Chapter Text
Book I: The Arena Makes Animals of Us All
It was a bad day’s haul.
Looking around at all the shaky hands and red-rimmed eyes, Cari Lacosi was hardly surprised. She had lived through six of these horrible days, and they had yet to get any better. Perhaps Cari would feel a sliver of relief next year, when she would finally taste freedom. Maybe she would even beg for the Games to come quicker, just so the deeply-rooted dread would finally ease.
But tomorrow, she would feel no such relief. Twenty-four slips adorned with her name would enter the reaping bowl, giving her a higher chance than most that she’d be selected for the 67th Annual Hunger Games. And may the odds ever be in her favor.
What a joke.
Cari looked around at her fellow “shipmates”, wondering if any of them would have anything to eat decently over the next few days. “Shipmates” was certainly an exaggeration, as five teenage girls and a cancer-struck old woman were hardly on a boat of any note.
The cancer-struck woman, Ms. Shann, “captained” their rickety, assigned boat that was anchored only half a mile off the coast. This close to the shorefront, their catches were small and close to worthless. Few meal tokens could be traded for even an abundance of Topsmelt fish.
For someone like Laney Dunbar, whose older brother was a proper deckhand during the summers, she was hardly all that bothered when the haul was less than stellar. Fairer-skinned than most in Sieravada, Laney looked more concerned about trying to stay out of the sun than her day’s haul. Though considering that Ms. Shann looked twice her age from sun exposure, Cari couldn’t blame her all that much.
Beside Laney, Blye Melton looked a tad more worried, biting her lip as she eyed her and her sister’s haul. Blye was Cari’s best friend, and she had the thankless job of being the main provider for her perpetually teary-eyed younger sister. Marina Melton had never taken well to life at the Community Home or to their extraneous summer shifts, constantly dreaming about her life before her parents had died. On the days before the Reaping, she might not have bothered to work at all with as few fish as she managed to capture amid the flood of tears. Poor Blye would certainly be skipping a few dinners to keep any more tears at bay.
Cari’s own meagre haul might have been salvaged if her younger sister, Aracel, had managed to keep her hands steady. A quick glance over her shoulder showed that Aracel hadn’t done any better than she had. She fought the urge to sulk as she realized she’d be missing more than a few dinners if Aracel and Jules were to eat over the next week.
Not that Cari was in much of a position to complain. If there was one person who never ate well, even decently, it was Meera Wiley. She was their final shipmate but had never been close to the girls, owing to the arduous time she spent taking care of her five younger siblings. At seventeen, she had almost fifty slips in the reaping bowl, likely the most of anyone in the District.
Few in District Four took out tesserae, compared to what they knew of Outlier Districts like Eleven and Twelve. Only the wretched orphans from the Community Home stuck taking care of bony, younger siblings would be stupid enough to do so.
Idiots like Meera. Like Blye. Like Cari.
Meera’s haul was unsurprisingly the best of the five girls. She worked like a machine for twelve hours straight, six days a week, during the summers. With five younger siblings and only one of them old enough to work, she hardly had a choice. Cari couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen her eat more than two meals a day.
As the sun touched the horizon, the day’s shift came to an end. Ms. Shann steered them back to shore silently and with a placid expression, as per usual, dropping them off at Port Wishon. It was a dingy little area, with greenish-brown stains and acidic garbage littering the shore, where those from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Sieravada came to drop off their day’s hauls.
“How many tokens did you and Aracel get?” Blye leaned over her shoulder, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I only got five. God, I’m going to whack Marina with my spear one day.”
“Only eight,” Cari groaned. As she needed a token for tonight’s dinner and all three meals the next day, it meant that she and her siblings would be losing out on at least four meals between the three of them. Great, just great, she thought. Jules will be ecstatic to hear that.
“Laney doesn’t even seem to care that she only got two,” Blye shook her dark head. “God, why couldn’t I be born with an older brother?”
“I ask that every day,” Cari agreed.
“Speaking of Dylan,” Blye said in that all-too-familiar tone of hers. “He’ll be back after a week’s trip away tonight-”
“Is that my brother’s name I hear?” Laney skipped towards them, Aracel in tow, with her eyes rolled practically behind her head. “Not having second thoughts about rekindling things, are you?”
“Definitely not,” Cari made a face.
“Oh, but you guys were so cute together!”
”I think Cari has more important things to worry about, Laney,” Aracel reminded her.
