home is where the heart is {silent} // frumtum

“A-hey, hey, Frey-ye-ye-ya! You’re faster’n I remember you being. Why don’t you wait? C’mon… you… you’re making this hard on me!” I scowl and then take a deep breath, continuing to ignore the voice behind me. “You been practicing runnin’ while I’ve been gone?”

In fact, I have. With my increased endurance, I am now a dedicated member of Varsity Cross Country. I also rejoined the school band with my long-untouched alto saxophone. My mom enjoys passing on her organizational skills as a wedding planner and has me practice managing budgets. Sometimes I even intern at my dad’s work, shadowing him as he crafts vicious muttation after muttation. I learn the genetic engineering involved and watch his dangerous, vivid ideas come to life, all the while trying to rid myself of the sickening feeling in my stomach when I remember what one of these man-made creatures did to Rum Tum. In short, this is my life now. This is my busy, involved, well-organized life, and sure, it isn’t perfect. There are several things about living here that make me uncomfortable. But it’s better: better than being lonely, stranded, and starving in the middle of the woods.

I can sense Rum Tum getting closer, and his ignorant, childish behavior immediately irritates me. I turn around, determined to get him out of my head and out of my life, for there is no happy ending to our story. There never will be. Spotting Rum Tum directly behind me, I grab him by the arm and pull him out of the way of pedestrians before any more stupid comments escape his mouth. I lead him into the cramped alley between the two buildings beside us. Seems to be the only inch of privacy on this street. Then I stand there, across from him.

For a few moments, I glare at him, attempting to speak all of the thoughts circling my head through the mere expression on my face. But for once in a long time, words are lingering at the tip of my tongue. I don’t know how else to communicate my thoughts properly without slapping Rum Tum for his idiocy, which I don’t intend on doing. Which means I need to speak.

Letting go of Rum Tum’s arm, I open my mouth, trying to recall how to properly form coherent speech. I close my mouth, swallow, and when I open it again, sound escapes. “Grow up,” I hiss, my glare having lost none of its intensity. My heart is beating fast with exhilaration and disbelief. My voice is barely recognizable with its light Capitol accent. I spoke two words already; I suppose I can manage a few more.

“Rum Tum,” I say, not gently or longingly, but bitterly and reprovingly. I do my best to complete the sentence, but my lips are already tired of forming thoughts into words. Either that, or I’m afraid: afraid to say something I don’t mean. Because beneath my callous outer shell is a tired heart kept together with scotch tape and Elmer’s glue, too afraid of being broken again.

It’s broken enough that sometimes I get fragments of warm dreams in between the bitter, frightening nightmares every night: dreams of campfires and worn quilts and crickets and stars and Rum Tum -- always Rum Tum. In every dream, he smiles, and I smile, and sometimes we laugh and talk late into the night and sometimes I pull him closer, put my lips to his, rest my head against his chest, or find myself forever trapped in his embrace. My subconscious cries his name every night, willing me to let him in.

But I can’t. I can’t trust my instincts anymore. They have already failed me enough times, the first time being when I pulled Kormiko into my reckless destruction. I quickly swallow down the guilt associated with his memory. The second time I failed myself was when I left this place and all of the people who love me merely because my curiosity was uncontrollable and my loneliness unbearable. And look where that left Rum Tum. I guess in some ways it wasn’t a mistake though. I suppose it took falling in love, getting lost, and winding up heartbroken and suicidal to realize that this is where I belong. I’m least dangerous here. Other people make most of my choices for me, apart from what makeup I apply on my face or which shoes I put on my feet every morning, but I know it’s the right thing to hand others the control panel to my life. I obviously can’t trust my own judgment.

“We can’t…” I swallow, keeping my face as composed as I can manage. “I can’t...see you anymore.” Does Rum Tum understand? Does he understand what it’s like to love and think that it’s the best thing that ever happened to you...until you realize that it’s actually the most damaging, painful, detrimental thing in the world? Does he know what it's like to feel like the loneliest person on the Earth, not once but twice? How long was he out in the woods? How long was he lonely? How much had I hurt him?

