We're Gonna Be Buried Alive [Double M]

When the bells rang out for my brother, I remember thinking about the panic—the overwhelming fear that he was going to die. I guess I had doubted he would ever come home from the very start. We had held hands on that long, narrow walk to the reaping, and he had accepted what the world had handed him so modestly, it was like he was being plucked to play the lead in the schoolhouse play. I’d spent days watching him on the screens, of his dark black and silver costume for the parade, and how even though he was smiling, I could see in the little lines of his face how afraid he’d been. Benat had been made whole by all the people around him. The minute that he stepped outside those district walls, he was splitting into pieces until, when Ivy’s mace had swung, he’d shattered. Even in those last minutes he couldn’t muster out something angry, or wail about how unfair life had been. He wanted us to be good to one another, because being good had meant being happy. We would shatter too if we didn’t all stand for one another.

Rum Tum had been that other half, the part of my brother that had never fit. He’d been outside the walls, in the shadows of districts and underneath broad blue skies. Where one brother had grown up in the arms of his brothers, Rum Tum had learned to navigate a world that was just empty space. And I think—how the two were so unflappable, that they both have been broken by the world. ‘Cause one of them had a chance that was taken from him, and the other sacrificed himself because—he knew—that I wouldn’t stand a chance outside the walls alone. They’re both gone, put out of a world that wasn’t made for either of them. Sometimes I guess that it must be for the best, for neither of them to have to live in a place that would’ve just ground them down to nothin’. It’s why I’m still here, why the girl holding my hand and following me along is still here. We haven’t earned the right to disappear yet.

We creep through the fields, pressing past dead stalks of corn and empty fields of dirt. The stars light the way above, and I press quietly over a stack of dead logs masquerading as the Hale’s old fence. Their son died long before I was aware of what the games were. Their farm shows the same weathering any broken home in the District does but—there’s an emptiness to the place, too. I swear I haven’t seen a Hale since before I’d turned reaping age. I wonder about all the families that have dealt with the loss in District Eleven, whether son or daughter. There must be hundreds of folk by now that don’t have one or the other, seeing how long it’s been since one of us has worn the crown. And it makes my blood boil again, thinkin’ about how much pain and suffering all of us must have felt. I look at the dark windows as we pass and think—there used to be a boy in there—because that’s all I ever think when I’m in our empty room, feeling how little the mattress is.

The fence of District Eleven runs higher than most, with thick concrete the closer you get to the train station. Out at the edge of the District, there’s still the concrete but it’s lower, and in some sections, splits to cross-stitched barbed wire. When Rum Tum left us, he’d gone out through the Hale farm because there had been, hidden at a rocky outcropping next to a set of old oak trees, a hole that dropped down into a tunnel. He’d gone because Deval had said I was too young to leave District Eleven, and we were too scared to go beyond the wall with him and the girl he’d brought. That wasn’t long before my name had been pulled from the bowl, and the whole world seemed to spin the opposite direction. It took me nearly the games before I’d built up the courage—or stupidity—to run off through the little tunnel and out the other side. I still remembered setting foot on the other side, when the bells were still calling out about Iago. I’d looked back along the wall, and then up at the stars. And I’d started running, pumping both my legs and arms, not stopping until the sun had started to come up.

My heart starts pounding through my ears as soon as I spot the little patch of rocks. There’s the old gnarled oak, and the lazy bit of moss scrambling across its trunk. I take another breath and spill white out into the night air. “It’s here,” I say, looking back at the girl and moving forward. I kneel next to the tree and begin to scoop away the rocks and dust that have come to cover up the manhole cover. I dig deeper into this dirt, pressing my numbed hands into the hard mud until I’m scrapping away. I feel the sweat trickle underneath my armpits, the heat growing despite the ferocious cold. I don’t stop until I can feel the metal against my fingernails. I let out a cough and wipe away the snot from my upper lip. I heave out another big breath and turn back to the girl.

“It’s here!” I say again, pounding a hand against the metal. I dig to find the handles, and start pulling back hard, trying to wrench the thing open. It’s heavier than I remember but, with three good pulls I move the thing off its base and over an inch. I turn back give another grin. “I told you, I’m not—” I move to push the metal over and expose the opening, “A liar…”

And there is the manhole I remember, casting deep and dark into the ground. Metal rungs start on the side, and go down into the darkness. I let out a sigh. “Told yah.”

HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0