“Well, you guys are still coming to the party tonight, right?” Laney asked, quickly brushing over the uncomfortable topic. “Come on, even Aracel didn’t back out.”
“Will there be cheap booze?” Blye asked.
“The cheapest.”
“I’m in,” Blye shrugged.
Cari scowled at her best friend. “You said you weren’t going to go.”
“I’m not staying home with you and Marina again just because you can’t be a big girl and see Dylan.”
“I see Dylan whenever he’s at the Community Home,” Cari scoffed.
“And immediately walk in the other direction,” Aracel pointed out.
“Nice to know you have my back,” Cari shoved her sister lightly.
“Come on, Cari, it’ll be fun!” Laney said. “Let’s just get our minds off things for tonight. Otherwise, we’ll be tossing and turning in bed as soon as dinner is over.”
“Fine,” Cari crossed her arms. “But if you try to get me and Dylan back together again, I’m leaving immediately.”
“Done,” Laney promised, holding her hands up in submission.
The walk from Port Wishon to the Community Home was only fifteen minutes long, but after a gruelling twelve-hour shift, Cari’s limbs felt hard and heavy. The knots in her shoulders and lower back wouldn’t ease until they returned to school in the Fall and took on shorter shifts. Not that shorter shifts were any better for their ailing bodies. Without so much time at sea, fewer fish were usually caught, which meant fewer meal tokens. Even Laney’s stomach was known to grumble during the winter months when the short, miserably cold shifts off the coast yielded very little.
Even Dylan Dunbar couldn’t go out on the bigger ships during the school year, despite his illustrious talents as a deckhand. You usually had to be eighteen to work as a crew member, but being as unusually tall and strong for his age, they made an exception for Dylan during the summer months. He never failed to come back with a hoard of meal tokens, more than willing to share with Cari, who begrudgingly accepted them despite her wounded sense of pride.
As the Community Home came into view, Cari felt that familiar pit of dread sinking into her stomach. Like the three hundred or so other children who called the too-small building home, Cari couldn’t wait to see the back of it.
It had housed her and her siblings for eight and a half miserable years, only two of which had all her meals been paid for. At the tender age of ten, Cari had gone out to the docks to find work, weaving piss-poor nets to capture fish the size of her thumbs in exchange for her missing dinner token. On her third day of work, she had arrived an hour late from her shift, and Mrs. Borea clipped her ear as a punishment.
Six more months, Cari told herself, six more months and you’ll be out of the Community Home.
“There you all are,” a familiar voice echoed through the humid night. “I was beginning to think you were all lost at sea. Cutting it close to curfew, no?” Sitting on the steps of the Community Home, Dylan Dunbar flashed that brilliant white grin of his that had once won her heart.
“How come you’re lumbering about?” Aracel asked. “Shouldn’t you be helping set up dinner if you're back early?”
“Babs cut me some slack,” Dylan shrugged, referring to their slit-eyed cook, Barbara. Of course, she had a soft spot for Dylan. Almost everyone did. “I have been out at sea for seven days, you know.”
“I wish it had been twice as long,” Blye scoffed as Laney bent down to squeeze her brother’s shoulder.
“And it still wouldn’t be short enough,” Cari groaned.
“None of you are being very nice,” Dylan pouted. “And of all days too.’
“Ugh, we are not talking about that,” Blye scowled. “Marina’s been driving me nuts for weeks. Every night she’ll cry enough to fill Lakeside, and I’ll have to go over to her bed and calm her down.” Cari and Aracel exchanged a grimace. As they slept opposite the sisters, they had overheard far too many of these nights. “I haven’t slept more than four hours a night since May. Not that she has any reason to be worried. She didn’t get picked in the prelim rounds.” It went unspoken that the rest of them did.
Because District Four was so large, a preliminary round for the Reaping had to be held, as otherwise there wouldn’t be enough space in Lakeside’s square to hold all the prospective tributes. If your name was picked in the prelim round, your slips went into the actual reaping bowl a fortnight later.
Supposedly, the number of names from each settlement in the District was proportional to the number of children they had, but everyone knew that the wealthy Walwitters bribed the officials to keep their kids’ names out of the bowl.
There were three settlements in District Four. Some two and a half hours by train to the north was a tiny, secluded town hidden within Walwitt Forest. They called themselves Walwitters, but to the Sieravadans they’d always be the traitors who sold out District Four in the Dark Days and had been lavished with favors from the Capitol ever since.