I want to scream and shout at him for wandering off that day I went into District Three, for leaving me, for not listening when I specifically said stay. Though, I know that if I so much as bring it up, I will drown in my own tears again, just a weak soul desperate to crawl back into Rum Tum’s arms. To be strong and to be happy, I need to be distant. I need to put it all behind me. I need to forget. I’m sick and tired of hurting myself and hurting others in the process. The less distant you are, the more everyone gets hurt.

“Never,” I finish my previous statement firmly with a shake of my head and a steady gaze, my eyes restraining the tears that threaten to give way. I cannot and will not ever see Rum Tum Tugger again. Not in this life. We lead separate, opposite lives now. It's simple. So with that, I take a deep breath, force the feelings down, and allow my heels to lead me away.

“Freya… No!” I allow myself to tremble at the sound of his voice, but only I only do so when my face is out of his view, when he can’t see that beneath my definite words is a weak girl who hasn’t yet put her broken pieces back together. “You have to give me a chance…” He grabs my arm, and I flinch, turning around. His pleading eyes are so close, and yet it hurts to look in them. So instead, I do what my father does every time a tribute on screen dies at the hands of one of his muttations; I look away.

“We spent so long outside of this place Freya, don’t you remember that nobody gets to make you feel what you feel unless it’s what you want? The Freya I knew would find a way—she wouldn’t just cut and run when someone was giving a second chance,” he says, I shake my head, looking at the ground as I try to stop the tears from escaping. Rum Tum lets go of my arm, and I hate him for it. I hate that he’s so nice, so genuine, so easy to love. I hate that the touch of his hand on my arm brings a warmth through my body that reminds me of our nights curled up together against the cold.

“When someone reaches out and offers his hand, you’ve got to reach out and take it, with your whole heart,” he says, and I feel tears at the base of my throat. I’m hurting him, and I know it. But Rum Tum is the kind of person who always knows how to stand up when he falls. I’ve never seen him break before – at least not in the way that I have, a million fragments strewn across the ground for everyone else to take until it’s hard to distinguish what part of me is…well…me. My therapist told me I’m not broken, just ill and getting wildly better; but I don’t believe her, not one bit. Either way, if I walked away and never saw him again, Rum Tum would be okay. He would. I know he would. Somehow, I imagine he would find his way back to the woods.

And somewhere along the way, I’m sure he would find more people, more friends, and eventually a young woman who smiles and laughs and looks at the stars with him the way I never did. She’d be adventurous and courageous, and still not quite as talkative and irritating as I always was. And she wouldn’t cause Rum Tum to go blind, lose him at the edge of District Three, be a total embarrassment in front of his family, or let him get turned into a Capitol servant. I’m sure Rum Tum would show her to the carnival and they’d get married along the beach, and they’d have children, and their children’s children would still be roaming the world years after Rum Tum is gone. They’d have a whole community out there: an entire world to themselves.

Rum Tum deserves her, whoever she is. Not me: not the girl who breaks everything she touches and the girl who, for a year and a half, forgot how to speak. But here in the Capitol, I have been mending that which I have broken: my parent’s hearts, my friends’ memories, and my debts to Rum Tum. This is where I belong. This is my home. I won’t let my reckless actions get Rum Tum in any more trouble. Not if my life depends on it.

“I don’t want to say goodbye to you. And I’m not going to, even if it means they have to shock me until I can’t speak.” He can’t mean that. I find the courage to look into his eyes. I recall the time he wanted to see his family in District Eleven – how afraid I had been that he would leave me for them. And here I am, a hypocrite on the other end. But it’s different. It’s different, because there is no way I can have my woods life and my Capitol life. There is no way I can be happy, and make everyone else happy too, which is why I can’t let his words tempt me. No, I can’t love him.

“People don’t change,” he says. “Not from a girl who loved the great wide open, who laughed so loud I could hear her echoes from the canyon—she doesn’t just up and become one of these people. She’s still there, even if she’s buried way, way down.”

