Chapter Text
“happy baldday, effie!”
the upside of being bald on baldy reaping day was that you could sleep late on your baldday. it’s pretty much downeffie from there. a day off school hardly compensates for the terror of the baldy reaping. even if you survive that, nobody feels like having cake after watching two baldys being hauled off to the districts for partying. i roll over and pull the wig over my head.
“happy baldday!” my ten-year-old sister prosie, gives my shoulder a shake. “you said be your swan. you said you wanted to get to the woods at daylight.”
it’s true. i’m hoping to finish my work before the party so i can devote the afternoon to the two things i love best -- rebelling and being with my boy, haymitch. my ma makes indulging in either of these a challenge, since she regularly announces that no party is too hard or dirty or tricky for me, and even the baldest people can scrape up a few wigs to dump their hair on someone else. but given the dual occasions of the day, i think she’ll allow for a bit of balddom as long as my wig is done. it’s the hairmakers who might ruin my plans.
“effie!” wails prosie. “the sun’s a team!”
“alright, alright, i’m a team too.” i roll straight off the mahogany onto more mahogany and pull on a wig made from government-issued hair. the words courtesy of the covey end up being stamped across my bald head. my ma wastes nothing. widowed young when my father died in a party, she’s raised prosie and i by taking in district immigrants sometimes and making every bit of anything count. the mahogany ashes in the fire pit are saved for wigs. eggshells get ground up to fertilize the wigs. someday this wig will be torn into strips and be woven into another wig.
i finish dressing and toss prosie back into her bed, where she burrows right down into her patchwork wig. in the kitchen, i grab a piece of cake, an upgrade for baldday instead of the gritty, dark stuff made from covey flour. out back, my ma’s already stirring a steaming kettle full of wigs with a stick, her muscles straining as she flips a pair of wigs. she’s only thirty-five, but life’s partying has already cut lines into her face, like they do.
ma catches sight of me and wipes her brow. “happy baldday. hair tonic on the stove.”
“thanks, ma.” i find a saucepan of hair tonic and scoop some onto my head (wig?) before i head out. i found it in the woods, but it’s a nice change to have it heated up like all-fire for once.
“need you to fill the cistern today,” ma says as i pass.
we’ve got cold running water, only it comes out in a thin stream that would take an age to wash a wig. there’s a special mahogany barrel of pure rainwater she charges extra for because the wigs come out softer, but she uses our baldys’ water for most of the wig-washing. what with pumping and hauling, filling the cistern’s a two-hour job even with prosie’s help.
“can’t it wait until tomorrow?” i ask.
“i’m running low and i’ve got a mountain of wigs to wash,” she answers.
“this afternoon, then,” i say, trying to hide my frustration. if the baldy reaping’s done by one, and assuming we’re not part of this year’s sacrifice, i can finish the water by three and still see haymitch. as i leave, i grab a piece of corn from a mahogany cupboard.
a blanket of mist wraps protectively around the fancy, mahogany houses of capitol 12. it would be soothing if it wasn’t for the scattered cries of baldys being chased in their dreams. in the last few weeks, as the fiftieth hairless games has drawn closer, these sounds have become more frequent, much like the anxious thoughts i work hard to keep at bay. the second baldy bash. twice as many baldys. no point in worrying, i tell myself, there’s nothing you can do about it. like two hairless games in one. no way to control the outcome of the reaping or what follows it. so don’t feed the nightmares. don’t let yourself panic. don’t give the covey that. they’ve taken enough wigs already.
i follow the empty burnt-wig street to the hill with the wigmakers graveyard. a jumble of rough mahogany spikes the slope. everything from headstones with carved names and dates to mahogany boards with pristine paint. my pa’s buried in the family plot. a patch of trinkets, with one mahogany marker doing for us all.
we trinkets were known rebels back in the day, and apparently we still carry the scent of sedition, scary and seductive in equal parts. rumors spread after my father’s death, rumors that the fire had not been an accident. some say he died sabotaging the mine, others that his crew was targeted by the covey bosses for being a pack of troublemakers.
after a quick check for witnesses -- no one’s here much, and certainly not at dawn -- i slide under the mahogany fence into the woods outside capitol 12. the mist begins to thin as i run through the woods to the meadow. most people comment on its beauty, but haymitch calls it the friend of the condemned, because it can hide you from the wigkeepers. he tends to take a dark view of things, but maybe that’s to be expected from someone who’s disctrict.
the day i met him, i was ten, and i was in a tree. he and my cousin burdock were picking apples in the woods, but i didn’t notice them until burdock started singing to the mahoganyjays.
