St. Jude [Quest/Oliver]
Apr 20, 2020 22:08:01 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Apr 20, 2020 22:08:01 GMT -5
‘You know you’re leaving money on the table, right?’
My brother Ether reminded me when I was packing up my suitcase. He’d be in charge of the bar while I went on my business trip, which meant setting bets for the finale, and taking advantage of the folks that couldn’t help themselves. You know the types, the ones who’d already put their savings down on Eloise to win, who needed double or nothing just to prove a point. Most of them would go for the hometown hero, the little boy that had an edge about him, for the win.
‘I’ve got shit I need to do for school,’ I shot back. I tucked in a pair of jeans and smoothed out a cotton shirt to free it of wrinkles. Last year I guess I would’ve felt the need to be running shots, shooting shit with all the regulars at Second Chances and shaking my head at another finale playing out like clockwork.
There were no happy endings for district six, whether or not the boy came home. I wish I could’ve said I thought he’d be hoisted up above Teddy’s shoulders and let Parson and me fade further into the background, but that’d be a dirty lie.
The peacekeeper ball played the turning point. Not because I’d danced with one of the Le Rouxs and spent the night indulging in all the shit that capitolites got on the regular. It was seeing the rest of us, the ones that’d lived through hell and back, that got me to thinking too much. There’d been the long faces. The fact that Annie seemed like she’d had something stuck so far up her ass it would take the jaws of life to retrieve it. We were all growing up into something, except some of them looked like they were more weeds than roses.
Allard, my therapist, and mentor, had been the one to ask me why I felt guilty. And at the time, I didn’t think of it as guilt, just that it fucking sucked coming back to the bar in six, going back to life, acting as though the parade they’d put me through wasn’t just another piece of bullshit. It’s abuse, he’d reminded me, emotional abuse, to keep all of you from ever coming to terms with who you are.
We’d spent the better part of an afternoon in his little office up at the college talking me down from another wind-up rage fest. I couldn’t explain it, other than that sometimes it’ll set me off, all the things that people have done, and make me mad enough to blow my top at the littlest thing. And a week to the day of the peacekeeper ball, I’d told him how I felt like my skin was crawling off. That looking at Shy, or Fiona I wanted to smash something, seeing them making their way but stuck. Or that I could lie awake at night and think about how good things were, but that I was spinning my wheels in this shithole of a district.
‘I want something bigger but they’re never going to let me,’ I’d said in between cigarettes, hands crossed across my chest. ‘The world’s so fucked up, and they’re all fucked, but no one’s going to tell them that. And they won’t listen, no one, about how bad all of this is. To their minds! The anxiety, the trauma. It’s…’ I had shaken my head. I couldn’t even finish I was seeing so much red.
We found my dissertation – The Long Term Effects of Trauma on Individuals Facing Involuntary Violence – the same day.
It was the first time in a long time, aside from the day I’d opened the bar with Ether, as though I had something I could throw my whole self into, you know? And I did all of that nerd shit because yes, she’s trying to get her education, pulling books out of the college library and writing and rewriting until Allard said what I had to say was passable. I swear, he’s the only one that doesn’t seem to care when I storm out and tell him I’m giving up, aside from my brother.
It’s what brings me to district eight.
Now, I could have seen myself settling down here. The buildings are squeezed together like in six, and it’s just about as dirty, and gray, too. But there’s a little bit of charm that seems missing at the edges of six, like the grime hasn’t worn away all the pieces that used to give it a name (did the district ever have a name?). There’s a weird vibe from people around here, too. Like they’re friendlier? They don’t even tell me to get out of the way when I stand in the middle of sidewalk, but say excuse me?
It’s pretty fucking weird.
I wandered a ways with a map, trying to make heads or tails of where I was going. First, because I got there mid-afternoon and the streets seemed mostly empty. Assuming they were all at work, or that I had wandered into the rough part of town (spoiler: it all was the rough part of town.). It took a few left turns and complaining about all the spaghetti roads not making any fucking sense before I finally came upon a run-down little shack at the edge of a cul-de-sac.
Now I’d sent a letter to announce that I was coming for a simple interview, to help with a project I was working on. I hadn’t expected an invitation to come back considering I’d tried to kill one of his friends before he died, but I suppose four years was close enough to get over grudges. For some people. And Fiona had probably put in a good word.
So I marched right up to the front door, and gave a heavy knock.
“Oliver?” I grunted, awaiting coming face to face with the first of what I hope would be many chances for closure.
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