The lush greenery of Walwitt Forest was in stark contrast to the place Cari had grown up in, Sieravada, the southernmost inhabited part of the District. Over 400,000 people were stuffed in a fenced-off, coastal settlement, made to operate the fisheries, work the docklands, and voyage out into the ocean. Cari lived in a particularly impoverished part of Sieravada known as Taunton, a dirty, run-down neighborhood that stunk of cheap beer and cigarette smoke no matter the time or day.
Some centuries ago, when the tides had started to recede rapidly inland, Sieravada had undergone rapid desertification, now matching the inland deserts. She lived in one of the hottest and driest parts of Panem, as bemoaned by the Peacekeepers, with less than thirty days of rain per year, usually all at once during the stormy season. It was unsurprising then, that few of her neighbors lived past sixty, especially with such high rates of skin cancer.
Further inland, and in between Walwitt and Sieravada, was Lakeside, which housed the district’s small commercial sector and the much-needed water reservoir systems. While it wasn’t illegal for Sieravadans to travel to Lakeside, as it was to travel to Walwitt, it was damn expensive. With the exception of Reaping Day, of course.
Since Sieravada’s population dwarfed the other settlements, some 10,000 unlucky souls and a single, permitted relative made their way to Lakeside every year on Reaping Day, crammed into sweltering hot trains. Almost every year, two children from Sieravada would be reaped, with a rare Lakesider being picked once in a blue moon.
The unfairness of it all might have been easier to stomach if the Waltwitters actually volunteered every now and again, seeing as they had their own academy where their students were prepared for the Hunger Games. A decade had passed since the district’s last volunteer, Kai Lynch, had emerged as their most illustrious and bloodthirsty victor.
Unsurprisingly Blye, Dylan and Cari were all picked in the prelim rounds, but unfortunately, so were Aracel and Laney. Laney had never made it past the prelim round before, Aracel only once two years ago, while Dylan and Blye had both been picked twice before. Cari was by far the unluckiest of the bunch, having been picked every year but her first.
“Relax, Blye,” Dylan said. “You won’t be picked. Not with how many slips Meera has in the bowl.”
Silence enveloped the group, each of them flashing their eyes around in case the poor girl came into view. Not likely, as Meera usually raced back to the Community Home, usually with Marina in tow, to check up on her younger siblings.
“So are you girls coming tonight?” Dylan cleared his throat, intent on changing the subject. He dropped his voice to a whisper, “Some of the guys have even managed to score some pot.”
Cari sent him a scathing look, “That’s one way to get us all arrested by peacekeepers.”
“Oh please, it’s the day before the Reaping. They turn a blind eye to anything we get up to as long as nothing catches on fire,” Dylan waved her off. The familiar gesture sent her blood boiling.
“I’m with Dylan,” Aracel shrugged. “If they throw me in a cell tonight, they’ll have to let me out tomorrow morning.”
“Or they’ll just throw you back in a cell after the Reaping,” Cari snapped. “It is you after all.”
A tense moment of silence followed, as it usually did whenever they circled around that topic.
“Whatever, Dylan and I are going tonight,” Aracel announced. “If you babies want to stay tucked safely into bed, then be my guest.”
“Who said I wasn’t going?” Laney called after Aracel, who had swiftly left for the mess hall.
Blye gave her a knowing look. “Well, you’re definitely going then, right?”
Cari glared at Dylan. “I don’t really have a choice, now do I?” Leaving Aracel to get up to her newest, idiotic bout of trouble was non-negotiable.
“Do yourself a favor, Cari,” Dylan stared at her with those deep, dark, puppy-dog eyes. “Remember to have fun tonight.”
“She will,” Blye tugged on her arm. “We’re getting away from Marina for a few hours. That counts for something.”
The three of them laughed as they walked inside the Community Home, having dawdled outside long enough. Any longer, and Mrs. Borea would come bearing down at them like a sharp-nosed hawk.
As they parted ways for the showers, any lasting laughter quickly dissipated. The Community Home was a dark, dismal place that was perpetually dusty and full of sand that everyone brought in from their day’s shift. It was a stark contrast to Cari’s childhood home, which, despite being a ragged little shack, was full of light and laughter.
The children at the Community Home, with their lamentable servings and dismal housing conditions, were all utterly miserable. Nearly all of them were orphans, except for a few who came from such poor living conditions that even the peacekeepers took notice. Considering the frequent bruises that they got here, it would have to be a pretty bad home life that this was considered to be the better option.
