Fragments. II. [Yani / 93rd]

What could you tell them about your best friend?

“She’s stronger than she gives herself credit for.”

You’re the dream of any confectionary capitolite looking for ratings boost from a lower district interview: your unruly curls have been pressed bone straight with a hot comb so that they sit your shoulder; you in your mother’s rouge red lipstick for the first time; you a vision in a green taffeta sweetheart swing dress freshly pressed (reminding you of your quince).

When they’d said you’d be interviewed, there hadn’t been a question of if but when.

Not because you wanted to – the ring light is too bright in your eyes and there are too many people you don’t know loitering in your father’s office. A man holds a boom overhead and out of frame. He had asked you where he could get something authentic but not spicy before they’d all gotten started. Another watches the interview from a double chair behind a set of screens, still another at a computer, all chrome and new and far beyond the green and black screen that sat on your father’s desk.

A pair of men in white armor stand just in the hall outside the doorway.

They’d taken all his things out of the office and replaced them with velvet chairs and marble table decked with metal bowls and a vase dotted with chrysanthemums and peonies. Behind you is a collection of photos of boys and girls you didn’t recognize – perhaps famous elevens from long ago?

You hadn’t long before they’d whisked you from the door to the chair. It was as though you’d never been here before, in spite of the many days you’d spent hours doing homework alongside your father at the mayor’s desk.

On the opposite wall stationed behind the cameras and out of shot were the faces of every family member you’d ever lost in the games.

You try not to stare at Salome or Sarina who seem ready to cry out from their picture frames. Or Gabriel, whose face only brings guilt. You settle on Beñat, whose smile reminds you of your father’s.

‘You all were close?’

At twelve, Haizea Izar had come crashing into your life – or rather, you’d fallen like a star into hers.

All the calamity and heat of two young kids that knew nothing and perhaps everything of what it meant to be alive: summers were soda pop and star watching; winters spent keeping warm in the kitchen teaching all you’d learn from your grandmother about spice, salt, heat, and acid; spring for gardening and whispering about boys who looked a little too long; and the fall leaf piles and cinnamon apple cider around bonfires on the old hill.

“I spent every second I could with her since the second we met. She was selfless. Haze did the right thing, even when it might not have been the best thing.” You have so little time to wrap her up in such a neat little bow, but you’d manage. “I taught her where we came from and she taught me there’s so much I don’t know still.”

They hadn’t been wrong to choose you, had they?

The daughter of district eleven’s infamous Mayor Vasco Izar. Youngest child who’d lost a sister and countless cousins to the games. Still young enough herself to be reaped – or volunteer.

A girl who never said she could not because like her father, she would do best for the district, and her family, above all else.

In the face of defeat by the capitol, she, like all Izars before her, would meet the world with a dogged determination, unyielding hope, and a smile.

‘Tell us something you think we should know about Haze.’

In the little bag at your side sits a rosary that Marisol gave you when you were eight.

She’d never pushed you to believe in God, much less something organized to live your life rigid as to what was good, or right.

But she taught you stories of people who could struggle through adversity and still retain every bit of who they’d been. That we could be more than our suffering. That pain and grief were part of life but could consume us if we had nothing else to live for.

And above all that to courage was not stories of one person who rose above others, who faced down a dragon or army and did the miraculous.

Courage to you was showing up each day as you had before and attempting the impossible – of hoping for the best, and doing your best – to try to make the world a little better than you found it.

“She thought she never knew who she was. That maybe she was still learning all of that before she left.” Your voice is crisp enough that the man with the mic gives a thumbs up. “But I think that’s just how we’re made to feel. That none of us are good enough, or strong enough.”

Your words border treasonous and out of bounds. And yet a smirk cracks the corner of the camera man’s lips.

“Haze hasn’t gotten this far because of luck. She always knew who she was,” You lick your lips, throat dry, “She kept her heart open. It’s what I loved most about her. And people forget how strong that makes you, to know how to see the good in other people.”

She’d seen the good in you. She’d had to have for all the hours you’d dragged her around the district. Practically a shadow at her back, the two of you had found a stride that sang like a song; iced cream and gossip, tears over things easily forgotten, arguments over the silly and serious, you found a heart that hadn’t been meant to be missed.

“She was my best friend.” A pair of hands to hold on a Saturday afternoon when you’d been feeling lower than low; someone to laugh over dance lessons for your quinceañera; a shoulder that carried enough weight when you could scarcely hold any; somehow as definitive as the statement had been, would never do it justice.

‘And if - well - can you tell us what you’ll do, what you recommend – if she doesn’t come back to you?’

Your sister would’ve knocked the microphone out of their hand. Probably would’ve walked out of the interview. Your brother would’ve reminded them that exploiting your trauma let them into something they didn’t deserve. But you?

You stiffen your back and place your hands into your lap.

“They always come back.” You find the words, despite the heat on your cheeks or the lump at the back of your throat, as though you hadn't thought about the casket you might see, “Not always how you imagine. But you find them again. And yourself, too.”

‘And if you could tell Haze something right now, what would you tell her?’

You’d scared yourself the day she’d been reaped, tossed aside by peacekeepers for your little rebellion.

You were only in this chair because your father had pardoned what you’d done.

Just a privileged little girl who sat pretty for an interview that wanted nothing but blood and grief.

You’d pounded on the door and screamed like a child when they’d locked you in this same room that day, forbidden to see Haze until she’d long left for the capitol.

It was a wonder what concealer did for a black eye, wasn’t it?

“Te quiero,” You start, and you don’t hear your words then, the microphone cut, picking up only the English that followed, “Come home to us. Please. I don't know what I'll do if you don't.”

elegant