The Second Quarter Quell

Chapter 10

A few years later I decided to go for a walk. The fresh air was vastly different from the alcoholic smell I had induced myself in. I went by the school and saw Maysilee. I did a double take and realised that it was Madison. I crept closer. She was giving something to a small child that looked just like her. That must be her daughter, Madge, I think her name was. Madison handed her something that glinted in the morning sun.

"It's for good luck on your first day of school." Madison explained.

"What kind of bird is it?" Madge asked.

"It's a Mockingjay."

I couldn't handle it. I ran back home and bolted the door behind me breathing heavily. Tears streamed down my face.

"May, I need you." I gasp, "Don't leave me May. I would never leave you, so why did you leave me?" I shouted the last few words, closing my eyes.

"I'm here." Her soft angelic voice floats into my ears. I keep my ears closed, scared that she will not be there. "I never left Haymitch." Her voice was so soft and calm. "You just stopped seeing me."

"I would never stop seeing you."

"But you did. You didn't want to believe I was ever real. You wanted the world to go away." I feel her fingers trace the outline of my jaw. I open my eyes. She is there, exactly the same. I reach out to touch her face, but my hand passes through it.

"Why can't I touch you?"

"Because I am apart of you Haymitch." She places her hand over my heart. "I will always be here for you." She starts to sing and fade all at the same time. Once she's gone, however, the notes of her song still lingering in the air.

That night I had no nightmares. It was the first full sleep I had had in years. I woke with a smile on my face and got rid of my liquor bottles. Occasionally I herd Maysilee's song but I didn't see her.

I started drinking again after I mentored the next games. Two more dead. Why was everyone dead? Couldn't anyone ever just live for once? I must be cursed. Everyone I touched died. At first I had tried to be a good mentor, tell the tributes how I won. But they all died and with them was my hope for any future tributes.

But once, 24 years after my own games. Someone lived. Someone I had mentored live. In fact both the tributes from 12 lived. But I was to drunk to realise. It was only the next year when there was a chance I could be in the games again that my living tributes made me stop drinking. They poured out my liquor and wiped the alcohol from my breath. One night I was fully sober for the first time I could remember. It was then I realised what was going to happen. I cried.

Someone rubbed my back. I looked up to see Maysilee.

"I'm going back, May." I whimpered.

"But you came back once, you can come back twice."

"But everyone in these games has come back once."

"Yes but no one else has come back from a quarter quell." She left at that. She was right I had been in a quarter quell before. I could win this. I realised one thing though, the living girl. She has a spark going in the districts. She has the power to start a rebellion. She needs to get out of there alive. I'm old I've lived my life and I never even wanted to live it. But this girl has so much life, so much promise. She had to live no matter what the cost. I will keep that girl alive so that Snow will fall.