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“No, no. You have to write more neatly, Penelope.” The little boy’s voice was a frantic whisper that tickled Penelope’s hair against her neck. He was peeking around her shoulder, watching her pencil scratch across the page.
“Hush, Patch.” She shrugged him off. “This is just a draft. I’ll need to copy it much smaller when we decide what to say.”
Patch’s mother, Georgie, took his hand in hers and tugged him over to her. “What are we going to say,” she asked. Her blue eyes looked darker in the dim light from the cottonseed oil lamp. The gummy residue of glue and soot blotted her pretty face.
Penelope glanced up from her page. “I’m going to tell them the truth. There’s no way that anyone can hear your story and not want to help you. The Capitol citizens are just people like you and me. And people are good, inside their hearts.” She frowned and looked back down at the page, tapping her pencil against her lip. “I just need to figure out a way to word it so that they can really understand what’s happening here; we need them to hear what the Capitol won’t say on television.”
Patch gazed at Penelope, his mouth hanging open. He glanced around the tiny apartment, as if he expected a Peacekeeper to jump out from behind the bed. Most people in District 8 would not have even admitted in a whisper that the Capitol was censoring their televisions. Penelope had gotten over that fear the moment she had seen the bright blossoms of blood on Georgie’s handkerchief.
“If they knew what things were really like here in the district, if they knew that there were people dying of illnesses they could cure with a single pill found in every Capitol medicine chest, they would come to our aid.” Penelope took a deep breath, “Once we have a good draft, we can make enough copies to sew into all of the bags that will go out in the Guingau shipment.”
Georgie shifted her legs around where she sat on the floor, uncrossing them and sitting up onto her knees. She reached out past Patch and grasped Penelope’s hand, the one holding the pattern book that she was using as a makeshift clipboard. “Will this work, Penny?” she whispered, biting into her lip and looking earnestly into Penelope’s eyes. Penelope was struck by how lovely she looked, despite the dirt on her face and the oily strands of hair escaping from her bun.
“Of course it will work,” Penelope reassured her. “The Guingau shipment is the hottest commision of the year. I heard the foreman talking with the manager. They said that we need to double production of the chartreuse handbag. Chartreuse is apparently the officially designated color of the season.” Penelope wrinkled her nose, thinking about hundreds of Capitol socialites tottering to their brunches on impossibly high shoes and clasping gaudy chartreuse handbags between their jeweled fingers.
“But what happens when they buy the bags?” Patch asked. “How will they find our note?”
Penelope smiled. He was a perceptive kid. Georgie looked down at him, and smoothed a cowlick that always seemed to reappear on the crown of his head.
“Once we have the copies,” Georgie said, her voice as soft as brushed suede, “we’ll sew the note into the bag. We’ll put it in the lining of the inside pocket so that it blocks the zipper from opening properly. That way, they’ll be sure to pull it out, and then they’ll read it. And hopefully they’ll tell their friends about it.”
Penelope added, “Once a wave of gossip gets moving in the Capitol, nothing will stop it from breaking on the shore. Your story will be everywhere. Everyone will wonder about the mysterious, tragic letter writer. They’ll all be clamoring over each other to help you.”
Patch smiled, and pillowed his head on his mother’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’ll be well soon.”
Georgie bit into her lip again, but she nodded at Patch. “I am too. When I’m well, we’ll celebrate with a butter tart from the bakery. What do you say?” Butter tarts were Patch’s favorite treat, obtained only once a year on his birthday. He gave a sideways nod from where his head rested on Georgie’s arm.
Georgie and Patch waited patiently while Penelope wrote, occasionally stopping to consider a word or cross out a line. The trick was to make it memorable, but short. They had to copy the note small enough that it would go unnoticed when it was sewn into the pocket lining.
Finally, Penelope set the pattern book and page down on the rug, spinning it around to face Georgie. “There,” she said. “What do you think?”
Georgie looked down at the note, her lips moving silently as she read the words. When she had finished, she looked back up at Penelope. “It’s perfect, Penny” she breathed, her eyes bright with tears.
She took Penelope’s breath away, as she always did. This would work. She would save Georgie. No other possibility had even a shred of justice to it. She leaned across the space between them and pressed her lips to Georgie’s, pouring all of her conviction and desperate hope into that single point of connection.
~*~
The assistant on hand to accept the shipment at the House of Guingau had directed the driver of the delivery van to leave the crates and boxes on the storeroom floor. They had sat for a few days, while Guingau recovered from a truly monstrous hangover, until the assistant returned and cracked open the wooden top of the first crate with a pry bar.
Guingau himself sauntered through the storeroom, touching fabrics that were draped over mannequins and dunking his hand into a bucket of sequins, feeling the slinky smooth discs slide past his skin. He moved at a leisurely pace, but it was all for show. He was anxious to see the shipment. It was to be the biggest fashion launch since his Bubblegumdrop CandyFusion collection had debuted over two years ago. Ages, it felt like.
So, despite his anxiety at seeing the final product, Guingau forced himself to take it slow. He knew he made a striking impression in the night-sky blue seersucker suit with the silver star buttons. His wig had been specially designed to complement the dark blue color. It was dyed a deep auburn and cut so that it brushed the tops of his ears as he walked. Guingau had put Finnick Odair in this exact suit just two nights past, and oh, had he done it justice.
But night-sky blue was out; It was official. The season was changing and the color must change as well. Without novelty, life would begin to lose its luster. Guingau finally meandered all the way to the shipment storage area. He quirked a delicately arched eyebrow at his assistant, who slid the lid back from the crate. Guingau looked down at his newest design finally taken form, like a child fresh from the womb. The chartreuse handbag. He picked it up, raising it into the light. He frowned. It was a much brighter shade than he remembered.
“This is the chartreuse handbag?” he asked his assistant, who looked at him askance.
“Yes,” she said slowly, as if a trap might lay in the question.
Guingau huffed and looked at the bag again. After a moment, he tossed it back into the crate. “I don’t like it. Chartreuse is out. Incinerate this entire shipment.” He waved his hand vaguely at the stacks of crates and sighed. “Back to the drawing board.”