blair noland : d8 : fin

My mother is not well. From what I remember, she's always been ill, but it's growing worse as the days go on. She lies bedridden in a room in the back of our house. She cannot leave. My father comes and goes, but I am only allowed in to administer medicine and bring her food. This morning, as I brought her tea, she reached for my face instead of the cup. "If you live like a candle, you will eventually burn out, and there will be nothing left of you," she whispered.

I didn't reply. I never understand anything she tells me.

My father stays home. I go to work, in a big factory with suffocating air. We make all sorts of clothes there. I sit at a table with other children my age, children who should be in school. Instead, we are stitching together garments until our fingers bleed. The girl next to me used to have a mountain of gold upon her head until she was nearly scalped by machinery. The boy across from her is missing two fingers. I saw him lose both. And the boy seated in front of me, Elliot, never seems to get any work done, because I only ever see him staring at me.

"You're beautiful, Blair, you know that?" He remarks, his head resting on his hand.

I look up from my half-finished pleated skirt, just for a second, before looking back down. "Really?" I answer. "It's not like you tell me that almost every day."

One of the factory higher-ups strolls by, tapping Elliot on the shoulder. Elliot dives back into the dress he should have finished twenty minutes ago. He watches out of the corner of his eye for the man to leave. "Well, I only tell you so often because you seem to forget," he says.

I guess it's sweet that he always compliments me, but I have more important things to worry about than how pretty I am. I wouldn't even consider myself pretty in the first place. I am nothing but a spindly boy. My skin is like pure white paper that somebody tried to paint red before giving up. The dry patches of skin spread across my face, down my neck, and over my limbs. How pretty. My hair, curled and blonde, is constantly falling in front of my eyes- Tired, tired eyes, proudly displaying their purple bags for all to see.

Long sleeves are impractical for factory work. One wrong move and you're dragged by your shirt into the path of the needle. I wear them anyway, rolling them up just out of reach of the machine. The sleeves cover that unsightly red skin, along with my sorry excuses for arms. I am not strong. It makes my father worry. He tells me he's concerned I'll eventually succumb to the same illness my mother has. We don't know what exactly is wrong with her, so I think he needs to calm down a little.

I get out of the factory just as the sun is setting. It bathes the buildings in an orange glow, like everything is on fire. I hear Elliot run up behind me while the rest of the kids go their respective ways. He grabs the sleeve of my fraying sweater. "Come hang out with me," he says, a crooked smile forming.

I shrug my shoulder to make him let go. He isn't a bad guy, not even close, but he and I are very different. While Elliot never puts any effort into his work, I throw myself into mine. I have to. If I slack, for even one minute, my family loses money. That's money we need to take care of my mother. It seems unfair, for so much responsibility to be shouldered onto me. I know my father is perfectly capable of working, but he doesn't want anybody but himself to take care of my mother. Sometimes I resent him for it.

Elliot is still smiling at me. It twists something in my chest. My shoulders sag in defeat as I breathe out a "Fine."

He takes my hand. His fingers curl around my palm more gentle than I was expecting. He leads me around to the back of the building, where a rusted ladder awaits. I'm guessing that it leads straight to the roof. "You're prettier than me, so I guess you can go first," he grins, motioning to it.

"I don't see the correlation," I reply, grabbing a rung and hoisting myself up.

We sit on the roof, a bit closer to each other than we're usually arranged. He stretches his arms to the sky and starts a conversation at the same time. Our conversations are very one-sided. He likes to talk, and I don't necessarily like to listen, but I do.

I've never seriously considered how I feel about Elliot. I think it happened completely out of my control. It scares me. My entire life seems to be on a track of its own, with no regard to what I want to do. I'm terrified of what could happen in the future. I don't know when my mother will die, or if I'll end up reaped for the Games, or if my father will be driven mad by his anxiety. Nothing is certain. The fear holds me back. Or, perhaps, I hold myself back while using the fear as an excuse.