Cari could usually avoid getting hit because she knew how to keep her mouth shut and stay out of trouble. Her sister, on the other hand, sought out trouble, which meant Cari was usually the one tending to her bruised cheeks afterwards. Too often, she hung around older boys like Rikki Loche and Sanna Hessay, who found themselves having run-ins with peacekeepers every other week.
Unfortunately, Aracel was exactly like their father, always angry and reckless. There had been no sense of restraint from him. It got him and her mother killed.
The two of them, alongside Cari’s brother, shared the common Sieravada “look”: curly, black hair, dark eyes, bronzed skin. Aracel’s pointed chin, long nose, and the way her lips formed a knowing smirk made her resemblance to their father all the more apparent.
Cari shared the same skin tone, but her hair was a few shades lighter and more wavy than curly. She had an upturned nose, while her eyes were a rather dark shade of blue, traits Cari had apparently inherited from a grandmother on her mother’s side.
It was always a chore showering at the Community Home after the day’s shift, as they could barely wash off in those dingy stalls with walls covered in mold. Cari would have only showered every other day if Mrs. Borea allowed it, because she never felt much cleaner afterwards anyway.
The mold was bad enough, but in the winter, when they didn’t have access to hot water, getting sick was common. The worst incident had been a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday, when Cari and her siblings had all gotten pneumonia, leaving them unable to work for nearly a month straight. They were saved only by the limited grace of the Community Home and their friends rationing their own food and going hungry most nights.
Six more months, Cari repeated to herself, and we leave the Community Home for good.
When she turned eighteen, Cari would be allowed to become her siblings’ legal guardian and permanently leave the Community Home. They would be assigned a hut to live in, hopefully outside of Taunton, and be able to boil water whenever they wanted and fill a whole tub to bathe in, a luxury they didn’t have here.
Unfortunately, Cari didn’t turn eighteen until January 27th, which meant she still had six months and twenty-four days in this hellhole to go.
Cari thought about Dylan and the fact that he'd turn eighteen in two months, which made her feel bitter all over again. He and his sister would be gone for good, living it up on his increased wages. Blye would likewise turn eighteen before the end of the year, leaving Cari and her siblings alone in this dark, miserable place.
But once she turned eighteen, they’d all finally be free. Free from bruises, from moldy, ice-cold showers, and from rotten fish. She’d be making a decent wage since she’d be allowed to work as a proper deckhand, and for the first time in a decade, her family would be safe and full.
After showering, she and Blye walked back to their assigned dormitory, and because they deliberately chose against dressing in the bathrooms, courtesy of the mold, some of the boys whistled at them as they walked through the hallways in only a threadbare towel. This was a pretty standard event, adding to the very long list of things Cari hated about the Community Home.
Another thing she hated was the dormitories. Thirty teenage girls above the age of fifteen were stuffed into rows of squished-in bunk beds, with one dresser shared between four people to stuff their limited wardrobes in and do their homework on top of. Her younger brother, Jules, was in a smaller room with about a dozen young boys his age. As he wasn’t old enough to work yet, in the summers they usually only saw each other at breakfast and dinner times. He spent the day under the watchful eye of Mrs. Hull, learning to weave nets and make hooks at the nearby beach.
When she saw him at dinner, his face looked even redder than it had yesterday. He seemed to be a lot less resistant to the sun than either Cari or Aracel were, and she had to wonder if she was going to have to let go of her pride and ask Dylan if he could salvage a tube of sunscreen for him. The idea that Jules would look like those withered old workers who lined the docks, too weak to man any ships, was too difficult to bear.
Cari’s earlier annoyance with Dylan had already dwindled after he offered her a spare dinner token. But her appetite wasn’t as strong as it should have been after a twelve-hour shift, owing to the impending Reaping. Spotting Meera Wiley across the hall with no meal in sight made her even less hungry as she struggled to swallow down just a few bites.
Jules, being younger than reaping age, didn’t share her struggle. Instead, he scoffed down his meal with his usual gusto, prattling on about how he and his friend Cassy Keene had made the best net of the day according to Mrs. Hull.
Cassy was one of the newer kids to the Community Home, and Jules had taken to her almost immediately, his schoolboy crush adorably precocious. Cari had seen Cassy around often enough at dinner, instantly memorable for how cute she was with her prominent dimples, honey-coloured eyes, and shaggy brown hair that was always unkempt.
