[justify]

"WHAT DOES SOMEONE WITHOUT A BODY LOOK LIKE?"


You and I walk a fragile line,
I have known it all this time,
But I never thought I'd live to see it break,
It's getting dark, and it's all too quiet,
And I can't trust anything now,
And it's coming over you like it's all a big mistake.


Forgetting is a powerful thing. Something underestimated by almost every person you pass in the street, because to them it is simply something that happens. A way of pushing the unimportant things from your mind and moving forward in your life. You might forget who was reaped from your district in your very first games. You might forget why, exactly, you pushed away your best friend all those years ago when you are crying alone in your room and wishing that someone was there to hold you. And then there are some things that you never forget because they etch such a hole in your heart that you simply cannot stop feeling the pain even when they are gone. I will never forget Freya, but then again she is not as gone to me as she would be to you. And just because she is dead and buried six feet below the soil of District Six, it does not mean that I cannot speak with her. That she cannot speak back.

She does, all the time. She tells me what she thinks and she tells me what to say. When I was little, she would often knock over vases and take jewels and people would accuse me. And so I'd tell them, over and over again, that it was Freya, not me, not Felix. They'd look at me with teary eyes, and say, "Felix, Freya is dead." I'd shrug, because I couldn't explain and I didn't understand that just because someone was buried in a coffin at a graveyard, people assumed that they weren't right there telling me things. I don't see Freya so much anymore, though. She's beginning to forget. Forgetting is such a powerful thing.

It is stronger than the wind and brighter than the stars and deeper than the sea. It is something that can be the difference between sleeping and waking. Dreams and nightmares. A teardrop and a raindrop. There is so much power in forgetting, and nobody knows it is there because you only know it once you're gone and by then it is too late to tell anybody at all. People often wonder what it is like to die. And I can tell you, because Freya and the others have told me. It is like forgetting. A world falling from your mind and leaving a vacant space of possibilities. That's what death is like.

Sometimes, people say that I look like a ghost. Pale hair, fair skin and sharp features that they say haunt them. But I don't look like a ghost, for I have seen ghosts, or at least what claim to be ghosts. And they do not share a single striking feature with me. Ghosts are shimmering, glittering, as though they are standing behind a veil even I cannot lift. That is not the way I look. I love older and weathered and far more real. Deep creases and a shadow streak my face and maybe it is because I have seen more than I should have for a boy of seventeen. Because even though nobody I have met ever really believes me, I know I possess eyes that see like no others.

That is something I will never forget.

People who's bodies do not stand where they should do not have reflections in the mirror, but I do. When I look in the mirror I see my family and I see Freya lost in my eyes somewhere and I see what I was before she died. She was twelve. She still is, trapped in that body for all of forever, until she completely forgets everyone still living and leaves. I speak with rebels who were killed and they cry. I speak with tributes that have fallen and they cry. I speak with mothers searching for children still alive and mourning, and they cry. Sometimes I cry, too, because only I will hear their tears drop onto the floor and feel their blood pooling around me in waves. People call me crazy, but I tell them otherwise. Freya does, too, but no matter how hard she screams they can never hear her. Sometimes I get tired of her screaming and crying, but sometimes I just scream and cry too.

Sometimes simply existing isn't enough, because I cannot hold her. I cannot really touch her at all. All I can do is whisper to her, and tell her that I love her, and it'll be okay. But it's not okay. Because for it to be okay Freya has to forget. She has to forget me.


"I CAN'T BREATHE WITHOUT YOU BUT I HAVE TO."


You and I walk a fragile line,
I have known it all this time,
But I never thought I'd live to see it break,
It's getting dark, and it's all too quiet,
And I can't trust anything now,
And it's coming over you like it's all a big mistake.


I remember my first reaping day. My mind was clear, although I thought it to be filled with fear. Fear for myself, yes, and fear for Freya. I did not love Freya then. She was my best friend, but I was but twelve. Two twelve-year-olds, entering their first reaping together. What are the odds, after all? What are the odds that either of us could be reaped? One name in the bowl each. One death sentence per quivering child. And I looked at Freya and she looked at me and she whispered something that I didn't hear. And then the worst words ever to be heard in all of time came to me.

"Ladies first!" A shuffle. A muffled cry. "Freya Serinn."

