We Go Out On Our Own - [Zoë]
Feb 9, 2014 2:58:14 GMT -5
Post by chelsey on Feb 9, 2014 2:58:14 GMT -5
E D G A R S Y C A M O R E
”Speaking of people who like you, I couldn’t help but notice your family members during the Reaping. Am I the only one who noticed?”
They say that our bodies are crafted from the dust of stars that have collapsed millennia ago. Somewhere in that black horizon that hangs above us, we all once drifted aimlessly. We were untouchable. We were eternal.
”They’re not my real family. I’m an orphan. None of us are actually related, we just live in the same house. The Sycamore house. And by the way, Sycamore is not my last name. I don’t have one.”
”I see. But surely they treat you like family, right?”
”Yeah.”
Maybe thousands of years from today, a star will be crafted from the dust of Laila's body. That's wishful thinking, though, isn't it?
There's a burning ache rooted in my chest that digs deeper with every breath I inhale. Pixelated from the television screen, Laila is glittering and shiny and - I swear - she looks like a star herself. Her gaze flickers into the camera, and she's looking at me for a fraction of a second before she's gone once more. It's almost like I was in the fire, again, chasing down flames that were too big for me to stamp out. Why do I always go out chasing fires when I have plenty of fire myself?
I remember the nights we shared after the flames took our home. We slept silently in Laila's room, but I could feel her bitterness drifting through the air as much as the ashes. She was so angry - so full of her own fire - at such a young age. How could I help her without lying? How could I say things would get better in the future when I have already experienced the future, and knew things would never change? I was afraid that if I touched her, we'd both just get burned in the end.
So, I let the flames consume her instead. What a cowardly thing to do.
Laila walks off the stage, stoic and stiff as ever, and something in me almost cracks as the next tribute replaces her.
Is that all she's ever gonna get? Three minutes on a polished stage and a three second tribute when her anthem lights up the Arena's sky?
I can still feel the words scratching at my throat. Only cowards fear death, but heroes fear the deaths of their loved ones. (Maybe that's what makes them so weak; maybe that's why all heroes end in tragedies.) But, I am neither a hero nor a coward, but it seems that when I stayed silent at the Reaping, I volunteered to be the latter, instead.
As the boy tribute begins to speak, I turn the TV off and stiffly walk outside, with the front door clattering noisily behind me. I want to scream loudly enough that it would crack the sky into fractured shards and fall upon all of us. Sometimes, it feels like even then, I would not be heard.
Instead, my hands reach for a bottle of booze that I've been keeping like a crutch inside the pocket of my coat. My hands are shaking so violently as they close fists around the bottle's neck that the liquor inside it sloshes back and forth, almost brimming to the edge of its container. When it touches my lips, the flames within me burn more than ever.
We were all fools to think that the fire from all those years ago was extinguished.
It's hard to imagine that maybe one day, the skin on my back will compose the interior of a star. But, if it does happen, I sure as hell hope it burns those Capitolite bastards to the ground.
