ochre peony /9

Ire came first, only by minutes, but I do what she says. We were born the same night but made so different. She's loud and shining, I'm quiet background noise.

Dad always said that if anything were to happen to them, all we'd have was each other. It's almost like he knew that they didn't have long with us or something. No one looks out for the little guys, especially not in Three so we're still trying to piece together what happened to them.

Ire says our dads just made it out, I think they got taken. You know, Avoxed or something. Whatever it is, they're gone so it's just us now.

We hid in the house for weeks, acted like everything was fine so no one would try to report us and put is in care or something. Everyone knows that if you end up in the system you don't necessarily get to stay together and bad shit can happen to you. Neither of us wanted that.

We turn eighteen in a year and we're free after that. Ire said that wasn't soon enough, that we had to get out sooner, follow our dads. They raised us both on stories of a life outside of Panem, out of the fences, said the world is a lot bigger than we think it is. Dad said that if we got to the ocean and just kept going then soon enough we'd hit land that Panem couldn't even reach by hovercraft.

I never really thought much about that, not when all our textbooks in school promise otherwise. We learn that the rest of the world is unlivable, that there's nothing past Four's shoreline and nothing outside of the fences. I've never met anyone from out of the fences, never even met anyone outside of Three. So I've never been so sure about those stories.

Ire was though, she'd sit there, eyes shining as dad wove us epics about our birth mother, an amazing woman who'd left to find the forgotten district. (It's this district out past Twelve that everyone knows got blown to bits but Dad says is still secretly there.) She battled Peacekeepers, tracker jackers and other mutts all to reach a promised freedom that she had no way of knowing was even there.

Dad told us her stories as if he'd actually seen them but everyone knows Thirteen is just rubble.

Ire always believed them though and I guess it was that or admit that our dads were probably dead, bodies dumped somewhere in a ditch in Three and I couldn't do that.

So we hatched a plan, maybe a stupid one but it was something. I'd grown up in Dad's lap, fingers feeling for engine parts as I sat blindfolded. Both of our dads worked in an automation factory building hovercrafts and by the time I was fourteen I was taking engines apart blindfolded and putting them back together neat as you please.

I grew up making potato batteries and building electric currents. When Ire laid out her crazy, stupid plan I stared back at her, knowing full well there was nothing out there for us to run to but hoping I was wrong. Maybe that's why I agreed to it, why we were both there that night, just stupid little flies zigzagging right into a spider web.

They caught me half under a Peackeeper's hovercraft dashboard, fingers black with oil, a pair of pliers in my hand. Dunno how they caught Ire but one of the Keepers had a black eye that night. My heart fell through my throat like a brick and my hands just started shaking. I'd forgotten that we could get in trouble, that the fences weren't enough of a punishment, because yeah we were young but we were also poor, the bottom of the food chain.

I heard Ire yell at me to run, so I did. She was in front of me somehow, glancing over her shoulder at me and telling me to hurry up. There was a backup plan, of course, if we couldn't get the hovercraft then we were supposed to head for this hole in the fence behind an old scrapyard. (Had to be careful though, everyone says they know a girl who got her leg chewed off by a booby trap.)

I honestly think that we would have made it too if I hadn't tripped. The railroad spike came up from nowhere, dug right up through my shoe and narrowly missed my foot. It took me right down and Ire stopped, terror on her face, looking right down at me.

For a split second, I thought maybe she might leave me but then her hand was reaching down, pulling me up and dragging and we were stumbling over each other in the dark, flashlights bobbing around us as we ran past crushed cars towards the fence. Maybe they wouldn't have ever even gotten close if I hadn't wasted time.

We both knew enough to watch for land mines, that'd always been one of the biggest traps in dad's stories, but I guess the peacekeepers didn't. I didn't even hear the click.

The force of a white uniform blowing to bits behind us sent us both flying forward. I remember wrapping my arms tight around Ire from behind and twisting, then my body hitting the ground and my head flying back hard against a rock.

I woke up with my bandaged head in Ire's lap on a train heading to Nine, my ankle shackled to the floor.

"Ever hijack a train?" she'd asked me then.

Same old Ire.