“One of these people?” I raise my eyebrows. The words sound poisonous as they escape his mouth. Irritation fills me, and I immediately become defensive. “These people are my family, my friends, and people who care about me, Rum Tum. Don’t you dare go talking about them like they’re anything less,” I say, glaring seriously at him. “You don’t know them! You don’t know me!" I realize just how close to Rum Tum I am now, and for a minute, I stop yelling and even breathing, for that matter, and look up into his pleading eyes. Even only inches away, I hate the distance that I've set between us. Isn't this the part in every movie where the girl and the boy both set aside their differences, stop yelling, and kiss without a care in the world? Well too bad my life isn't a movie.

I quickly step back, increasing the distance between us. "They’re the ones who helped me when they found me sick and starving and nearly dead in the middle of the woods," I continue. "And I owe them for that. I owe my heartbroken parents and my friends and everyone else who helped me stop hating myself for what I did to you.” But some of them were also the people who had put that shock collar on Rum Tum's neck. I pause to take a breath before continuing.

“And I still hate myself for it. Every day. I hate that my mutt attacked you and that you went blind because of me and that I left you there at the edge of District Three and I should have taken you in with me I should have and then I lost you and it was all my fault and I hate myself for not finding you and for being such a burden everywhere we went and making a bad impression on your brothers and yelling at you when I got overwhelmed and I hate seeing you here with this shock collar on your neck I don’t even want to think of what they did to do and I hated watching you fall to the floor as your master shocked you all because I distracted you from your work and I hate that I walked away and didn’t say anything and I hate that I don’t know what else to do but walk away and I'm sorry oh god I'm so sorry.”

I gasp, struggling for a breath, and only then do I realize that I have tears streaking down my face. There's a choked feeling in my throat as I wipe away the tears. I can’t even imagine what my mother is going to think when she sees mascara running down my face like this. Oh god, I almost forgot that she's waiting for me.

“And I don’t want to walk away,” I say, and then I stop to take another breath, ashamed of the tears and the words and the shame that won't stop. “But if I don’t walk away from you then I’m turning my back on my family and my friends and...and I hate myself for leaving my family. I can't do that again." I swallow down a couple of tears. "And if I don’t walk away from you, you’ll end up like Kormiko and it will be all my fault,” I say, and I realize that I never told Rum Tum the full story of Kormiko Lazarov. “And I don’t know if I could live with myself if that happened: if they killed you or cut out your tongue or hurt you any more.”

“You don’t belong here in the Capitol. You need to get out." I look down at the ground and then back up at Rum Tum. "And I need to stay," I say, because it's true. For a while, I was getting better; I was able to look in the mirror and see a confident Freya Hanig. But every time I look at Rum Tum, I am reminded of the monster hiding beneath my make-up. There are things about the Capitol that I like, love even. And yet there are things that make me feel more empty than ever. But I can't turn my back on the people who are helping me.

"And we need to forget," I say, because until I forget, I can't be happy.

Maybe once I'm happy, I will let myself remember again.

But Rum Tum always made me feel happy.

I open my mouth again, but after a year and a half without use, it is tired of speaking. So instead, I take a step back and will myself to take my eyes off of Rum Tum and leave.

But taking a single step feels like the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

“You have an awful lot to say about what I’m allowed to do.” The moment his eyes meet mine, I look down at the ground, refusing to submit his gaze. “My whole life I’ve gone from one place to the next and I’ve never fit the mold. I was never born for the districts but I wasn’t meant for the outside by myself, either.” I look back up at his face, his closed eyes. “Well I can’t take it, Freya. I can’t… I can’t keep putting out my neck and keep running into walls. I can’t sing and dance and be all magic because I’m not, I’m not magic, I’m just me—Rum Tum. I’m still the boy that saw more of the world with you than anyone here ever will. I hope you don’t forget that, at least.”

“I haven’t ever belonged anywhere that I fell into. Not District Eleven, not here, not even the wild. Except I didn’t feel like I was alone when I was with you,” He says. A sob escapes my throat, and I bring my arm up to wipe away the tears along my soaked face. Hadn’t I felt the same?

