DREAM GIRL EVIL || the hunger games

I. good little monster

[ chapter one, good little monster ]

*⍋*

ASTORIA

Usually, when Astoria wakes up from a nightmare, she waits out the fear. She waits for the ghosts in the corner of her room to call it a night and leave. She stays in bed until she is allowed to sleep again. Tonight, it seems the ghosts have taken up the graveyard shift.

It makes sense, she supposes. Her nightmares are always worse during times of stress, and her biggest stressor always falls around the same time each year. It doesn't help that President Snow will be making a televised announcement about the upcoming Quarter Quell in the afternoon. Astoria doesn't know why she's so worried. She's safe now. (Except no one is ever truly safe in Panem—not the districts, or the Victors, or even the very people who believe themselves to be untouchable.)

No matter, lack of sleep wouldn't help Astoria's jitters. But her nightmares refuse to be kept at bay, and her eyes are too scared to be shut. So Astoria admits defeat and pushes the covers off her body. Even though she has socks on, she can feel the cold radiating from the ground through the fabric. She doesn't normally mind the cold; in fact, most times she prefers it.

Still, the frosty floorboards send chills all over her body, and Astoria wishes for a second that she had agreed to let Olive turn on the heater that night. She takes the blanket from her bed and wraps it around her body. She makes sure to open the door carefully—there's a loose screw that sometimes makes it creak whenever it opens. Astoria makes a mental note to finally fix it in the morning.

She trudges into the kitchen, flickering the light on. It smells of biscuits and cinnamon butter, Astoria's choice of a late night snack before bed. She's tempted to steal another biscuit from the batch before remembering she finished them all already. So instead, she opens the fridge and takes out the pitcher of tart cherry juice.

The woman who runs the fruit stand at the market, Dolores (she can never remember her last name), told Olive that cherry juice helped soothe insomnia. And Olive, who holds a fondness for Dolores, brought home a pitcher that same day. She was sure it would help with Astoria's restlessness, as she called it. Astoria didn't have the heart to tell her there is no remedy for nightmares spooled of blood and a guilty conscience. Cherry juice isn't the magic anecdote for all that is wrong with her.

There is no anecdote, no cure, no way to fix her.

But Olive still tries. For the last year (after Astoria woke up from a nightmare so bad, she thought she was still in it, after she held a knife to Olive's throat believing her to be the enemy out to get her, after her little sister finally saw how bad things were for her), Olive has been trying to fix her. And Astoria lets her. She drinks the tart cherry juice, despite the fact that it never works, and she never explains to Olive that some toys are simply broken forever.