ekaterina "kat" ivanov | d5 | done

kat

The picture appears before me. After hours of scribbling furiously, the shades of orange dancing against the purple take shape into the malicious cloud of dust. Wisteria, the T.V. presenter had called it. His shock was ecstatic like he had just seen a dog do an exciting trick. The canon sounded, and I retreated to my room. The sketchbook was almost filled and I know I won't get another one for a long, long time. My colored pencils were reduced to knobs at this point- they had done their job depicting all the scenes from the past week.

In the justice building, he had told me he was going to get me new ones when he got back. Liar.

Dad tried to come and talk to me, but I put my rickety desk chair under the door handle and told him to go away. He probably expected me to be in tears, but I didn't cry. They both thought I was delicate, something to be looked after. I had cried years ago when he had been taken to the detention center, but I wouldn't do so now. I refused to let him haunt me from the grave, and I refused to let Dad see my pain. I think he'll feel better if he thinks I can handle it on my own.

Downstairs, I can hear Dad talking to someone in hushed tones. It was probably Benji come to pay respects.

I can't hear what they're saying, but it doesn't matter. I feel too hollow to spy on them. Instead, I pull the fraying blue blanket off of my bed and sit on the floor, wrapping it around my shoulders and staring up at my wall. I've had the blanket since I was born. Dad told me that it was mom's and that whenever I had it covering me, I would know that she's still there for me. I never knew her, though, and all I feel is the rough knitted material. No, there's no spirit watching over me.

Among the pictures of oil rigs and the dam and smoke clouding a sunset pinned torn from my book and pinned to the wall, he stares down at me.

^{Or really, he doesn't stare. All of the faces in my sketches are blank. I could never get faces quite right, they always end up with soulless eyes that I couldn't bare looking at.}

But I know it's him. I see him facing down a monstrous spider and a swarm of dragonflies; I see him dropping a heart to the ground and getting stabbed in the stomach; and now I see him, palm open in defiance against his would-be murderer.

The announcer had called it suicide, but I knew what it was. Refusal. We both had a shared stubbornness like that. He wouldn't let someone else have the final say over his life. I loved him for that, and I refuse to let myself cry over his body when the Capitol delivers it in a casket.

He had been like that his whole life. His refusal to let Dad care for him, his persistence in illicit dealings until the keepers caught him, his stubborn anger at those who wronged him. Even when Dad rubbed his head in pain trying to think about how to reach him, I always wanted to be like my brother.

People always told us how alike we were. Being compared to him wasn't something that angered me, like I knew it did for other siblings. We had the same piercing blue eyes and the same hair inherited from our mother, and the same tenacity for trouble.

We both hated school. Whenever I walked into classes on the first day of school, my teachers would always shake their heads and bemoan that "another one" was in their room. They would always grow to like me, though. I was never the outward troublemaker like he was. My pieces of rebellion against school were always more subtle.

He would be rude to teachers and find ways to anger the law, but I wasn't like that. I would always give my authorities a simple smile, and they would rarely identify me as a culprit. Once, in my history class, I didn't like how my teacher was talking about dead people, so I put marbles under two of his chair legs. When he fell to the ground, he had no clue it was me. I told my brother later that day, and he had laughed and told me not to do that again.

But I knew he was proud of me, so I didn't stop.

That night, the one after he died, I didn't sleep. I know we were supposed to watch the T.V. and answer the Capitolite interviewers who came knocking at our door, but I let Dad handle them. I just sat and stared at the pictures just like how he had sat and stared and storming skies in the arena when he couldn't sleep.

The next day, I skipped classes. It was understandable, and I don't think any of my teachers marked me absent out of pity. My friends came and checked on me with their parents who brought small gifts of cookies or bread from their reserves. I responded to them with short sentences; I was happy that they cared enough to come, but angry that they wouldn't leave until I reassured them that I am fine. I'm not, but I won't burden them with that.

My problems are my own to bear. I've grown up protected by my brother and my father, but despite how Niko and Dad might act, I'm not delicate.