There's always a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that I don't deserve anything good. That I'm only meant to make money to pay for my mother's medicine. I don't have any hobbies. I'm not sure if I have anybody to consider a real friend. Is it selfish to wish that your purpose in life was for yourself, and not for others? Most of the time, it feels like I'm not my own person. I'm only a vessel to further others. I think I hate that.

"You okay?" Elliot asks, jolting me out of my thoughts. I didn't notice that my gaze had drifted to the tile of the roof near my feet. I nod my head. He nods back before starting to recap what he had been telling me.

Somebody has placed a bomb in my heart. I feel it ticking, every time he speaks. Every move he makes, every twitch of his hands or shift of his eyes, I watch. When he lays back onto the cold roof, I follow, our bodies inches from each other. The moon rises well into the sky, but he's still talking, and sometimes I talk, but it's mostly him. When we're working, I scold him for running his mouth, but here, on the rooftop of our factory prison, I find myself wanting nothing but to listen to his voice.

Elliot finishes his latest story with a joke and a dramatic flourish of his hand. I smile, feeling the warmth from my face all the way down to my toes. His eyes widen. "Have I ever seen you smile?" He asks. "Because it's incredible."

"Ah, well, I don't think so. I don't think I smile a lot."

"Do you never have fun?"

"All I do is work, really," I mutter.

"You're going to work yourself to death," he says. "Why?"

It all comes back to my mother.

My father told me my mother had been sickly her entire life. Not seriously ill, like she is now, but still sick enough. She wasn't supposed to be able to have children, either. Well, here I am. The miracle baby. My father told me later that my birth only made her sicker. Not really a nice thing to tell a child, but he wasn't lying. It was too much strain on her body. She became bedridden soon after she had me. At first, I was allowed in with her. She was actually normal for a few good years. She would prop me on her lap so she could read me stories, or let me scribble drawings for her in crayon.

Since my mom was well enough to watch me, my father was the one who went to work. It was fine, for a while, until I grew older, and she grew sicker. He didn't really notice her health deteriorating. One day, when I was six, she fell into an intense fever. I didn't understand what was happening. She was so ill that she couldn't speak proper words. I thought, let me be a good child, and let me find somebody to help. I ran outside, slipped on some ice, hit my head, and nearly died.

My mother doesn't know that happened. I guess only one of us gets to harbor intense guilt for the rest of our lives.

I had to stay right next to my father at his job while I recovered from my concussion. I knew he wasn't happy with me. He got a nurse for my mother so she wouldn't be alone. That was the setup for the next few years. I attended school, my father worked, and my mother was home. By the time I was ten, the nurse became too expensive. My father decided to quit his job so he could stay home with my mother, instead of working more hours to pay the higher prices. We still needed money, though, so he pulled me from school to work.

It started small. You obviously wouldn't throw a ten year old into grueling factory work. I ran errands for neighbors, I helped out in stores, all that. At twelve, my father got me a job at the same factory I work at now. Old enough for the Games, old enough to work a dangerous machine. I didn't want any of it. I wanted to go to school like most of the other kids. I realize now that my father was a desperate man, to send his only child to work in his place. It doesn't mean that I forgive him. I don't. But I understand, I suppose.

This will all be for nothing someday. My mother will die, and I'll have wasted my childhood working for medicine that didn't fix her.

Elliot is still waiting.

"My mother is very sick," is all I tell him.

"I'm sorry," he replies.

We turn our eyes away from each other for the first time in hours. There are no stars visible through the thick smog, so we gaze up at where they should be. He asks me my favorite color. I tell him blue. His is blue, too. I ask him what he would want to do with his life, if he could do anything. He berates me with a laugh for asking a much deeper question than he did. A moment passes, where I assume that he's thinking, before he answers that he would have a family. I nod. I don't tell him mine, because I don't know it. Another moment passes.

He asks if he can kiss me. The bomb in my chest explodes, sending shrapnel straight into my heart. I tell him yes. He pushes himself up, leans over me, and presses his lips to mine.

I can't see the stars, but in this moment, I swear I can feel them shining within me.