Chapter Text
I . "living just comes with a bit of heartache, heartache comes with a bit of young faith."
'painkillers' rainbow kitten surprise
It starts as a rumor, like most things tend to do.
Jimmy runs the pad of his finger along the words on the page of his notepad, testing for smears as his skin dances over the indent of the letters that came to with every scratch of his ballpoint pen. They are words written in a scrawl that only he recognizes, messy and quick with every loopy ‘o’ and undotted ‘i’.
The light from the midday sun shines through the windows that make up the walkway connecting the two buildings in the capital. The ground beneath him shakes with every passing car, and he can hear a group of college girls talking to his left; one has pink hair done in spikes, hanging against her back like ponytails, while the other’s head is painted in neon green jaguar spots. They talk like any two schoolgirls would; with fingers twirling long hair and fingers covering the laughter that falls from colorful blue lips.
The one with the long hair talks about her father, who has a name that Jimmy recognizes from long meetings when he was twelve and handshakes with people who are more important than Jimmy will ever understand. She tells her friend about how he thinks they’re going to bring in prior victors for the third Quarter Quell. She tells her friend about how it’ll be the deadliest game in history.
They turn the corner laughing into the palm of their cupped hands with the same level of dignity that anybody in the capital carries in the peppy stride. The girl who has her scalp painted neon green speaks about how she hopes a tribute from district two will be reaped again in a thick accent that Jimmy does not recognize. The girl with her hair done in spikes says Jimmy’s name in retort.
They are talking about you. A voice says, in the back of his head. He presses his finger against the ink of the paper and tries to focus on the mess of words that he’s about to give in a lecture. They speak of your demise .
He tells the voice that it is a rumor, just like everything else in this hellhole of a city.
( “Sheen Estevez,” the man says. There is somebody cheering; but not for Sheen. They are cheering for the bravery of the sixteen-year-old girl who willingly volunteered to take the reaped girl’s place. She stands fair and tall, with her back as straight as the microphone she stands in front of. She is from a place where volunteering is a chance of opportunity. If she wins, she will be accepted amongst the bustling Victors Village.
The crowd dies down as the brown-haired boy makes his way to the clear path between the gathered boys and girls. Jimmy is too busy grinning at the girl on stage to notice the familiarity in the haircut and the eye color and the clothes that the new tribute fashions. He is too busy to notice the way Sheen looks at him in fear.
He has to do a double take. His eyes skip over the brown-haired boy, because he recognizes him instantly . A voice in his mind tells him that Sheen can’t possibly be the tribute. That there is something he is missing. That the tribute is already on the stage or still in the crowd or not even in the audience.
But then a Peacekeeper grabs Sheen’s arm, and Jimmy is moving before he can stop himself.
“Sheen!” He shouts. That is not a warrior. That is not somebody that Jimmy can watch on the television and place bets on with his parents and empathetically coo at when they get pierced through the lungs. “Wait!”
There is a hand on his arm and another one grabbing onto the back of his dress shirt. They are his friends, trying to hold him back because they know what happens when little boy’s disturb big ceremonies. They know more than Jimmy did at the time.
But Jimmy knows that the boy who stands in front of the crowd is his friend . He knows that the boy who stands in front of the crowd is wearing a dress shirt that came from Jimmy’s closet because he had completely forgotten about the Reaping Ceremony. He knows that the boy who stands in front of him is the third fastest runner in the sixth grade because he had thought that the faster he ran the more girls would like him. He knows that the boy that lives in his memories and his heart doesn’t say swear words because he thinks they're bad and keeps dinosaur bandaids on him at all times. Jimmy knows that the boy that stands in front of him is alive and there and breathing.
Jimmy knows that if he doesn’t do anything, he will not know that boy for much longer.
“I volunteer!” He shouts, surprising even himself. “I volunteer as tribute.”
“Jimmy—” Sheen says, as the Peacekeeper that grabs Sheen’s arm pushes him into the crowd with the rest of the boys, and Jimmy is pulled from the grasp of his friends by the gloved fingers of men who came from the Capital. “Jimmy, wait!” He says, because they all know that Jimmy cannot fare for himself in the arena.
But you can do better than Sheen can . The voice in the back of his head tells him as he is dragged to the edge of the stage by the Peacekeepers. Soon enough, he is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the sixteen-year-old girl next to him. She regards him out of the side of her eye, sneering in his direction. He ruined her gratuitous act of volunteering by stealing her moment, which is an act punishable by death in the games; especially considering his age and skill level.
He turns to look at the audience before him when he hears somebody sob his name. It is his mother, standing in the back of the crowd with a handkerchief pressed against the edge of her eye. She knows that she will soon be a mother to none.
“Two volunteers,” The man from the audience says, a certain ring in his tone as he regards Jimmy. “Well, boy, you sure are a young one. Say, what did you say your name was?”
“Jimmy,” Jimmy says. His voice sounds raw when echoed back across the loud speaker. He is not met with the same array of applause as the girl besides him. A few that clap at the sound of his name, unknowing of Jimmy’s skills. The sound of applause comes from the people in the audience that know that Jimmy has not trained a day in his life. That he will be the first to die. “Jimmy Neutron.”
“And how old are you, Mr. Neutron?” The man asks. His breath smells like vodka. Jimmy decides he does not like it.
“Twelve.”
