io starfall // D5

The time before we were Starfalls, I think our last name was Evans. Just simple, boring but I guess it suited. I don't remember much from then, just concepts like creaking wood and beds made of metal, a large room with rows of kids and a mat to play on with wooden blocks.

Don't know if I remember meeting my parents or if I've just heard the story enough times to imagine it well. Because they say that we chose them, toddler legs made us fall clumsy near their reach. I always held on to Nari tight when there were visitors because I was so scared that they'd take her without me. Even then, Nari was bright and beautiful and I was so solemn, careful, easily lost in the background.

But they said that's what they liked about us, that we were two halves of a whole. I always spend more time wondering why we were there to adopt in the first place. Who decided that they didn't want us, what did we do? I wonder if we cried too much, maybe not enough.

Guess I should be thankful I didn't end up with Evans for a last name, Starfall has a better ring to it.

I sit with my feet up on the counter because the bell above the shop door has been still for hours. The pre-games rush for reaping attire is weeks past so all that's left is hem work and the occasional rehashing of someone's grandfather's suit jacket. It's boring work and my callused fingers aren't grateful for it, we make enough each year from funerals, the reaping and occasional wedding to get us through easy.

A hoop sits in my lap and I pick at it idly. I messed up on the clouds, didn't make them fluffy enough so I'm redoing them. No one's going to buy this dress off me, it's too precious. If I were in the Capitol, things would be different, I know it. Everyone would be wearing my stuff, my name would be on everyone's lips and I'd never have to work here another day in my life.

It's not that I hate it I guess, it's just that the sky that I can see through the front window is so blue and when I shut my eyes, I can see the small patch of wildflowers so far out of the centre of town that not even Five's smog crushes them. They've made it into this embroidery, stems bend and reflect each other to make an intricate design.

It wasn't even supposed to be my day at the shop but Nari ran off early this morning, an excuse barely parting from her lips before she was scrambling headfirst out the window. That's my sister, it's how she is so I guess I should be used to it by now. I love her despite all of that.

But it's barely two o'clock and I'm going to be stuck here all day so I hate her a little bit too.

We don't look perfectly alike but there are similarities. Our eyes are the same colour and I think our hands look alike, we're the same height and we've got the same colour hair. I wish I were taller, but I kind of just stopped growing, and the odds don't look good for me. Guys at school joke, call me Nari's twin sister. I know it's supposed to hurt but it doesn't, not really. It's just a stupid joke.

the guys at school are just stupid anyway.

Mum says to ignore them, we sit at the kitchen table together at two in the morning sometimes and I give the oranges in the fruit basket stick n' pokes. She says that they're jealous because of my pretty looks and I tell her that I don't want to be pretty. I want to be handsome and tall, filled out, athletic, anything but the delicate thing I've become.

She doesn't get it, how could she, she's a girl and she asked Mom to marry her when they were in the tenth grade. That makes me nervous, I've never met anyone I've even liked enough to date and I'm sixteen already. Meanwhile, people line up down the school hall to give Nari a Valentine. I avoid my locker for weeks so I won't have to see how empty it is.

I thread a precious pearlescent string through my needle and start on new clouds, it'll be better this time because I'm doing them freehand. Whenever I try and stick to anything rigid I mess it up somehow. Sewing is different, I can cut a pattern with my eyes shut if I want. Anyone can do it, it's embroidery that's art, that takes imagination and planning.

Last Reaping, we sold a dress I'd done for a hundred and twenty dollars. I'd stitched a sun into the front of the bodice and a moon into the back, it'd taken me two days straight of work. Sometimes I see the girl who bought it around town and I feel like I'm cupping a secret in my hands. I want to call out to her, tell her thanks for liking my work, but it'd be weird.

Besides, no one cares who made it, just that it's made.

And I know that it's going to be me who inherits this place, Starfall's Threads, located across the Games Square from Magnolia's. I'm probably going to die in here, just keel over from a heart attack one day at like, sixty-something. Nari doesn't care enough about this place so I'll be stuck with it.

I guess they know I won't complain, I never do.

That's probably why they took me too.