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Coralie Odair had never thought she was bad-looking, in fact, she knew she was not. Everything in her face was right, she was said to be pretty even, but between her two best friends, she felt like nothing in her appearance particularly stood out. Marva had the most gorgeous head of chestnut curls she had ever seen, and Liana had a full, red mouth that no one could keep their eyes off, and although Coralie’s features were all elegantly and evenly set on her face, she did not think they were particularly striking. So when Richard Wilson had noticed her out of the three of them, she had been pleasantly surprised.
That summer, they had all been bored senseless. In summertime, there was not much to do for girls who grew up in the Central Area of District Four, or at least, not for girls who were not too invested in the upcoming Hunger Games. It was no fun to be at the beaches when they were this clogged with Capitolites and overworked fishermen. And so the girls spent most of the afternoons laying in their parents’ gardens, dissecting rumors they had discussed dozens of times before. Until one day, Liana had come up with red cheeks and gleaming eyes, and excitedly announced that she had finally found a good spot to go to.
‘Park the car here,’ she demanded after a fairly long trip. Liana was the informal leader of the trio, although they all pretended this was not true. Her parents were Duboirs, a family as close to aristocrats as you could find in the District. Although Marva and Coralie came from families that were not weaned from societal influence, they definitely did not have the same status as Liana. All three of them were well aware of this, as the Center was a place where these things mattered.
At times, the Center and its preference for hierarchy and order suffocated Coralie. She understood that a girl like her had no real purpose in the world, aside from tightening family bonds and gaining monetary security. Now that she was close to 18, it would not be long before her parents would begin pressing her to find a husband. Preferably someone like Liana’s brother, a Duboir. Or a Cresta, of course, although with the fanaticism that the Cresta family produced Hunger Games cannon fodder, there soon would not be a lot of sons left to be engaged to.
Sometimes Coralie wondered if it had been dumb of her to not get into Careering. The bloodshed and the terror of it had always appalled her too much to really consider, but if you won, if you actually won… she imagined it would come with a whole new sense of freedom.
‘We still have to walk for a bit,’ huffed Liana. It was a hot, sunny day, and the sweat was already piling up in the back of Coralie’s neck.
‘Where even are we?’, she complained after a while. They had been walking in the scorching heat for at least twenty minutes now, and there was still no end point in sight.
‘Almost there!’
When they emerged from behind some dunes, Marva audibly sucked in air. In the distance, there was a gray, stone-covered beach covered with old nets, rusty boats and many, many people working its grounds. In the distance, the smoking towers of the Production Center popped up, its metal silo’s flickering in the sunlight.
‘What the fuck?’ Marva hissed angrily, ‘we travelled for over two hours to get to North Beach?’
Coralie had to agree. North Beach was far from a charming sight, and the little information she had on it had always kept her far away from the area. Her father had always been pretty adamant about her not going.
‘Don’t be such a baby, Marv,’ grinned Liana, ‘I do everything for a reason!’
She strolled onto the beach languidly, unwrapping the shawl she had tied around her bathing suit. Coralie stared at her friend’s body with jealousy. Liana was properly voluptuous, and the closer they came to the figures in the distance, the more attention she attracted.
Some of the men working the shores turned and whistled. Coralie noticed the area was pretty much men only, and this made her feel queasy. No one knew where they were, and the people here could obviously tell they were wealthy. She was sure coastal folks where not inclined to like their sort of people much. She shot a glance at Marva, who seemed equally unsure about the endeavor.
Liana, on the other hand, stood on her toes and waved at a group of young men in the distance. The men cheered and whistled, and Liana strolled over with an ease that said she had never had to worry about a single thing in her life.
‘Ah look who we got there,’ one of the young men, or more a boy maybe, laughed, ‘it’s the heiress again.’
‘I brought some friends,’ Liana responded haughtily. The boy grinned and gave Coralie and Marva a quick look up and down.
‘Fancy a swim, ladies?’
Coralie did not answer, because in that moment, another young man’s head popped up from behind a gang board, and left her speechless. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. His body was perfect, lean and tall and triangular. His cheekbones were unbelievably sharp, and his lips were almost as rosy and full as Liana’s. But the most striking thing about him were his eyes, which were framed by long eyelashes and of a bright, sea green color she had never seen before. She immediately understood he was the reason for coming all this way.
