Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time I ever really understood what hunger was, Maysilee and I were eleven and Mama gave us each half a cup of coffee for breakfast. No bread. No oats. Just coffee. We sipped it slow like it was soup and tried not to look at each other.

“Drink it before it gets cold,” Mama said, like the warmth would fool our stomachs into believing it was full.

It didn’t.
But we drank anyway.

In the Donner household, appearances mattered. Even if our merchant license made us seem better off than most of Twelve, it was a lie. Being a merchant only meant we were expected to smile wider while starving. Mama powdered her face and braided her hair high and tight every morning. Papa wore the same stiff-collared shirt even when it was too hot for it. He polished the counters of our little trinket shop until they gleamed brighter than the wares we could barely keep in stock. And Maysilee and I? We learned early how to walk like we weren't always one missed sale away from an empty pantry.

Maysilee was everything I wasn’t.

She carried herself like she’d already decided she wouldn’t rot in District 12. Her spine was straighter than mine. Her voice cut louder. She was brave, and fearless, and mean in the way kind girls sometimes are. Sharp-tongued, but only when she knew you needed a push.

People liked her anyway. They always did.

Sometimes I think it was because she cared enough to be mean.

I, on the other hand, perfected the art of not caring. Or at least, looking like I didn’t.

The day we met Haymitch Abernathy, he was just another loud-mouthed, knobby-kneed boy in our year. It was the week before the Reaping—always a strange time in school. Everyone walking around like ghosts pretending we weren’t scared. Like we weren’t eyeing each other thinking, maybe it’ll be you this year instead of me.

We were outside during lunch break, sitting under the droopy tree behind the school where the ground was all roots and no grass. Maysilee had brought a tin of coffee to share. Real coffee, not that burnt grain substitute from the apothecary. We sipped from the same cup and passed it back and forth.

“He’s so full of himself,” Maysilee said suddenly, fuming as she watched Haymitch strut past a group of girls by the fence.

“Who?” I asked, though I already knew.

“Haymitch. Abernathy. Look at him. Acting like he’s somebody.” She rolled her eyes, which only made me more suspicious.

“Maybe he is somebody,” I said dryly, watching the way her eyes lingered on his stupid hair a beat too long.

She threw a small rock at my foot. “He’s obnoxious.”

I smirked. “Mmhm. And you’re definitely not halfway to writing his name in a heart behind your spelling notebook.”

That got me a full slap on the arm. “Shut up, Merrilee.”

“Just saying,” I shrugged, sipping the coffee and letting it burn a little on the way down. “You only get that mad when you like someone. You hated Tobias Mirkwood for a whole month before he kissed you behind the mill.”

“That was different.”

“Sure,” I said. “He didn’t wear his hair like he was in love with himself.”

She made a sound between a groan and a laugh and buried her face in her hands.

I looked out at Haymitch again, now tossing a stone into the air, catching it, tossing it again. He wasn’t anything special, not yet. Just a smart-mouthed seam kid so alike yet so very different from us, too quick with comebacks and too slow to see trouble coming.

But still.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe he was somebody.

We just didn’t know it yet.

And maybe we were, too.

Though none of us would have said it out loud. Not in Twelve. Not when the Reaping was only days away.

Because in District 12, being somebody only meant they’d remember your name when they carved it into the stone and if you were lucky enough to have a body to bring back, bury what remained into the cold, hard dirt, where you shall forever lay. 

The irony was that true freedom in District 12 could be found only in death.

I still remember the first time I truly heard Haymitch Abernathy, before he even said a word.

It was during that knot-tying demonstration in the schoolyard, the day the Capitol instructors came early for the Quell orientation. Maysilee and I were meant to be watching, taking notes, pretending we didn’t already know how to do a half-hitch or a square knot. I fumbled through mine, deliberately, maybe, and Maysilee breezed through hers, fingers moving like she’d been born weaving thread.

Then came Haymitch. He was all elbows and bravado, and completely hopeless with knots. He pulled the cord so hard it snapped in two. I stifled a laugh. Maysilee didn’t.

“Oh, honestly,” she muttered under her breath, loud enough for me to hear. “Itchy Itchy Haymitchy strikes again.”

I blinked at her. “Itchy Itchy Haymitchy?”