In their spare time, the two liked to draw pictures, using the last stubs of the good chalk set Cari had bought him last year. Aracel had been furious because Cari had used her well-earned wage from managing to catch a couple of lobsters. But the little treat was worth it when she saw the look on his face, glazing with happiness. A long time ago, Cari had liked drawing too, back when her father could spare a bit here and there for a cheap watercolor set and some spare scraps of paper.
Returning to their dorm rooms after dinner was only for show. Mrs. Borea slept curtly at eleven every night and expected the rest of them to be in bed by ten-thirty. As all their other carers went to their own homes to sleep, it was stupidly easy to sneak out an hour after curfew.
Still, they went about their usual nighttime routines for show, changing into their night clothes and slipping into bed. Thankfully, Cari and Aracel shared a bunk bed in the far right corner of the room, close to the loose window that they used to sneak out. Blye and Marina slept in the opposite bunks, one shared dresser separating their beds. In it, they stuffed all the hole-ridden clothing they shared between them, and on top of it, they struggled to finish all of their assigned homework.
As Aracel despised the Capitol curriculum and viewed the dresser as a perpetual reminder of the looming school year, she instead preferred to keep a framed photo on display, one of their few remaining family possessions. It was the only photo they had where all five members were present: her father, straight back and proud, Aracel sitting on his knee, looking up adoringly at him, her mother cradling a newborn Jules in her arms, and Cari, standing in front with a bright smile.
Just over a year after this was taken, her parents were hanged in the main square, leaving Cari at eight years old to take care of a toddler and a forever-grief-stricken seven-year-old.
She hated the photo because it was a reminder of things that could never be. But of course, it was one of two things that Aracel treasured most in the world.
Cari thought of all the many fights that had transpired between them since that dreadful day and wondered if, when Aracel turned eighteen, she’d see much of her sister.
Aracel seemed surprised to see Cari getting up to get dressed at precisely eleven-thirty. “Didn’t think you were coming-”
“ Shhh, ” Cari whispered. “Before you wake the whole room up.”
They dressed in silence after that, Blye quickly joining them with Marina sniffling in her bed. She let out a sob as the three of them crept towards the loose window, Laney already waiting for them in a far nicer set of clothing.
Squeezing through the loose window had been a lot easier at fourteen, the first time Cari had gathered the courage to sneak out after curfew. She was still as bony as she had been back then, but now she had a few more inches on her to squeeze through and was more than a little envious of the much shorter Laney.
Only when they were a good 200 yards away from the Community Home and in the thick of Taunton's smoky alleyways did they speak.
“So you’re not going to ask where Dylan is?” Laney said with a rather cheeky smile.
“I assume he snuck out early to meet up with his friends,” she answered briskly as Blye and Laney exchanged twin grins. Dylan’s school friends were a lot friendlier and had more money to spare than the boys at the Community Home. Cari didn’t blame Dylan for avoiding the other boys here. She certainly did.
“Oh, come on,” Laney said dramatically. “How long are you going to keep this up? Pretending to still be mad at him?”
“I’m not pretending,” Cari retorted. “And anyway, I’m not interested in him anymore. He should know that by now.”
Laney pursed her lips, “He’s not going to wait around forever, you know.”
“I’m not asking him to.”
“Okay, but you’re both turning eighteen soon,” Laney pointed out. “And wouldn’t it be so much better if we all moved in together? If you guys were dating, we could ask for a bigger house and we’d have so much fun-”
“They’d have to get married to live together,” Blye pointed out.
“So?” Laney retorted. “Plenty of couples get married ahead of time to live together.”
“What a romantic you are,” Cari scoffed. “And here I thought you were saving your virtue and hand in marriage for our most illustrious victor.”
“That’s still true,” Laney said, looking lost in a faraway dream. “Finnick is my one and only-”
“Have you thought of a way to get him to knock you up yet?” Blye grinned. “Because that’s the only way you're making it to Victor's Village anytime soon.”
“You know I don’t get the appeal,” Aracel started. “He’s good-looking and all, but I’ve seen better.”
“Yeah, like who?” Laney snorted. “He’s the best-looking thing that’s ever come out of this place.” She gestured around them.
“Technically, he came from Curlew,” Aracel reminded her. Curlew was one of the nicer neighborhoods in Sieravada, so it was no wonder Finnick had turned out better-looking than most. “Not that he has so much as stepped foot south of Lakeside since he won the Games.”