I don't remember the male tributes name. All I remember was breaking down right there, shrieking "NO!" Over and over as I fell to the ground, hands over my head, crying out in silent pleas of protest. And then running, screaming, begging, all of it in my head and silent and useless as a gust of wind. She must have thought I didn't care. Because I never saw her again. Never said goodbye. Just sat and stared as she died right before my eyes, so far away. But it was better after the sword pierced her neck, because then as I was crying she came to me and told me it would be okay. And she rested her hand on my shoulder - no, just above my shoulder - and promised to stay with me. I didn't have to cry anymore, because she kept my promise and as we grew I fell in love with her.

Is that really so wrong? Because people say she is a figment of my imagination, a way of coping with my greif. But I could never imagine her voice so perfectly entwining itself into my soul. Never feel her touch so closely as if she is truly there. No. Freya is as real and as here as I am. Just in a form only I can see.

But she is there, I'll tell anyone who will listen. I feel her watching me, I see her eyes when I sleep. I speak to her and she speaks back and I fall in love with her and she is all she always was. My best friend. Dead, gone, buried. But mine.

Not just Freya haunts me while I wake. Others do, too, but not so frequently as the girl I still call my best friend. Even though she is dead. The others tell me stories from their lives. Stay with me for a day or a week or a month before they begin to forget and move on. Never long. I think when I die I shall do my best to forget, because my family was never so understanding and Freya is already waiting with one foot on the other side. Or both feet. It depends on how you look at it, I guess.

Before Freya died I was normal. I was just any other kid in Six, smiling and dreaming that maybe one day I would be as good a pharmacist as my father. I was almost just a little more quiet, a little more thoughtful than the rest, but it was nothing to be worried about. He'll grow out of it, they said. He'll come out of his shell soon, the doctors told mama, and she believed them. Just before I turned six I met Freya and she helped me do just that. I learned to speak a little more, but mostly I relied on her to speak for me. Her mama wasn't as caring as mine, but after a while she spent almost more time at our small house on the edge of six than I did. It didn't matter that we were different, that her skin was tanned and her hair chocolate brown while I have always been as white as freshly fallen snowflake.

Her death was the worst thing ever to happen to me. It was also the best.

You might think I'm terrible for saying that; hear me out. She was hungry. She was afraid. Her mother by this point had left her and her papa got mad when she came home late from mine. ended up sneaking to her bedroom late at night only to hold her as she cried as her father blindly raged in the other room. She had me, she had mama, but she wasn't happy. I think she's happier now, because nobody is holding her back. She can be exactly who she wants to be.

The constant fear plagues me that one day she will want to move on. There is another place she can go, but if she leaves she can never return. And like I've said a million times already, she has to forget me to leave. And that would break my heart.


"I THINK TO MYSELF WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD."


Oh, I'm holding my breath,
Won't lose you again,
Something's made your eyes go cold,
Come on, come on, don't leave me like this,
I thought I had you figured out,
Something's gone terribly wrong,
You're all I wanted.


I was born seventeen years ago in District Six. My mama loved me because I loved her and she had something about her which needed love. Maybe she lost her papa young or something, but I always felt as though she craved love more than the others in my family. I figure that's why she used her job to make us. Using different men and being paid to have us. Bear calls it a prostitute, but I think she just wanted someone to love her. So we each have a different Daddy and most of us have never met him. I haven't met mine either, but I know his name. Phillip Valentine, District Six. Mama told me that after Freya died so I could find him if I needed to. But I didn't, because he was the one who walked away, right? I guess he mightn't have known about me at all. Either way, why enter his perfect life with my hallucinations and strangeness and dead best friends? Why bother him with a son he cannot fix. Someone labelled broken by so many.

Why would I do that to a man with a name like Valentine? He probably has two kids and a wife and a job and a memory in the back of his mind of that night when he was bored and young and stupid. Seventeen years ago. Before he probably had a life or a care in the world or something to tell him, 'no, this is wrong.' So I wont remind him. I'll just keep his name close to me because Felix Valentine-Keeni gives me somehow more meaning right inside of me. Not to you, but to Freya and me.


And that is all that matters.

I have other siblings, other than Bear. They know about Freya and how she talks to me, but none of us are close. I'm different, not stupid. They think I don't see the doubt and pity flicker in their eyes when I tell them that it wasn't me, it was Freya. To lay Freya a place at the table tonight because she's feeling lonely. To say hello because sometimes she almost forgets that she exists. They don't believe me. But I do. And I believe them when they say that they truly feel afraid of their own name or insist on removing their clothing at the strangest of times. I get them, because our family is strange and there is really nowhere else to go but home.

"We're all mad here."

Speaking
Expression
Body
Headings