He can hear the surprise in the crowd, and see the way that the man’s eyes widen in revelation. They have not seen a victor as young as twelve win the games since before the first Quarter Quell. Jimmy sees the way that the expression on the man’s face melts into one of pleasant shock, and Jimmy knows that the man thinks Jimmy has been training his entire life for this moment. Jimmy knows that the man does not think Jimmy will die.
Jimmy knows that the man is wrong.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it!” the man says, standing up straight and gesturing towards Jimmy and the girl. Jimmy knows that they are supposed to shake, so he turns to face the girl and offers his hand palm up in front of him and tries not to grimace when she forces the length of her fingernails underneath the skin of his palm and pulls away, the edges of pink nail polish incarnadine with blood. “Your tributes from District 3 for the 68th Annual Hunger Games!”
“You’re dead meat,” the girl says underneath her breath, as she waves and smiles at the roaring crowd. Jimmy does not say anything in response. “My sister’s in your grade. She tells me you can’t even kill a spider. You’ll be dead before the Games even start.”
“Let’s hope,” Jimmy says through clenched teeth and a wide smile. The girl rolls her eyes with a scoff. Jimmy tries his best to ignore her, waving at the crowd in front of him and the camera’s to his right to try and stop himself from crying on live television. It does not work.
It does not work.)
“Did you see the news?” Cindy asks him. Jimmy is sitting on the ground in front of the couch with a box of string in front of him. He is watching a show in a language that he does not understand as he grades the tight box knots in front of him, sticking his hand into the loop of strong rope and pulling on the edges of loose string.
“No?” Jimmy says, watching as Cindy places a bag of groceries on the countertop before walking over to the makeshift living room. Cindy has this incredible ability to grab Jimmy’s fear from the depths of his mind and wrangle it into a little ball, placing it back near the front of his brain as carefully as possible and making him pick up the remote and change the channel with shaky hands.
“They’ve announced the third Quarter Quells,” Cindy says, avoiding eye contact. She plays with the ends of her blonde ponytail, sighing as she stares at the windows on the opposing wall. “I— well —I’m not sure how to tell you. I think it’s better if you found out yourself.”
“What’s going on, Cindy?” Jimmy asks, changing the channel anyways. There is a man with long straight hair that hands down to his calves on the screen in front of him, standing in front of the Presidential Office as he rubs the ends of the hair on his knuckles. “Is it bad?”
“Well we’re from District 3,” She says, like that explains everything. “It probably won’t be as bad, because I’m sure at least one person will volunteer, you know? So we probably don’t need to worry, because logistically, there’s like, forty other names in that fucking bucket, which is—”
“To our viewers just tuning in, we are reporting the breaking news revolving the developing story around the 75th Hunger Games,” the man on the television says, and Cindy’s jaw audibly clicks shut as both of them turn to stare at the screen. “For the 25th Hunger Games, the Presidential Syndicate decided to host a special anniversary Games, where tributes were voted in by their districts instead of reaped. For the 50th Hunger Games, the arena hosted forty-eight tributes instead of the usual twenty-four.”
“Jesus Christ , get to the point already,” Cindy murmurs, and Jimmy can’t help but snort at the exasperation in her tone.
“The Presidential Syndicate just announced the verdict for the 75th Hunger Games, where already victorious victors will be reaped again for the chance to enter the games for a second time,” the man says, and Jimmy is still laughing at Cindy’s comment to fully register what this means. “We have a citation from Calamitous, where he states that ‘this game will decide the biggest victor that the Hunger Games has ever hosted, through wit, skill, and luck against fellow competitors.’ In a month, victors from the twelve different districts will be able to relive the sorting ceremony, the requirements of—”
Cindy throws the television back onto the couch, a hand against her temple as she rubs soothing circles into the skin on the side of her forehead. Jimmy is staring at the point on the black television screen where a man used to stand, his mind trying its absolute hardest to comprehend the seemingly unrelated words given to him.
The sound of his own voice surprises him. “They’re bringing—”
“Yeah,” Cindy responds from somewhere behind the couch. Jimmy can feel her nervous gaze against the back of his head; if it was any other moment, Jimmy would tease her for being this open about her fear. It is rare for him to see her nervous when it is not an aspect of a specially crafted mask of her creation. (They are both victims of the Games. They have come out of that arena with masks and scars and weapons alike. They carry what they need to survive and have not seemed to be able to drop it ).
“I have to—”
“ Yeah ,” Cindy repeats. Even then, her voice is a taunt of a whisper of itself. Jimmy cannot blame her; he too is afraid of the idea of having to relive his worst nightmare; even if for just a mere ceremony. “Jimmy, they’re making us go back .”
“I can’t ,” Jimmy says, turning around to face her. The knots go forgotten on the ground beneath him ( which is shaking back and forth. The ground is swaying underneath his feet and he’s not quite sure it’s supposed to do that and he needs to sit down. Jimmy needs to sit down. ) as he begs Cindy to stop joking. “Cindy, this isn’t funny .”
“It’s not a joke, Jimmy,” Cindy says, and there are hints of anger in her tone. “I’m telling the truth. They’re making us do this shit again. Word around the park is that it’s to keep the victors from getting too cocky with their rebellions. Or maybe they just want to kill us off.”
Jimmy laughs, because if he does not laugh then he’ll cry, and he has been trained to know that crying is a metaphor for weakness. “That’s pretty on brand for the Presidential Syndicate.”