When they finally returned to the car, Liana had giggled excitedly, told them she had met him while he was working for her parents.
‘His name is Richard. I want him to do me,’ she said, with her usual blunt brassiness. Liana knew she was hot, and she knew she could pull guys, but even for her this man seemed to be of another league. ‘It’s like he does not even notice me!’
She had said it with a whine in her voice, but from the gleam in her eyes, Coralie could tell Liana loved the challenge immensely. The rest of their summer was thus spent at North Beach, although it did not take long until Marva started to decline the invitations to go up there.
‘You’re such a prude, Marv,’ whined Liana to her when she refused to come another afternoon. ‘You would think you are afraid of fun. There’s plenty of cute guys out there. What’s the harm?’
Marva’s eyebrows knotted into a frown. To be fair, the tension between the two girls had been rising for a couple of weeks already. Maybe it was the summer heat, or just the fact that Marva was not as compliant as Liana wanted her to be anymore. Finally past their awkward tween years, both Marva and Coralie had come to understand there was more to life than walking in Liana’s shadow. The girls had been bickering often lately, but Marva still hated being left out, and Liana knew how to get under her skin.
‘Cory is having a good time, isn’t she?’ she added some fuel to the fire, turning to Coralie and making a dismissive hand gesture to Marva. ‘Luckily she’s not as much of a wuss as you are.’
‘At least I’m not a slut trying to get off with some dockworker,' Marva replied coolly. Coralie’s friends did not make up before school started, which meant Coralie and Liana were left to their own devices for the rest of the break, and they spent increasingly later nights at North Beach, using each other as a cover.
At first Coralie was sure she was imagining that she felt Richard’s eyes resting on her whenever she came over. When she caught him looking, he smiled at her in such a dazzling way that her blood rushed to her cheeks in an instant. Towards the end of the summer, he began walking closely by her, putting his hand on her waist sometimes, complimenting her hair, her tan, her beauty. He wanted her, she could tell. It was in the way he pronounced her name, and the intensity of his attention. Boys had flirted with Coralie, or had tried to at least, but it had been nothing like what Richard did. Richard was confident. He knew what he was doing. It was scary, and dangerous, and exciting. Sometimes, when he looked into her eyes, she felt a heat rise up in her lap. She had to admit she wanted him, too, although she had no idea what it entailed exactly.
Although Liana had relished in Richard’s disinterest in the beginning, enjoying the chase, she lost interest in the game as soon as she noticed Richard was making advances on her friend. Instead, she took her jealous frustration out on Coralie, which ended with neither of the three girls talking to one another. With so much time and so little distraction on her hands, the pull to Richard became even stronger, and soon Coralie went to see him whenever she could.
He kissed her one afternoon, securely, and it was nothing like the wet pecks school boys had given her before. This was so good she almost forgot to breathe, and her legs became weak as his hands expertly trailed over her back, her hips. Later, in the seat of her car, she carefully felt between her legs, and was shocked by how wet she was.
In the last week of the summer, Richard walked Coralie back to her vehicle. He kissed her like he had before, and the heat roared through her body, making her feel all sore and swollen again. She unbelted his jeans without giving it much thought, and he rewarded her with a crooked smile. That alone was enough to push any doubts aside: it made him look angelic.
‘You sure?’
She nodded breathlessly. He unfolded his towel and put it in the sand. There, hidden in the dunes, she lost her virginity. She felt a little strange afterwards, but good. For the first time since their fall-out, she really missed having Liana to talk to.
Richard and her slept together for some months more, but he soon began to lose interest. It felt like she should mind that, but she was not sure she really did. Although it was rude of him to throw her away like this, and the rejection made her feel shitty, she was not really sure if she wanted to keep seeing Richard at all. Although her body still responded strongly every time he shot her that crooked smile, she had also begun to notice that, outside of the flirty lines she had believed to be so sincere in the beginning, there was not much to him.
