the joneses used to live here | temple

There is a colony of mugs behind me on the table. Ma keeps bringing tea and no matter how many I don't drink she brings more. She’s gone to her room to sleep. Pa is in the barn. They're both avoiding this. I wonder if they watched when it was me.

My lips are cracked and dry, my eyes watering from staring at the television all night. I had to see it. I had to see Kahinta. There are only four left and she's so close to coming home I can taste it. She's stronger than I was, than I ever will be, and if there was ever going to be a Jones girl that came home it was her. It was always her.

Ma said the Capitol camera crew is still lurking in the district square, filming reactions but really they're waiting for us. They're waiting for me to stick my head out of the ranch house and talk to them about my sister. They want good footage and I can't blame them, but I can't think about them either.

I can't think about anything else right now but her.

When Oberon falls I am thankful she is one step closer to home, but the pain is so evident in her face. In her frazzled attempt to make him reach death sooner. It's hard to watch her like this. Tears rise in my eyes at the memory of a small body wrapped in a colorful flag. Of a figure consumed by waves.

How could I be sad when those people are alive? Oberon was truly dead and Kahinta's grief was true and real. Realer than mine could ever be.

When she gets home I'll make sure to comfort her. I won't compare the experiences too much because they were so wildly different. She'll need space, of course, but hopefully she won't mind my hovering. I had left her on her own far too much and she had ended up...

Bette. I need to talk to Bette. Once Kahinta is home we'll have to sort that out. It’s the last thing I want to do but I'll do it for her.

"We didn't deserve this! None of us fucking deserved this. They shouldn't get to tell us we have to die. The Capitol doesn't get to decide if we're worth something! This isn't right. This isn't right! This isn't what we're meant for, any of us!"

"Careful," I mumble. That kind of talk isn't going to fly once she gets back to the Capitol. She’s right but the truth has to be quiet. Maybe Victors are allowed wiggle room to scream and yell at their captors but they won’t allow treason.

She can be angry, just do it at home. Scream but in our fields. Cry in our room together. Be here.

Come home. Get out of that grave and come home.

There's a swing of a morning star and then-

No.

I lurch to my feet, the quilt that I had huddled under all night falling to the floor. It doesn’t feel real. My limbs are numb and my eyes are staring at a screen expecting some trick, some strange camera angle but there isn’t.

A cannon fires.

There is a bubble in my chest blooming and blooming. An itch in the back of my throat as the thought echoes around my head.

She's dead.

But she can't be. Kahinta's stronger than-

I step outside and then I'm running into the field. Cattle are dozing and munching on grass unaware that the world has been knocked from its axis. The air is too warm, the world too open, the sky too blue. My throat is choking on words and screams and sobs unable to let any of them out.

The world is so quiet around me. No wind, no birds, nothing but the pain stretching across my chest.

For the first time since waking up in the cavernous lab with my life stitched together I wish I hadn’t at all. If I had stayed dead would they have taken her? Did living two lives take hers away?

Did any of it matter?

Movement catches the corner of my eye and I see Pa working at the entrance of the barn. He’s holding a length of rope in one hand, occupied by chores instead of the television. I walk over to him and he stops. The second he sees me, out in the sun instead of huddled by the old TV set, he stops.

“Kahinta?” he asks, his voice holding the question no one wants to ask. If I speak I will fall apart. If I say the words they'll be real.

But my silence answers his question.

His pulls me into an embrace and I shatter. My tears finally fall, staining Pa's shirt with snot. Every sob pent up in my chest releases all at once in a horrifying death rattle. I cannot breathe. It feels like suffocating, it feels like being crushed. It feels like dying only there will be no end to this suffering. I'll carry it forever in every breath I take and every beat of my selfish heart.

Pa is trembling in my arms and I hold him as tight as my arms will allow. As hard as I should have held her. We're kneeling in the dirt and I don't remember when my legs gave out. I don't remember when Ma leaves the house and finds us. I don't remember when she wraps her arms around us both.

I don't remember when the sunsets. All I know is stiff fabric clutched in my fist, hot tears soaking into my hair, and the strangled grief of a family irreparably broken.