She leaned toward me, grinning. “Didn’t you hear? He got chiggers last week running through the woods, scratched his legs raw and then tried to cover it up with coal paste. Looked like a diseased squirrel.”

“Nice,” I said, eyeing Haymitch across the way. He caught her gaze then, flushed, and looked away. Maysilee didn't soften. She never did. That was the thing with her—brave, bold, impossible to ignore. Me? I faded beside her like dusk next to noon.

But in that moment, I saw something new in her. That glint in her eye. Not just annoyance. Something... speculative. Like she’d just uncovered a puzzle worth solving.

Maybe it was the beginning of something.

We were drinking watered-down coffee that morning. Ma said it helped with the hunger. Maybe it did. Our parents were merchants, candy, mostly. A Donner sweet was a District 12 staple, and people said Maysilee had a mind like a ledger and a mouth like a whip. Papa joked she could sell a thimble of syrup to a man drowning in molasses.

But merchants or not, the Seam always reached for us. Not with soot, but with scarcity. We sipped coffee to feel full. We breathed sugar and wanted bread. Still, Maysilee powdered her nose and wore her ribbons. I didn’t bother.

Reaping Day arrived like a storm we’d all been pretending wasn’t coming.

The morning light was gray and flat, like the sky had gone dull from watching too many children die. We all wore our best clothes, which in District 12 meant clean if you were lucky and unpatched if you were rich.

Maysilee wore our mother’s old lavender dress, freshly hemmed. I wore a blue one that used to belong to her before she hit her growth spurt. She’d sewn lace to the sleeves to make it feel less like a hand-me-down.

“Do I look okay?” she asked in the mirror.

“You look like you’ll give the Capitol a heart attack,” I said. “Too much spine.”

She smiled faintly. “Good.”

We walked to the square together, fingers brushing but not quite holding. Mama and Papa followed behind, silent. That was the rule on Reaping Day. No small talk. No pretending.

The square was already filling by the time we arrived. The stage sat like a wound in the center, velvet and polished wood hiding its ugliness. The Peacekeepers stood at every corner, rifles gleaming in the sun.

Mayor Allister gave his usual speech. The Treaty of Treason. The history of the Dark Days. The punishment of the Hunger Games. My stomach roiled.

Then it was time.

District 12 had only two bowls—one for boys, one for girls. All names written on fragile little slips of paper, all crammed into a glass container like that would somehow make the choosing fairer.

The square was already hot, that kind of still July heat that settles like a warning. Drusilla Sickle descended on us like a diseased daffodil, her lemon-yellow boots clicking like beetle shells, her face pulled taut with steel pins, actual pins, like something out of a haunted doll collection. Her voice rang out like the shriek of an off-tune bell.

I hated her. Not the way Maysilee hated her, on principle, loudly, with scathing wit, but with that quiet, bone-deep revulsion you reserve for something that shouldn't exist.

Drusilla’s face was the Capitol’s face. Gleaming. Merciless. False.

“Ladies first,” she trilled, twirling the paper like it was confetti, like she was plucking a prize at the market and not someone’s child.

“Louella McCoy!”

My heart dropped, and then clenched tighter when her second slip came out.

“Maysilee Donner!”

The air in my lungs went cold. I didn’t scream. I just grabbed her—because what else do you do when half of your soul is about to be cleaved off?

She hugged me back, whispered something about Sid, and then pulled away, chin high, spine stiff. Lavender dress smoothed.

I watched her climb those steps like she was ascending a throne. I could barely stand. Ma held onto me. Papa charged the stage waving bills, trying to buy her back like she was candy behind the counter.

“Don’t, Papa!” she cried.

But I knew, no one bought anything from the Capitol except death.

Then came Woodbine Chance.

Chaos had already bloomed like a bruise through the square, but somehow, in the eye of it all, I remember the thud as he hit the stage, the blood, the screaming. Maysilee flinched. I gripped her hand.

When the Peacekeepers tried to separate us, I slipped through and held her, one last time. The two of us, nose to nose. One heartbeat. One memory.

And then they tore us apart.

Haymitch walked up to the stage, not twitching this time, not scratching. Just walking. Eyes locked on the stage, fists balled at his sides.

He stood beside Maysilee like they’d planned it. Like fate had been playing games behind the scenes.

And maybe it had.

Maybe this was how stories started in District 12.