She had to admit that, besides loving to fuck him, she did not really like him. If she was really honest, he sometimes scared her a little, and so did her own mindless, dumb lust. She knew it was risky, sleeping with some stranger. Furthermore, the nerves of having to come down to North Beach all the time were gnawing at her. Her parents were probably wondering where she went off to, and she could not be sure that Liana was not already spreading the word. Still, every time she saw Richard, all she wanted was to feel him inside of her. And yet, when he ultimately dumped her, the first thing she felt was relief.
At the end of the year, she found out she was pregnant. It was a disaster. Asking Richard for help felt ludicrous, but she knew there were ways, that women in the coastal area had special remedies for situations like this, and that he was the only person she knew who might know where to find those. When she had finally shoved her pride aside and went to see him, however, all Richard did was shake his head.
‘I can’t help,’ he told her brusquely. She was too young back then to fully articulate how awful he was being, for leaving her on her own with it, like it was all her fault. After Finnick was born, she had often thought about the moment, about what she should have said. But back then, when Richard looked at her and said, in an almost discarding tone: ‘Cora, I barely make enough to feed myself. You’re a Central princess, in what world should I have to pay for this?,’ she had not really known how to defend herself. She had no other options, and so she had to tell her parents. Pale and trembling, she confessed what had happened at the kitchen table.
‘Who is he?’ her father boomed, his angry voice echoing off the walls. ‘Who is the father, Cora?’
This was the worst part. If she had just done as she was supposed to, she could have made this work. Sure, getting knocked up by your first boyfriend was a little messy in any situation, but if only she had been messy with a boy of her own caliber, the situation would have been fixable. In her part of the District, honor was everything, and no family would allow their son to impregnate and discard a girl. Marrying young was not that odd around here either, and although there would of course be rumors, her honor would be salvaged if she would just get engaged to some nice, wealthy family’s son. If the son was important enough, her parents would probably not even be that mad at her.
‘Richard Wilson,’ she whispered.
With a frown, her father got up. ‘Wilson? Wilson who?’
Coralie felt her cheeks burn when she confessed that she had no idea who he was, of course, because he was nobody. Both of her parents looked pale and shocked at her confession, but only briefly, because she had barely had a chance to breathe before they began throwing offenses at here. When she opened her mouth to defend herself, her mother struck her hard in the face. Coralie had never been hit before.
At night, her mother came into her room and kissed the top of Coralie’s head.
‘I’m sorry, Cora,’ she whispered, ‘I lost my temper. We will fix this. We will fix it, and no one will ever have to know.’
When her mother left the room, a sense of panic had come over Coralie. She clutched her stomach in her hands, still flat, although her body had begun to change. There was more of it, everything seemed a little fuller. In there, she thought, there was a baby. Or something that would eventually become a baby. The idea that it would be taken from her filled her with sudden dread.
It was not just because of the baby. More so, it was that Coralie realized she would forever owe her parents if she let this happen. She had put a blemish on this family, and for the rest of her life, she would be making up for it. It was just how things were around here. She would have to bend at her parents will, lose even more of her freedom. They would definitely try to find her a husband soon, now, any considerable guy who would have her. And the child growing inside of her would be no more than a dirty secret, something Coralie would never be allowed to speak of again.
She could not sleep. She thought about what else she could do. And the next evening, for the first time in her life, she defied her parents.
‘I want to keep it.’
Her father barked a humorless laugh. ‘You should count yourself lucky you don’t have to keep it, you dumb girl.’
‘I won’t let you take him.’ She did not at all feel certain that her baby was a boy, but it sounded nice to call the baby ‘him’.
At the moment she made her case, she had sincerely hoped her parents could be reasoned with, but she quickly found out she was wrong. They told her to pack her bags, and she was made to leave first thing in the morning, with only some clothes and what she had been able to save from her pocket money. Coralie had never learned to be very independent. She had no idea what the next step was.
Somehow, it worked out. Perhaps out of guilt, her parents also let her take their car, and she was able to sell it for a decent price. With the money, she could rent a little, ramshackle trailer near North Beach, and there, she soon set foot to the looming factory that was Cresta Canned Crabs & Shellfish. She still knew Eli Cresta from when she was little, and she knew he had become a bit of a black sheep, too, after eloping with some South Beach girl. If not the mutual connection, she hoped at least that would make him more sympathetic to her case.
