The Capitol Games

Chapter 31- the haunting past

The next morning, the main door of the Guiders' quarters opens with a hiss and click, and Sam strolls into the living.

I smirk above my coffee cup at him "Welcome back." I say, "How was your night?"

Sam rolls his eyes, clearly getting what I was implying. "Funny. I was on this floor, actually. I was in a room just next to yours."

"Oh." I didn't even realise.

"I came in late though." He says, taking the cup from my hands and slurping on it. I roll my eyes and pour myself another cup.

"And I heard it." he adds.

Mom's nightmare. A frown slips onto my face, and I nod.

"So," I say, changing the topic. "You spoke to Mayra?"

Sam nods. "I told her your plan." he say. "She feels... um, bad. For being mean to you."

"It's fine." I say.

Finnick pads out then, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. I search his face for a hint of any sign of what happened, but he shoots me a warning look, and I drop it.

"So she's fine with us now?" Finnick asks.

"Yes." Sam says. "You want to know what happened to her?"

"If she's okay with us knowing. I asked Zeke to find out, but I guess he didn't yet."

"She is fine with you knowing." Sam said, his voice hoarse. "It's not a big secret anyway. Most people in her Sector know, anyway."

"So what did really happen" Finnick asks.

Sam sets down the coffee mug and leans against the counter. "It's her family, basically. Her parents left her brother Sterling and her when she was a kid. Ever since then, they've worked tirelessly to make ends meet. She loved her brother more than than anything, but they, um... drifted apart. After he got married. And the wife was a monster.

"She turned Sterling into one as well." Sam continues. "Sterling married Wilda when Mayra was ten and he was seventeen. Mayra was happy at first, having another person in family, but thinks took a turn for the worse really soon. Sterling stopped working. He would just be cooped up in their room with his wife. Gradually, they shut Mayra out. She was forbidden to come into their room, even if it was just to clean. All throughout the day and night, bottles of cheap liquor went in, the sound of ugly music from the stereo wafted out. At night, the music got louder, their laughs became hysterical, then there were the screams... Mayra would sleep in the barn.

"The neighbours complained. Only to her, of course, because Sterling and Wilda barely ever came out of the house. They called their house dirty, the worst ones going so far as to throwing pails of water or sacks of garbage on their front door, the nicest ones telling her to maybe join a foster house. But Mayra, of course, didn't leave. She couldn't leave her brother."

"She still loved him." I say softly.

Sam nods. "Sterling was the only family she had left, and even when he pretended she didn't exist, she remembered about the good times they had together. How he practically raised her. So Mayra stayed. And worked for all of them. She slowly started saving up some money just so that she wouldn't have to take a loan from people for emergencies. Sterling came out of the room occasionally, to go buy things that Wilda told him to. Mayra would scramble up to him. Ask him how he was, if he could just talk to her. But he just shrugged her off, and left as quickly as he could. By the time she was twelve, he was just impassive to her. He would always say the same thing-- "I'm fine, just leave us." So she did. Mayra stopped asking them to come out of that room so that she could clean it, or ask them to come for dinner. She'd just leave food by the door and take away the dishes in the morning. Mayra didn't so much as catch a glimpse of Wilda for years, so when Sterling came out of his room one day and told Mayra that Wilda was due in a month, she panicked. They didn't have enough money for a proper deliver by a doctor, so Mayra begged some of the elder woman of their Sector to help her. The agreed, if only because of Mayra's distraught desperation." Sam's face was pained, continued on anyway.