Borderlands

When they were still small, Willow would lay in her yard between Maysilee and Lissabeth. At night the girls looked for shapes in the stars, and during warm summer days they combed the clouds for meaning. Maysilee always saw birds. She loved robins, cardinals, even plain little sparrows. But mockingjays most of all, like the golden pin that belonged to her great-aunt Magen.

Willow can still feel the tickle of cut grass on the back of her neck and bare arms, the green smell of the freshly mown lawn. That's how she likes to remember them. Loud Maysie and quiet Lissa, framing her like the ballerina bookends in Daddy's office.

And that makes sense, really, because without both dancers the books all fall down.

Maysilee Donner dies on national television the summer Willow turned seventeen years old. Killed by the things she loved most in a color she couldn't stand. That's all Willow can think for days afterward. Maysilee hated pink. And apart from Haymitch Abernathy, it's the last thing she ever saw.

Willow won't ever be able to see the color again without red following it. Blood on bright feathers. Sharp beaks breaking soft, girl skin. Just because the Gamemakers wanted Haymitch and the cameras and the people at home to focus on something besides that forcefield.

Lissabeth won't stop crying, and maybe Willow should be crying too. Like the day of the reaping, when Maysilee's name was called. They wept and clung to one another, almost children again. We are children. At least, that's what the Capitol says. Young enough to be tributes.

Now she's supposed to greet their new victor at the train station. Cheer and smile and pretend. She doesn't begrudge Haymitch his win or his life, but she won't celebrate the Games that killed Maysilee. She won't. So when Father says to get out of bed and put on a pretty dress, that's what she tells him.

He doesn't much like that answer.

"You'll get up and you'll go." He's a mild-tempered man, her father. So long as she follows his rules.

It's been two weeks since Maysilee was murdered, and apart from school and chores, Willow has done little besides sleep. Her last full meal was three days ago, and she hasn't bathed in six. She can feel oil on her skin, in her hair. Smells the sour strength of her own scent in a way she never has before. Like the children Leera Blake makes fun of in winter, when it's too cold for the poorest families to waste coal on heating water.

"You stink like the Seam," Father says, and he hauls her from the bed by an arm. Willow doesn't struggle, but she relaxes her body, lets herself go leaden and limp. If he drags her from here to the station it won't be easy. Carpet scrapes her skin, and in the hall the gaps between floorboards pinch. Dead weight still, Willow couldn't fight if she wanted to. The world seems slow-moving, dizzying and hazy. Until there's cool tile beneath her bare legs, and she realizes what he means to do.

Father shoves her under the faucet just as a jet of water comes out. She chokes, sputters, when it goes up her nose, in her mouth, down her throat. He pulls again, so the freezing water hits the top of her head instead of her face. Then he scrubs soap into that long, golden hair he says is so like Mother's. Scours six days of dirt off her scalp with holy vigor. Harsh runoff slides down into her eyes, stinging something fierce. He moves to her face and arms and legs. Everywhere that's uncovered. Then Father dunks her until she's good and rinsed. Naked skin newborn tender and piglet pink, he lifts her from the tub and gently pushes a towel into her dripping hands.

"There," he says. "You're clean. Now dry off and put on the dress Mrs. Cartwright gave you. The blue one."

So Willow digs the cornflower dress out of the mess of clothes in her closet and steps into it. She buttons up her fears and thinks, maybe, that she should cry now. But the tears won't come. They're too far away.

At the station, Jerem asks if she's well.

"Fine," she says, but when the train arrives like a sleek silver snake from another world, she grabs his arm. The muscle there is flour-sack hauling firm, and Willow takes some comfort in his strength. Jerem is her steady place, has been since they were children. The apothecary is sandwiched between the sweetshop and the bakery, so Willow grew up spoiled on sugar and the company of the Mellarks and Donners.

But the time for spoiling is over. Cameras catch the clapping crowd while Haymitch gives a lazy speech; he's following his Capitol script, but as irreverently as possible. Willow watches three plain, pine boxes being unloaded beyond the cameras' view. Maysie is in one of them. She'll be buried in the tributes' graveyard behind the Justice Building, her plot topped by a plain stone marker. Identical to the rest.

"Hey, it's gonna be all right," Jerem says, and Willow realizes she's shaking. A camera leans toward her, its round body on long limbs, like a spindle-legged spider clicking closer. She buries her face in Jerem's shirt and waits until Haymitch's voice fades and the train pulls away, carrying the Capitol's people with it.

"They're gone," he says, and Willow can feel the warm hum of his voice against her cheek. She nods and steps back. "We should look for Lissabeth."

They find her crying with Sal Undersee, the boy Maysie had been stepping out with since they were fifteen. Sal cries too, and Willow remembers how he teased both twins for years, yanking their braids and tagging them during schoolyard play. At some point the teasing changed, and he chased Maysilee in a different way. It took two whole years for him to convince her to go on a date. If Maysie saw what was coming, maybe she'd have said yes the first time he asked.

When Lissabeth looks up, her expression is fierce instead of soft with grief. She's never looked more like her sister. "Where've you been? Nobody's seen you since the Games ended." Lissa pushes Willow backward, hard enough to make her stumble. "Guess it takes a mandatory event to get your ass out of your room."

Jerem, still so calm and quiet, puts a hand on Lissa's shoulder. "Come on, enough of that."

"I'm sorry," Willow says. "I know I should have been here for you."

But I've barely been here myself.

