metro malls to airport halls // goat!

Life is different now. Almost two years since Ridley came back home with gold in her hair and anger in her chest and Aurora still can't get used to it. People regard her higher, like she's worth more because a member of her family killed three people and got a crown for it. As if Aurora could ever be as strong as her cousin was. She doesn't resent her, per se— she'd been one of the only people defending her when she came back— but she doesn't know how to handle it. She was invited to the Peacekeeper's Ball, for god's sake. Who the fuck would have ever thought Aurora Le Roux would be invited to something like that?

She'd spent half the night hotboxing a bathroom stall and the other half devouring finger foods, but hey, that was on them for inviting her.

School feels pointless now. All the shit they teach, algebra and grammar and Capitol history, it's useless in the real world. Useless in the games. The Gamemakers aren't going to force you to solve quadratic equations before you can grab something from the cornucopia. No, you just have to be faster than the other tributes, or more bloodthirsty. Aurora was never good at retaining all that information, anyway. She thinks her brain just might be wired differently.

Her training isn't worth jack shit either. She's falling behind in her class, a fact that's easy to make fun of when you look at the rest of her family. Her lungs are lined with too much resin to help her run long distances, and her arms can barely support the weight of a weapon. At her last sparring match, the other girl had her belly up on the mat as soon as the bell rang.

So what is useful about Aurora, exactly?

She can't think of an answer.

First period was a drag. She slumped further and further down into her seat until she fell asleep, and when the teacher had to go over and shake her awake, the snickers of her classmates felt like knives in her back. She figures she should be used to it by now, since she's been disappointing people her entire life. It's Ridley's fault for making people expect more out of her anyway.

Okay, so It isn't her fault, not really, but Aurora has never learned how to do anything but blame and deflect. She thinks she should work on that. Maybe.

She's ready to go as soon as class ends, slinging her bag over her shoulder and pushing her way out of the classroom. She would have feigned sick today, made herself vomit on one of her mother's ornate rugs, if she knew it was going to be like this. While the rest of her classmates head to their next class, she sneaks out the double doors and emerges into the warm morning.

The sky is grey, ugly. As she hurries toward one of the sports fields, the only place on this godforsaken campus she can get any quiet, she passes by someone who's walking away from them. It looks like one of Tatton's shitty friends. She probably has no right to call his friends shitty, considering she doesn't even have any friends, but she doesn't care.

A familiar smell wafts through the air. She follows it to the bleachers and ducks underneath. Her brother is there, kicking back in a chair with a blunt in his hand. Guess they had the same idea.

"Oh my god, are you doing drugs?" She says, feigning surprise. She reaches into her backpack and pulls out her treasured vape pen. "Bet my shit's better. Cotton candy, motherfucker."

Her brother coughed up a storm after seeing her. What, she thinks, am I that ugly? but he clears his throat long enough to bitch out the unfortunate weed he’s smoking. Aurora takes a deep inhale off her vape and blows the cloud into the air. The smoke dances in the light breeze of the morning, and she’s almost mesmerized by it, before reminding herself that no, it’s not pretty, or any of that bullshit, it’s just her stupid vape cloud.

“Duke and Haven bailed on me, can you believe that shit?”

“Stupid motherfuckers,” Aurora agrees. She reaches out and exchanges her pen for Tatton’s blunt. “Ass sweat flavor, my favorite.”

It burns. Fuck, it burns so bad. She can feel it in her ears, the taste lingering in the back of her throat. Tatton wasn’t kidding, this is the worst thing she’s ever smoked, and she’s smoked some bad shit. “Where did he get this? This is foul,” she says, holding it back out so her brother can take it. She doesn’t even want to see it again. She’s sorry for knocking on her vape cloud, okay? It was pretty, it was like, the prettiest thing she’d ever seen. She’ll never be a brat about it again.

She forces herself to cough, trying to force out the terrible weed taste, before dropping to the ground and sitting cross-legged in the grass. The blades poke at the exposed skin between the end of her pant leg and the top of her socks. She reaches down to scratch it, digging angry red lines with her nails. This is nice. She’ll take the blunt, even though she’ll probably be pissed about it for days on the sheer basis of its existence, over being stuck in another classroom. Over the realization over and over that she doesn’t belong here, she never has.

“I don’t want to go to training today.” It comes out a whine, the trademark style of an ungrateful teenager. “That red-haired bitch beat my ass and laughed at me last time. You know her. The one without the eye.” Aurora gestures to her own. “Whatever. I should just quit while I’m behind.”