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00. IN THE FLESH
DISTRICT THREE ROSE like a palace of steel and cement before my very eyes, I remember that much. It was a bitter kind of entry, the kind that tasted like metal when you bit down on your tongue too hard. In retrospect, I cannot imagine the place ever getting any sunlight, even the small balconies that hung out and overlooked the nicer apartments uptown, close to the square. I know this is false, of course, but everything was so gray, so bleak, it seems, in my mind's eye, to be raining and overcast all the time.
I recall District Three more often than the other districts for one reason and one reason only. The boy. He was, I think, sixteen ― the same age as I was. Dark hair and a sallow look about him, but there was something puffy in his face, too, like a bloated corpse pulled from a river after a few days under the surface.
I'd watched him carefully in training. He was tall and lean, stronger than me by a longshot. I watched everyone carefully in training, but he was like me ― good with a knife and quick, clever. I would even go as far as to call him handsome, or at least that's what my brain told me to distract from the fact that my death was imminent on the horizon, a storm rolling in from the distance.
I remember finding out what blood and desperation tasted like mixed together for the first time. I vomited, of course, and then vomited again, and then I couldn't stop and my mouth was dry and there I was, heaving once again.
A voice cuts through my daydreams. "What are you thinking about?" He asks, brow furrowed in the resting scowl I am so accustomed to seeing him wear. He chews slow, savouring each bite like it will be his last meal.
I shrug, letting the slice of bread drop from my hands onto the stone plate in front of me. It is District Ten bread, the good kind, just a little nicer than the sort I grew I up eating. Still just as dense and creamy and a little sweet, the occasional grit of seeds in a mouthful.
"Nothing," I say finally. "Just...thinking."
That is a lie, and he knows it. The only secrets we have from one another are the answers to questions we choose not to ask, anymore. If I told him the truth, he wouldn't know what to do, besides nod and keep eating. We tried it before, when I first came home. It was miserable, giving each other pep talks constantly. Eventually, silence was much preferred over motivational speeches.