"It doesn't matter. She's just as dead no matter what we do-or don't bother to." Lissa gives her that look again, and it's almost like Maysilee's back from the dead. Raised up just to leave all over again. Willow knows there's a break between her and Lissabeth now. A space of her own making that can't ever be crossed.

Father tells her to go to her room. She'll be staying there until school starts back next week. For once, Willow doesn't mind the confinement. More time to sleep is welcome, but when she dreams it's always of Maysilee.

Red red blood on pink plumage. Fireflies buzzing against their glass cage. District One's axe hitting the outer rim of the arena and bouncing back. Lying in the grass instead of stale sheets, a warm sister on each side of her. Death rattles and life spilling out of Maysie's mouth. Her eyes when she smiled, bright and just barely crinkled at the corners. Her eyes when she died, wide and white and so scared.

Even Father's punishment doesn't last forever, though, and come Monday Willow has to dress and go to school. Not that she makes much effort. She buttons up the same blue dress, still wrinkled, that she wore to the train station.

Leera notices and asks, with false sweetness, whether she might like to borrow some of her clothes. Since it seems Willow's wardrobe has shrunk to one item. Cotton Greengrass and Sally Franklin laugh. Lissabeth smiles, and that hurts far more than the teasing. If Maysie were here she'd have something clever to say, but all Willow can think is how much she'd like to rip out Leera's sleek, ash blonde hair. The girl was so vain of it, that sheet of sterling silk that swayed above the small of her back when she walked. Surely Principal Watkins would send her home for plucking Leera Blake like a goose.

Instead, she goes to math class and sits as far from Maysilee's empty chair as seating will allow. When the lecture on meeting coal quotas grows too boring to stand, Willow starts to write a note. Her pencil brushes the paper, lead leaving a grey smudge on the new, clean sheet, before she remembers she has no one to give it to.

During gym, the Seam kids practice with weights. Lifting, swinging, pulling, to build up the strength they'll soon need in the mines. Coach Cooper tells the merchants to warm up for a game of basketball, and Leera asks Jerem to help her stretch. He holds her feet and tries not to look at her slender legs. He isn't, Willow notices, entirely successful. Leera is small, five feet and a hundred pounds at most. Boys like this. Standing next to her makes them feel more like men, maybe. Jerem, already strong and solid, looks like a fairy tale knight grasping a princess's slippers. He glances in Willow's direction-checking to see if she's watching-and his cheeks flush.

So her sweetheart wants to fuck the meanest girl in school.

Leera is smart and popular, surrounded by friends and hangers-on. She always knows what to say to break you down or build you up, and seems to have a new beau every week. But Willow will be damned before she lets Leera steal hers.

That night, she lays with Jerem in the woods, naked in the warm summer dark, and she asks if he likes Leera Blake.

"No," Jerem says, too quickly and too forcefully to be telling the truth.

Between her legs she's still wet from their lovemaking, and she wonders if he's ever thought of Leera when he's inside her. Does he imagine those slender legs wrapped around him, or small breasts instead of full? The way she sometimes thinks of Benjen Everdeen. Whipcord lean body arched, serious mouth open on the hollow of her throat, callused hands everywhere.

Willow used to think she and Jerem belonged to one another and nobody else. But maybe she was wrong.

She takes a walk down the Seam. Past the ramshackle houses, coated in a layer of dark grit: coal dust, sprinkled over every inch of this district. Like snow, if snow could catch fire. A one-armed man and his wife watch her with eyes the same color as the dirty sheen on their clothes, their porch, the whole of Twelve. Seam grey.

Willow walks to the edge of her world. The fence isn't live this time of day. Even merchant kids know that much. But come night time those dead wires will hum with energy. Power all the way from District Five, generated somewhere somehow and sent here. Electricity enough to kill a girl of seventeen in a second flat. An ugly death, but quick.

Quicker than Maysilee's.

So Willow waits. Sits and watches the sun move across the sky, changing colors as it goes. White gold to deep yellow to orange-red. The Sunday sky fades around the horizon, from day brightness to twilight. Fireflies blink into sight, one by one. She remembers catching them with the twins. Filling mason jars until they had three lightning bug lanterns, pulsing green against the dark.

"Willow?"

She looks toward the voice, familiar and melodic, but difficult to place. It's Benjen Everdeen. Tall, brown, and scowling, his game bag slung over one shoulder. "What are you doing out here?"

"Just watching the sunset," she says, and that's true in its own way.

"Next to the fence?"

"It's as good a place as any."

His frown deepens, and double creases appear between the sharp lines of his eyebrows. "No," he says, "It's a good place to get killed after dark."

"Pot, kettle," Willow returns. "You just came under the fence. Unless you found a few fat rabbits running down the road."

Ben clutches the game bag tighter, and now his mouth is flat. "Well, if you're stupid enough to stay close to that damn thing, I won't stop you."

He walks on, and for some reason Willow can't stand for this to be the last words between them. "I'm not stupid," she says.

Ben stops, turns, and the look he gives her seems to strip her right down to the bone. Past lies and pretense to plain truth. That night isn't the dark she's waiting for. "I know," he says. "Let me walk you home."

She's ashamed, suddenly, that he sees her so clearly. And what would Maysilee think? Living through a hell in heaven's clothes. Blood and dirt and death, until the day a cotton candy flock gave her all three. Maysie, who fought so hard for her life, would be sick to see Willow throw hers away.

So when Benjen Everdeen holds out his hand, she takes it.