I am a machine that runs on the burning of my own flesh— I can be rebuilt and set back to the same task when there is no skin left on these bleached bones.

Pondering this, I begin to tear the layers of the pastry apart to see how many can actually be separated one from the other. This is nothing more than body being torn limb-from-limb, nothing more than the sight of six bodies reliving their role in tandem with thatofmyownhandsI

drop the piece of mangled dough back to my plate.

I just want to burn all the boxes that they were buried in as well. Besides, I have gasoline inside my veins and it’d be so simple. It just takes one drop and a match struck against my ribs and the whole world that they have left behind for me to dwell in would go up in smoke. Goddamn, what a beautiful sunrise that would be. I have not watched the sunrise in months, but I think I would make an exception if this was the condition leading to the morning. To arrange this would be difficult, but not impossible.

As I am running through the calls I would need to make and the graveyards I would need to visit, a voice breaks the silence, and it is not that of the woman who joined me at the table just an hour prior.

“Hello, can I come in? Please?”

The voice is soft, and it does not take any word past the "hello" to know that this is the girl from the morning prior. My heart plummets to place of anger and I swallow the fear it radiates before speaking, “Yeah, come in. You don’t have to ask, and you certainly don’t have to speak to me like some scary adult. Are you hungry?”

[Deleted]

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Gillian Imberline

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“Oh my gosh, it’s really you!”

When the 75th games played on your family’s television set, you had already decided to name your stuffed bear Shelby. At nine years old, you believed that one day you would either own a dress salon or be piloting a hovercraft, or both. Perhaps your parents could have shielded you less from the reality of the world, but the tenacity lurking underneath your surface surprised them. There was something to your normalcy—that common sense you prized above other knowledge that helped to get you out of scrapes and to look past what others could not see. You had struggled more with the day-to-day (why are the older girls so mean? Why can’t I get a new dress? Why do boys get told they’re smart and strong and girls are supposed to be gentle and kind?).

Shelby was a celebration not only of district eight, but what it meant to be strong and a girl. Even with her sharp tongue and naughty language, you admired the way she’d been so faithful to her friend Raven, and how she had struck down Curse with ease. The blood and gore had frightened you into night terrors for weeks after, but your father couldn’t keep you away from watching Shelby. Was there someone who could embody both the spirit of grace but fearlessness of someone that lived so in the present? She reminded you most of all of the tale your father told you—of the pirate captain that took her crew around the endless sea, never backing down from all that stood in the way of her treasure. Now, here in the flesh was Shelby, an idol and icon (take that all those girls back in district eight that thought you would never be anyone), welcoming you to eat.

“Thank you! I have a poster of you next to my bed at home! Oh man—my friend Sam’s not going to believe this!” Because it hasn’t sunk in, not yet. Not until when the night settles and you’re alone in your room will you realize, Sam will never hear how kind Shelby was to you. The thought it black and dark and pressed out of your head for now, but like a worm inching out of the earth after a rainstorm, will surface. “Whenever I think about how some of the boys think girls can’t be strong enough I always tell them that we have Shelby and they don’t have anyone!” You don’t even mind if it’s too much, she’s the only thing about this moment that could make you feel any sense of calm.

“Would you sign my book?” You wasted no time pulling out your token, the book of pressed flowers and journaling, an item that reminded you to be who you are. The pages would give you comfort in the days to come, of memories that could never fail you. You flipped open a page with a crude drawing of a woman with tri-corner skull and crossbones hat and a curved sword. “You should do it here—I drew a picture of you if you were a pirate. Oh man—I can’t believe it’s really you!”

⚜