Still, boys were somehow never punished for such mishaps in the way girls were. After some cold-shouldering, the Southern girl had by now been fully accepted as Eli’s wife, life resumed as usual, and Eli had still inherited his father’s factory. Coralie could not complain, though. He ended up giving her a seasonal job, perhaps softened by the fact that he himself had just become a father to little Ella.
Initially, in the factory, Coralie was not well-liked. The other women thought her posh and clueless (she could not deny that she was). She worked slower than the others, and they rolled their eyes and complained about the favoritism at play. Had Coralie not met Paula, she was not sure she would have survived. Her kind-hearted neighbor evidently felt sorry for her, and had soon asked her if she would not like to join her at her workplace, another factory closer to their quarters. Through Paula, Coralie became part of the team, learned how to work fast and hard, and her new colleagues soon became fond of Coralie’s quick wits and gentle personality. The bulging belly hidden under her apron probably helped, too.
Coralie was still working at nine months pregnant, she had no other choice, the money was too tight as it was and she would not be paid when she needed to take some time off after the baby was born. In the work line, she felt heavy on her feet, her back hurt, and she was stiff from stress. It was September, and blazing outside. With a hollow feeling, she thought back to last year, when around this time, she had still been able to make the decision that would have her not end up where she was now.
The closer she got to labor, the more worried she became. Perhaps it had all been an adolescent whim, this wish to have her baby, perhaps she should have listened to her parents. She did not feel ready to be a mother, was so scared that she would mess it up. Mess him up. What did she really have to offer a baby at this point? The first few months taking care of herself had been hard, and frustrating, and lonely.
Perhaps, she thought, if she gave up the baby, her parents would take her back. The baby would have a better life. No one would lose. Capitol families were looking to adopt all the time, she had heard that some women down here even got pregnant for them, in exchange for money. She could do that. The Capitol had nice things, theatres, libraries, university. And no Reapings. Her baby would have a better life there, surely.
Her water broke in the bus to work. She had paled with fright, unsure of what to do. Luckily Paula was there, got off with her to help her to a midwife. She asked who she should call.
‘No one,’ Coralie said, suddenly feeling so alone she could cry, ‘I haven’t got anyone.’
Paula grabbed her hand tightly. ‘Love,’ she said, ‘you have me. I ain’t leaving. ’
In the health clinic (although ‘clinic’ was much too fancy a word for what it was) she had bawled her eyes out for the first time since she left her parents’ house. She had fought to keep it in, the sadness felt so vast that she was sure she could never face it. But now, on threadbare sheets, squeezing Paula’s hand, she wanted to be home so bad. She wanted her mother. Paula gently wiped Coralie’s sweaty hair from her face, told her to breathe easy.
‘I’m scared,’ Coralie sobbed, feeling that he was almost coming now, the pain different from anything she had ever felt. ‘I am so scared!’
‘Of course you are. This is the scariest moment of your life,’ Paula replied it with a slight smile. ‘But you have made it through everything else you’ve faced so far.’
Paula kept consoling her, and then the baby was there. He was healthy, and sturdy, and cried loudly. He was indeed a boy. The sound of his crying unleashed something primal and terrifying in her, her whole body responding to it. Coralie dared not look at him.
‘He has to go,’ she cried, ‘I’m giving him up. Please, I cannot do it if you make me hold him.’
Paula looked at her earnestly. ‘Baby, that is a really hard decision. And it is yours to make, but I think you will stay filled with regret until the day you die. If you asked me, I’d tell you to keep that boy.’
Coralie had whimpered about the trailer and the lack of money, about Capitol schools and families with two parents, and Paula grabbed her hand steadily. The young midwife that had helped her deliver still stood there, holding the whining baby, unsure of what to do.
‘Girl,’ Paula said a bit sharper, ‘my babies grew up in a trailer and they all landed on their feet. A baby doesn’t care about Capitol schools. A baby wants a mommy who cares for him. And you do. You will be a good mom. I know it.’
Maybe it was what Paula said, or maybe she just could not fight the urges coming from her inside her any longer. She reached out to the boy, and the midwife – looking relieved they had come to a decision – placed the screaming little bundle in her arms.