With bad nicknames. And coffee for breakfast. And two kids walking toward death like they weren’t afraid of anything.

Maybe that’s what made them heroes.
Or maybe it’s what got them killed.

I didn’t know yet.

But I was Merrilee Donner.
And I would remember everything.

Drusilla’s voice still echoes in my ears. “No good-byes for these people. They’ve lost that privilege.”

She’s wrong. We never had that privilege. Not in the Seam. Not in Twelve. Not as twins born into hunger, sugar, and smoke.

And if she thought she’d seen the last of the Donners, well, then she truly had no idea what she’d just unleashed.

The first day after the Reaping, the Donners' house was so quiet it made my teeth ache.

There was always noise here, always. The kettle clanking against the stove, Ma yelling for someone to fetch more sugar from the cellar, Papa muttering under his breath about inventory, the rustle of candy wrappers, the clatter of glass jars, the steady hum of Maysilee’s voice, even when she was alone in her room, reading aloud to herself just to hear the sound. It was constant. Not chaotic, not exactly, but alive. The kind of noise that stitched itself into your bones so you didn’t even realize you needed it until it vanished. And now it had.

I stood in the hallway outside her room that morning, staring at the door like it might open on its own. It was shut, not locked, just... closed. Her side of the room was still perfectly neat. Maysilee always made her bed first thing. Mine was a mess. Always had been. I sat on my own bed and looked across the gap between them and realized how far away she really was.

A single pink ribbon was still tied to the post of her bed. I'd woken up with it clutched in my hand.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I had whispered last night when we were still in that awful clutch of hugs and fear before the Peacekeepers dragged her away.

“You’re not,” she whispered back. “You’re going to be strong.”

She had said it like she believed it. Like I was capable of something.

But now? Now the air was still and warm and suffocating, and no one had spoken since sunrise.

Mama was in the kitchen, staring at a pot of coffee she hadn’t turned on. Her apron was spotless, her hands trembling as she tried to measure out the grounds. The scoop clattered against the tin.

“I can make it,” I offered softly.

She didn’t answer. Didn’t look up. Just kept trying, like if she could just get the coffee right, everything else might fix itself.

Papa wasn’t in the shop. The front windows were still shuttered. The candy was still shelved, untouched from yesterday. That never happened. Not in the Donner household. Not even during illness, not even when we were mourning Grandma Lee. Business always opened.

But not today.

Papa was in the parlor. Sitting in that old green chair that squeaked when you shifted in it. He hadn’t shifted once.

I stood in the doorway.

“She’ll be fine,” he said after a long silence, voice like gravel. “Your sister… she’s smart.”

“She’s a target,” I said. My voice cracked. “She’s too pretty. Too… loud. They’ll notice her.”

He didn’t look at me.

“She’s not like the others,” I added, and my throat felt tight. “They’ll see it. She shines too bright.”

Finally, he glanced up at me, and his eyes were ringed in red. “Then maybe she’ll win.”

I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t want her to win. I wanted her to come home. Those were not the same thing. Not when winning meant standing alone among fourty-seven bodies.

I went upstairs. Maysilee’s hairbrush was still on the dresser. I picked it up, held it in both hands like a relic. It still smelled like her. That sweet floral soap she liked. I ran my fingers along the bristles, then set it down again, gently.

Her notebook lay open on the desk. She was always scribbling, lists, ideas, little maps of how to reorganize the sweetshop. The last page she’d written on just said:

DON’T FORGET THE LOLLIPOPS.
(Get Mer to do the cherry ones - she always gets the swirl right.)

I shut the notebook.

And then I broke. Not in a loud, messy way. No sobbing. No collapsing to the floor. I just folded into the chair, my arms around my waist, and stared at the wall.

The house didn’t creak. No footsteps, no voices, not even the kettle whistling. Just the sound of my own breathing, harsh and uneven, and the echo of silence in a home that had never known it.

That evening, Mama finally sat at the table. She didn’t touch her food. Papa came in from the parlor but didn’t eat either. I chewed slowly, forcing each bite down.

“Did you see her face?” I said after a long while. “On the stage?”

They looked at me.

“She didn’t flinch. Not once.” My voice was brittle. “Even when the Capitol woman said her name like it was a joke.”

“Drusilla Sickle,” Mama said, tone low and trembling. “Wretched vulture.”