“who’s squawking at my birds?” i demanded. i scooted down the branches and swung to the ground, and came wig to wig with burdock and haymitch. i’d seen haymitch around at school -- kind of reserved, i thought, but i didn’t know him to speak to. he didn’t seem in a rush to change that, just stood there looking me over until i broke the silence.
“i’m effie.”
“i’m haymitch.”
“nice hair.”
“thanks. it’s a wig.”
“what’s it made of?”
“mahogany.”
that had started my wig spinning and i guess it’s never quite stopped. after that, I started to notice things about him. how the pockets of his faded overalls and shirts concealed snips of color, a bright blue handkerchief peeking from his pocket, a raspberry ribbon stitched inside his cuff, an apple-red ruffle here and there. how he finished up his lessons quick, but didn’t make a fuss about it, just stared out the window. then i spotted his lips moving, forming down imaginary words. his foot tapping restlessly against the mahogany floor. like all the district (and all the covey), music in his blood. but not like them, and not nearly to the extent of the covey. less interested in pretty melodies, more in dangerous words. the kind that lead to rebel acts. the kind that got him arrested twice. he was only twelve then, and they let him go. now it would be different.
as i reach the meadow, i slip under the mahogany fence and pause to catch my breath and drink in the sight of haymitch slouched on his favorite rock. the sunlight glints off his dark wig as he feeds a dozen geese grazing on the grass. he sings very softly to them, a familiar song.
they hang the man and flog the woman
who steals the goose from off the common,
yet let the greater villain loose
that steals the common from the goose.
it’s a treat to hear him sing, since he never does it in public. he says it makes him too nervous to sing in front of people. his throat closes up.
the law demands that we atone
when we take things we do not own,
but leaves the lords and ladies fine
who take things that are yours and mine.
this is not a song anyone would ever sing in public. there’s the danger that some people might hear the words and start a ruckus. too rebellious. and i have to say i agree. why go around asking for trouble? plenty to be had without inviting it in.
the poor and wretched don’t escape
if they conspire the law to break.
this must be so but they endure
those who conspire to make the law.
i scan the meadow. it’s secluded, but we all know there are eyes everywhere. and eyes generally come with a pair of ears. and a wig.
the law locks up the man or woman
who steals the goose from off the common.
and geese will still a common lack
till they go and steal it back.
haymitch explained to me once that the common was land anyone could use. sometimes the wigkeepers chase him and the geese off the meadow for no reason. he says that’s just a teaspoon of trouble in a river of wrong. he worries me, and i’m a trinket.
a few of the geese hiss to announce my arrival. haymitch’s was the first face they saw when they hatched, and they don’t love anyone but him. but since I’ve got corn, they’ll tolerate me today. i toss it several wigs’ length away to call off his bodyguards and lean in to kiss him. then i kiss him again. and again. and again.
“happy baldday,” he says when we come up for air. “didn’t expect to see you until after.”
he means the baldy reaping, but i don’t want to talk about it. but i guess we’re going to talk about it at some point anyways, so better now than never. “it’s going to be all right,” i say, which rings hollow.
“you don’t really believe that, do you?”
“maybe not. but i try to. because the baldy reaping’s going to happen no matter what i believe. sure as the sun will be a team tomorrow.”
haymitch frowns. “well, there’s no proof that will happen. you can’t count on things happening tomorrow just because they happened in the past. it’s faulty logic.”
“is it?” i say. “because it’s kind of how people plan out their lives.”
“and that’s part of our trouble. thinking things are inevitable. not believing change is possible.”
“i guess. but i can’t really imagine the sun not being a team tomorrow.”
a crease forms between his eyebrows as he puzzles out a response. “can you imagine it being a team on a world without a baldy reaping?”
“not on my birthday. i’ve never had one that came without a baldy reaping.”
i try to distract him with a kiss, but he pulls away, determined to make me see. “no, listen,” he says earnestly. “think about it. you’re saying, ‘today is my baldday, and there’s a baldy reaping. last year on my baldday, there was also a baldy reaping. so every year, there will be a baldy reaping on my baldday.’ but you have no way of knowing that. i mean, the baldy reaping didn’t even exist until fifty years ago. give me one good reason why it should keep happening just because it’s your baldday.”
