Chapter Text
I only watch as she takes a handful of herbs and strains them through her palm, spreading it across the paper before shoving a filter to the bottom. Delicately, Ava tucks the paper in itself, curving it into the perfect shape. It's something we've perfected over the years, hundreds of thousands of the same action. Spreading, folding, licking, tucking, adding filters, and lining up the finished product in a box before repeating. It was an art, in our own way. The hours of work until our hands were nearly shaking, continuing anyway.
Ava reaches it out to me to lick the edges. I do so, avoiding the paper cut on my tongue from hours ago when we rushed into the work. We'd been hoping to get it done before supper - lessening the party preparation later tonight.
I take our widdled stick and use the dull end to pack down the grinded leaves before using the sharper end to tuck the paper into the filter. I hand it back to her and admire as she stuffs another filter into the first before using the stick once more to poke an opening into the end.
With our work finished and the last joint in the box, we seal it and carry it out of the dark, cold basement of the bakery. Up above is much nicer than the cellar we create the true product in. Peacekeepers tend to get more nosy as of late so we stack bread straight from the oven on top of the lines of joints. I force myself to power through the burning sensation that I experience for only a second before tossing the bread into the box. After we're sure it's completely covered, we set the box in a busy corner towards the back of the bakery.
Once we're out to the front room, Ava looks behind the counter to be sure the whole shop is packed up before snatching a list off the tabletop and starting out the door. Following her, I march out the door and am met by the road leading up to the square.
"Where's your, pa' anyway?" My voice carries through the deserted road, inhabited only by the songbirds and snakes.
"Out by the busy bush, why?" Her voice carries a forced nonchalance to keep eavesdroppers away.
"We just got the baked stuff done?"
"No shit, I was there too. He's just having a moment."
"A moment?" The drama queen of a man was always having a moment.
Mr. Baguette was always a delight in the winter, but summer held only despair for the man and his daughters. The humid season sowed the sorrow of a widower. The sacrifice of his wife for his oldest, sickly ill, daughter. Ava was the youngest of the two, of course, strong and healthy as a stoner could be in the new district.
It's a miracle Sophia was still here today - her medicine cost more money than I'd made my whole life. Her father was at the end of his rope all those years ago, forced to watch as the saint that was his wife sacrifice her life for money to keep his oldest alive. I hadn't known Ava back then but I recalled the look on her young face as a peacekeeper forced her head forward to watch as their commander broke her mothers skull with a bullet. The whole district had to watch.
I supposed Mr. Baguette had the right to be a drama queen.
Miracles ran in the family, though. He told the story every year on his beloved's birthday; his attempt on his own life in the forest, the matches he'd chosen and how one fell after lighting it. The smoke rose from a bush and as he breathed it in, he had the amazing idea to sell it as a product.
So many times had he almost been caught before recruiting his daughters to help him create the bakery - a coverup that only gave up bread to the starving and peacekeepers with a pretty penny in their pocket.
I only met him personally when I was on the brink of starving. Nate was too young to work and I wasn't allowed anymore factory shifts - too young for tessare either. I had seen Ava around, but we were never friends. Her family had just bought their new fancy home in a nicer part of the district. I lingered under the porch at night, looking for rats to cook up and dry sticks to light. She had just stepped outside to rid of a box full of screwed up joints.
I was covered in mud and as she handed me the box, I almost got it on a dress of hers. She didn't wear those dresses too often anymore, unless for the reaping.
Or the party the night before.
It was a long walk from the bakery uptown to the coal covered, starving, unkempt slums of our home. We tried to walk as quickly as possible without running. Running would only attract the curious peacekeeper or narc that plagued the whole town; The oldest of the district say we once had more freedoms, that the peacekeepers sent here were the weakest of them all and could do nothing to stop what we did. That's changed in the past thirty years or so. The original twelfth district was burned to the ground and the people who escaped were either executed or made to have children to repopulate the district. Most of our older citizens were stolen from their home district as a child and sent to our island to fend for themselves.
I, personally, was a full blooded district twelve citizen. My father was the son of a peacekeeper and a coal miner before the revolution, while my mother was the daughter of a seam-born woman and a hysteric who did nothing but sing. I never knew my fathers parents, but my mothers parents stayed by her side until their end.
My grandfather would insist music was in our blood, that if you looked far enough down our family tree, you would see performers and nomads. My father always called him crazy but we allowed him to say it again and again.
I always wished there were performances other than the games.
Ava and I are both silent as we walk to the market. The shops and carts were lined up with ladies and gents waving trinkets and necessities at all the passerby's. We don't even have to discuss where to go first, as we've developed a routine after so many years of party preparations. Even the owners of each shop knew what we needed before we even said it.
I do a small skip just before reaching the cart with meat lining the table and dead animals hanging from the structures walls.
"Dana! Lord, I've missed you."
The squirrel atop Dana's head seemed to glare down at me angrily as I spoke to her, and though she insists it's fake, we all smelled the rot of the squirrels flesh and just had to ignore it when you were around her or she'd shout and shriek about how he was fake and you were a liar.
Aside from that, Dana was a joy to be around, despite how her age seemed to cause rambling of the same fake stories my grandfather would tell of. Performers and musicians that stuck awe in even the peacekeepers. The capitol called it "mass hysteria" all the elders who were traumatized by being left on this island seemed to have it. Especially Dana, so much so that the children made little folktales about it, calling her a "straw 'typa man", since the Straw Man is the antagonist of all the religion. He kills them. He's… not real. Anyway.
