kiara lowe. d10.

  

I'm sad, all the time, but I shouldn't be.

I don't know. Dad just sort of... stopped talking to Saffron after Clementa killed herself, as did I. When you're 12 you don't get to make your own decisions. You just do what your family does. When all the family you have left is one parent and a Victor you're more inclined to chose the safety of your father. We just had each-other and a graveyard and I had a koala named Cupcake who wasn't made for the climate of Ten but I tried, anyway, if only to put my energies into something other than hurting.

Teddy Ursa does the hurting for me so all I'm left with is a great big hole in my chest and my abdomen and my brain. I fill it with colour - there's not much to paint around here but the trees and the sunset, I think Myara liked the sun.

I don't remember. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I don't really remember my oldest sister, and I'm sorry that I'm forgetting about the twins, and I'm sorry that I never knew my Mom. Guilt is supposed to be an ugly thing but he's my friend. Not like Cupcake, more like the girls at school. They just wanted to be my friends because of my last name.

Fake friends aside, I just try to keep to myself. It's easier that way. Stay away from everyone, everything, that makes me interesting. Dad says I'm smart to do so. It didn't work for him and my sisters to stay away, Saffron just found us anyway, but I do remember Clementa screaming at her over Emberly's dead body to take herself and her dumb baby far far away.

She stayed away, so did I. It's easier this way. For the better.

I'm sad all the time and I've got zits on my forehead constantly. Dad cut me some bangs to try and hide them but it only made my forehead greasier, 6 months later they're not as red anymore but I'm still embarrassed by their presence. Like my last name. Every time I write it down I squirm and sweat and it just makes everything worse, I've learned to sign my name as Kiara L. - anonymous, still me.

I was never angry. Not like Mint, not even when she volunteered. I gave her that nickname, you know. Mint. Couldn't wrap my baby mouth around Clementa, or Menta, just Mint and Em and My. Saff. Paige. And then...

"Kiara," I introduce, all alone with my ghosts and my guilt.

"Just Kiara."

It hurts less. It's better this way.

I scratch that word into the back of my notebook, into the wall behind my bed, into the backs of my brown eyes.

Better.
Better.
BETTER.

I think I'm getting better but then I'm not. I still cry, all the time, but I've just learned to cry quietly. I grow in years but stopped sprouting at 14, forever short. Forever sad. Forever lonely, down here. It's better being alone, I'm better off being alone, I have to be, I have to be for Dad - I think he'd kill himself if I got reaped. It's better this way for both of us.

But my sisters are no better off. Or maybe they are, because they're dead, at least they're all together now. I like to think that, at least, when I look up at the stars and think of Emberly, and Myara, and Mint and Mom. I can feel them laying in the grass next to me, imprints of their bodies pressed into the flowers. I can't remember what they looked like, not exactly, the details are fuzzy - but I know that my sisters told me I looked just like Mom.

Dad looks just like Saffron.

A few days after my 12th birthday my Dad sent me off to die. Strawberry blonde - not red - hair tied up in braids and I had accepted my fate. Closed my eyes and pressed my clammy hands together, prayed to the universe to be kind to me in my final few days. I didn't have any hands left to hold so I held my own instead.

Someone else passed on in my place. Again, at 13, 14, now 15 and I'm still standing - maybe I did go into the 80th Games and came back with the rest of them. Maybe I died when my sisters did, reborn with each casket. My soul sure feels like it's near-dead sometimes. 

How'd I go from being in a family of six to a family of nine to a family of two? I don't know. The universe has it out for the women in my family. I don't know how Saff or Paige are going but I bet they're fucked up enough. I hear they have kids now. I kind of want to meet them. A little girl to run around with, a baby boy to cuddle. Childish impulses - but maybe I could be good for them. Maybe they could be good for me.

I keep forgetting to tell myself it's better this way, Dad's words ringing in my ears.

Better if they stay away.
Better if I stay away.

Guilt, he nestles with me. Cupcake the Koala, too. Someone left coloured pencils on my doorstep the night before my 15th birthday and I knew I shouldn't have taken them, but I did. Told Dad a girl at school gave them to me. But I know who they were from - at least, I've got a good idea. They're kept under my bed like a secret, taken out in the night under flashlight, and I draw flowers and sunsets and buildings, clouds and trains and strawberry-blonde hair.

I'm ashamed of what I want. I'm scared of what will happen if I get it. And I think that's why I'm so sad. I want my sisters back. I want my family back. I want to salvage my roots, replant them, grow a new family tree. But I can't, so I dig my heels in the dirt and weep quietly for what I've lost, and what I can never find.