“She looked at me before she went up there,” I said. “And she smiled.”

Papa closed his eyes.

“I think she did it for me,” I whispered. “So I wouldn’t cry.”

Mama reached across the table and took my hand. Hers was cold. Her fingers were shaking.

“I would give anything,” she said, voice raw, “to trade places with her. To go instead.”

I didn’t answer. Because I was thinking the same thing. That it should’ve been me.

That I was always the quieter one. The invisible one. The one who wouldn’t have been missed.

But Maysilee?
She was everything.

And now half of me was gone.

And what if she never came back?

It began the morning after the silence, with ink-stained fingers and a piece of candy-wrapper paper torn from the backroom of the shop.

I sat at the little writing desk we shared, Maysilee and I, its drawers stuffed with old notes and ruined receipts, the edges of forgotten dreams. Her handwriting was still on the calendar. Reaping Day written in blue ink. Underlined. She’d even drawn a frowning face next to it.

I touched the line gently. Then pulled open the drawer and found the only pen that still wrote in full.

And I started.

Dear Maysilee,

I don’t even know why I’m writing. It’s not like they’ll let me send these. But I guess I just needed to tell you that the coffee tasted burnt this morning. Mama tried her best. Papa still won’t look at me. The shop is closed. I woke up and reached out for you before I remembered.

The room feels crooked without you.

I miss you already.

— Mer

I folded the note and slipped it between the pages of her notebook. It didn’t help much. But it was something. A whisper against the screaming.

I wrote a second letter after the Capitol broadcast.

They aired the Reaping footage in full, cutting between districts, like some twisted collage of sorrow. When they showed District 12, I stopped breathing. Maysilee’s name rang out from Drusilla Sickle’s lips again, and this time I noticed how white her knuckles had gone, gripping her dress.

I watched her climb the steps. That lavender dress swinging around her calves. Her back straight. Her eyes scanning the crowd, not panicked. Searching. And then I saw it. That second, that second, when she found me. Just before Haymitch’s name was called.

She smiled.

Even knowing what she was walking into, she smiled.

That’s when the tears came. I pressed my forehead to the desk and wept, trying not to make a sound.

Then I wrote:

Dear May,

You looked beautiful on screen. You always do. But you also looked… small. Too small for that stage. I wanted to throw something at the television. I wanted to pull you back through the screen. But I just sat there. Like a coward.

You smiled at me, didn’t you? I wasn’t imagining it. I saw it. I’ll remember it forever.

I hate this.
I hate them.

I don’t know what to do except write.

— Mer

I tucked that letter in the drawer with the first one.

Some part of me, foolish, desperate, thought: maybe when she comes back, I’ll give them to her.
A pile of letters. Proof that I kept living. That I held space for her in every hour she was gone.

But I knew, even then, it wasn’t really for her.
It was for me.

Wretched, fragile hope. The kind you keep alive even after it dies.

That night, I couldn't sleep.

The moonlight crept into our room like a thief, silver and cold. I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours before I sat up, drawn by some invisible thread.

I crossed the room barefoot, stepping carefully across the worn floorboards to her dresser. The second drawer down, behind the stack of old scarves and a broken hairclip, was where she hid it.

The mockingjay pin.

She disliked the pin however due to the fact that the bird was half mutt, and that I was gifted a hummingbird pin instead. She wanted to return it to Tam Amber and have it melted down and remade into something prettier, but he declined. She then kept the pin in her dresser, hiding it away.

She never wore it in public. Said it was too ugly.

I pulled it out now, the metal cold in my palm. The bird’s wings were frozen mid-flight, its beak open like it was singing something no one could hear.

I clutched it to my chest and fell to the floor beside her bed.

“Come back,” I whispered. “Please come back.”

It wasn’t a prayer. I didn’t believe in prayers anymore. But it was something.

I stayed like that for a long time, curled on the floor with my cheek pressed against the blanket she had tucked in just days before. The pin warm against my skin now. As if it held a trace of her heartbeat.

My hummingbird pin was still on my windowsill. I looked at it, twin to her mockingjay. Hummingbird and mockingjay. Two birds. Two girls. One world that had only room for one to survive.

I was her twin. Her other half. And now I was alone.

But every letter I wrote, every breath I took, I would make it mean something.