I unzone myself and look up to see the huge chunk of meat Dana has plopped on the table with a toothless grin before Ava tosses a coin onto Dana's counter.
We begin to move on after a brief little goodbye from Dana, ending with her signature "Deer, dear, and dear!"
We go on to get the pre-made food from Greasy Bae. She was quite the character, eating mostly butter. Hence the nickname, which she accepted gratefully. Despite her odd diet, she was the best cook in all the new district. Soups, meat, pasta, sandwiches, fruit bowls. All food. I can't name many.
We approach her cart and see how she has it prepared and it actually slammed due to families wanting food to either celebrate or grieve with after the reaping. The bakery had been slammed earlier with the starving, they all know Mr. Baguette would spare a loaf or two for all.
Ava does most of the talking to Greasy Bae, they get along very well. Not that I don't get along with her but just that Ava got food from her much more often. Greasy Bae knew how to make food that catered to Sophia's illness, which made everything ten times easier for Ava and her father.
Once we finished getting the food, we only had one more stop before getting the fireworks for the party. Liquor. Liquid courage. No reason to throw a party without it. the only issue was that Mattie was… not someone I was capable of being friendly with. Matted hair and beady eyes that always shined their disdain down on me. I parked myself against the wall of the hob while Ava dealt her coins to Mattie in exchange for a few bottles. Once that was done, we went to the fireworks stand and got one singular big one that got tucked under both our jackets before we rushed back to the bakery and shoved everything into a small storage space under the tile of the basement.
Avabelle Baguette
Me and Jule went our separate ways. I walked down the paths of district 12, passing the bakery, finding my way to my house. Our various packages that we gathered for the pre-reaping party were smushed in between my bulging arm muscles.
My feet found their way up the creaky, old, wooden pine boards that made up our front porch. My mom had wanted him to fix the one timber. She was the first to notice it since she liked to sit on the farthest left end of our porch. She liked watching but we never did. I was too young to appreciate the serenity of it. I was too young to appreciate her. I was too young for my dad to ever appreciate me.
I unpaused and opened the door, my muscly, buff, arms finally feeling the excessively substantial bags that were digging into my arms. My sister stood over a big pot while slowly stirring a ladle around in the mixture. A slight sloshing sound was made as the serving utensil made its rounds in the soup. Dad sat next to her. He was placed at his spot at the square dining table we had. His chair was pulled out slightly so that he was a little in the way but not fully obstructing my ability to get upstairs. I placed the bags on a little bit of counter space that was left.
"For the party... " I paused to look at the back of my fathers head, "tonight or whatever." He didn't say anything to me but he did scuttle under the table further. I put my feet on the first step. I hang back for a second. I want my dad to say something to me. To acknowledge me.
"Dinner will be ready in like 20 or so minutes." Sophia said. I nodded. I guess dad was going through one of his spells... As I got up to the second level I heard him tell my sister that he looked like my mom.
Drama queen.
I always knew he loved my sister more. My mom died for her after all. He slaved to make sure that the baby that should've died at eight will make it to eighty. I wonder what would happen if I got reaped. How could he afford her diabetes supplies? I wriggled out of my socks with my toes and climbed into my bed. There are so many other kids who have much more tesserae than I.
My vision falls to deep blue as I close my lids. In my dream I was the girl from last year's game. She was my neighbor. I'd eaten lunch with her up until 4th grade which is when me and Jule became friends. She wasn't my favorite person but I cared for her. She had made it to the top five which was much farther than most of district 12.
Sunny, her name, she was asleep. The arena was some sort of desert. There wasn't a drop of water. Over half of the contenders died of thirst. She was a small girl and this 17 year old boy pressed down on her. He cut off her left arm, gnawing through it with a hunting knife. She was dazed and starved and confused. Even if she was completely aware she still would've died. She lost her life screaming for her mommy.
Right now it was me with that boy upon me. He sawed through my right arm as he muttered about the strewn. He screamed about my sins and crimes. He hysterically threw my arms away into the red sands. He pulled a large cleaver out of his belt and cut my legs off in swift motions. Then his back arched up to stab me in the heart but before his blade landed he slumped over. His blood fell out and mixed in with my pooling gore. I got no quick end as I felt my soul leave. Staring at the rock that cracked his head in front of me. I wanted my mother more than ever but I was dead. Or she was dead or we were both dead or maybe...
I sat up with a cold and sticky sweat that clung to my body. I really didn't need to have my quilt on since it was July but it felt wrong to not be covered. I went down the stairs and ate the seasoned broths with chunks of mixed vegetables.
The time was 5:52 pm so we scrambled out the door to square. We got there soon enough to six, not late enough to worry but the peace keepers had started taking count for prayer time. I looked for Jule, turning for her. She wasn't here yet... they had gotten to the D's and C's and now. They were calling the people with the last name that started with B. The Baguette family was all accounted for. The Brie family was... my heart dropped. They weren't there. The whole world slowed down... no one was late to prayer time. It happened at 6 o'clock every day ever since I've ever remembered. What would happen... then I heard a strained scream that said HERE! at the third repetition of the last name Brie. My breath caught as I checked my watch. The clock hit 6 just as they got there. Then they called out the last name Bowring. They were not there for the first or second or third call. When they did show up there were many rifles aimed at the mother and son's head. The boy couldn't have been more than six and he wouldn't ever get the chance to be any older. He was less than a minute later to prayer but it did not matter to the men with guns. At 6:30, when everyone left, there were two puddles of blood that were left to stain.