A Knife in the Dark | ✓

Forty Seven

One morning, I woke up, and they were gone.

Bell and Leah left no notes. They left no signs. They were there one night, and then the next morning, they were gone. Their rooms were perfectly organized, nearly the exact way they had been the day before. The only visible difference was that the makeup and jewelry (mostly inherited from her sister and "borrowed" from Saylee) that usually made up a layer over Leah's vanity was moved, organized on the little shelves and in the little drawers designated for them. In Bell's room, the only thing missing was a sword that had belonged to her brother, which usually leaned against the blue wall beside her window. I was the one that found them gone when I went to check on them that morning.

I acted, as I had with Saylee and Jake, as thought they had never been around. As if Bell and Leah hadn't ever been in my life, as if they weren't actual people in District Two. That was the way of things--when someone disappeared, you acted as though they'd never existed and you moved on. Someone disappearing used to mean that they were taken by the Capitol for interrogation, which was a euphemism for being tortured and slaughtered, or, for the less fortunate, turned into an Avox.

The parents were good at keeping their faces impassive. Good, but not good enough. I'd seen Caprenia in one of the sitting rooms that first morning, her face blank as a slate. She was staring blindly out the windows across from her, and tears were silently streaming down her face. Knowing that she was quietly mourning the loss of five children rather than one, I slipped out of the house unheard. That was the last time in a while that I set foot in the Marcellus house.

I did what every good, loyal citizen of Panem would do. I helped out in the lower section of the district, distributing and helping to make clothes for the people that lived there. I brought food to the men working in the quarries, who were all overworked and half-starved. I spent hours helping train the most ruthless and bloodthirsty of the kids in the district. It seemed to me that each year of children was more loyal to the Capitol than the last, and more willing to spill the blood of others in an arena. If I wasn't so much faster, so much more skilled, so much more experienced than them, I would have been terrified. Oh, and my grades had never been better.

I paid no mind to the Games. I heard plenty about it in school and at the training center. I didn't want to watch the Games, anyway. My dreams were still haunted by a girl falling to the ground like a rag doll, by a boy's loud screams and cries of pain as the mutts tore through layers of armor and clothing and flesh. No, I had no inclination to watch the Games. I would play the Capitol's games, be the perfect little soldier on paper, but I refused to watch the Games. And if they found out and shot me...well, fine. Not like I cared. I didn't feel invincible, but I'd long ago come to terms with the likelihood of me dying a young death. How I died didn't matter. I could have been shot for treason the following day, I could have been tortured in one of the Capitol's buildings, or I could have been slaughtered in the Games and it wouldn't have mattered to me.

It was three days after Bell and Leah had left. There was a knock on my bedroom door, and then it opened. In the doorway was Vitellia, with Flora clinging to her legs. Lately, this family that had adopted me had been very careful to constantly check on me.

Flora was six at that point, and her hair had grown long and reddish gold like her mother's. She was dressed in muted brown and had her thumb stuck in her mouth. She slowly inched her way into my room and towards me. Only when I held out my arms to her did she come bounding forward, eagerly jumping up onto my lap. She leaned her head against my shoulder and shut her eyes, smiling contentedly.

"Maximus thinks that tonight will be the final night of the Games," Vitellia said carefully. "Would you like to watch with us?"

I considered it carefully. The last time I had watched the Games, it had been with Jake and Saylee, and we had seen two of our closest friends die. From what I knew of the 75th Hunger Games, neither Brutus nor Enobaria had died, but then again, Cato had died on the last night.

"I suppose I could." I replied slowly, my thoughts still racing as if trying to determine the likelihood of having to watch Enobaria die.

This seemed to encourage Vitellia. "Okay," she said. "We'll put it on at nine, after Flora is asleep."

Flora looked up at me, a big grin on her tiny face. "We're going to make cookies!" She said around her thumb. "Can you help, Alla?" She looked up at me with big, pleading eyes.

I exhaled slowly, but smiled down at her. "Well, I guess I can fit you into my very busy day."

She giggled and hopped off of my lap, then held out her tiny hand to me. "Come on!" She latched onto three of my fingers and pulled hard in an attempt to drag me from my room. With a laugh, I scooped her up and ran down the stairs to the kitchen. Her curls bounced, and she looked delighted in the way that only a young child could. I wished that I could keep her innocent and happy forever. When we reached the kitchen, I twirled around and then set her on the floor, and she looked up at me adoringly, still giggling. I pushed any dark thoughts from my head, because, as I saw it, Flora was the only one left for me.