Seraphina Feldspar D2 {Fin}

Seraphina Feldspar
Fifteen
Female
District Two

“A good career needs charisma. Sex appeal. Allure,” the abnegation instructor slinked down the rows of desks like a cat, swaying her hips and taking sultry, measured steps. “The arena is a stage, and you need to decide if you’re going to dance, ride that pole, tell those jokes or exude raw animal magnetism.” She stopped right in front of Seraphina’s desk and paused, eyes sweeping over her look to judge her.

Seraphina looked down nervously at her hands. The polish on her nails was chipping again. Perhaps she ought to have spent more time on her hair too. She could feel Ms. Gillovich’s disapproval radiating outward. They’d just finished a module on tributes that had made alterations to their uniforms in order to look more desirable. Bur Sera was clueless around a needle and thread, let alone cutting clothes with a knife or whatever was at hand in the arena.

“If not, you’re going to be exiting stage left.”

The instructor picked a desk and random and sat down, crossing her legs and inspecting her nails in feigned boredom. “Now, someone tell me, what’s the one thing that every sponsor in the Capitol loves?” The room was silent, save for the scratching of pencils taking down her every word.

“No one?” Ms.Gillovich shook her head. It’s stories. Stories. People love a good story. So by the end of the year, you need to show me. What’s yours?”

***

Don’t cry, Don’t cry, don’t cry.

Seraphina picked herself up and tried to ignore the stinging red welt that she knew was rising across her stomach. It didn’t matter who she was paired with as a sparring partner. They were all leagues ahead of her. While she’d spent her childhood days playing the violin and having adventures with her pets, they’d been learning how to kill people. She was a stick, barely any muscle on her. Dainty hands. Delicate features. One of these days one of her classmates was going to snap her in half.

“A weapon is like a musical instrument; In the right hands, it sings. In the wrong hands, it is nothing more than an expensive paperweight.” The Dauntless instructor was moving between the pairs, straightening postures, correcting forms. Sera could feel tears pricking at the backs of her eyelids. She wasn’t built for this. She was garbage at swinging swords, let alone anything bigger. She wasn’t light on her feet and she wasn’t fast. The other day, running laps had almost killed her, left her covered in a sheen of sweat, nearly passed out on the floor, wondering if she was going to throw up.

“Again!” he thundered, and her opponent disarmed her before she could get her guard up, leaving a rapidly forming bruise on the pale skin of her forearm. Sera yelped and clutched the limb to her chest. Perhaps she should spend more time in the weight room. Barbells couldn’t add to her height, but maybe some extra muscle would make the strikes hurt less.

***

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”

Seraphina bit her lip. This was her least favorite of the classes at the academy. Half the time, she felt like she had no idea what the hell they were talking about. The other half of the time, the stuff she did understand made her feel like a terrible person. She was supposed to learn how to be alright with who she was. Acknowledge her strengths and work on her weaknesses. But she had difficulty talking to people. She wanted to ask people what their favorite color was (crimson and black for most of them, she assumed) or if they wanted to have a tea party. But she couldn’t. She had to pretend to be a real go-getter of a career. She had to fake it. Or try to at least. Her attempts at being intimidating usually boiled down to not responding to questions or barbs at all or with a pained, tense smile.

***

At least there was one class that didn’t send her into a panic by the end of every week.

“Today we will be reviewing the 81st games in greater detail. I expect a three to five-page essay on why Nico Thorne had more heart than most of his competitors and how it guided him. She liked Mr.Donahue. He said that violence wasn’t everything. You could wear a mask in the arena if you needed to, but you couldn’t become it. If you didn’t need a heart, their district might have had more victors over the last twenty years. She suspected that he didn’t much care for their victors or their inability to bring people home. The lower districts had them soundly beat in that area.

Sera turned away from the screen, not wanting to watch Nico stabbing his district partner in the face again. She couldn’t imagine killing someone. The last time she’d stepped on a beetle she’d been distraught for two days and buried the poor thing in a matchbox. And here she was at the academy, learning how to do terrible things to people. If she ever got reaped, she could only imagine herself dying in the bloodbath. Unless someone took pity on her. Even then, there was no way she’d ever be able to betray someone. She couldn’t even muster the courage to tell people not to cut her in the lunch line.

***

“The tributes that come from the lower districts may not be the most appealing nor the most skilled in combat.” The erudite class was more of a lecture hall than anything else. Or so it felt to her. “But they fight smart. Many of them spent their formative years working in the mines, ranches or fields. Without ready access to medicines and vaccines, many of them have learned home remedies passed down from generation to generation. They have real-world experience that students like the lot of you are sorely lacking in.”

The instructor paused and tapped at the board with her stick.

“This contributes to their survival, to their high placements and victors year after year.”

Seraphina was only half-listening as she wracked her brain trying to label all the leaves in front of her correctly. Was that one Poison Oak? Or Ivy? Wait, no, was it hemlock? Sera held her head in her hands. She could remember the names of every minor character in her favorite book, even Terrance Langford, and he was only mentioned once on page 237. She knew exactly how many sugar cubes her mother took with her tea. (It was five.) But she couldn’t commit to memory the things that counted. What did she remember?

She could remember Nile’s eyes getting more and more tired the older they got. She could still make him laugh, but it wasn’t like it used to be. He was always there to congratulate her on learning a new piece, or had a treat in hand for her puppy. She could remember her parents crowing about his achievement to every one of their friends while she poured too much sugar into her lemonade and snuck an extra cookie.

She could remember her parent’s being distraught when the Peacekeepers came to tell them that Nile had overdosed on morphling. She can remember her mother crying about the scandal it would cause if it came out to their circle of friends. She can remember her father bitterly saying that Nile had wasted the opportunities they had given him. She could remember hearing Nile tell his friends that he was under too much pressure.

As she looked at the leaf at the top left of her desk and decided it was nightshade, she wondered if this was how Nile had felt every day.

***

Sera knew from day one that she wasn’t at the Academy to make friends. She wanted some, but it didn’t seem to be in the cards.  She knew she wasn’t like the rest of them. She wasn’t smart. Or honest. She couldn’t fight. She didn’t know how to be something she’s not, someone that people would like. She had compassion in spades, but it wasn’t a useful skill when everyone around her was learning how to cut hearts out. At the very least, another day at the academy was over. Seraphina collapsed on her bed in exhaustion, and then, alone with her face buried in the pillow, she cried.