Shattered (A Hunger Games Fan-fiction) (Wattys2015) (#feels)

Chapter 15

(The part in italics is a past memory in this chapter. This happened back when life was good in District Four)
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It was a beautiful day and the sun was warm and bright, turning the whole district into a river of gold. The wind was blowing and the trees were swaying back and forth, casting feathery shadows on the ground. Somewhere in the distance, soft music was playing and I walked along the beach.

Annie and I had not talked for days now. I had invited her to my birthday party, and she had come, wearing this blue princess dress that I still remember somehow. But then she had spilled some cake on her dress and had started crying about it so I had tried my best to soothe her.

Of course that made it worse. I accidentally pushed her a little too hard in a game that day and then she had tripped and fallen and then she had gone home. After that day, she didn't even talk to me.

We were pretty little so of course this was a perfectly logical excuse to stop talking to someone. I missed her though. Even if we hadn't gotten to know each other yet, and my birthday part was the first time we actually played together, I still missed her and wanted to talk to her.

I was watching the waves crash onto the shore and the sound of the sea was like music to me. I had always loved the water. My parents were walking on either side of me, holding onto my tiny hands. My mother had her hair tucked into a braid at the side and was smiling brightly at my father who just told a sailor joke. Those jokes were getting old, but somehow they always brought a smile to my mom's lips and my dad loved seeing her like that.

We stopped and set up the picnic we had brought and my mom started unpacking the sandwiches she had made in the morning. They were delicious. I remember my father tickling my sides that day and my mother taking pictures of us.

"Okay, let me take one of you, Jess," my dad grinned, getting up from the sand. He took the camera from my mom and snapped a picture of her as she sat their with the sea foaming behind her. After about thirty minutes, my father pointed somewhere behind me.

"Isn't that the girl who tripped on your birthday?" my mom asked me and I turned around immediately. Sure enough, it was her. Annie was walking towards us with her dark hair loose and flowing behind her and her green eyes were sparkling.

"Hi," she said when she reached us.

"Hi," we all said. Then my mom smiled at her. "How's your knee, honey?"

Annie smiled faintly back at her and said. "It's fine, Mrs Odair." There was silence for another moment and then my father said.

"Is your mother here with you?" He turned to my mother. "We should go say hi to her, don't you think?" My mother nodded, beaming.

"She's sitting over there," Annie pointed a little way behind her. My parents got up, told me they would be right back, and left. That left me eating a turkey sandwich alone as Annie stood next to me, not saying a single word. Then after a while, she sighed and plopped down in the sand.

"My mother made me come to you," she told me with a glare.

"Oh," I said, too lost in her eyes. She nodded her head.

"When I told her why I wasn't talking to you, she said that I was being stupid," she sighed. "I don't know if she's right."

"She is," I replied. I had only accidentally pushed her. It wasn't that big of a deal!

"I guess," Annie said, looking up. She had absentmindedly started to doodle in the sand and I saw with a jolt that she had written my name there. Finnick, surrounded by swirly lines. But before I could say anything about it, she ran her hand over it and covered it with more sand.