Coralie loved him immediately. She also knew she would never love anything or anyone else this much, and that was terrifying. The minute she pressed him against her, he quieted down. His tiny, soft fingers made little grabbing motions, as if he was waving to her.
‘Do you really think I can do this?’ she asked.
Paula smiled warmly. ‘I know you can.’
***
Paula had been right. Coralie was a good mom, and despite not having much, her baby boy was always well-cared for. She could looked at him for ages, fretting over the sounds he made, playing with his little feet. He stared back at her with his big, adoring eyes, giggling and gurgling back at her when she talked to him. They were Richard’s eyes, but they looked so much nicer in Finnick.
She loved her son, it was not hard to do: he was a loveable child. Strolling with him over the market, she was stopped every other step by older women, who cooed at him and pressed sweets in his fists. Finnick wrapped everyone around his little fingers. He was her pride.
On his first school day, she was so worried. He was so small still, only five, and his school day ended an hour before her shift. She brought him to the schoolyard. The big kids running made quite an impression on him, he shyly peered at them from behind her legs. She had left him alone, before, Paula often looked after him, but this felt like a bigger deal to her, and evidently to him, too.
‘Finnick,’ she pointed at a clock near the gate. ‘You will have to wait here for me, okay? When the little finger is on four, I will come pick you up. ’
He nodded, his little shoulders still nervously pulled up, but when she walked away, he ran after her.
‘No, baby,’ she tried to sound cheerful, ignoring the lump in her throat, ‘I got to go to work. There’s nice kids here to play with, okay? I will be back when the little hand is on four, I promise.’
She had to force herself to walk away when he started to cry. The whole day, she felt a pit in her stomach, worried he had been miserable, but when she arrived at the gate late in the afternoon, two older kids had taken him up in their midst, and he was happily running between them, cheeks red with joy, while the older two were clearly letting him win their game.
That was how it always had been. Everybody loved Finnick. She was proud of that. Finnick was the kind of child that was naturally popular, but not the kind that boasted or felt the need to put others down. She appreciated his kind heart, his huge imagination. He was also really chatty.
When she was tired, she sometimes played ‘the quiet game’ with him, a sneaky way to get him to shut up for a second, but he never held out long. She did not really mind, though. She liked the sound of his voice and the many unanswerable questions it came up with. Coralie had at first wondered if his chatting, and his love for acting and dressing up, things Finnick usually did with the girls in his class, would maybe turn him into an outcast amongst other boys, but it never did. He was athletic, too, frequently asked to be part of a sports team or another. He thrived in many contexts, got along with everyone, and she could not have been happier.
At fourteen, he came to bring her the keys at work one day after she had forgotten them. He had just finished his second growth spurt of the year. She kept laying out the hems of his pants, but it was no use, there was no keeping up with it. He had surpassed her now, and was taller than any other boy in his year.
‘Wait a minute,’ one of her colleagues, Susie, said to her in surprise, as he rushed out of the factory again, ‘was that your boy Finnick?’
‘Uhu?’ Coralie was confused. Who else would it have been?
‘Oh, how he has grown!’ Susie whistled, impressed. ‘Would have sworn he was way younger. He is going to break some hearts real soon.’
‘Have you had the talk with him yet?’ another colleague asked.
Coralie protested: ‘He’s fourteen!’
Paula guffawed. ‘Girl. Don’t be naïve. You know my boy Reg?’
Coralie, of course, did know. Paula had three boys, Paolo, Gerry and Regino. Reg was the middle one, and he was the best-looking. It had been a while since Reg had lived at home, but when he still had, Coralie had more than once caught him sneaking a girl out of his bedroom at night.
‘Yeah. I’m not saying it’s happening now. But I’m saying with boys like Reg or Finnick it can happen sooner than you think. Girls notice them, and then all they have to do is lie that they are older than they are.’
‘Not Finnick! He’s a baby. I’m sure he has no interest in it yet.’
‘Well, teenage boys tend not to talk about that sort of thing to their moms, Cory,’ the other women laughed.
‘But still, you will notice when they do,’ moaned one of them, ‘I have two of them around that age now. Absolutely feral, and the stink!’