Because if the Capitol took her…
Then I would never let them take what she meant.

The Capitol Parade aired three nights after the Reaping.

Mama made stew that no one ate. Papa sat with his jaw clenched, his back ramrod straight in his chair like it was holding him upright out of sheer pride. I sat on the floor in front of the screen, knees curled to my chest, the hummingbird pin pressed into my palm so tightly the wings left red marks.

The TV buzzed. Snow’s face came on first, an announcement of peace that no one in this house believed. Then came the pomp. The fanfare. The extravagance. Horses, fire, glitter, girls from One in molten armor, boys from Two looking like living weapons.

Then finally, District 12.

Maysilee.

She was standing tall on a gold-trimmed chariot, side by side with Haymitch Abernathy, the boy she once nicknamed “Itchy Itchy Haymitchy.” Now he stood like her equal, dressed sharp, the Capitol’s glitter on his sleeves. But she, Maysilee, she looked like a vision. Her hair curled just so, lips painted but not overdone. She wore a deep green cape with silver trim, a nod to Twelve’s mining past, but her presence wasn’t drab. It shimmered.

“She looks...” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Like she belongs there,” Mama said softly, as if both proud and terrified of that fact.

“She doesn’t,” I whispered.

She belongs here.

When the screen cut to Caesar Flickerman shouting, “There’s our golden girl!” I felt the bile rise in my throat.

She waved. That confident smile. The one she used when she wanted everyone to think she wasn’t afraid. I knew the difference. I could see the set of her jaw. The tension in her neck. She was holding it together with the same kind of stubbornness that used to win every argument in our house.

The audience cheered. The screen sparkled.

And I felt sick.

That night, I wrote again.

Dear Maysilee,

You looked like you were on fire. Not burning, just… untouchable.
Mama said you looked like a Capitol darling. Papa hasn’t spoken since.

Haymitch didn’t look awful either, which is probably the biggest compliment I’ll ever give him.

You smiled. I know you did it for me.
I’m going to believe that even if it’s not true.

I keep wondering what you were thinking. If you could hear the crowd. If you imagined our faces in it.

I miss you more than I know how to write.

— Mer

Two days after the parade, the training scores aired.

No one ate that evening. The stew on the table had gone cold. Mama sat rigid, her hands clasped in her lap. Papa stood behind the sofa like he couldn't bring himself to sit. I took my usual place on the floor in front of the screen, legs folded, my hand wrapped around the hummingbird pin in my pocket so tightly the wings were starting to draw blood.

The broadcast crackled on, already mid-countdown, voices smooth and detached. The camera panned over tributes’ faces like they were meat in a display window. A ten for one of the District 1 girls. An eight for a tall boy from 2. A four. A seven. On and on. Names. Numbers. Futures being weighed and priced.

Then came the boy from 12.

“Haymitch Abernathy. Score of… 1.”

My breath caught.

Mama blinked. Papa’s brow furrowed.

“A one?” I said out loud, incredulous. “That… that can’t be right.”

“Maybe he froze,” Mama murmured, voice thin.

“No,” I said immediately. “He’s loud, sure, but he’s not stupid.”

Papa crossed his arms, his jaw tight. “He must’ve done something to offend them.”

“He’s impulsive,” I muttered. “Too mouthy.”

But inside me, something went hollow. I thought of him beside Maysilee on the chariot, tall, proud, unexpectedly composed. He didn’t look like a one. And Maysilee didn’t pick fools to stand beside.

The Capitol was making a point.

And then came her name.

“Maysilee Donner. Score of 6.”

It should’ve been a relief.

It should have been.

But instead, I felt a strange, twisting dread. Like I had just heard the click of a trigger being pulled. A six wasn’t safe. It wasn’t forgettable. It was… just enough to make her noticeable. Just enough to mean they saw her, but not enough to keep her safe.

“She’ll be underestimated,” Papa said finally. “That’s good. A six puts her just below the Capitol’s line of expectation.”

But I didn’t believe that. The Capitol didn’t need a reason to choose who died. The Game wasn’t about fairness. It was about control.

Still, I clung to the image of her in the arena, smart, quick, capable. A six was respectable. A six could survive.

Right?

I waited until my parents were asleep before I wrote again.

Dear Maysilee,

A six.

Not too high. Not too low. You always did know how to land just right.