I had never fit into the Capitol; that’s why I left it. District Eleven wasn’t inviting either. But I wasn’t lonely when I was with Rum Tum; was I? I don’t belong anywhere. Rum Tum doesn’t belong anywhere. You would think that that would mean we belong together. He made me feel happy and whole and brought out the Freya in me that liked to smile at sunrises and run through the rain without thinking about the fact that the clouds were crying the tears that I was postponing. But even through it all, I still hated the stars and the evil, false hope they shed upon the world. I didn’t want to be vulnerable enough to send my wishes up there, to put my faith in some sparkly thing that invaded the simple black sky.

I still don’t like the stars, not when every ounce of faith I put in the world is just thrown back at my face. And I still hate the snow, then and now. When Rum Tum looked at it as if it were the most beautiful thing, I could only think about how cold I was – how cold I always was. But Rum Tum is warm: warm enough that a little bit of snow could never dim the flame that flickered so brightly in his curious, kind, determined eyes.

But I am different. I am weak enough to let the cold sway me; I am not as protective of the warmth inside me because underneath it all, even the warmest, happiest moments were always etched with the shadow of this cold monster within. Even as we sat atop the rollercoaster, as we found safety inside the lighthouse, as we smiled at the faces in the mountain, there was still that lingering feeling of despair.

“Look—you don’t get to decide whether or not I want to be here because that’s not fair. You’re a lot of things but you’re not the one that feels for me. You ought to know that by now.” He wipes a sleeve across his face, and I know I’m hurting him. Hurting Rum Tum is an inevitable part of my nature apparently. I wish he could see how much better off he could be without me in his life, in his head even. I am just a pool of tears and a skeleton of bones that are tired of holding themselves together. He’s right though; I can’t feel for him. Then again, I can’t feel for myself either, not with this overpowering sense of dismay standing in front of me, inhibiting me from stepping anywhere closer to Rum Tum, to anyone. Every time I try to fight it, move past it, and take control of my life, my every attack at this brooding figure is sent in the wrong direction, and I end up hurting someone else instead. I can’t keep fighting.

“And you don’t get to make choices for other people. All you can do is live your life, and hope that the people you love, that they love you enough to let you be happy. Well,” He stops for a breath, “You can forget about me, Freya, but I’m never going to forget about you. And I’ll tell you one thing more. You told me that we were family. You remember that? I don’t forget family.” He lowers his head and whispers the same word I had whispered just moments ago. “Never.”

Another ugly sob breaks from my lips at the sound of that single word, and I shamefully wipe away the tears. Underneath all of my many reasons for why I need to forget – my parents, the Capitol, our differences, my responsibilities – it all comes down to the reality that I am too broken to be loved, and too sick and tired of forcing everyone else to pick up the fragments for me. For once, all I want is to go back to the lighthouse, where I could stare at the walls for hours and days and weeks and months until I was too numb to think or feel or cry. I sat in a place between life and death when the hallucinations, the memories, and the nightmares stopped, and for a while, I forgot that I existed.

Forgetting is the most comfort that I know anymore, a slight weight off of my shoulders. If I forgot every moment – good and bad – I wouldn’t have the past weighing me down: only the present and the future. Would I be happy then? 33% closer?

No. I will never be happy, not with Rum Tum, not with Malcolm, not with anyone. Why? I’ve achieved what so many others have not: found someone who cares for me and loves me more than I can even love myself, and even then, I can’t be happy. Is anything enough? Will anything ever be enough? I hate that I can’t have enough. I hate it. I hate myself. My parents gave me everything, and I ran from it. Rum Tum gave me everything, and now I’m running from that too, and it’s not fair. Never fair.