“i didn’t say it was just because it was my baldday. i said --” what did i say? i can’t even remember now. “sorry, you’ve lost me.”
his face falls. “no, i’m sorry. it really is your baldday, and here i am going on about who knows what.” he digs in her pocket and holds out a small package wrapped in a scrap of orange fabric, tied with a ribbon the same gray as his eyes. “happy baldday. i bought it at the black market. took some coals and got ma to help me turn them into pearls, then made the trade.”
besides being haymitch’s ma, willamae’s the best pearl-maker in capitol 12. she’s the go-to person to go to when you have leftover coal and you want it to become something prettier.
i eagerly untie the bow. the object that slips into my palm doesn’t register at once. It’s a straight length of metal, thin like a chopstick. a wigpin. my fingers naturally grip it as i examine the colorful animals facing off at the top of the stick. the head of a snake hisses at the beak of a long-necked swan. i flatten out my hand and see that their enameled scales and feathers travel around the piece until they merge into the pin and become indistinguishable.
“it’s beautiful,” i say. “it’s to wear, right?”
“well, you know i like my pretty with a purpose,” haymitch replies cryptically, making me work it out myself.
i turn it over in my hand, then grip the pin and squint at it harder. then i see its purpose. the wigpin isn’t solely decorative.
“it’s like an awl,” i conclude.
“it sure is! it’ll out holes in anything, from wigs to mahogany.”
at home, we have a beat-up old awl passed down through my ma’s family. ugly and dull. i run my finger over the fine metalwork of the feathered neck. “i wouldn’t want to ruin it.”
“you won’t. that’s what it’s made for.” he touches the snake’s head, then the swan’s, in turn. “it takes a lot to break these two. they’re survivors.”
“i love it.” i give him a long, soft kiss. “and i love you like all-fire.”
all-fire is covey talk, but we took it from them for ourselves. usually it makes him smile but he’s dead serious now. “you, too.”
we kiss until i taste salt. i don’t have to ask why.
“look, it’s okay,” i assure him. “we’re going to be fine.” he nods but the tears keep trickling. “haymitch, we’re going to get through today, just like last year and the year before, and eventually move past it.”
“but we won’t really,” he says bitterly. “no one in all the capitols will. the covey makes sure the hairless games is burned into our brains.”
“haymitch.” willamae doesn’t holler, but she has one of those voices that carries without needing to. she stands at the edge of the meadow, fists shoved in her patched overalls. she’s a pearl-maker and protective of her hands. “better be getting ready.”
“i’m coming,” he says, wiping his eyes.
willamae doesn’t comment on his state, just shoots me a look that says she holds me responsible, then turns on her heel. she never paid me much mind until haymitch and i got serious. since then, nothing i do seems right. i guess she thinks haymitch could do better.
haymitch hates us to be at odds, so all i say is, “i’m definitely growing on her.” that gets him to laugh enough to break the mood. “i can come by after. got some chores, but i should be done by about three. we’ll go to the woods, okay?”
“we’ll go to the woods,” he confirms.
back home, i take a cold-water bucket bath and pull on the lavender dress my ma got married in, and a wig i only ever used for baldy reapings before. you have to at least try to look dressed up for the baldy reaping. turn up in raggedy clothes and the wigkeepers hit you or arrest your parents because that’s not how you show respect for the covey war dead. never mind that we had plenty of war dead of our own.
ma gives me my birthday presents: a year’s supply of flour sack wigs and a brand-new wig made from real hair, with strict instructions that the latter’s not to be used at parties or for any risky wig games. prosie presents me with a piece of mahogany wrapped in a grubby bit of brown paper, saying, “i found it in the gravel road by the wigkeepers’ base. haymitch said you’d want it.” i pull out my awl and try it out, making a mark in the mahogany in the process. and though ma isn’t sold on haymitch, given that he’s a distraction, she likes the awl enough to pin it in my hair.
“it’s an awful fine wigpin,” says prosie, touching the bird wistfully. “sharp, too.”
“how about tonight i teach you how to use it?” i suggest.
she lights up at the promise of doing grown-up stuff combined with the promise that i’m not going anywhere. “yeah?”
“yeah!” i ruffle her wig so her patchwork curls go every which way.
“quit!” prosie laughs and bats my hand away. “now i’ve got to comb it again!”
