Sarkine Ottrel, District One [Finished]

Sarkine Ottrel

Twenty-one

"District One"

Female

‘State the nature of your business.’

'I’m traveling for my father to deliver gold threaded fabric to district eight. He doesn’t trust anyone else to properly deliver it.’

Sarkine rehearsed the line a hundred times in the bedroom mirror that morning. She kept her voice firm but not so forceful as to hint there was something amiss with her delivery. Her shoulders were back and her chin up, even as heavy as the grief was. There would be extra scrutiny for anyone related to a dead tribute traveling. It was a wonder at all that her father had let her apply for the visa, but he was less bothered to travel when so many were still wishing condolences at their home. He didn’t want to miss a chance to soak up all the attention that would disappear soon enough, and for Sarkine to make herself scarce seemed an added benefit.

She’d put her hair back into a ponytail and thrown a trench coat on over a simple polka dot dress. Something that spoke as understated, rather than the attempt at flash some of the other girls in district one had. She’d almost foregone make-up, but the dark circles under her eyes would’ve drawn too much attention. So she painted herself up with a mask, sacrificing a part of herself for her safety. She could play the part, could bury down the grief for the chance to escape.

So when the peacekeeper stamped her booklet and motioned for her to get aboard the train, she felt the tenseness leave her chest and was able to exhale. Maybe she’d had nothing to worry about at all; it’s not as though her father had done everything in his power to always be in the social graces of those in power in the district.

Absalom and Sarkine had grown up with the trappings of a life without want. A double story house with blue shutters and white siding, one who’s square footage would’ve housed three seam families; a housekeeper that came to clean up once a week; a fridge that never went unstocked; a basement with hours upon hours of capitol approved movies that she and her brother had devoured.

She had grown up being taught that she deserved all that she ever wanted, and so she believed that it was supposed to be hers. Her family had earned their wealth, or so she believed (it couldn’t have been that his family had been in the right place at the right time), her father’s gold and jewelry work a testament to skill and hours of grit (not the labor of those desperate for work and prices that made them rich).

People earned what was deserved; so long as she treated others as they needed to be treated, that was all that could be done.

And maybe if she’d been an only child, her mother and father’s teachings would’ve stuck. She’d have been the girl with friends who trained hard and preened as though they were royalty readying for a coronation. She’d have thought that condescension was the same as empathy (how many times did her father say, I’m sorry you feel that way), because she simply knew better.

After all, her advice would have come from a place of knowing so much better than anyone else. She’d never have had anything to apologize for, because she’d never have been capable of being in the wrong. Especially when all of her friends agreed with her. How could someone who had earned her place in society ever have been at fault?

Oh, there could have been small spats, little harms that all young women go through. But the greater message from her mother and father was that as long as she played by the rules, no matter how she acted, she’d nothing to apologize for.

After all, how could they be wrong if the world told them they’d done nothing wrong?

When her brother came into the world, she knew that things would be different. Her father came face to face with a reality that couldn’t quite fit with the vision he’d created. Gone was the ease of rubbing elbows with the Frays or Morenos when his son needed special schooling just to do the simplest of tasks.

She saw her parents’ frustration plant a seed of unkindness as a child. The way her mother and father watered it by pressuring Absalom to go further, work harder, to become something that he couldn’t. Absalom was supposed to be the brilliant career, the boy that married well and carried on his father’s business. So when words like developmentally delayed, or remedial started to become a part of their vocabulary at the dinner table she could sense that those visions had slipped away.

And they pruned the branches that were born as though this tree, the one that overshadowed her brother and kept him from the boy he could’ve been, as though it was a way of giving them the life they had wanted. At least they could have an excuse for how Absalom turned out, so long as they did everything in their power to have him return to normal.

