moral of the story / august

This library must be worth a million bucks, rough guess. Just the ornamental carvings on the bookshelves with the gold inlays would have been enough to make my dad stop and stare for hours just to try and figure out how it was done. It makes me wonder who made all of this–did the Capitol hire some kind of master carpenter, or was this some kind of twisted slave labor, the way the justice building back home was rumored to have been built?

But Mackenzie advised Laurel and me to keep our thoughts about the Capitol to ourselves. So I think all I can say here is: be they master or minion, they did a pretty nice job.

I would be lying to myself if I said I didn’t come here to hide in the peace and quiet and abundance of this place after yesterday’s overwhelming agenda of being torn from my family, getting seriously straight-talked by Mackenzie, and riding a train for the first time (which was on my bucket list, I’ll admit, but gave me motion sickness). A bossy little angel on my shoulder with Tallulah’s voice is telling me that I should be in the training room learning how to fight.

Maybe she’s right. But also, sitting here reading a book of fairy tales for two hours has not been a total loss. If anything it’s only prepared me even more for the fucked up shit that’s about to happen to me. I thought they would all end with “Happily Ever After,” but maybe my parents had been feeding me the kiddie version. Because these ones are full of unresolved betrayal and untimely death. Some of them are kind of disgusting, but I keep reading them with a can’t-look-away sort of mindset.

”What’s that you’re reading?”

I nearly leap out of my skin; one of the girls from Four has managed to sneak up on me without making so much as a sound. The floorboards here must be new, because they don’t squeak the way wooden floors should. Her platinum blonde hair gives her an almost ethereal look; I might have guessed she appeared right out of this fairy tale if I hadn’t already recognized her from the Reaping recordings.

She goes on. "you know, i think they overlooked the dewey decimal system when they were organizing this place."

The Dewey… what?

She sounds so smart. And she snuck up on me. I make a mental note that this girl definitely has what it takes to kill me. Hopefully she hasn’t realized that yet.

Straightening a little in my chair, I try to act unsurprised, placing my book on the fable, open and face-down. ”Just reading some fairy tales. It seems like this whole library is full of them. This one’s actually pretty messed up.” I feel the sudden urge to explain the whole plot, and can’t stop myself. It’s like I’m trying to compensate for my unpreparedness by chatting up a storm.

”It starts out with this couple who make a wish to have a son. The mother dies, and later on the evil stepmother kills the boy and feeds him to the father in the form of a meat stew. Then the boy turns into a bird, and sings about it. Long story short, the whole village loves his song and everyone gives him gifts. The miller gives the bird a millstone, and he drops it over the stepmother’s head.”

Somehow, summing it up out loud in this way causes the moral of the story to dawn on me so suddenly that it almost gives me goosebumps. Or maybe not the moral. A theme? I should have paid more attention in literature class.

”I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, I was always told revenge is bad. Turn the other cheek and all that. So… why is it so satisfying when the evil stepmother gets killed by blunt force trauma? Are we supposed to feel good about her getting what was coming to her? I don’t know. Anyway. Sorry for rambling. You’re Florentine, right?” I meet her eyes, trying to guess whether I’ve just bored her out of her mind or not.

”I think stories are all about angles, August,” Florentine says. Clearly she has paid more attention to names than I have. ”It just depends on the perspective. Everyone’s the hero, in their head.”

Her easy tone in saying this makes me squirm in my chair, the wooden armrests creaking under my elbows. Is that what we’re all doing here? Each reaffirming our own belief that we are uniquely worthy of staying alive? And if so, does trying our best make us self-centered?

”I don’t know…” I think aloud, suddenly keen to argue, ”I don’t feel like much of a hero, do you? More like… a goalkeeper in an Exy game. Just fielding whatever shots come at me. Or–” I pause, revising, ”a janitor, even. Cleanup on aisle August. Shit happens, and I react.”

But aren’t they protagonists too, in their own way? The goalie and the janitor? Each with their own conviction that they must be the one who solves the problem at hand, be it shots taken or a mess made. Or, then again, maybe they are just doing what they’re told. Maybe we are too.

My head is starting to hurt.

”Do you believe that, what you said about revenge? Is it so bad, for people to get what they deserve?”

The question catches me off guard. I hesitate, wondering if that’s what she’s actually trying to do–make me nervous–although I can’t place why I feel that way. Maybe because nobody has made me think about this before. Or because she’s reminding me of school, where I only passed Literature by the skin of my neck. I feel strangely exposed, caught halfway between wanting to exit the conversation, and wanting her to sit down next to me, relieving me of the day’s quiet solitude.

In the end I think I’m flattered that she’s asking me questions like I’m worth the exchange. After just one day I’m already accustomed to the cursory, dismissive glances of the careers, like they take it for granted that I’m nobody worth worrying about. As strange as it is to think of this way, it’s a little bit of a confidence boost for someone to notice that I have thoughts and take up space.

God, that’s so fucking depressing.

"Good question,” I concede, buying myself even more time. ”I think it depends on what they did, and how much they meant it.” A smirk spreads across my mouth before I can stop myself from indulging the thought. ”And how much money they had, maybe.”

Wealthy people are a different kind of guilty. I’m even more convinced of this, being here in this library. People in the Capitol seem to have even more money than what we all thought growing up. Where was their charity during our years of drought?

”I think we can all agree about the evil stepmother though. Killing innocent children is wrong.” In the heavy pause that follows, I feel the irony catching in my throat. I pipe in with another question. ”Do you think people are ever evil like that on purpose? Or are they all just being… like you said, heroes of their own stories?”

I decide to lean in rather than run, even daring to pull out the chair next to me with the tiniest hope that she will take it.