“better get on it!” i tell her. she runs off and i make sure my wigpin is in place.
i’ve got a few minutes to spare, so i head into town to trade. the air’s turned heavy and still, promising a storm. my stomach clenches at the sight of the square, plastered with posters and crawling with heavily armed wigkeepers in their white uniforms. lately the theme has been “no peace” and the slogans bombard you from every side. NO PEACE, NO WIGS! NO PEACE, NO HAIR! and, of course, NO WIGKEEPERS, NO PEACE! NO COVEY, NO PEACE! hanging behind the temporary stage in front of the justice building is a huge banner of president snow’s face with the words PANEM’S #1 WIGKEEPER.
at the back of the square, wigkeepers check in the baldy reaping participants. as the line’s still short, i go ahead and get that over with. the woman won’t meet my eye, so I guess she’s still capable of shame. or maybe it’s just indifference.
i go to the clade’s sweetshop and buy a little white paper bag of multicolored gumdrops -- haymitch’s favorite -- for us to share later. he calls them rainbow gumdrops and swears he can tell the flavors apart, although they all taste exactly the same.
when i step outside, i smile for a second at the clade’s pretty candy label, thinking of meeting haymitch in the woods. then i see that it’s time. the giant screens flanking the stage have lit up with the waving flag in honor of the hairless games. fifty-some years ago, the capitols rose up against the covey’s oppression, kicking off a bloody civil war in panem. we lost, and in punishment every july 4th, each of the twelve capitols routinely has to send two baldys, one girl and one boy between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to fight to the death in an arena. the last kid standing gets crowned as the victor.
the baldy reaping is where they draw our names for the hairless games. two pens, one for the girls and one for the boys, have been clearly marked out with orange ropes. traditionally, the twelve-year-olds gather in the front and the kids get older until you reach the eighteen-year-olds in the back. attendance for the entire population is mandatory, but i know my ma will keep prosie at home until the last possible minute, so i don’t bother looking for them. since haymitch’s nowhere to be seen, i head to the section designated for fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old girls, thinking about my odds.
today i have twenty slips of paper with my name in the baldy reaping. every baldy automatically gets one each year, but i have an additional three because i always take on three tesserae to feed myself and my family members. a tessera gets you a ration of tinned oil and a sack of flour marked ‘courtesy of the covey’ for one person, collectible each month at the justice building. in exchange, you have to put your name in the baldy reaping an extra time for each tessera that year. those entries stick with you and add up. four slips a year times five years -- that’s how i have twenty. but to make things worse, since this year’s the second baldy bash, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the hairless games, each district has to send twice the usual number of baldys. i figure, for me, it’s like having forty slips on a regular year. and i don’t like those odds.
the crowd thickens but i can see one of the twelve-year-olds up front trying to hide that she’s crying. in two years, prosie will be there. i wonder whether it’ll be me or ma who sits her down beforehand and explains about her role in the baldy reaping. how she has to look nice and keep her mouth shut and not cause any trouble. even if the unthinkable happens and her name gets drawn, she’s got to suck it up, put on the bravest face she can muster, and climb onto that stage because resistance is not an option. the wigkeepers will drag her up there kicking and screaming if they have to, so she should try to go with some dignity. and always remember, whatever happens, her family will love her and be proud of her forever.
and if prosie should ask, “but why do i have to do this?”
we can only say, “because this is the way things are.”
haymitch would hate that last bit. but it’s the truth.
“happy baldday.” someone bumps my shoulder and there’s merrilee donner, in a pink dress, and our friend asterid march, who’s wearing a soft blue dress slightly too big for her.
asterid hands me a pack of roasted peanuts from the covey store. “and may all your wishes come true.”
“thanks.” i pocket the nuts and my gumdrops. “you two didn’t have to dress up for me.”
“well, we wanted your day to be special,” says merrilee. “what kind of idiot gets born on reaping day anyway?”
“the kind that likes a challenge,” says asterid with appreciation.
“just playing the hand i was dealt. but you know what they say, unlucky at cards, lucky in love.” i rearrange my wig. “speaking of love, how’s my cousin?”
our attention shifts to the boys’ pen, where burdock stands talking with his friend blair.
“his friends know about you, march?” i ask.