“It’s okay, though,” Cindy says, jumping to the back of the couch and sitting down next to Jimmy. She does not look at him while she says it; instead, she looks at the reflection of her teary-eyed and mascara-stained self on the black television screen. Jimmy looks at her reflection on the screen as well, for fear of what he looks like himself. “I’m Cindy-fucking-Vortex. You’re Jimmy Neutron.”
“There’s twenty other victors from District 3,” Jimmy says, and Cindy nods, albeit tearfully. “Thirteen girls, seven boys. The chances we get chosen are astronomically low.”
It is quiet for a moment. They are both thinking about kids who are too young and memories that are stained red at the edges.
Cindy rests her head against Jimmy’s shoulder, dragging a thumb against runny black mascara. Jimmy knows what she is going to say before she says it. He knows Cindy like the back of his hand—they share the same hopes and dreams and fears and nightmares. They are the same person, identical in the way they cry and laugh and speak. “I can’t go back there.”
“We won’t,” Jimmy says, but they both know that this is not what Cindy wants to hear. His own words sound weak on his tongue. “We won’t go back into that hellhole of an arena, Cindy.”
She laughs. The sound echoes throughout Jimmy’s body and pounds against the confines of his skin. It sounds like she has already given up. “You can’t promise that shit, Neutron.”
Jimmy does not respond to that, because he really can’t promise anything.
Instead, he wraps a hand around Cindy’s shaking body and presses the palm of his hand against her shoulder, holding her tight as her gaze slowly, steadily, slightly, falls from their reflection in the black television screen to the ground. He knows that she is thinking of the three kids she killed in the bloodbath—all younger than she was, at the time. He knows that she is hitting herself for every wound in unharmed skin and every cannon that signaled the silence of little kids crying for their mothers.
Jimmy knows a lot of things. It is why he is able to wrap an arm around his friend and count their synchronized breaths. It is why he can lie on his bed at night and rub a finger against the scar on the left side of his waist.
It is why his chest rises and falls, and his heart beats a continuous rhythm inside his body. He is alive because he knows and he knows that this is why he is alive.
He places his other hand against Cindy’s other shoulder, resting the side of his head against the top of her skull. She laughs against the fabric of Jimmy’s shirt, but it comes out sounding like a strangled cry. He holds her tighter and presses a kiss to the top of her head and prays and wishes and hopes that they never have to go into that arena again.
(“You’re that boy from District 3,” somebody says, and Jimmy turns around to face him. The people here are not as rude as the girl that volunteered from District 3; the other tributes have waved at him in the hallways, talking behind cuffed hands about how pitiful it is that a boy his age is in the games, or their eyes trace against the lines of his muscles as he tries to cover his scrawny torso during the tribute parade.
Jimmy recognizes the levels of desperation needed to look at a little kid and see a soldier. He recognizes it in himself when he looks at the girl from District 12 and thinks to himself that she will be an easy kill if it comes down to it. He recognizes it in the way that slowly, his mind shifted from the idea that the games were an entertaining piece of media he could watch with his family, to the girl who was kind enough to share her meal with him will be killed in a week.
“You volunteered, right?” the boy says. He is at least four years older than Jimmy, and has three other tributes trailing him. He does not sneer at Jimmy’s presence, like Jimmy saw him do to the tributes from the penurious districts. Jimmy supposes this is a plus of being from District 3; by definition, he is a career. “Why don’t you show us what you can do?”
“He has the body of somebody who uses spears,” a girl standing next to him says, leaning over and inspecting Jimmy’s physique with a finger over her chin. She smells strongly of fresh grass. “I wouldn’t doubt the fact that he’s half-bad with something heavier, maybe a trident?”
“Nah,” another boy says. “He’s just twelve. He hasn’t hit puberty yet.”
“So?” The leader of their coterie says, placing a hand on his hip as he gestures towards Jimmy with his other one. “What’ll it be? Which station do you want to show off for us in?”
And Jimmy knows what they’re doing—he knows that they want to scout his skills; see if he’s good enough to keep until there is a night in the arena where they will kill him in his sleep. Jimmy has seen enough of the Hunger Games with his mom and dad to know most of the strategies. He knows that dying in his sleep is the only blessing the other careers are willing to give him.
“He can’t do shit,” somebody says from behind Jimmy, and he is not surprised to see the sixteen-year-old girl from his District walk past him. It does not surprise him to see the way she sends him a ruthless grin as she rests an arm on the elbow of the boy. It does not surprise him to see that she has already made friends with the other careers. “He knew the kid that was reaped, and thought that he could save him. That’s why he volunteered.”
“Really?” The boy says, looking at the girl with a furrowed brow. He is not the type of man to believe Jimmy over his friend; Jimmy can tell by a simple glance. It is heartbreaking in a way that Jimmy had expected this reaction; heartbreaking in a way that Jimmy should be upset but isn’t.
“Tell ‘em,” she says, and she smiles at Jimmy because she has him backed into a corner that he cannot escape. She is already a master at pretty facades and cheerfully fake laughs, and she regards Jimmy with a tight-lipped smirk in the presence of her friends. “Tell ‘em how you’re going to die ‘cause you don’t even know how to wield a sword.”