Haymitch got a one. I don’t believe it. You probably don’t either. What did he do? Spill water on a Gamemaker? Laugh at their hair? Something reckless, I’m sure.

They’re playing games with you already. Not just in the arena. Out here, too.

Just… be smart, May. Be invisible when you need to. Be brilliant only when it counts.

I wish I could tell you these things in person.

I wish I could stop you from going in at all.

I miss you more every time I see you.

I hope you punched something. I hope you used that wit of yours. I hope they remember the girl from District 12 who walked in like a queen and made them wonder what they were in for.

I know you.
They don’t.
But they will.

I’ll keep writing. Even if I don’t know how many more letters I’ll get to write.

Please survive.
Please.

— Mer

I tucked it under the growing stack in her drawer. I had written seven letters already. I didn’t know what I was hoping for anymore, that she’d read them when she got home? That I’d hand them over and we’d laugh about the time we were almost torn apart?

I didn’t believe in that kind of miracle. But I still kept writing.

Because without that hope, even the most fragile, broken version of it, I would fall apart.

Later that night, I crept again into the silence of our shared room. I opened her drawer and pulled out the mockingjay pin. Cold metal. Perfect curve of its wings. It nestled into my palm like it had always belonged there.

I pressed it to my chest and whispered, “Don’t let them clip your wings.”

I didn’t know if she could hear me. But I had to believe something could.

Mama cried that night.

Not loud. Not wailing. Just quiet, broken sobs in the kitchen as she clutched one of Maysilee’s old candy molds in her lap.

Papa stared at the wall like it had answers.

And me?
I sat by the window, watching the night darken.
Writing.
Breathing.
Waiting.

Because hope, however fragile, was still the only thing holding me together.

The Interviews

The night of the interviews, Mama braided her hair. She always did that when she was nervous, twisting and unravelling the strands over and over again. She never finished. Just sat on the sofa, half-done, hands trembling.

Papa didn’t speak. He kept tapping the armrest with one finger, a slow and steady rhythm that made me want to scream.

I sat on the floor again, the screen too close, knees pulled to my chest, both pins, which now never seemed to never leave me, hummingbird and mockingjay, clutched together in my hands.

The camera zoomed in on Flickerman’s face, unnaturally smooth, eyes too bright, voice full of manic joy. He introduced each tribute like they were show ponies, and the crowd clapped like they weren’t watching a parade of the condemned.

District 12 was last.

First, Haymitch.

He strode onstage with that lopsided, cocky half-smile, the one that seemed to say he didn’t care if the world burned, he’d still have something smart to say about it. He slouched in the velvet chair, legs spread like he owned the place.

Flickerman laughed. “You’ve been a bit of a character, haven’t you, Haymitch?”

“I guess,” Haymitch said with a shrug. “Better than being boring.”

The audience laughed.

He was charming. That surprised me. Not just snarky, not just brash, but clever. Quick. He gave nothing away, but he gave them something. Something to watch. That Capitol crowd was eating out of his hand.

“He’s trying to be underestimated,” Papa muttered.

“No,” I said. “He’s trying to distract them.”

And then, Maysilee.

The screen lit up, and there she was: polished, composed, radiant.

The audience cheered. Flickerman grinned wider.

She sat down, legs crossed, dress simple but elegant, soft lavender like the one she wore to our aunt’s wedding. Her hair was pinned back with a silver clasp. Not the mockingjay, something Capitol-approved, forgettable. But she didn’t look forgettable. Not at all.

“Maysilee Donner,” Flickerman purred. “Our girl from District 12. You made quite the impression during training.”

“I tried,” she said. Her voice was clear. Steady. “They only see what they want to see.”

“Which is?”

She smiled, but not with her teeth. “That I’m quiet. Sweet. Harmless.”

The audience chuckled.

Flickerman leaned in. “And are you?”

Maysilee tilted her head. “Wouldn’t you like to find out?”

Mama exhaled. A tiny sound, but full of so much, pride, fear, something deeper.

“She’s so brave,” Mama whispered.

“She’s playing it smart,” Papa said. “Not threatening, but not invisible.”

I didn’t say anything. My throat was tight. I kept looking at her face on the screen and thinking: She’s not supposed to be there. She was supposed to be in our room, painting her nails or trying to teach me to make sugar roses again.

