Pleasantries and Hostility | Onyx

Although I hate to admit it, my parents certainly know how to throw a party.

Naturally, when Cricket Antoinette twirled, tumbled and blazed her way into the finale, I knew the night would come when I would have to relinquish my quarry den, pack up my bag and return to the home of Archer and Lesley Solstice - willing to call it my own. No, that's something it will never be. However, I never guessed that the day would come so quickly. I have only spite for Cricket, who elegantly paraded her acrobatics straight through the first week of the Games, with sponsors practically throwing themselves at her feet, as if to join the slain tributes that lie there. Even if I had stepped up at my own Games, all eyes on me, I doubt I would have made it past the third day at most. I proved at that Reaping that I don’t have the courage, the strength, to do my duty for the District.

I was greeted at the Solstice residence by the sound of dozens of pairs of scampering feet and, walking through the door, the sight of the Avoxes they belonged to; my parents were nowhere in sight. I felt sickened by their presence – not by the grotesquery of the tongueless choking noises they made to communicate, but by the thought of how little Archer must be paying them. Politely weaving through I made my way up to my bedroom, mechanically remembering the way even though I hadn’t been there for a year and a half. I even jumped over the creaky floorboard as I did when I was sixteen, sneaking out with boys, tiptoeing down to the gymnasium for a midnight training session with girls who would sleep over between tournaments, even though there was no need to be silent now. My room was immaculate, the green-brown walls invisible under posters of Victors, Trainers, Capitol Celebrities – the people I aspired to be like before I threw that chance away. The first thing I did was rip them all down. It was almost unbearable sleeping there last night, with a welcome from neither my mother nor her husband, and having to stare sleeplessly at the darker rectangles where the colour of my walls had not yet started to fade, and the piles of weapons and body armour in the corners of my room.

When my mother finally greeted me this morning, after I had spent nearly twelve hours under her roof already, it was with the cold expression of someone who doesn’t really care. She would endure me simply because she had to, just as I would smile and look like I had done nothing to disrupt our family harmony because it was what I needed to do. The greeting itself was sparse: a nod, “glad to see you got here alright,” (she wasn’t) “I’ve prepared breakfast for you downstairs,” (she had had a slave prepare it for me) “and the gymnasium is also open, if you’d care to go down to it,” (I should practice my combat to impress my parents’ high-and-mighty guests this evening.) Regarding tonight itself, she said nothing, but made it pointedly clear what was expected of me by hanging the most elaborate and ridiculous dress and shoes combination on my door, plainly with the purpose of stopping me from going anywhere – particularly not out of the house in rage or embarrassment – in a hurry.

Dressed in those clothes now, as I sit silently fuming at the long, polished dining table amongst the distinguished guests who were invited to the pre-celebration dinner, nodding and smiling only when is strictly required, I feel even more embarrassed. The white lace dress cuts in across my diaphragm, my solid Career muscles straining against the shape designed for a more feminine figure. Perched atop my head is a band made of similar fabric, and my feet are wrapped in vine-like stilettos – pewter. Shoes I can’t stand straight in sober, despite my years’ training in balance and grace, giving me no opportunity to forget my humiliation through alcohol. I want nothing more to get out of here, now.

I catch sight of my father, finally, emerging from a hallway at the back of the dining hall that connects onto a library or study or some other room I was never allowed him. No one else but me seems to notice the touch of cerise about his lips, or the way he hastily straightens his tie with sweaty palms. Or, if they do, they make no sign as they clap his back and usher him into the main part of the room, no more so than they mark the skinny twenty-something secretary who clandestinely slips out of the passage a few minutes after. Bile rises in my throat but I suppress it, knowing that it’s none of my concern where Archer Solstice busies his hands. I also know that my mother was quite the malevolent revenge-seeker in her youth, and when this inevitably comes to light, the consequences of his actions will serve him right. In a way, I blame my mother too, for marrying this bastard, and for becoming the bitch she is now just to please him, casting her own daughter aside. Is that really so wrong?

I seize the moment of diverted attention towards Archer, who I notice has wrapped his sinful hands around my mother’s in some feigned display of affection, to take my leave. Tottering forwards in my ridiculous shoes, I adjust the hem of the dress and head straight for the door into an adjoining retiring room. When I was twelve, I was spurned for daring to come in here without permission, but seven years later I have free reign of this place, ironically contradicting the hostility and exile that rebuked my rights to exploration just a year ago. The door shuts with a triumphant click, and I lean my head against the cool painted wood, tugging the bizarre headband from my hair and dropping it on the ground. “Fuck,” I moan, bending my knees slightly to relieve the strain on my feet and calves. It’s only then that I hear the rustling of cushions from the chair behind me.

My Career reflexes cause me to whip around instantly, my eyes locking quickly on the other figure in the room. One hand clutches the door handle in case I need to make a quick getaway into the midst of the party, the other clenches into a fist. Would that I had the handle of a weapon filling it. However, I soon realise that neither of these reactions were necessary, because the slender, muscular form of the woman before me is one I recognise. I’ve watched her in Capitol interviews, speculating on the hopes of District Two’s tributes. I’ve noticed her in the Training Centre – even training me and my peers at one point. I remember her smiling and waving from Julian Bryze’s Victory Tour float, held by many to be fully responsible for his success in such a difficult Quell. This woman is the ghost of what I could have become, had I made a different choice. But, of course, I suppress all these thoughts, memories and feelings, and instead grimace at her. “Valeria Caden? What an honour it is to see you again, after all this time.”