“I don’t know how to wield a sword,” Jimmy repeats, because it is the truth. There is no point in lying, not when they’ll just make him test his abilities with a weapon and be pleasantly disappointed to see that he is useless in a training room and useless in the arena. “I have never held a weapon in my life.”
“Jesus, kid,” the career says, and there is a glimpse of sympathy in his expression. That is more than Jimmy has been shown all day. “They say you’re twelve. You had your whole life in front of you.”
And that’s something Jimmy has noticed within the past few days. People do not speak about him in the present tense anymore. His parents had whispered fleeting comforts in his ear and had begged the Peacekeeper for five more minutes with what was their son. The stylist he had visited before the tribute parade had told him that he would have been beautiful. They speak about him like he is already dead; like his fate is already sealed.
“I don’t plan on dying first,” Jimmy says in response, because that is all he can really hope for.
“That’s what all of us say,” the career says, and there is a silence after his words. Jimmy knows what he will say before he can even say it. It is what Jimmy has told himself late at night, when he wakes up with his heart pump pump pumping and his mind racing and a cry for his mother on his lips. “But, y’know, someone’s got to be the first. Just—” he sighs, glancing at his friends for help. “—Don’t get your hopes up, okay?”
You think I’m going to be the first to die , is what Jimmy wants to say, but the words do not come out of his mouth. He cannot say anything because he knows that there is no point arguing. He knows it to be true.
“Good luck in the games,” one of the other boys says, and Jimmy knows that this is the end of the conversation. He knows that the sympathy he can get from being young will not win him the support of the careers. He knows that he will have to go into the games as blind as a bat, screaming into the void and waiting ( pleading, begging ) for the void to scream back. “And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
“May the odds be ever in your favor,” Jimmy mumbles in response. It is courtesy, at this point, for them to repeat the words of the capital back to each other like parrots.
The group of careers leave as quick as they came, talking about what Jimmy suspects to be him behind cupped hands as they go. They do not look over their shoulder at the kid they leave behind; they are skilled enough to hide the fact that they are talking about Jimmy by keeping their eyes trained on the corner of the training center with tridents arranged in a row. It is the small mercies that make Jimmy remember that life is worth living in the week before he dies. It is the lack of eyes on his skin and stage whispers about him.
The careers may be killers, but they are loyal.
Jimmy remembers the sound of his friend’s name and the sight of brown hair amongst a group of to be reaped kids. He thinks of his friend Carl and Sheen and Libby and Cindy; people who mourned him before he was whisked away to the capital. He sees the careers and their loyalty to each other and thinks he can respect this. Jimmy thinks he understands.
“Boy, did you just say you ain’t ever touched a weapon?” Another man asks from behind Jimmy, and he turns around again. He ignores the eyes of curious kids on him, lingering from his conversation with the careers, and focuses on a man from the capital who is standing behind an empty training table. Jimmy takes a step forward.
The stars align as he takes another step. Jimmy can feel it underneath his skin, where his soul lies hand-in-hand with his heart. He takes another step and another and another until he is standing in front of the man’s station.
The man has a mischievous glint in his eyes. Jimmy decides he likes it. “I can’t say I ever have, sir.”
“Well, I’m manning a station right here that doesn’t focus on weapons at all, if you’d like to stay and chat,” the man says, gesturing towards the wide array of what looks like different types of string on the counter of the table. Curiously, Jimmy picks up a thin line between his pointer finger and thumb. “I ain’t forcing you to do nothing you ain’t want to do, but maybe you’ll be appreciative of the beauty of traps.”
“Traps?” Jimmy asks, placing the line back on the table.
“Did I stutter?” He asks, arching a brow. He has a hairstyle that Jimmy assumes is common in the Capital, with the ends of his blue hair slicked into a curve on the top of his head. He is almost out of place, surrounded by other workers who have defined muscles and patched skin from work in the field. “Catching live food in the stadium is harder than your television screen makes it look. You’re going to get hungry, and you’re going to have to learn how to catch your own food if you don’t want to be reliant on sponsors.”
“Interesting,” Jimmy says. He knows that what the man is saying is true; but he is not enraptured in the idea of catching his own squirrel hides, or even the idea of dying an honorable death from the piercing point of a sword instead of his own stomach coiling in on itself. “What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever caught in a trap?”
“The biggest thing, huh?” The man repeats, and Jimmy can see the understanding wash over his face, but it only makes his smile grow wider. “Well, if you’re able to tie knots as well as I think you can, you could probably catch up to two hundred pounds in a leg snare.”
“Think about it,” The man continues, and Jimmy matches his grin with one of his own. They are thinking the same thing, and it is refreshing to finally meet an adult who is not hesitant to hold Jimmy back. It is refreshing to meet an adult who thinks that Jimmy might actually survive. “Two hundred pounds hanging upside down from a tree, helpless to do anything. They’re easy to kill like that.”
The man smiles at him with a grin that is missing one tooth as Jimmy sits down on the other side of the table. Jimmy ignores the sounds of fighting and violence and the feeling of eyes on his skin and his clothes as he watches the man give him a string.
He runs the pad of his finger along the frayed ends that escape the bound rope, playing with the string between his fingers as he copies what the other man says to do and does as he says.
It comes easily, and by the end of the hour, Jimmy already has a makeshift trap on the table in front of him. It is big enough to hold a small squirrel, squirming and struggling against the restraint on its foot as it is being held up in the air. The man grins as he gets two more ropes, and Jimmy does not move like the rest of the tributes when the hour alarm rings.