Coralie was still quite sure Finnick had no interest in girls yet. In fact, she sometimes doubted that he would ever be interested in them at all. He had always been a little eccentric, a little more soft-spoken than most of the boys she knew. Perhaps, she thought, he would end up with another boy. She had known of a few boys like that back when she still lived in the Center, their preferences more or less accepted as long as in the end they got with a girl and married her.
In the spring of the next year, he suddenly started offering to go for the shop for her in an abundant way. Even when the errands could wait, he ran them immediately, sometimes leaving for the store twice a day. At first she figured there was something in the windowsill he liked: as a kid, he had often stood in front of it, mesmerized by some toy or trinket, and after a few weeks of his eager shopping trips, she decided to try to figure out what it was. She had made some extra money on her long night shifts, perhaps she could buy him the thing for Reaping Day, it was not often he got gifts.
In the store, shopkeeper Adam greeted her familiarly: ‘Coralie, long time no see!’
‘I haven’t had the need,’ she joked, ‘my assistant has been very keen on doing the groceries lately.’
Adam grinned back at her ‘Say that! I see yours more than my own these days.’
‘Speaking of, do you have any idea what he is interested in? I was thinking of buying him something, as a surprise.’
The shopkeeper laughed heartily. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. This one is not for sale.’
Coralie blinked, not understanding, and Adam gestured to the back of the store. At first, Coralie was not sure what he was pointing at. Then it clicked. In the back end of the isle, a girl of about sixteen was neatly lining up canned foods. She had long, dark hair, tan skin, and when she reached up, a piece of her skin peeped out between her pants and the hem of her shirt, showing off her pierced belly button.
‘I see,’ mumbled Coralie. Adam laughed loudly again. ‘She’s my niece. And I don’t think the infatuation is mutual. Oi, Shannon!’ he yelled out at the girl.
‘Aye?’
‘You know that copper-knobbed boy that comes here all the time? Fancy him?’
Shannon shrugged, ‘he’s handsome’, and returned to her cans.
Coralie figured she might have to sit Finnick down after all.
***
When he got reaped, she was sure her heart stopped. In those few counts it took to pronounce his name – the hostess stressing the wrong syllables – it felt as if electricity ran through her body, a hard, cold rush that made all her organs pause. She had to suppress the urge to run to the stage and pull her child off. As she saw his figure move forward, she tried to calm herself down. It did not matter. There would be a volunteer. There was almost always a volunteer.
It remained quiet.
‘Why is no one volunteering?’ she whispered to no one in particular at first, and then she started shrieking.
‘God, god, why is no one volunteering?’
Paula had grabbed her by the hand, all the color drained from her face, but Coralie jerked herself free and began pushing through the crowd. No. No. My baby. My baby. My baby.
In the Justice Building, she pressed him to her chest and tried not to become hysterical, tried to keep her voice steady and make him believe he stood a chance. But he was so young, he was way too young.
‘I might be okay,’ he said, evidently only to calm her down. She hated that he felt the need to do that now, when it should be the other way around. ‘I’ve been… I’ve been training.’
The sponsored Career program was bullshit, Coralie knew that much, she had grown up in the Center after all. Sponsorship kids trained once a week, and although that might have been slightly better than nothing, it was forgettable compared to the hours and hours the real Careers made. Even between just Finnick and the District Four girl, the muscles running through her neck like cables, his chances we poor.
‘Yes,’ Coralie agreed nonetheless, ‘you’ve been training. You’re strong. You’re smart. And people love you, everybody loves you. You will charm the hell out of them.’
Coralie believed that. She had seen her boy grow up, and in all those years, he had been charming everybody wherever he went. People adored him, spoiled him. Maybe it would work, just like that. Maybe people would sponsor him, just because they could not help liking him so much.
They did. She was baffled when he made it to the final eight, but for the first time since she had hugged him goodbye, she felt hope. Hope and determination. She needed to do whatever she could to help him win. When she took her place in front of the camera’s for the final interviews, she had practically begged the Capitol for mercy.
‘Finnick is my only family,’ she said, trying to sound pitiful and not accusatory, ‘I need him back with me. Please, bring my son home.’
Paula cried, when they gifted him the trident, but Coralie could barely even believe what was happening. The importance of the moment did not come to her until minutes later. They had to know it would be a weapon he was skilled with, he had practically been spearfishing since he could walk. They do love him, she realized, they want him to live.
