:| Counting Numbers |: {Minie}

As I stood in the doorway waiting for someone, I could hear the quick footsteps of someone running down the hallway. Well, at least someone’s excited to see me. I’m pretty sure no one else is at school—so where are they? Of course, we had those who were already in the workforce so they wouldn’t be coming home until later, but I had expected to at least see the youngest, Violet, sitting on the couch dutifully. As the baby of the family, she was basically given everything, but we never seemed to mind until the family got smaller and it was easier to give her more stern attention. But no, she wasn’t in the living room and I turned my head just when the footsteps sounded so close to me.

I was immediately met with Mist, Storm’s twin, with her arms around me and she gave me a scolding. I chuckled at her words as I wrapped my arms around her. Mist was always the spitfire of the two, the one I couldn’t control, and we had many fights when we were younger because I just didn’t know how to control her temper. She had broken down when Storm died, much like how Fawn fell into a deep hole of emptiness when Jabber died. They both loved the fallen tributes, but with Mist, she lost her other half. Even though Storm and Mist were night and day in terms of personality, they complemented each other and always stuck by each other no matter what. That was how the family—and most of District 9, really—saw them: Mist and Storm, Storm and Mist. And now it was just Mist.

It made me a little frustrated that Ma was now placing the pressure on my younger siblings; Mist wasn’t exactly dumb but she wasn’t a genius—and I say that in a bad way—nor did she care about her studies. If I hated the pressure from Ma, I could only imagine how much worse it was for my little sister. I gave her a small pat on the back, still chuckling, and said, “I guess you know how I felt for thirteen years.” We separated and I took a step back to look at her. “It’s only been a month or so since I last came by, but you’re already looking taller.” I placed my hand on her back and gently pushed her towards her room. “C’mon, Ma told me that you need help with your math homework. Let’s get that thing finished.”

I laughed uncomfortably when Mist said the words that had just been bouncing around in my head. “It’s alright, you just learn to tolerate it.” But then Mist continued by wishing Ma would be a victim of an accident and my posture hardened as I stared at my sister in the eyes, hoping she wasn’t serious. While I agreed that Ma could be a hardass most of the time, I never wanted Ma to suffer, especially after what happened to our family. I thought Mist, of all people, would understand that the most. At the same time though, I would have been a liar if that thought hadn’t passed my mind at some point in the thirteen years Ma had been breathing down the back of my neck. Still, I looked straight into her eyes. “Mist, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

Mist started smiling again, and I knew that she didn’t really want Ma to have an accident. It was just a moment of frustration—a moment I knew all too well. She mentioned her birthday and I gave her a big grin. The grin died a little as she spoke in the plural form. I knew what she meant by “we”—she remembered Storm just as well as I did. I in fact had not forgotten about her birthday, or their birthday for that matter, and I had visited Storm’s burial site but not Mist that day. “I remembered,” I whispered back, bringing her closer and kissing the top of her head. There was once a time when I had to lean forward to kiss the top of her head, but now she was getting older and taller and I barely had to lower my head to reach her. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to say happy birthday to you then. I had a lot of work that day and couldn’t take some time off.”

I laughed when Mist said she hated math. It wasn’t as if I liked math either, but since I could see numbers, math was easier for me. Maybe if the numbers weren’t haunting me, then I would have actually liked math, but the pressure of Ma and the constant presence of numbers made math doable but annoying. “I do know that. Alright, well, lead the way.” I nodded my head towards the hallway.

I knew Mist didn’t mean it when she wished an accident on Ma, but it wasn’t until she finally said the words that my body relaxed. I really did know how she was and I wasn’t surprised she got hotheaded at all—that was just who Mist was. A part of me was pleased to see that she hadn’t changed so much since we lost Storm, but I also didn’t know what she was thinking and it was hard for me to interpret her. I read numbers, understood what they stood for, but when it came to emotions, I was at a complete loss.

I followed her down the hallway to her room, the one she shared with my two sisters. Now that so many people had left the house—Mocking and Red had their own rooms based on my calculations—I wasn’t sure why there was still three girls in one room, but it also made sense. It was much harder to divide the rooms with an uneven number and different ratios of gender—not to mention that we all grew up in a specific room. It would have been difficult for me to move to a different room in the house, even though there were three big boys crammed into one room.

Mist had made some changes to the room, though, as I spotted the black sheets on her bed. We didn’t have many bed sheets in the house, so like most parts about the house, some certain items would “belong” to a certain person. We didn’t even have to bring it up; it was more or less an unspoken rule that we all grew up with. So I knew those sheets were not Mist’s, but rather they had been Storm’s. I remembered holding my little brother as I placed him in the middle of those dark sheets, reading him a bedtime story so I wouldn’t have to go back to my own room to work on my homework. Soon, he began to read for himself and he would read to me as I rested on the bed next to him and watched the numbers float above my head.

That had been years ago, years before Jabber had moved in, years before we realized what the Games would do to our family. Mist and Storm were just small numbers back then, curled up against me as I sometimes helped Ma tuck them into bed. Always, Storm first though, as Mist was always stubborn and refused to sleep before her twin closed his eyes and his chest moved slowly up and down. Now, she would never have to wait for him. I shook my head, trying to shake away all the numbers that reminded me of the past and sat down beside Mist.

“Alright, is this homework from Ma or from your teacher?” I didn’t think Ma would be so cruel to pile more homework on Mist, especially math homework, but I thought to ask to prepare myself for what I was about to see.