It’s ironic, in a way. A thing that will trap so many others might be Jimmy’s sole chance at freedom. If the idea didn’t thrill him, he would have laughed.)
They watch the reaping of the other two districts first.
The town square is smaller than it has ever felt, with walls that push in and surround and trap, and cobblestone floors that trip uncareful feet. The area is fenced off, just like it is for every reaping. Parents cry amongst the barrier, but it is not nearly as heartfelt as it once was. They do not grieve twice for children they have already lost to the games.
The first reaped child of the games is a volunteer.
It is a crazed looking woman whose teeth are stained an artificial red and wears sharp yellow contacts. She is near the age of fifty, throwing her fist in the air when the woman repeats her name and district. It is not a sign of bravery, but rather stupidity; nobody claps.
The man’s name is called and a woman—a mom —wails at the name. Nobody volunteers for the man, and Jimmy wonders if it’s because they know better, or if it’s because he walks on stage with his shoulders scrunched and a murderous glare in his eyes when he regards the announcer ( and it is not fair to call him a man. His dress shirt is untucked in the back and he has bright blue eyes and he looks at a point in the distance—his mom—with nothing but unbridled love. He is a boy at heart. )
They stand at the front of the stage and shake hands and the girl is not subtle with the way she tells him that she’s going to savor the taste of his blood when it seeps from the tip of her axe to the muscle of her tongue. The anthem of the capital plays as the screen cuts to the familiar landscape of District 2, and there is a chill that enters the townsquare as they come to the conclusion that the games have truly started.
The careers have been picked. A woman who maims with her words and then kills with a blade, and a boy who’s deadly nature is a result of the blood that stains his hands from his time in the games.
Both of the victors from District 2 volunteer. They have hair that only the capital could love and surgically implanted pig noses. They are ugly in the way that they are beautiful because they will kill you if you say otherwise. The crowd cheers like they might win.
And then the camera cuts off and suddenly a man is entering from behind the closed curtains on the stage in the town square. And suddenly Jimmy is pressing a hand against his heart and trying his best to inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale and inhale .
They start with the girls. Jimmy is both thankful and unthankful.
The man on the stage dips manicured hands into the clear bowl in the center of the stage and pulls out a perfectly crisp white piece of paper from where it used to sit in previous years amongst the many. The girls spare looks at each other, but there is a deep understanding: nobody plans on volunteering.
The man reads the name, and it is not Cindy’s.
It is not Cindy’s name.
It is a woman in her late thirties, with already graying hairs and places on her skin that show the reminisce of jagged rocks and roaring fire. She wears a long blue dress, and her legs shake in a way that lets Jimmy know that she has spent ample time at the Capital. She does not smile as the girls that are not on the stage hug and cry and rejoice over their newfound freedom. Instead, she shares at a point in the distance and places her hands against her stomach and raises her chin ever so slightly. She is the pinnacle of a martyr.
The man laughs as he walks towards the other bowl ( this one even emptier than the last, and Jimmy has a terrible feeling brewing in his gut ). He laughs at them like they are children; like they are less than he is. Jimmy glares at him, because he does not know the relief that comes with being granted the freedom to wrap tender fingers around your own heart, knowing that it will beat until a day that is not determined by the capital.
His fingers enter the vast sea of white slips of paper in the second bowl, and the girls go quiet like puppets.
He pulls a folded piece of paper out of the bowl ( it is one out of eight. Jimmy is one out of eight. There is a twelve percent chance his name is chosen from the bowl ) and carefully unfurls it with the edges of his nails.
He hums at the name, just to tease.
Then, he leans forward and his lips graze the edge of the microphone and the sound of the movement against metal echoes and rings in Jimmy’s ear, but it is nothing compared to the utter relief that comes when he says the name of the boys, because the name is not —
“Jimmy Neutron,” he says, and the seven other boys in the crowd turn to look at him.
Because that’s his name .
The boys do not cheer like the girls at the mention of a name that isn’t theirs, but they wipe away tears and quickly turn in place to look at their families ( and they have sons and daughters and grandchildren and wives and husbands. They have families that Jimmy won’t ) and place a hand over their mouths like he is a child being sent off to war. Like he is twelve instead of nineteen and is volunteering for a boy that he calls his brother instead of being reaped into his imminent death.
His legs shake as he makes his way through the crowd and towards the stage, eyes trained on the cobblestone ground in front of him. He trips amongst the uneven footing, catching himself with quick feet that have made quick work in keeping him upright a hundred times before. He cannot bear to look up; look at. Jimmy keeps his gaze on the lines of cement in between the different colored stones because otherwise he will look at his best friend and his parents and his childhood friends and everybody who is safe and he will cry.
He walks onto the stage and the man puts his arms on Jimmy’s shoulder’s and leads him to the right side of the other reaped tribute. Jimmy stares down at their feet as they stand together; he is wearing brown dress shoes and she is wearing leather strapped high heels. The man says something about how brave the victors from District 3 look. How proud he is that they are the people that are representing their district. Jimmy does not, cannot, pay attention.
The man makes them shake hands. Jimmy looks away from the floor and places his hand in the open space between the two of them and meets the girl’s gaze with the softest gaze he has the courage to give. Her eyes sparkle a brilliant brown, like the honey that Sheen’s family has given him every time he goes over to their house.