Sarkine was nine when she’d asked her father if it was right that he expected so much of Absalom. They’d been in the kitchen, and Warwick had just scolded Absalom for the sloppiness of his handwriting, and how few words he could define on a sheet of schoolwork. Absalom had gone quiet and sulked back to his room, on the verge of tears.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong, Sarkine. It may seem like a cruelty, and I’m sorry if it looks that way. But this is what we must do. And there’s nothing wrong with that – your mother agrees – that we push him as hard as we can. We only do these things to make both of you stronger. Don’t you want to be like the rest of your friends? Don’t you want to be the best? And have everyone know what you’re capable of? '

‘No,’ she had decided.

It surprised her, the way the thought struck so suddenly, standing there in the middle of the kitchen, staring back at her father as though he was a fool.

No – she didn’t want to try to be the greatest if it meant treating some worse than others. No matter the way society had written the rules, you could still be cruel even if people had said you’d done nothing wrong. You could still be selfish even if it meant you did just as everyone else was doing. You could still be wrong, even if you couldn’t see why.

It would be another twelve years of disagreements between her and her father. Of going to training and not taking it seriously because she wanted to do something, anything else than become a career. Years spent pulling away from the other girls and boys that bought into the way the world had been written because of what it gave some of them in return. Sarkine never felt as though being rewarded with attention or praise made her a better person. If anything, she marveled at the way Absalom approached the world with curiosity, and openness to all those that let him do so.

She didn’t want to benefit from the way the world handed her a silver platter, not when her brother would never have the chance. And maybe she made choices that ran against the grain – spoke up and out of turn, told girls when they were being cruel even if it wasn’t her business – but she felt better for speaking up than saying nothing at all.

It was no wonder that by the time of the eighty-fourth, she had so few to rely on.

Save for the few that worked the café with her, Sarkine had kept to herself, and to her brother. She’d turned down the job at her father’s business, the one that would’ve put her at the helm before too long, even after all the shouting she had to endure on his part. She couldn’t gain from something she hadn’t earned, and in spite of all the money, all the chance she’d have had working alongside her father, nothing bored Sarkine more than rubbing elbows with the sorts of people in the business.

Maybe she’d have a little apartment with Absalom outside the district center for the rest of her life. She’d go on to be completely unremarkable, unnoticed by the greats of the district, but somehow – she imagined she’d be all the happier for it.

Of course, even as she’d laid plans before the reaping, she had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that it was a lot more daunting than it appeared.

She lost Absalom the moment his name had been plucked from the bowl.

He could’ve been one of the greats, maybe, but Sarkine knew his heart. He wouldn’t have worn the crown even if he pulled through and so she spent every night since he’d left imaging what his funeral would be like. She’d cried a dozen times, locked away in the dark of her room, or the bathroom of the café, thinking of his death.

So when the jaguar had pierced right through his eye, even as she’d gone cold, and dropped the tray of coffees she’d been carrying, Sarkine didn’t fall to as many pieces as she could have.

Absalom wouldn’t have wanted her to stay sad, anyway. Sure, he’d have told her to watch a sad movie and cry out all her tears, or to remember that she could still see him in pictures. But her love had always helped him pull through. She’d need to use his to pull through this, if she were to carry on.

Little Bill would never know, nor Eloise, that they had convinced her she needed to go to district eight. Anywhere but one, and – from the kindness, the way they’d cared for her brother – she decided that she’d go there, too.

For how long she couldn’t say, but she packed her old leather suitcase with her whole life – which, looking at the open pack on her bed, wasn’t much at all – and convinced her father that it was time for her to do some work for him. At the least, to let her take whatever was needed to eight, so that she could lessen his load while the games were still going.

She didn’t cry when the train started to make its way from the station. The petite blond could see the only world she’d ever known start to pull away and somehow, she felt herself grow lighter. Maybe one had always held her back, pushed her down into a smaller version of herself. Maybe the future, as uncertain as it was, wouldn’t suffocate her.

She settled against the cushion of the train’s seat and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t know what the future held, but somehow, she didn’t care. Instead, she took to plucking at the friendship bracelet on her wrist and thought about the boy who’d have said that she could do anything she put her mind to. Didn’t he?

And she believed him.

She’d go on living for him, too.

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