But she was dazzling. Even there.

That night, I wrote one more letter.

Dear May,

You were perfect. Not too much. Not too soft. They saw you, but not all of you. That’s good. That’s smart.

Haymitch surprised me. He wasn’t awful. He actually… held his own. I saw the way you looked at him offstage. You trust him, don’t you?

I hope he helps you.
I hope you help each other.

I hate that I’m hoping for him. But if you have to go into that arena with anyone from here, I’m glad it’s him.

Come back.
Come back.

Please.

— Mer

The Morning of the Games

We didn’t speak.

None of us.

The house was dark long after the sun rose. We didn’t open the shop. The stew from last night was still on the stove, congealed at the edges.

We just sat in front of the screen, watching the countdown. Mama held a cloth napkin in both hands, wringing it until the threads came loose. Papa gripped his old belt in his lap, face like stone. I sat on the floor, unmoving.

And then—

“Welcome to the 50th Annual Hunger Games!”

The trumpet blast made Mama flinch.

The screen flashed to the arena: a dense, forested field with cliffs and rivers and thick underbrush. Dangerous. Unforgiving.

The tributes stood on their pedestals like statues.

I found her immediately.

There. Fifth from the left. Her hair braided back. Her face expressionless. Her hand clenched slightly at her side, probably holding something. Maybe nothing. Maybe just hope.

The camera flicked to Haymitch. He looked calmer than I expected. Still. Ready.

I whispered, “Please, help her.”

I knew he could be selfish. Could be snide. But he wasn’t stupid. And Maysilee wouldn’t waste her trust on someone who wasn’t capable. I needed to believe that. If not in him, then in her judgment.

The countdown began.

I couldn’t breathe.

My nails dug into my arms.

The gong rang. The Games began.

The screen exploded into motion. Tributes sprinting. Screams. Blood. The camera darting too quickly to tell who was still standing.

“Where is she? Where is she?!” I cried, leaning forward, frantically scanning.

Then, there. A glimpse of lavender darting into the trees. Maysilee. Alive. Moving fast. No blood.

“She made it out,” Papa breathed.

“For now,” Mama said, choking on the words.

I clutched both pins and whispered, “Run, May. Just run.”

Early Days of the Games 

The screen was our only window into that terrible wilderness. Every day, every hour, it was there, flickering, grainy, impossible to turn away from.

Maysilee moved like a ghost through the forest, silent and careful. Haymitch was there too, sharp-eyed, always scanning, never resting. They spoke little but seemed connected by something unspoken—trust, or maybe necessity.

At home, the silence grew thicker.

Mama barely ate. Papa stared out the window as if willing the arena to crack open and spit them both out.

I wrote letters I never sent.

Dear May,

You looked strong today. You moved like you belong there, not like some scared girl caught in a nightmare. That’s because you do belong. You belong where you survive.

Haymitch is fighting beside you. I saw the way he glanced your way. Protecting you, or maybe just making sure you’re still there. Don’t let him fall away. Keep him close.

I’m scared every second. But I’m proud. So proud.

Keep fighting. Keep running. Keep hoping.

— Mer

I kept watching, heart in my throat, as they fought their way through dangers that seemed to multiply every day.

When the others fell, sometimes it felt like a little of my hope died with them.

But Maysilee and Haymitch, still alive.

Still fighting.

Still together.

The days dragged on like heavy stones in my chest.

I barely slept.

The screen was always there, buzzing with movement, branches cracking, feet pounding dirt, whispers of breath in the underbrush.

Every shadow could mean Maysilee.

Every silence, a warning.

I watched as she and Haymitch carved their path through the wild. They were like two halves of the same sharp blade, Maysilee’s quiet determination, Haymitch’s fierce cunning.

They survived storms, traps, and the ever-present danger of other tributes. Every night I prayed their fire wouldn’t burn too bright to attract hunters.

Sometimes they spoke. Just a few words, urgent and clipped. Other times, they sat apart, scanning the darkness.

I wanted to scream at them, stay close. Trust each other. Don’t let pride or pain get in the way.

But I knew it wasn’t that simple.

At home, the silence was a living thing.

Mama’s hands trembled as she folded clothes. Papa stared blankly, the worry etched into his face like a scar.

I sat alone with my thoughts and my letters.