The palm of their hands meet and an understanding blooms: they will not smile when they see the picture of the other in the sky. They will mourn like friends; cry like parents.
Then the man asks them to wave to the audience one final time, and Jimmy finally meets the eyes of his parents. They stare at him with inconsolable eyes, waving at where he stands on the stage. His mother has a hand in front of her mouth and his father has his head hidden in his mother’s hair. Sheen and Carl and Libby stand next to them, and Sheen is close to tears while the other two return Jimmy’s weak wave. Cindy stands in the audience, and she is crying like she had been reaped herself.
“ It’s okay, ” Jimmy finds himself mouthing, his gaze darting between his parents and his friends and Cindy . His shoulders shake with tears that amass in the corner of his eyes as he tries his best to smile. “ It’s going to be okay .”
“You can’t promise that,” Cindy mouths in response, and Jimmy can’t help himself from laughing: it is a noise that sounds more like a sob.
He is escorted to the back as soon as somebody comes onstage and tells the man from the Capital that the cameras have been cut. There are hands that push against the sliver of skin along his back, and he subconsciously walks through the makeshift halls of the backstage area for the second time. They still use the same wallpaper, he notices with the traces of a laugh.
They place him in a room the size of a mudroom. They tell him to sit down and shut up, and that any threats or physical action may result in him being unable to rejoice with his friends in his final moments in District 3.
He sits down when the Peacekeeper shuts the door. It is a rocking chair of a familiar ugly pattern ( there are grains of wheat in a pattern along a light pink background ) and cherry red wood. Jimmy sits with the ease of the boy he was when he was twelve. The seat is no longer too big. Now his feet touch the ground and his fingers can wrap around the edges of the armrest.
The chair feels electric; like a death sentence he had missed when he was twelve and is just now reconciling with.
And in one single movement, he leans back against the plush seating and seals his fate.
(Jimmy’s fingers curl over empty air. They feel and don’t feel. They wrap coy muscles around invisible strings and unwrap. The pad of his fingers wrap around something that is not quite there. It is this repetitive motion that keeps Jimmy sane as a female voice welcomes him and twenty-three kids and everybody watching to the sixty-eighth annual Hunger Games.
The girl from District 4, who stands at least ten feet away from him on her own marble podium, eyes the way his fingers curl and uncurl; wrapping around what should be there and what isn’t.
Jimmy knows what's there.
It’s the coy string he has tied around his fingers for a week. It’s aching relief for the calluses on his hands, marked with rope burns and bleeding scabs. It’s the late nights tying snares to anything that would support the rope and breakfast meals with the rest of the tributes as he tied and untied pieces of rope under the table.
The man from the training station had visited him a few minutes before the Games started. He placed a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and got down on one knee and told Jimmy that he is proud of his skills. He told him that he is a good kid. He told him that he is sorry. He hugged him when there was a minute left before Jimmy had to enter the games and zipped his sweater with last-minute words of wisdom.
“I ain’t ever met a boy like you before. Nobody gave a damn about traps like you did—you recognized their true potential,” he tells him, standing up with a sigh. Jimmy is standing on the edge of the marble circle on the ground, a hand clenched around his heart to quell it’s ache. “Remember that if the Cornucopia don’t give you the materials you need, your own clothes are made out of thread. It ain’t strong, but it’ll get you a squirrel if you’re lucky.”
“Thank you,” Jimmy says. He does not have the courage to look up.
“I don’t know what your mentor told you, but don’t you dare go into the midst of that Cornucopia,” he says. “You’ll want to, but you shouldn’t. They’ll kill you if you do. You’ll want to grab a pack on the outer lines of the Cornucopia and then run like the hills.”
“Thank you,” Jimmy repeats. The man sighs and adjusts the collar of the folds of his hoodie. The marble platform starts to rise soon after, and he can do nothing but watch as Jimmy is propelled into the air except to watch.
Jimmy wants to run. He wants to jump the three feet it takes to reach the ground floor and run through the halls of the Capital until he is back in the arms of his mother. He wants to run and scream and cry because his heart is pounding in his chest and he is going to die.
He is going to die.
Fifty , the woman counts down from. The stadium scenery around him is a wide plain with the occasional tree. Jimmy immediately knows the opportunities and obstacles that come with an arena such as this: there is nowhere to hide besides in the tall grass and weeds, and there is not a single source of water. On the other hand, though, Jimmy knows that if he can make it to a tree and set up a snare quickly, it will be easy for other tributes to be anything but careful when they run towards him. It will be easy for Jimmy to hide traps and for him to kill.
Forty . Jimmy looks at one of the other kids and prays that they will step off of their podium. It does not occur to him that he is praying for the death of a child. All he can see are the toned muscles and the gut-curling grin and he knows he wants them dead.
Thirty . his fingers tangle in the fabric of his sweater. His knuckles ram into the skin above his heart, reminding it that he is not dead yet. He applies pressure to his ribs and massages soft circles into the muscle and tries to calm down. He is not useful if he is unable to think.
Twenty . Jimmy looks at the Cornucopia and tries to find a backpack that the man was talking about. He sees two close together—he thinks that if he runs he might be able to make it.
Ten. He closes his eyes and pictures his mom. He does not know if he’ll be able to do that again.
