Magdalena Izar // D11 // fin

I carry the name like a curse. Everyone knows who I am and to what compound I belong. They say I should get running back to my older cousins and wait to be reaped. Prepare myself for the slaughter like my sister.

I've been publicly punished three times since she's been gone.

The first time I was twelve. Two long years had slogged by as an only child. I was so used to Salome being there, watching over me, offering advice I didn't know I needed. I was a child, born in the summer and raised in a time of plenty. It all washed away when she left her family and was placed in front of a camera to die. She was kind, too kind. Too soft for the world we live in. I was so young, I barely understood anything that was going on. But I understood blood. I knew what that horrible gong meant. I knew what a corpse looked like, and I knew my family's tears. They had shed them before, for other cousins that had become casualties of the great games. When it came time for me to enter the square and take my place among the league of Izars shuffled into pins, I refused. The woman pricked my finger, documenting my presence in her ledgers and she tried to move me along, waving a hand as if counting bushel of grain. I rooted myself there, my second-hand shoes glued firmly to the dirt bordering the square.

A Peacekeeper, a man, had approached me. His fingers wrapped around my forearm and jerked me forward. Young and ignorant I leaned over, sinking my teeth into his hand. Salome had always said I was wild, I guess I was living up to the title. The back of his hand met my cheekbone with an earth shattering crunch. I was only twelve, just a little girl and he had smacked me to the ground. Dazed, I was brought to the first pin and thrown inside. Pain blossomed over my face, and I could feel the skin swelling. No Izar was chosen that day, so when the ceremony had ended and everyone started the trek home everyone's attention was firmly on me.

My mother had pulled me aside, her fingers carefully touching the bruised lump growing on my face, her brown eyes wide with worry.

"Mija, you can't do this. Whenever they tell you to move, you move. Don't do this to me, Magdalena."

I guess you could say I've never been very bright, but I tried for mama. She had been through enough with Salome, and I promised her I would be good. I had gone to school, slumped in my chair and stared outside. I copied facts about wheat and soil, but in the margins I doodled. My pencil tried to sketch her face but I never did get it right. It was hard to remember her face, and even when I looked in the mirror the only similarity I saw was curls. Hers had been so neat. Thick, glossy ringlets that that would gracefully fall over her face when she was working. Mine are untamed. They frizz and poof out into a mane around my head. She was always soft, like pastries for breakfast or dawn after snow. I am sharp, like a bag of bones shaped like a person. My ribs jut out, my jawline sharp. Sometimes I feel like what Salome would have looked like if someone shoved her inside a pencil sharpener.

But I'll never be anywhere close to Salome. I can compare, mama can croon over our eyes, but I'll never be her. No one can be Salome now that she's gone.

The second time a Peacekeeper struck me I was fourteen.

My promise to mama had slowly been forgotten and school fell by the wayside. I strayed away from my older cousins, preferring the company of other kids I had met loitering outside the school building. I still remember seeing them for the first time. I had slept in late and had been left behind by the other Izars lest I make them late. I shuffled down the path in Salome's old shoes, my gray school dress mama made me wear too large for my frame. They were standing beside the door to the school, two older students. They had no books or supplies, only cigarettes hanging from their lips. I could see them smile as I approached.

"You're late, little Izar."

"Eat shit."

"Ohhhh this one has a mouth on her." He looked down at me, flickering his cigarette on my shoes. "Are you one of the crazy ones?"

I looked up at him, brown eyes blazing. The past years had been colorless, a drudge of mourning and nothing. Even though it was anger that burned inside me, it felt like I was tasting food for the first time in a decade.

"Yes."

I had walked to school for weeks afterwards only to meet them at the front door and cross to the district square instead. They showed me how to slip fruits from stands into my schoolbag. Often times they'd send me in to speak to the speak to a store keeper, or even a Peacekeeper to be a distraction while they snatched something pricier.

"Bat your eyelashes at 'em, they eat that shit up."

And they did. For a time.

Two months after I started hanging around that crowd, we were caught stealing. It was like any normal day. I stepped into the shop and chatted up the old man about the weather and how the Games were going, while the other two filled their pockets with anything that would fit. A Peacekeeper was waiting outside for us. The two boys each lost two fingers. They made me watch as they sliced them off on the butcher's block in the middle of the square.

"I'll let you off easy." The Peacekeeper had smirked before tying my hands together and ripping the back of my shirt open.

Five lashes.

My mother and father watched. My cousins watched. The whole fucking district watched. Only five, they said, because I hadn't technically stolen anything. It was just a warning.

The third time was the day after my fifteenth birthday.

I had returned to my studies after that. I did not meet the eyes of the now eight fingered boys who roamed the halls like ghosts. I walked directly home after school, not wanting to draw anymore attention to myself than necessary.

He was waiting for me. Still in his crisp white uniform, baton hanging from his belt.

"Happy Birthday" he said, offering a small gift wrapped in cloth.

"It was yesterday." I said, mindlessly.

"Happy belated Birthday, then."

I took the gift and unwrapped it. It was chocolate. I didn't think of what it meant. I didn't think of all the invisible strings attached. I took a small bite, letting the sugar melt across my tongue.

He tried to slip a hand around my waist. He tried to lean his face down to mine. Like three years prior, when I had sunk my teeth into a Keeper's hand, I worked on instinct alone. I slapped him across the face.

I earned twenty-three lashes for it.

The tracks are almost healed now. Thick twisted scar tissue that runs from the nape of my neck down to the base of my spine.

I guess "problem child" doesn't begin to explain it.