Life Through Sea Green Eyes - A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Part 2: Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own or claim ownership to any content related to or included in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I write this story purely for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of others, with no intent for making money.

Life Through Sea Green Eyes

Part Two: Decadent Delirium

Chapter Five

          It barely seems like any time passes before the next Hunger Games loom on the horizon. When I get back from the victory tour, I settle back into my old lifestyle, but with one major change. Whenever Natare, Mara, and Annie aren’t in class I am with them, doing whatever it is that young people with free time and not a care in the world do. Since I am hanging out with three pre-teen girls, we inevitably end up doing stuff that doesn’t particularly interest me – one entire afternoon is spent at a hair salon that Natare treats her friends to. But these three girls are the only people under the age of 70 who I can just be myself with, and I don’t really care what we do as long as it’s with them.

          At first Mara and Annie are just “Natare’s friends” in my head, because I don’t know much about them. Well, I do know Mara a bit – we had a bonding moment last Reaping day – but Annie is a total mystery. But as the months roll past, and I’m inundated every day with their tales of friends, school, guardians, and boys – they are obsessed with boys – I gradually get to know them.

          Mara keeps her long black hair braided in a thick braid that coils around her head like a crown, and while she claims it’s practical, I learn that her father used to call her his little princess before he ran off with a washerwoman a few years back, and Mara wears her hair like this to remember him. Her mother is crabby and domineering, although she’s backed off now that Mara is spending so much time with Natare and I. Mara thinks that her mother is hoping I’ll fall in love with her daughter and marry her, by proxy elevating her entire family’s social and financial standing. Sunset is her favourite time of day, and she, despite only being thirteen, has a new boyfriend practically every other week. I meet a few of them, but they tend to get intimidated by me so she stops bringing them around.

          Annie is a lot harder for me to get a read on, possibly because she just isn’t as outgoing as Mara and Natare. As I learned from my sister, her parents died in a hurricane a year ago, which has no outward effect on her. Sometimes, though, I catch Annie staring off into space while Mara and Natare giggle about something that happened in school that day. In open defiance of traditional style, Annie wears her hair unbraided. When I ask her why, she shrugs and says that not everything has a reason.

          Maybe it’s our shared tragic past, but the more time I spend with the girls, the more intrigued I am by Annie. It’s completely platonic, of course – she’s only thirteen – but I find myself making excuses to hang back and walk with her when we go somewhere. I find it really peaceful being around her, because if I feel like talking, she’s happy to join in the conversation, but if I don’t initiate anything we just walk in companionable silence. At first I made the mistake of thinking she never started conversations because she disliked talking to me, but that isn’t it at all, it’s just the way she is.

          As the 66th Hunger Games approach, Natare and father – Mags as well, to be honest – watch me carefully for any signs that I might be in danger of reverting to my depressed state from my last brush with the Games. But my experiences during the victory tour have replaced my anguish over the Games with a sense of resentful bitterness – not necessarily a healthier emotion, but I can still function more or less normally with my new attitude.

          Mags invites me over to her house in the Victor’s Village a few days before the Reaping. She sits me down on her sofa – everything in her house is covered with lacy knit throws – hands me some sugar cubes, and starts talking. “I don’t know how much you are aware of the mentoring rules, but because you’re under-aged, you’re exempt from mentoring this year.”