No one has ever hurt me – not the way I hurt my parents, Kormiko, and Rum Tum – and yet I feel like pain is an undeniable and inevitable part of my existence, as if hurting is the only thing I know how to do. Why? I have everything that defines a perfect and beautiful life, so why doesn’t it feel perfect and beautiful? Why is it that I feel so lonely even when I’m so loved? Rum Tum is standing across from me, just having given me everything, told me that I’m everything to him, and yet I give him nothing and even have the nerve to tell him that he can’t mean anything to me. He can’t. He never told a lie, never raised his voice to a shout the way I did when I was overwhelmed by the thoughts in my head, and yet it took me three years to reveal to him the anguish that lies behind the joyful smile that he probably fell in love with. And that smile – that smile isn’t mine.

Rum Tum is an abundance of optimism, and I can’t take that from him, whether we’re family or not. Because all I am is a pit of sorrow, emptiness, and resentment, and I should have told that earlier. I should have let him know that I’m not the happy, carefree, curious, and loving Freya he thought I was. She’s just an image holding these fragile, cold, weak, tired, hopeless, empty bones together, and no one should love that: not Rum Tum, not my parents, not anyone. My mother told me that this feeling is not part of who I am, but I don’t believe her. It’s always been me: never happy, never satisfied, never able to stay in one place for too long before running…

And I need to run. I need to run back to my room and hide beneath the covers where no one can hurt me and more important, where I can hurt no one, and where I can fall asleep and dream of worlds better than this one, where I can grab my copy of Jane Eyre from beneath my bed and read it through for the twentieth time, pretending that I am Jane Eyre herself: the confident young lady who loves, dreams, thinks, and never lets anyone get in the way of who she is. But when I close the book or when I wake up from the dream, I’m still Freya Hanig.

I finally look up at Rum Tum’s face, but he seems to be looking down, himself. Only minutes ago, I was walking down the street to meet my mother; I was okay – or at the least, pretending to be okay. It’s amazing how I can so quickly shatter. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out as I wipe away the remainder of my tears. ”Rum Tum, don’t…please don’t ever…blame yourself,” I take a few deep breaths, trying to empty myself of the impending tears, just so much that I can enter the streets for just a few minutes looking like a normal human being before returning home to retreat to my lonely room, which I frequently lock myself within. I step backwards towards the entrance of the alleyway, words emptying my mouth: the only words I can think to say. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just can’t…I just – goodbye,” and just as I turn around to rush home, there’s my mother, her mouth open in shock.

“Freya, did I hear you just” – she moves closer and spots Rum Tum, her eyes immediately narrowing on the shock collar around his neck. She obviously only hear the tail-end of my statement there. I close my eyes in horror, because I didn’t think it could get worse. And now it’s about to. My mother’s a smart person; I’m sure she’s already put enough of the pieces together – enough to know that there’s a Capitol servant standing in an alleyway, and that I was just talking to this servant, and that the first words out of my mouth in the last 1.5 years are spoken to this lowly servant. I’m sure she can see the smeared eyeliner and traces of mascara running down my face; I’m sure she’s already figured that –

“Freya, is everything alright?” She asks in her high-pitched accent. I nod. “You didn’t come, and I was worried that something had happened along the way.” She looks back at Rum Tum quizzically. “Who’s he?” She asks, and I remain silent. “Did he hurt you?” She asks seriously, and I shake my head. She continues to stare at Rum Tum, and I can tell by the crease in her forehead that she’s thinking about something. All I want is to run away from this moment, but my mother manages to prolong it. “I bet he’s expensive -- he looks like he's one of those lucky ones who still got a voice,” she says, her gaze back on the shock collar around his neck. However, I wouldn't quite consider Rum Tum lucky, especially not now. “But if he’s getting you to speak, well then, we sure have to make that work," she says, without questioning me anymore about him. I don’t say anything. I don’t do anything. I don’t feel anything. She turns to Rum Tum. "Where's your master?" She asks. "I'd like to speak with him."

For a second I pretend that this moment isn’t real. I try to forget that it exists, that I exist.

Because if I forget, then maybe it will stop existing.

But the moment and all its misery is inevitable. Every moment is inevitable.

And still, every moment is just as meaningless as the last.