deja vu moments || raseri

Reaping Day had come and gone as it had every summer for six years. Lily and I had lain under the blankets on our bed, closing our eyes and talking each other to sleep the night before with words of everything except the day we had ahead of us, since we knew we’d never catch a wink with that on our minds. My name would be in that glass ball 21 times the next morning, and hers would be in there almost a dozen, so we knew the family had 31 chances to lose a daughter. We’d just hoped they weren’t very good chances.

I woke up right before the rooster did—or, at least, that’s when I stopped staring at the ceiling and got out of bed, since the sleep I’d gotten had been fitful—and decided to creep downstairs so I could help Mom get breakfast ready. The smell of bacon woke Lily up quick enough (we St. Clairs had always been light sleepers, and the Reaping made us even lighter), and soon she was trudging downstairs to take one of the four seats at the table. I filled up two plates and handed one to my sister, sitting in the chair beside her even though it had a wobbly leg. Lily and I, we fought sometimes, but any skirmishes we got into were always forgotten around Reaping Day. ”It doesn’t do to go to sleep mad at someone you love,” Mom always said. ”You never know if you’ll still have ‘em when you wake up.”

She’d drawn up a hot bath for the both of us after we’d cleaned our plates; Lily first, then me. I didn’t mind being second, because then I didn’t have to worry about hurrying up so my sister could get her turn in the tub. I could scrub until I saw the pinkness of clean skin underneath a layer of dirt and grime, and I could wash the grease and sweat out of my hair until it was light and silky-soft, the way I’d had it for the beauty pageant. And then, when I was finished, I could sink down into the warm water and soak until it turned cold, when my fingers and toes looked more like prunes than body parts. I picked out a light blue sundress to wear to the district square; it wasn’t anything fancy, but it was nice, and it was cool in the hot weather. Lily brushed my hair for me and pinned it up on my head, sliding some daisies in to pretty it up a little. I wish I could have done the same for her, but although I knew how to make myself look good, hair wasn’t my specialty, unless she wanted a ponytail. Mom braided Lily’s hair instead. We looked a lot alike with our hair pulled back out of our faces like that, almost like twins. But they put us in different age groups when we got to the Square.

My eyes joined the rest of the kids’ in looking up at the escort’s hand as it fished through the glass bowl, praying to whoever could hear that it wouldn’t be someone we knew. I wiped my sweaty palms on my dress. ”Bae Fescue!” was the first name. Even though I knew this girl—this stranger—probably wouldn’t last more than a day or two in the arena, the relief I felt was too powerful to let in any remorse for her. Lily and I were safe, and we could all sleep easily for another year. So far so good, I had thought as a little boy in the audience broke down crying, even though I knew it wasn’t good at all. At least it wasn’t a familiar face I saw climbing the steps to the stage.

”Motel Hunt!” was quite a different story. After all, how could I forget him? The boy from the pageant, who’d walked in and slapped Tallow Tansy right across the behind after telling the judges he liked our district because he liked cows. I’d heard he’d kissed Mr. Poers for his talent, although I’d been too busy hiding in the dressing room by then to have seen it. Motel had a smile on his face as he made his way to the stage, but I had to wonder; How long would it stay there?

I woke up a few mornings later before the rest of the house had stirred, when everything was quiet except for a few birds. I went to the stable first, to saddle up Shadow. When I reached his stall, the white stallion nuzzled my shoulder with his soft, pink nose, and I stroked his neck fondly. He was a good horse, my favorite out of all the ones we’d raised, and he took the bit without a fight. After leading him out of the stable, I put a foot in the stirrup and swung myself into the saddle, urging him into a trot and then a full-on run. Sometimes a good horseback ride was all you needed after a stressful day, and I loved the feeling of the wind in my hair as we flew through the pastures, the tall grass tickling at my ankles, the heartbeat rhythm of Shadow’s hooves against the dirt--dum ka-da dum ka-da dum ka-da dum.

”Woah,” I told Shadowfax, slowing him to a stop when I saw someone coming towards me—they must have had the same idea, riding early—before my horse’s coat began to lather. It was a boy about my age--fairly cute, I'll admit--and he looked familiar, although I couldn’t put my finger on where I’d seen him before. ”Hi,” he said with a smile. ”You live to the right of me on a farm, are you a St.Clair?” Drawing up a mental map of my neighborhood, I tried to think of the name of the family to my left—the Winstons, I thought. Yeah, that was it; they had lost a daughter a few years back in some kind of accident, Leila or something. The boy’s name escaped me, although I thought it started with a T. Toby, maybe? No, that wasn’t right.

”Yeah, I am,” I answered with a smile. ”And you’re a Winston. Thomas, right?” I asked, almost sure I had chosen the correct name.

thinking, doing, hearing, ”saying,” other

Lily and I had never socialized much with the neighbor kids before, and I can’t really think up a decent excuse for that. I could say that it was because the district’s idea of living “close” to someone was living only a few acres away, so you could still go a while without seeing anyone if you stayed on your farm. But really, I guess we’d just never thought about it much. When we were younger, the only play dates we really had were with each other—except for the few times Dad invited his buddies over for a drink, and we’d get to play with the kids they sometimes brought along—and we never minded. Nowadays we were usually too busy around the farm to worry about free time. I hardly ever saw any friends now, except in school. But I guess now that I was meeting one of the neighbors, that could change.

”No it’s Travis,” the neighbor boy corrects, causing me to almost slap myself in the face. That was pretty embarrassing, having lived next to the Winstons ever since I was born. I muttered a nearly incomprehensible “sorry,” and he asked me whether my name was Lily or Lyric. He’d been able to remember two correct names, and I’d only had one letter right. ”I’m Lyric. Lily’s my sister,” I answer, smiling over at him. ”It’s nice to meet you.” Maybe we’d be friends. It would be nice to have something more to look forward to, what with the Games having taken a turn for the worse from District 10’s standpoint, with Bae dead first and Motel not long after. It’s so strange, watching someone you know die like that. It had never happened to me before Motel got reaped, but this year I found my eyes clinging to the television, grasping blindly at any shred of hope for our male tribute’s life. And then the mutts came and tore him to pieces, and I’d wrenched my eyes away, unable to watch the light leave his eyes. And there had been so much light in them.

I’m known to be pretty tough; I’ve fallen off horses more times than I can count; I’ve had my feet stepped on by a number of cows; I’ve taken a few good whacks to the face from the wringer on mom’s old washing machine. None of that has really daunted me. And all my past experiences with watching the games have resulted in little more than the usual disappointment. But after watching that, I somehow feel a little less…sturdy. It’s like the reality of all of it has finally hit me: people that I know can actually die in the Hunger Games. Next time, it could be one of my friends, or one of my cousins, or my sister, or even me. And that thought was a little off-putting.

Pulling my thoughts back to the present, I looked over to Travis and decided to strike up a conversation. ”She’s pretty,” I observed with a smile and a nod towards the other horse, urging Shadow closer so I could reach my hand out to stroke the forehead of Travis’s mare. ”What’s her name?”

thinking, doing, hearing, ”saying,” other