The Hunger Games - Beyond the Books

Salt and the Sea

Inspired by Salt and the Sea by the Lumineers from the album III. If you haven't heard it, you should go give it a listen.

POV: Finnick Odair Jr. (age 17)

...

I watch the fine grains of sand fall through my fingers. It leaves my hand covered in a thin layer of dust, making my sun-darkened skin a shade paler. It settles on my polished shoes and in the black threads of my suit, but I don't try and brush it away. My eyes settle on the grey horizon. The churning waves of the sea reflect the dark grey of the gloomy sky. I shiver as I feel the damp sand soak through my fine clothes. But I don't move. I just sit.

I hear a faint peal of a baby's laughter from somewhere far behind me. I know it belongs to Willow Mellark. The joyful sound might make me smile, on another day. But at the moment I don't feel much like smiling.

I knew what was happening, before it had happened. My mother had started by distancing herself from me, little by little. To make it more bearable for the both of us, I suppose. I remember coming home from school one day to find her bedroom door locked, lights off. The house was silent. She did this on occasion, and I let her think of my father in silence. I had no reason to suspect that this time should have been any different, and she seemed normal the next morning. It happened again the next day. I made dinner for the both of us, and knocked on Mom's door, but the plate of food across from me lay cold and untouched. The pattern continued for days, and then weeks. She stopped coming out in the mornings. She didn't answer me whenever I spoke through the door, trying to coax her out with increasingly anxiety-saturated words.

I laid in my bed awake every night, dread eating at me. And if I did doze off, her haunting screams jolted me awake. I would scramble out of bed and jiggle the doorknob. She always blocked me out. I sat on the floor, my back pressed to the door, speaking softly to my mother, trying to comfort her, to tell her it was okay, that I was here for her. I told her she needed to be there for me. I knew if she would just let me in, I could help her. I could make her better. But just the fact that she didn't let me confirmed what I've spent my life fearing. My mother had given up. She had given up on life...on getting over my father's death.

My whole life I've been constantly reminded of the absence of my dad. I'm told how much I look like him, the way I carry myself, the color of my eyes that matches the sea on a clear day. There were times my mother shut her eyes tightly at the sound of my voice, like she was trying to listen for him. I notice when Johanna Mason's face drains of color at my laugh. When Katniss Mellark stares, looking at me, but seeing someone else.

One day, everything went silent. I woke up from the best sleep I'd had in months, with an empty feeling. Without knocking on the door, I knew she was gone.

I called the first person that I knew and trusted to help. Peeta made all the calls and arrangements, even planned most of her funeral. I sat out through everything I could, and let him handle everything. Peeta, Katniss, and their year-old baby stayed in a guest room for a week, while I stayed shut in mine up until today. They tried to coax me to eat, but Katniss had a look of understanding when I snapped at them and she convinced Peeta to give me some more space. I know he meant well, but Katniss seemed to understand the way I felt and acted. But even so I knew there would be no getting out of today, the funeral. I let Peeta lay out my suit and help me comb my unruly bronze hair, even offer comforting words that I pretended to listen to.

I didn't cry when they put my mother in the ground. I stood straight as the cold wind blew through my dark clothes, covering my skin with goosebumps. I didn't flinch as my mother's old friends wept around me. Afterward, I didn't reenter my quiet, empty house. I walked straight down to the shore behind it and sat in the saltwater-soaked sand.

Sometimes I get angry at my mother. She chose my father over me time and time again, and now she's chosen him for the final time. I hate her for bringing me into the world when she wasn't capable of loving me. I hate her for giving in to the darkness instead of being here for me and being my mother. But then I remember that she never really was.

I've seen what love can do to a person. It killed my mother. It saved Katniss and Peeta, my new official guardians. It made me an orphan. I know that love answers to no one. No one can tame it, or change its ways. It strikes without warning, giving, and taking. I will not let it take me like it did my parents.

But now maybe, after everything, I can finally be loved the way I deserve. There is a foolish bit of hope hidden deep within me, telling me that maybe it will be okay.

That, just maybe, things can be good again.