Windy Day [HOLLY QUINTANILLA/GOAT]

My mother swung by the apartment on her lunch break to ask if I could make dinner. It wasn’t an unusual exchange for us— she usually works long hours, I usually cook dinner alone and make a plate for her to have when she gets back. It was nice to see her for a brief moment, but she left so fast that I didn’t have a chance to tell her that we were basically out of food. I hadn’t had a chance to go grocery shopping before she paid bills. Despite how often she works, we never seem to have enough money for essentials.

I try to take inventory of what we have. The fridge is nearly empty. There’s half a carton of eggs and some wilting lettuce. I toss the lettuce in the garbage as I move to check the cupboards. When I push past the various spices, I find an unopened bag of rice hiding in the back. Nice. I figure I can make some sort of creamy rice dish with this. I’ll have to go out and get milk and cheese, but that shouldn’t be too expensive. I grab whatever money we have leftover from the cash box and slip my brown boots on.

The sky is blue today, much bluer than it usually is, but the wind is blowing hard. I feel like it’s going to knock me right off my feet. The walk to the market feels ten times longer than usual because I have to focus on keeping my balance right, like a gymnast wobbling on a tightrope. Still, I make it to the market in one piece, along with all the other people braving the bad weather for groceries. I select a hunk of parmesan cheese and a bottle of milk. The money in my hand isn’t enough, but the girl at the counter recognizes me from class. She slips a coin from her own pocket into the register and smiles.

Us people at the bottom look out for each other better than the Capitol ever could.

I’m walking back to my apartment with a dumb wide smile on my face when the wind picks back up again. There’s a shout— “Watch out!”— and then something hits my shoulder. I stumble forward, dropping the paper bag in my arms. It lands on the ground with a loud, sad thud, the contents spilling out onto the pavement. I swear under my breath and drop to my knees. Thankfully, the cheese is wrapped in plastic, and the milk bottle has no cracks when I inspect it. I breathe a sigh of relief and put them back into the bag.

There’s a girl standing over me, and some sort of toy resting next to where my bag fell. That must have been what hit me. I want to be angry, but it’s not her fault that the wind is so bad. I pick up the girl’s toy and get back on my feet. “This is yours,” I say. I feel like I recognize her but I don’t know from where. “Quite the weather we’re having today, isn’t it?”

“You're telling me!” the girl says, taking her toy back from me. Her dark hair whips around her face as the wind rushes through it. The longer I look at her, the more I feel like I definitely recognize her. I must have seen her around school. She looks older than me, so we wouldn’t be in the same class. Not that I talk to many of my classmates. “Yeah, it's a windy day for sure.” There’s a look in her eyes that I can’t quite place. Is she nervous? I don’t know why she’d be nervous talking to me. “Got something good you're going to cook up?”

“Oh! Yeah, I guess.” I look down at the brown paper bag in my arms like I forgot it was there, despite dropping it not even a minute ago. “I’m going to make some creamy parmesan rice. It’s easy to make when you don’t have a lot of ingredients. I’ve made it before, so it should be good. I hope.”

I look around, from the clear sky to the familiar buildings surrounding us, back to the girl who ran into me. I don’t know how long you’re supposed to carry on a conversation with somebody you just met, but she seems nice. “My name’s Holly, by the way. Holly Quintanilla. It’s a long last name, I know, but it’s easy when you’re used to saying it.” My face goes red. “Sorry, I’m talking a lot. That’s pretty rude of me. I promise I’m not usually like this.”

I don’t have a lot of friends. The person I talk to the most is my mom, and she’s barely around. I don’t want to confess to this stranger that my social skills are not exactly up to par, though, so I don’t say anything about them at all. I decide to turn the conversation back to her. “Your toy is cool. How does it work?”

She makes a joke about me being reserved, and I laugh as she smiles. I guess it’s true, that I can be pretty shy if I’m around people I don’t know— which is almost everyone. I mean, I’m always polite, but it’s just hard for me to talk to people I don’t know. I wonder if I’d be more outgoing if I had more friends. Maybe time will tell. This girl seems nice, and talking to her has been easy enough so far. I mean, she complimented my cooking, and she doesn’t even know if I’m actually good.

I nod along as she explains how the toy works, listening when she mentions that she honestly couldn’t afford it. I know the feeling. Just today, I was reminded of it.

“My name's Camila. Well, Chamomile technically. Mom's a bit of a weirdo! I always thought Camila fit a bit better, so it's what we go with now. Camila Gilbrook. I swear I've seen you before,” she says, and I’m about to open my mouth and tell her that I think her name is really pretty, and that I might have seen her around school, but she starts to speak again. “Or was it your... sister? I may be confusing you with.”

“Odile,” I say, her name rushing out of my mouth before I can stop it. I didn’t expect Odile to be brought up today. Although, I guess people never expect their dead sibling who they didn’t know about to be brought up in casual conversation. I haven’t spoken to anyone about her in a while. Her mother hasn’t invited me around for tea in a few months, and my mother and I haven’t talked about her since the day she told me about her. I think about her every day, though. Sometimes I wake up and think that maybe today is the day she’ll randomly come back to life, and we can have the relationship we deserve, not the one that was stolen from us. “Yeah. Her. She was my half-sister, technically. I didn’t know her. Guess we look alike, though.”

I try to laugh a little at the end of my sentence, but it doesn’t sound convincing, so I just shift uncomfortably from foot to foot instead.

“The eyes,” I say, laughing a bit to myself. “Of course. She saw things, you know. Things that weren’t there. But I don’t see anything like that. Sometimes I wish I did, so I could be like her.”

It must seem like such a silly thing to say, but the only things I have of my sister are the things I saw on the screen. There’s nothing else. I have to latch onto what little I have or else I’ll forget.

Camila says Odile tried her best, but I don’t know how true that is. If I’d known her, I’d have known what her best was, but I didn’t, I didn’t know her, and I’ll never know her. I don’t want to talk about this anymore, I want to talk about something else. Anything else. I grit my teeth together and hope that I don’t look too upset.

I’m glad when Camila moves the conversation along to the Reaping instead. It’s coming up soon, after all. I’ve never had much anxiety over the Reaping before. I probably should, considering my sister’s name was called all those years ago, and there always seem to be siblings of previous tributes getting reaped nowadays. It’s so cruel to continue tearing those families apart, but it’s just another day in the life for the Capitol.

She asks me if I’m out of reaping eligibility yet, and I shake my head. “No, I’m still eligible. I’m only fifteen. Do I look older?” I pick at the rough edge at the opening of the paper bag. “It isn’t really that hard for me. I don’t worry about it too much. My odds are pretty low, so— compared to yours, I mean, since you’re older. Um. Good luck, I guess.”