“Why would you?” Cari muttered. “I’d never leave Victor's Village if I won, with such a fancy house and a pool all to yourself.”
They advertised the village on television sometimes, an opulent area hidden away at the edge of Walwitt Forest with its own little private beach. No work, no sunburns, just an endless amount of time to swim to your heart’s content.
“If I won, I’d eat myself to death,” Blye grinned. “Lobsters, oysters, salmon, caviar .”
“You’re thinking too narrowly,” Cari shook her head. “I’d have some actual meat for once.”
“I don’t even remember the last time I had meat.” Laney looked dazed. “It must have been over a decade ago.”
“Here’s hoping that next year, we might have a bit more cash to spare and some chicken on our tables,” Blye held up her hand in mock toast.
They arrived at the “party”, a term that had been loosely applied to Dylan’s get-together. Mostly, it was just some kids from school who gathered at one of their dirtiest local beaches, where you remained wary of stepping onto glass bottles strewn upon the sand. Sometimes it felt like there were more cigarette buds than there were grains of sand, few Sieravadan teenagers turning their noses up at a smoke. It was certainly the cheapest of vices available to them.
A group of rowdy teenagers at the beach already looked plastered, the scent of booze intermixing with what must have been a very cheap and thus very weak strain of weed.
Dylan greeted them with drinks in hand. “Ladies, nice to see you’ve all shown up.”
Cari smelled the drink, “I still don’t understand how you manage to get any real alcohol, even with your salary.”
“Some of the boys and I have been saving up,” he grinned. “That and Old Skipper gave it to us for cheap. I think she felt sorry for us.” Skipper, the owner of the lone tavern in Taunton, was rarely that generous. Dylan must have pouted pretty hard to get that discount.
“Still, what about the peacekeepers?” Cari asked warily. “They can’t be happy about a bunch of teenagers out drinking.”
Dylan shrugged, “Claudia and Felix are patrolling here tonight. They said they’d overlook it if we gave them a few bottles.” Claudia, she didn’t mind, known for her good mood while drinking, but Felix had a bad habit of looking at her and the other girls in a blatantly perverted way.
Blye decided to take a swig before immediately screwing up her face, “Ew, what is that ? ”
Dylan tried to look innocent. “I didn’t say it was good alcohol.”
“Nice to know,” Blye glared. She didn’t give the bottle back. “Come on, Cari, let’s go sit by the water. It’s so fucking hot even at this time of the night.”
The cool water was a relief from the groggy midnight heat. Cari had her own bottle in hand, stomaching down the acidic taste just so she could be mind-numbingly drunk. She turned down offers for a cigarette though, even as Blye accepted, due to the night’s heat.
“You know, I hear that the Walwitter teenagers have a bonfire every night before the Reaping,” Blye said after a few quiet minutes.
Cari shook her head, “That’s just a stupid rumor.”
“I believe it,” Blye shrugged. “It would fit in with whatever primitive practices that go on in that academy of theirs. Apparently, they burn an old set of clothing to symbolise a new Reaping every year.”
Cari snorted, “That’s such a fucking waste. And it’s not like they’re getting their names pulled anytime soon.”
“I didn’t say I agreed with them,” Blye pointed out.
“Besides, we’re from District Four,” Cari said. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to send things out to sea in the name of symbolism or whatever?”
Blye snorted, “Knowing our luck, it’ll probably end up back on our shores, and there is enough waste on the beach as it is.” That was true, most beaches in Sieravada were stinking and full of garbage because there weren’t enough people assigned to waste duty.
“So, are you going to get back with Dylan?” she asked after a moment.
“This might be our last night in District Four, and you’re asking me about a boy ?” Cari shook her head, incredulous at the very thought.
“Don’t think like that,” Blye snapped.
“Sorry,” she said, feeling rather guilty. “But no, I’m not going to get back with Dylan.”
“I thought you two loved each other,” she said with an indiscernible look.
“Yeah, but we ended up hating each other by the end of it.” Cari remembered the numerous fights, the insults, the desire to hurt each other…
“Well, I still think you’ll end up together,” she took another swig. “In fact, I bet that after the Reaping tomorrow, once we’ve had a good dinner for once and you’re thankful that neither of you got reaped, you’ll be back into each other’s arms. I mean you always do.”
She fought the urge to scowl, even though Cari knew she was telling the truth. How many times had she and Dylan broken up and reconciled in the past two years? Too many to count at any rate. And who knew? Maybe when she was relieved he wasn’t being sent to fight to the death in the arena, she would find it in her heart to forgive him.
