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Kitty never met her older sister, all because she died before she was born. By the time she turned twelve, though, she thought she must have done, at least in another life. Judging by how much she knew about her, Kitty wouldn’t be surprised.
Maybe that was through reinforcement. Whenever they talked about the old days in District Eleven, they talked about the Victors, sure — but they talked about her sister more.
The thing that tripped most people up was that Kitty looked like her sister. Kitty thought that this was obvious, annoyingly so, because they were sisters. Same Mom, same Dad. The people who commented on the resemblance had to be idiots. And all her classmates whispered about it, even though they weren’t around either when all that stuff about the Old Capitol was happening. Double idiots.
She knew, vaguely, that they’d moved around a lot before it was all over. The Old Capitol had put a lot of pressure on District Eleven, being so close to Twelve, and even more pressure on her parents because her sister was so linked to the Mockingjay. They’d become even more of a target nine months later, when Kitty had made her way into the world, kicking and screaming, named after the very teenager that ended up upsetting it all.
Kitty liked to think that she was a trendsetter, because there were a lot of younger girls named after Katniss in her grade and under. She was named after her because of what she did for her sister, not for what she did for Panem.
Kitty knew that she wasn’t the only kid in District Eleven that was hyper-aware that there was footage out there, somewhere, of their sibling’s death. That millions of people had seen Rue stabbed though the chest, had watched her funeral, had cried as if was all entertainment and not real. She thought that she didn’t need to be another. Her History teacher had argued with her, Kitty had argued back, and that was why she was sat in the corridor outside the Principal’s office staring at her beat-up shoes.
The double doors banged open, and her mother and father came bursting through it. Her father was wearing his field clothes, and her mother was in her scrubs. Her mother’s eyes were angry, and her father looked indignant, and it took one slam of the principal’s door for Kitty to realise that they weren’t angry at her.
They pulled her out of school for the summer, after that, early and bright, promised to return in the fall months. Kitty wasn’t too mad at the turn of events. She found herself climbing trees on the far reaches of their fields, in riding horses, in the summer rain, in the harvest. At their table, on that day, was her cousin, also named Katniss. And the second Katniss was taught how to tie knots and how to listen to the growth of corn in the night, just like Kitty was. Not by her parents, though.
There was this diary that Rue had left behind, hidden behind a panel in the family barn. She found it the day after the incident. The last time it had been written in had been nearly thirteen years ago. Kitty learned from it, as if it was a guide to being twelve. She found herself in the pages — crushes, school fights, friends, betrayals.
And Rue wrote of the Reapings each year, if she knew the kids that were sent or not. All of them died. Kitty tried to imagine growing up in fear of being sent to die by some old people in the centre of some universe they left behind when she was less than a year old.
She didn’t know how to feel about her inability to relate. Kitty lived in a world that was about living, not just survival. She thought Rue would have liked to have seen it, what they had now. So Kitty began to write in the diary, too. In it, Kitty wrote of the new world, and she wrote about it as if Rue was still writing. She wrote, still, as she became older than her sister ever did. And she eventually thought, much later — this was what the rebels must have fought for. Died for. Like Rue.
And, if anyone looked, they would notice: similar handwriting, different pens. And that would make all the difference.