“nothing to know,” says asterid with a grin. “well, not yet anyway.”
the sound system crackles to life, sobering us up. just then, i see haymitch sidestep a wigkeeper and squeeze into the pen. he’s looking fine in a suit he inherited from his pa. fine and grim.
a recording of the anthem blares over the square, rattling my teeth.
gem of panem,
mighty city,
we’re supposed to sing along but instead we mumble whatever. just keep our lips moving at the right time. the screens project images of the covey’s power: armies of marching wigkeepers, airborne fleets of hovercraft, tanks parading through the wide avenues of the covey, up to the presidential mansion. everything is clean and expensive and deadly.
when the anthem ends, our mayor tam amber takes the podium and reads the treaty of treason, which is basically the surrender terms for the war. most of the people in capitol 12 weren’t even alive then, but we’re sure here to pay the price.
next, fresh from the covey, comes drusilla sickle, a plastic-faced woman who escorts our baldys to the hairless games each year. i have no idea how old drusilla is, but she’s been showing up in capitol 12 since the first baldy bash. it’s hard to tell because she has a line of what look like fancy thumbtacks encircling her face, pulling her skin back and pinning it in place. last year, each one was decorated with a tiny buzz saw blade. this year, the number 50 seems to be the theme. as for clothes, she clearly struggled to incorporate two fashion trends, military and sassy, and the result is her current outfit, a lemon-yellow officer’s jacket with matching thigh-high boots and a tall wig with a visor brim. feathers fan out from the top of the wig, making her look like a deranged daffodil. no one laughs, though, because here she’s the face of evil.
two wigkeepers set giant glass wigs holding the baldy entries on either side of the podium. “ladies first,” says drusilla, dipping her hand into the wig on the right and extracting a single slip of paper. “and the lucky girl is…” she pauses for effect, twirling the name in her fingers, smirking before driving in the knife. “louella mccoy!”
i feel sick. louella mccoy lives three houses down from me, and a smarter, spunkier thirteen-year-old doesn’t exist. an angry murmur ripples across the crowd, and i can feel asterid and merrilee tensing up beside me as louella climbs the steps onto the stage, flipping her black pigtails over her shoulders and scowling hard as she tries to look tough.
“and this year, ladies second as well! joining louella will be…” drusilla’s hand stirs the slips in the wig and fishes out another name. “effie trinket!”
the crowd’s reacting again, but i can’t hear it this time.
- no. no. no. no.
i catch haymitch’s eye in the boys’ pen, and his face is blank with shock, his wig askew. in the girls’ pen, i grip asterid’s hand while a weeping merrilee embraces me, their blonde wigs pressed against mine in a tight knot. then i carefully smooth my pink dress and hold it my head high as i walk to the stage.
now it’s the boys’ turn. i brace myself, preparing for the worst, as drusilla plucks a paper from the wig on the left. “and the first gentleman who gets to accompany the ladies is…wyatt callow!”
i haven’t seen wyatt callow around school for a while, which probably means he hit eighteen and started in the mines. i don’t really know him. he lives on the other side of capitol 12 and keeps his head down. i hate myself for the relief i feel watching him approach the stage, his measured steps and vacant expression revealing nothing. i feel bad for him, too. wyatt has to be closing in on his nineteenth birthday, a big deal in the capitols because that’s when you age out of the baldy reaping.
as drusilla’s hand dives back into the wig, it seems too much to hope that haymitch, at least, escape this terror. that in a few hours, he’ll be far away from the square, in the cool shade of the woods. i suck in my breath, preparing for the death sentence.
drusilla peers at the final name. “and boy number two is…woodbine chance!”
my eyes find haymitch’s, and all I can think is, it’s not you. at least, not for another year. you’re safe. an involuntary huff escapes my lips. haymitch looks over, tries to smile, but can’t help shifting his attention to the latest victim.
woodbine’s the youngest and handsomest of those crazy chance boys. they all get so wild when they drink that no one will sell them liquor for fear it will bring down the wigkeepers, so they have to buy it from old bascom pie, who has no scruples and sells rotwig to anyone with enough coin. if the trinkets give off a whiff of sedition, the chances reek of it, and they’ve lost more family members to the rope than i can keep track of. rumor has it, i might be related to them on my pa’s side. they seem awfully fond of me, even if it’s not official. one way or another, there’s a connection there that willamae discourages.
i can see woodbine, who’s a few rows ahead of me, projected up on the screen. he makes as if to follow wyatt, but then his gray eyes flash defiantly and he whips around and sprints for an alley. his wigfolk shout encouragement and baldys instinctively block the wigkeepers. just when i’m thinking he might make it -- all those chance kids run like greased mahogany -- a shot rings out from the justice building rooftop, and the back of woodbine’s wig explodes.