When she saw her little boy with this heavy weapon in his hands, groaning as he plunged it into other bodies, she felt something in her break. It was not because of what Finnick was doing, he had no choice, and she was glad he fought, she needed him to. But when the camera’s panned in for his final shot, those beautiful eyes were wide with terror, he looked sickened and defeated, and she thought she would never have her boy back. Not the boy he had been.
When Finnick came home, he trembled under her embrace. For weeks, he woke up screaming, and she rushed to his bedroom to try and bring him some peace. His body felt so bony in her arms, and she was not sure anymore if he had already been this skinny before. But after some time, he seemed to breathe easier again. He started laughing more. And he started talking again, chatting, about anything and everything, even about the glamorous things he had seen and done in The Capitol. She felt so relieved. Her boy was still in there. Perhaps time would heal him.
When Finnick came home the second time, after the Victory tour, she knew something bad had happened. To a stranger, he might have seemed the same. No screaming, no loud nightmares, but something was off. She knew it instantly, and afterwards, she realized that even then, she had maybe already known what it was. She had just been so eager not to see it.
Finnick came back and he was quiet. He spoke, but only when needed, and all the time sounding strangely polite, as if he was a guest in the house of someone he did not know that well. He moved differently, more guarded. She asked what was wrong, but he said nothing. She did not press him. She did not know she had to. Up until this point, Finnick had barely ever held a secret for her.
He went to The Capitol again, and came back even quieter. He did not go out as much as he used to. He barely saw his old friends anymore.
‘Don’t you want to invite someone?’ she tried, one day. ‘Some friends? You could have a nice sleepover in this house.’
He was not interested. He did not seem interested in anything.
In Coralie’s mind, alarm bells were going off. People were talking about him already at that point. A tempter, they called him, a flirt. She would never deny that Finnick sometimes used his looks to his favor, but the implications in those articles suggested something different. Suggested he was chasing people. She found it hard to picture, but the conversations she had had with colleagues earlier gnawed at her. About what boys like Finnick might do behind their mother’s backs. And she thought of Richard’s hot temper, and the way he had seduced her, and wondered if it could be true. Perhaps it was hereditary, but it somehow did not seem to line up.
‘Finnick, what have you been doing out there in The Capitol?’ she had eventually asked him, concernedly. He just shrugged. She often missed the sound of his voice. With an ache in her heart she thought back to the days where they played the quiet game. When she had told him to try how long he could be silent for, because he was chatting her ears of and she just wanted a moment of peace. His silence, she had found out by now, was much more pressing.
He began locking the bathroom doors, then his bedroom door, and he never changed in front of her anymore at the beach. Puberty, she tried to convince herself, it is just puberty, he has gotten too old for that, too old for his mom walking in on him, he is entitled to some privacy.
One night, she woke up at four in the morning to the sound of the shower. She went to check, figured he had come down with something. When he came out of the bathroom, he seemed unreasonable startled to see her.
‘Are you okay? Feeling sick?’
He lashed out at her. Told her to leave him alone. He had never done that before.
Puberty, she told herself again, just puberty. Perhaps, she reasoned later, he had had a wet dream. She did not know much about that, but that happened to boys his age, surely. For the first time, she wished that there was someone in her life. Someone who could talk to him about these things. It would probably be easier to talk to another man, a father figure, instead of her.
She kept telling herself all these things, but inside her, the alarms still kept ringing. He’s not okay, he’s not okay, something is very, very wrong.
‘Paula,’ she whispered one day. They were sitting on the porch in silence, in the sun, but Coralie found it hard to actually enjoy it. ‘Do you notice something about Finnick?’
‘Well…’ Paula looked conflicted, as if she was concerned that what she was about to say would offend Coralie. ‘I mean, yes. He seems less cheerful. But after those horrible Games…’
‘He was not like this after the Games. I think… something happened after that.’
Paula looked at her inquisitively. ‘What do you mean?’
Coralie was not sure is he should say it. She could be so wrong. Was it even right to ask Paula and not Finnick? But then, she had asked him in many ways, many times, and he had so far avoided giving her an answer.