“Can we talk about something else?” Cari asked, quite uncomfortable with the choice of topic.
“What do you want to talk about then?” she asked. “Tomorrow?”
“God no,” Cari laughed. “Boys and impending doom can’t be the only things we have to talk about.”
“It’s all I can think about.” Cari narrowed her eyes at Blye. “The impending doom, not boys,” Blye corrected.
“We’ll be fine,” Cari reassured her. “There’s thousands of slips.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I just have a really bad feeling about tomorrow.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I always have a bad feeling about the Reaping.” The two girls both laughed because it was better than accepting the worst, that both of them had a very good chance of being reaped compared to most.
“How are your siblings coping?” Blye asked after they had calmed down.
“Well, you know how Aracel is,” Cari shrugged.
Blye made a face. “Planning an uprising, is she?” Cari knew it was supposed to be a joke, but she immediately froze in horror.
“I’m sorry,” Blye looked immensely guilty. “I didn’t mean-“
“I know,” Cari waved her off, though she felt agitated. The very thought turned her blood ice-cold. “It’s fine.”
“How’s Jules then?” The guilty expression remained on her face.
Cari shrugged, “He’s still young. It’s like he knows what’s going on but doesn’t understand it. I think the reality won’t settle in until he turns twelve.”
“That really was the worst year,” she grimaced. “I had nightmares for months.”
“He’ll never have to take tesserae, so his chances will remain low.” It was this thought that helped her hold it together whenever the thought crept into her mind.
“Well, I heard Sirena Palmer's coming by the Community Home after the Reaping.”
Sirena was one of the five living victors in District Four, and the one with by far the nicest reputation. She was one of two victors who bothered visiting Sieravada, even though she was a Lakesider by birth. Kai Lynch was their other semi-frequent visitor, though that was because he liked to tour the local taverns.
Sirena was a lovelier person by far, and her husband, Beck, was a doctor who sometimes treated the kids at the Community Home for free. He was the one who had tended to Cari and her siblings when they had all contracted pneumonia.
“In fact, I’ve heard she’s bringing her famous mango cheesecake,” Blye continued.
“Who did you hear that rumor from?” Cari rolled her eyes.
“Dylan,” she answered.
She looked around for him, only to find Dylan drunkenly wrestling one of the boys from school. There was a circle forming around them, their names drunkenly chanted as the other boys started calling for bets to be placed.
“Your sources amaze me,” Cari said dryly. Before either of the girls could laugh, however, they heard the sound of trucks pulling up through the street. Since no one could afford a vehicle to drive in the Sieravada, it could only mean one thing: peacekeepers.
“Oh shit,” she heard Blye mutter. “We should go.”
Instantly, Cari sprang to her feet, “I’ll get Aracel.”
She spotted her sister cheering on Dylan, all looking too dazed to know about the peacekeeper’s arrival.
“Everyone, wake up,” she snapped her fingers in front of Aracel’s face. “Peacekeepers have arrived. We all better get out of here.”
“Why?” Aracel slurred. “We’re not doing anything illegal.”
Cari leaned in towards her, “You know they’d just love to book us for something. And where would that leave Jules? Alone in the Community Home, without anyone to fend for him.”
Despite her drunken state, something seemed to click. Not wasting another moment, Cari grabbed her hand and led her away from the beach, stumbling into someone she recognized from the Community Home.
“Sorry,” the boy called.
Cari kept pressing forward, trying to avoid the peacekeepers who were flashing red lights now. One of their few advantages was that, as Taunton natives, they knew the streets better than any peacekeeper. Cari and her sister took winding, back alleys, jumped fence after fence, and were back home in record time.
“Do you think the others will get back in time?” Aracel gasped, clearly out of breath.
“Honestly, it’s us I’m more worried about.” If the peacekeepers came knocking to check on them, and Mrs. Borea decided not to provide an alibi…
She and Aracel jumped the fence and walked to the side of the building where their dormitory was, avoiding the peacekeepers who were now patrolling out front. Cari fidgeted with the window to slide it loose before turning to Aracel. “You go in first.” She had racked up too many indiscretions this year already. Better Cari was caught than her.
By the time they reached their beds that night, there was some unspoken agreement they wouldn’t be sleeping alone. It was hot and sweaty, as they tossed and turned all night, but neither of them let go until morning.