‘Please,’ he thinks to himself as the bell rings and he runs forward as fast as he can. ‘Please, God. Please let my parents be alright.’
There is the sound of metal against metal to his right, and he trips over his own front feet in an effort to run away (away, away) from the sound. The grass of the field itches the skin of his ankles and he can hear screams in the distance, singing for the attention of the masses. All he can see, though, is the two backpacks in the distance.
He grabs one of them, with its fabric brown like the grass. He makes a sharp left in an effort to grab the other one and carries it with the crook of his elbow. There is the sound of wind next to his ear, and he knows that a moment’s hesitation would have done him no good.
It is all a game of speed. There are things happening ten feet away and five feet away and right in front of Jimmy, and all he can focus on is running to a tree in the distance. A little girl’s shrill scream echoes in his left ear and a kid laughs and a cannon goes off and the sound pounds against Jimmy’s head; already imprinting itself in his long-term memory. It is a type of horror that he has never experienced in his life, because it is a horrible thing that implants itself inside his brain and begs to be forgotten.
Somebody throws another knife at him, because he feels the bag on his elbow swing at the momentum. He does not bother to turn around, afraid of the time it will cost him and the sight he might see. Instead, he continues to run.
He runs for far longer than he has ever needed to run in the past: by the time he is able to throw the backpacks down near the base of a tree and crouch amongst the long brown grass, the sun is setting a golden orange overhead. His feet ache as he neatly organizes his supplies, paranoid at the slightest sound and sight.
The light brown backpack has a bottle of dirt brown water, which Jimmy regards with pressed lips. It is not preferable, but in a terrain like this one, it might be the only water he will be able to find. It also contains two long carrots and plastic wrap—both which Jimmy saves for later.
The other backpack is lighter than the brown one, and Jimmy has a feeling that some of the contents might have leaked through the hole in the front. He wraps his fingers around the handle of the throwing dagger and pulls it out of its fabric confines, feeling its weight in his hands. It is the first weapon Jimmy has ever held.
He tries to throw it at the bark of the tree. It weakly falls to its roots. Jimmy’s cheeks go red at the attempt and he is quick to pick it up. He will not be able to kill anybody with this dagger—not anytime soon, at least.
It also contains a bulky selection of wire, which is bigger than the hole that the dagger made. Jimmy’s heart soars at the sight, and he hugs the bundle of wire close to his chest before unraveling it and measuring its length. It is perfect for snares; perfect for him .
It is the first time Jimmy allows himself to cry.
He sits there until his cheeks are dry and his shoulders stop shaking. He sits there while the anthem plays and the ground becomes white from the light of the projection in the skies (he does not watch. He does not want to see who is dead.). He sits there and cries like a little kid until it is past his bedtime and he forces himself to stand up anyways.
He sets up a snare under the cover of the dark. He is quick to throw his bags on the ends of one of the higher branches of the tree, making sure that it is out of sight of the thieving eyes of sneaky hands. He then sits against the trunk of the tree and waits for somebody to come to him, the handle of a knife clenched tight in his hand.
His gaze slowly drifts to the stars in the sky. Nobody comes by until early morning.
It is a girl that Jimmy recognizes. A girl that had given him a portion of her food when he was late to breakfast and did not get fed. She has a polite smile and walks in complete silence, like anybody else from District 6. Jimmy would not have noticed her if it wasn’t for the way she blinks at him owlishly, spear raised in her right hand.
She seems to make her decision quickly—maybe she knows that Jimmy is young and untrained. Maybe she knows that Jimmy does not have a visible weapon—and is quick to break into a sprint in Jimmy’s direction. Jimmy knows better than to be scared ( he knows that the girl is heading straight for his snare. That his traps have not failed him yet) but he still curls in on himself and places his hands over his neck and closes his eyes and yells out!
The attack does not come. Jimmy is tense until he is not.
He lets his body relax slowly, almost hesitant to look over his shoulder as he tells himself to breathe out longer than he breathes in. Eventually, there is the mute struggles of the girl next to him, and he turns around on instinct to see if she needs any help. He had forgotten where he was. He had forgotten who he was supposed to be.
The snare worked. He thinks to himself, quick to scramble to his feet with his dagger in hand. The girl hangs upside down in front of him, desperately reaching for the rope tied around her ankle as the spear goes neglected on the ground. He does not make a sound, watching with ample curiosity as the girl struggles and cries and eventually gives up.
“You are smart,” she says, and there is a light accent to her voice. “They told me your skill level was a six. They underestimated you, no?”
“Snares aren’t really on the skill test,” Jimmy says awkwardly, rubbing a finger along the metallic side of the blade. He can see his own reflection in the dagger, looking back at him with eyes that are not nearly as sharp as the knife he holds. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“I know,” she says, and it is soft in a way that Jimmy does not deserve. Not when he has her hung upside down like a squirrel. Not when he has a weapon in his hands and a goal to kill. “I do not want to die.”
“Why are they making me kill you?” Jimmy says, even though he knows why. “You don’t deserve it.”
“If you do not kill me, I kill you,” she smiles, but there are tears in her eyes and her chest rises and falls rapidly. After a moment, she closes her eyes and exhales shakily. “Please, do not count down. Give me the mercy of a quick death, straight through the heart.”
He hesitates for a moment.