‘You know all the stuff they write about him?’
Paula scoffed. Her face expressed she was as convinced about those stories as Coralie was.
‘I’m worried that…’ Coralie fell silent. ‘How were your sons at that age? Did they change a lot?’
‘Mwah,’ Paula sighed. ‘Paolo was pretty consistent, just became more mature. Gerry was more of a troublemaker as a teen. Pushing his limits a little, picking fights with his dad and so on. Normal teenage stuff. Reg was… well, Reg was perpetually girl-crazy so that was that. Could not keep him focused on anything else for longer than a minute. He failed two grades.’
That made Coralie laugh, despite everything. With a sigh, she added: ‘Maybe Finnick is just going through puberty.’
‘Could be!’ Paula turned from the conversation again, leaning back in her chair, and Coralie let it go.
Finnick was gone often those days. He would fly back and forth, staying in The Capitol for extended periods of time. She did not like it, he was barely sixteen, and she had no idea where he was or what he was doing when he went there. Sometimes, she tried to persuade him into staying, but the Games had made the rules of their relationship unsteady. She used to be his mom, the authority who could tell him ‘no’ if needed. But now he was not really listening to her, and she felt hesitant to claim him. After all, how could you tell a child that had been forced to grow up over the course of weeks, who has seen and done things she could not even have imagined, how could you just guide them back into the regular family dynamic and go on with business as usual?
On his seventeenth birthday, he was not home. It was the first time she had spent his birthday without him since his birth. She had always loved Finnick’s birthdays. When he was little, they never had any money to spare, and so she gifted him things she would otherwise have bought him, a new shirt or a pencase, but she would make a show out of it. She collected pieces of fabric and saved the metallic shiny wrappers that sometimes came around cans. Finnick was always a gullible recipient, he saved the little pieces of sea glass she used to decorate his gifts in a tiny jar. She could not stop herself, suddenly feeling so sad, that she opened the door to his room, his hidden kingdom now. She barely entered it anymore, he seemed so adamant on keeping her out.
The room was huge, but, she realized only now, Finnick had pretty much stripped it of the Capitol décor that it had come with. The sheets on his bed were almost a decade old, a faded red with little mushrooms on them, once obtained by her at a clearance sale. They had been a birthday gift for him, too. She smiled at the sight of them, those childish sheets in that enormous, king-sized bed. She could easily picture him sleeping, rolled up in the sheets, hit feet poking out and his mouth half-open. When she rummaged through the shelves he stacked his books on, her hand suddenly fell still by an unexpected object. It felt cold and fragile. Carefully, she pulled it towards her, and looked down. In her hand she held the little jar filled with different colored sea glass.
Later that week, she watched television with Paula in the giant living room. Paula was there often now, eating the dinner Coralie served. Coralie would have loved to do more, and she knew Finnick would, too, but that was against the rules. Victors were not meant to share their wealth. They watched something mindlessly, some Capitol-talk show, when suddenly Finnick’s face appeared on screen.
They were pictures, taken at his birthday party. Paula audibly held her breathe. Coralie could almost physically feel the laughter, the inappropriate comments the talk show hosts were making climb up her spine. What she saw on screen first was her son, sprawled out on some couch, shirtless, sweaty and obviously under influence of one thing or another, with a barely-dressed woman with brightly colored patters on her body leaning her head on his chest, and it did not take long for other photo’s to follow.
‘God,’ Paula said ultimately, when the segment was finally interrupted by something else, after what felt like hours. Her voice sounded a little creaky, and she did not say anything else.
Coralie stood up and walked to the kitchen. The rational inner voice tried to calm her down, using terms like experimenting and natural part of growing up, remembering things she had done as a teenager, imagining combining that teenage recklessness with a sudden on-set of fame and limitless money and spaces filled with unimaginable hedonism. But it felt like a final puzzle piece, proof of that feeling she had been walking around with for a long time now. She knew that boy on the photo’s was not happy, she could see it in his eyes, and somewhere deep down a littler, more instinctive voice was screaming at her. After all, Finnick had never been as reckless and irresponsible as she had been: his much less secure upbringing had not allowed that.
A part of her knew, but still, she did not know how to help him.