bailey martell . d10 . fin

It had been awhile since the warm glow in the curtains had faded, the flames on the other side reduced to a chilling smolder. She'd begun mouthing the familiar lines of her favorite shadow play—('Hey, sugar. What're you looking for tonight?' 'That'll be extra, love.' 'He won't be happy about that.')—posing like the silhouettes of claw-laden maidens and dancing like the smoke rising from their cigarettes. Bulbs popped and flickered to life outside, their gentle buzz joining the chorus of frogs, katydids, and crickets—the soundtrack that played throughout her dreams.

It was like this most evenings. After she'd boiled her bath water on the stove and rushed through washing her hair with water that was barely soap any longer, she'd put herself in the dresses that her Mom couldn't use anymore. They all fell off her shoulders when she twirled, but she liked pretending. To be a grown up. To be one of the silhouettes in the window. To be just like Mom.

It was then—as she fidgeted with her shoulder straps and hung the stick of her lollipop between her lips—that the doorknob jiggled and jumped. Her heart leapt into her throat, panic settling in as she took longer than usual to find her bearings. She heard her Mom curse, flipping through her collection of useless keys as if she didn't know exatly which one would let her in. It was an act Bailey had been taught from the moment she could walk—a warning, a signal to hide.

She hid within the wall, mimicking her Mom's curse as a sliver embedded itself in her palm. She'd only just let the tapestry fall back over the small opening when she heard the door swing open. She quickly replaced the drywall cut-out as the baritone of a familiar stranger reverberated within the walls. She shifted slowly, breathed deeply and puffed her cheeks 'just like a cute little chipmunk.' She was pretty sure it didn't help her to hold her breath, but it always made her Mom laugh.

She waited patiently, counting each second in her head as she picked at the sliver in her skin. It was nearly free when the rhythmic knock, knock, knock, knock began. She pressed an ear to crack in the wall to be sure, satisfied when the squeak of mattress springs could be heard. 'That's when they'll be too busy to care,' her Mom always said. 'That's when the earmuffs go on, okay?'

They made her ears itch; she never wore them. They sat idly by as she clicked her flashlight on beneath a blanket and dug the splinter free. Triumph nearly made her laugh aloud as she held it between carefully painted nails. She closed her eyes, balancing the bit of wood on her fingertip as she firmly affixed her wish to it. Just like you would a star. 'Better even.' Mom always found a way to cheer her up.

She blew the fragment with eyes sealed shut, careful not to blow it in the diretion of her pillow. She smiled, satisfied. So certain of the power a wish and an itty bitty piece of wood that had embedded itself in her skin had upon the world. It put her at ease, made her eyelids heavy. She fell asleep with her head resting upon weathered paper, the pages with new words she didn't understand dog-earred for morning.

Her dreams sounded like buzzing neon and singing insects, tasted like strawberry lollipops and nicotine, felt like lukewarm baths and expensive silk dresses, and looked like her mother's smile and fragments of wood disappearing into the dark.

She wished it would never change.

---

Today the door exploded. She sat dumbfounded, eyes wide, frozen and rigid as their sharp edges stood tall in the doorway. They had gruff voices, feet so heavy the floor dipped where they stepped, armor so shiny she thought it must have been made of compressed clouds. One shouted questions, another spat demands. She couldn't hear them, even as they stooped to latch their fingers around her arm. They wore her face upon their own, her fear on display everywhere she looked.

His hand was like a vice grip pinching and squeezing at her skin. She wanted to tell them to go away, to ask what they wanted, what they were doing here, why they were holding her so tight—but all she could do was fidget uselessly within their grasp and claw weakly at their knuckles.

Her vision began to blur then, blackened at the edges until her peripherals had been eaten away. The abnormally long room they'd been pulling her down seemed to tunnel on for eternity. Her neck swiveled as if on a broken hinge as doors swung open and shut all around—she saw women being pulled by their hair, children huddled together as their home was tossed around over their heads, men with unbuckled belts and hairy chests on display, shoving uniforms aside.

She'd only ever seen fear like this a few times in her life. And it was always in her mother's eyes whenever Bailey got up the courage to ask-

("Can I go outside?")

It was her mother's cries that broke through the haze, her voice a beacon within the chaos, but still Bailey could not see her. Her Mom screamed out her answer- over and over and over and over again, as if she could hear the broken and slurred thoughts swirling within her daughter's mind.

"No, no no! Bailey, my baby- no! No! You will never-"

It was the last thing Bailey could remember before darkness consumed all corners of her vision and sunlight swallowed her whole.

---

There was a lot that happened outside her little box. Silhouettes let you down, water costs money even to be cold, and wishing on stars had about the same success rate as wishing on flecks of wood you'd painfully dug from beneath your own skin. Her sheltered world had crumbled atop her shoulders and still all she could do was stare up through the wreckage at the stars twinkling above.

Ten years ago she stood in this same spot, hands clutching a book with no title and throat raw from screaming—at least, that's what she was told as they pricked her finger and took her picture. Everything was still so bright, sing-songy voices and mechanical smiles still asking her how old she was or if she could tell them her name. Apparently I had been living a different childhood than kids were supposed to in Panem.

But fitting in was easy enough. School was boring, but she loved being surrounded by people and their funny stories. Home wasn't home and her family wasn't her own, but they have been nothing but grateful to have someone to fuss over and help them open jars. She was led to believe what happened with her Mom had been as it should be—a soul so gentle shouldn't be living in the walls of a motel overrun by whores. That's what the adults had always whispered when they thought she wasn't listening. Or they simply didn't care. Bailey had never decided which was the truth.

But the more she thought on it, the more of the world she saw, the more of it she came to understand—everything had changed. And she missed her little box.