He places the edge of the dagger against the girl’s heart, breathing deeply before he too closes his eyes. He has to breathe in and breathe out again, before he is able to thrust the blade of the knife into skin . He bends his wrist to the side and listens as the knife prompts the sound of ooze. The girl does not make a sound, but Jimmy knows when she is dead by the way that her breathing stops and a cannon replaces it.
He pulls the dagger out and immediately throws up.
His stomach hurts. He wants his mom.
Jimmy turns away from the body, but cannot help himself from trying his best to clean the blade of the dagger. He ignores the iridescent red that shines in the reflective metal rays of the sun, and focuses on the way the edge of his sleeve eradicates pieces of the girl’s internal organs. There is something squishy stuck on the sharp end of the knife. Something round and covered in blood is pierced through the top of the dagger. It is the ugliest thing Jimmy has ever seen.
He tries his best to ignore the wound that seeps blood as he cuts the rope that hung the girl. He sets up another snare—just in case he finds himself defenseless. Just in case he doesn’t have the time to later—and drags the girl into the middle of the field by the rope that is still attached to her foot. He does not know when the aircraft appears to take her remains, but Jimmy returns to the trunk of his tree and watches through his persistence to ignore the sight of the pool of blood that stains the grass. Jimmy watches the girl enter the spacecraft and tries not to think about what he just did.
An hour later, there is another one. This one has nothing but the backpack on his back and a stone in his hands.
An hour later, Jimmy watches as he is escorted through the same aircraft as the girl.
Jimmy cleans the blade of his knife and stares at his reflection in the metal. He does not recognize the face that stares back at him, with the edges of clean skin stained red with blood. Jimmy drags his fingernails along the spots, but he quickly finds that it never comes off.
Not really.
It is two days later, and Jimmy has somehow made it into the final two.
He has killed five. The girl from district six, the boy from district eight, the two tributes from district ten, and the girl from district twelve. He has killed people that have been nothing but kind to him—people who approached his tree with their hands extended and a question of teamwork on their lips.
But he knows that if he does not kill him now then they will kill him later. He knows that they know it too, based on the way they smile at him like he is a little kid and eye the collection of weapons he has gathered from dead tributes.
It does not get easier, but it is never as hard as the first time.
Every knife that pierces sealed skin does so with shaking hands. Every knife that pierces sealed skin does so blinded; where Jimmy has his eyes clenched shut because he cannot dare to watch it enter the body. Every knife that pierces the skin is an apology, and the blood that comes when Jimmy withdraws is a thank you.
He knows that it is just him and the girl from his own district. He knows this because last night all four of the careers were on the lists of deaths, and he knows that she would have only done this if she had thought that everybody else was dead; she did not even think to check that Jimmy was still alive.
Jimmy waits for her to come to him. He savors every breath that escapes his lips, and the rise and fall of his chest. He knows that this girl will kill him. He knows that this is the end to his fatuous success in the games. He cannot beat a girl like her, who looks like the mere idea of killing is an endorphin in its purest form.
And she finds him.
She throws a spear as a warning, and Jimmy does not even have his eyes opened. The spear goes straight through his abdomen and pierces him into the tree he sits against, and she laughs as his hands fly to the handle, wrapping around cold brass and trying helplessly to pull it out.
The pain leaks into his brain and makes his thoughts go fuzzy. He screams against the blade of the spear, crying for his mother and his father as he wraps fingers around the wound in his stomach and then the base of the spear, staining it red with his own blood. The liquid leaks down the end of the handle of the spear and joins the red-stained grass of the previous tributes, and Jimmy laughs blood at the irony.
Then, the girl takes another step forward.
And she goes up .
Jimmy watches as the rope wraps around her ankle, pulling her upside down and hanging her from the tree. The surprise of the moment makes him stall—makes him do nothing but watch as she tries her best to reach the wire—until he realizes that he has a dagger on the ground next to him. Until he realizes that it is only her and him and the vast emptiness of the arena.
He grabs the dagger. He yanks against the spear and ignores the white that blinds the ends of his vision when he removes it from the wound. He presses one hand against the steadily bleeding spot on his stomach and wraps the fingers of his other hand around the handle of the dagger.
He does not close his eyes for this one. Instead, he takes his hand off of the wound on his stomach and wraps blood-stained fingers around his other hand and leaps forward.
The knife goes through her skull. Her scream echoes around the stadium. Jimmy watches as the knife pierces the retina of her eyes and makes blood leak down her forehead and stain her hair.
A cannon goes off in the distance.
Jimmy throws the dagger to the side and falls backwards, both hands pressed against his wound. There is somebody saying something in the distance, and he cannot tell if it is a sign of God or the Capital. He closes his eyes and chooses to relax his body anyways, welcoming the soft hands that reach out to him with open arms. They do not promise pain here. They do not promise blood stained cheeks and adrenaline-laced minds.
He wakes up with stitches in his side and the Presidential Syndicate on his deathbed. They tell him that he is the winner of the 68th Hunger Games.
Jimmy is as thankful as he is unthankful. His stomach aches and he does not know if the pounding in his ears is from a headache or the memory of the cannon in the games. He can still feel the ghost of grass brushing against his ankles and rope against the bends in his fingers. He is thankful in the way that he is able to hug his Mom , and unthankful in the way that he is not really the winner, because the Games never really ended.
Not for him, anyways.)