71st Reaping [D10]

I'd always kept my diary stuffed under my bed in a large box with all the other things which were relatively sentimental to me. A book of flower pressing and a necklace made by my sister which she gave to me on our first reaping day. Every now and again, I'll wonder if I should stop my writings and dedicate my time to something more beneficial, like how to farm or breed cattle.

But there's nothing quite like jotting down what you feel to someone that is there (but isn't really).

It's like a window to my private thoughts. A window into all the good and all the bad and all the things I've been too scared to talk about to anyone who has ever walked the planet.

My diary did manage to make it to each important event with me. My first day of school and my last. Mine and Noelia's birthdays and being allowed to keep that scatterbrain cat which was living in our foundations for three months. A insignificant little book in the whole wide world managed to see the light and dark, the dreams and nightmares, the hurt and the heal.

I'd trace my fingers over the pattern on the front: a never ending loop of intricate lines. Noelia and I would follow it with our fingers for hours when we were little and naive. Exclamations of our innocent minds combined into one activity caused for a hurricane of arguments which weren't necessary but still slipped through our friendship to happen anyway.

Of course, this was documented in my book.

Leather bound with crusty old beige pages, white pages, nice pages, thin pages, thin handwriting, crushes written in code, silence, dog-eared pages, drawings, sketches, art, masterpieces, notes in margins and dates as a header, careless whispers between one page and another and relieved sighs archived as 'Reaping One' to 'Reaping Five'.

This diary is my everything.

Reading countless entries from my younger self makes me feel like my eyes have opened. My views have changed. Things aren't obscured by my mother feeding me lies to try and comfort me. At the time, my 12 year old self was guided by the reassurance that things would "get better" or "be okay".

Of course, they didn't and my little book tells the story of a girl who transitioned from a dream world to reality.

And I can remember the transformation. I was a caterpillar my whole life, living life in the dark, unaware of all the tremendous difficulties the world dealt. There was no light really, and I realised that. But just when I thought the world was over, I became a butterfly.

It made sense.

Infinite scribblings in my tatty old diary looped together and became clear. The pieces fell together and the picture was complete.

All those words written about different days and times and moments and lies and heartbreak were unscrambled by this enlightening, and I must've been blind because they were all documented beneath my name.

—

"Leticia Tibideaux!"

My fingers curl around Noelia's palm and I do nothing but squeeze. I don't want to look at her and I don't want her to look at me. I don't want anyone to look at me. I don't want to look at myself. In the seconds between peacefulness and a hurricane of emotions, I whisper to her.

"I love you,

and I will always love you until I die.

And if there's life after that,

I'll love you then, too."

Saying goodbye to my saving grace, my sister, my rise and fall makes my knots become loose with acceptance. I won't be away from her, not really. Because when a person is your tragedy, you have to wear them as armour.

I let go of her hand and place my hands behind my back, my thumb tapping against the leather cover of my diary to make sure it's still tucked into my skirt underneath my jersey. It's still there.

Good.

Involuntary movements made by something alien control my body. I feel like a puppet on strings as I walk out of the organised lines of children and teenagers to show the world the face behind the name. My eyelids flutter to blink away tears but a stray droplet slithers down my face.

I'm limp: my arms and legs feel weak. It's set in stone, there's no volunteers for me so I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this for real and I can't go back now even though I wish I could just pinch myself or something so everything would be like how it was when I was eleven because it was so easy—

—but I can't. I'm reaped.

I blink and appear on the stage. Time ticks slowly on as half the crowd stands in anticipation of the second name, the other half: relieved. My eyes flickers to Noelia, her head facing towards the ground. I don't want her to see me like this: a delicate puppet held in place by a single fraying string.

I can't look any more. And I won't.

The depth and clarity in my eyes becomes lost, they've frozen over like the surface of a puddle on a bitter day. My insides dampened by uncried tears and I can feel the battle going on to make sure the crowds don't see. It's not fear, worry or shock.

It's pain, and it's arrived like an unwelcome gift to my arms forced open.

Golden tickets of hope become lost in the ice and everything becomes cold. The world around me turning slowly becomes blue with each movement I make, and though my desperation to run from it all is high, I'm frozen like a statue into my place.

All I have are my eyes. To watch the seeds of relief be sown and to see the harvest of another skeleton twinned to mine. I can't accept the frost which washes over everything, and so I look to the only warmth found in the eternal numbing.

The sun: a star.

My eyes close and my mind runs with emotion. Harmonic symphonies playing as coins are thrown from a mountaintop to a fountain. I inhale to let the toxicity stain my lungs, but exhale childish dreams of wishing on a star.

But in this moment, I just need to know how many wishes one star can give.