Dear May,

You’re stronger than I imagined. I see it in the way you move, like the forest belongs to you now, not the other way around.

Haymitch watches your back, but don’t let him carry all the weight. You’re fierce too. Don’t forget that.

I’m here, waiting, holding you in every breath.

Please, come back.

— Mer

Every day I felt the ache grow, a mix of hope, fear, and helplessness.

But no matter what, I held onto one truth:

They were still alive.

And that was everything.

The days blurred into one another, each morning greyer than the last. The screen was the center of our world, our lifeline and our curse. I’d sit cross-legged on the cold wooden floor, eyes glued to the flickering images of that brutal forest, my hands clenched so tightly around the pins in my lap that the metal bit into my skin. Every snapped twig, every rustle of leaves, made my heart leap or falter.

“Mama,” I whispered one afternoon, my voice breaking the brittle silence that had settled like dust over the house. She was sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at a cracked teacup, fingers tracing its rim absentmindedly. “Did you see? Maysilee... she just took down that boy from District 6. She’s so fast, she’s...”

Mama didn’t look up. “She has to be,” she said softly, voice cracked. “Or she won’t come home.”

Papa stood by the window, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. His jaw was tight, like he was swallowing some unspoken rage or helplessness. “Speed isn’t enough,” he muttered. “It’s the hunger in the others that scares me. They don’t play fair, not like our girl.”

“I keep thinking about Haymitch,” I said, voice small. “He’s got that look, like he’s been through hell before. But he’s protecting her... I can see it.”

Papa snorted, half-bitter. “Protecting? He’s probably thinking about saving himself first.”

“But May trusts him,” I said, surprising even myself with the stubbornness in my voice. “She wouldn’t stick with someone she didn’t believe could help.”

Mama finally blinked, her eyes glossy. “I pray you’re right.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The image of Maysilee’s face on the screen, the way her jaw set, the tense muscles in her arms, played on a loop in my mind. Then the sharp crack of a bowstring echoed from the arena broadcast, and I gasped. The camera jerked to show Haymitch, arrow nocked, eyes burning with fierce determination. I held my breath as the arrow flew, piercing another tribute’s side.

“She’s still alive,” I whispered, tears blurring the screen. “She’s still alive.”

The next day, a storm had swept through the arena. Mud slicked the paths and rain hammered the trees. I watched Maysilee struggle through the muck, her clothes soaked and heavy, her breath ragged but steady. Haymitch was beside her, shielding her from the worst of the downpour. The way he reached out to steady her made my chest ache.

At dinner, Mama pushed her food around her plate, and Papa barely touched his stew. I wanted to break the silence, to say something, anything.

“Do you think they’ll find an alliance with anyone else?” I ventured.

Mama shook her head. “Too dangerous. The others want them dead.”

“But if they stick together…” I hesitated, “maybe they have a chance.”

Papa finally looked at me, eyes shadowed but softer. “Hope is a luxury we can’t afford.”

“I can’t stop hoping,” I whispered. “Not for May.”

The days wore on, but something inside me shifted. At first, I barely dared to hope. Each morning, the silence in our home felt heavier, the shadows longer. But with every glimpse of Maysilee moving, breathing, fighting, surviving, that flicker of hope grew, small and stubborn like a flame refusing to die.

I wrote more letters than I could count, folding each page carefully, imagining them carried across the deadly miles to her hands.

Dear May,

You surprised me today. I saw you set a trap, so clever, so quiet, and then you caught that boy from District 3. I thought you were too gentle for this. But you’re fierce. Fierce and smart and alive.

Haymitch looks tired, but he’s still there. Still watching your back. You two make a good team. Don’t let anyone break that.

Mama tries to keep the shop running, but I can see how much this is wearing on her. Papa hasn’t said a word since that fight three days ago. I’m scared for them, but I have to be strong for you—for all of us.

Come back to me. Come back to this house that’s too quiet without you.

— Mer

At home, Mama’s hands were busier than ever, sewing and mending, but her eyes were distant. I caught her wiping tears behind her sleeve once, and Papa’s jaw clenched so hard it looked like it might crack.

“Your sister’s got a real shot,” I said to him one evening, the words surprising even me. “She’s smarter than anyone there.”

He grunted but didn’t disagree.

“I’m not giving up on her,” I told Mama one night after the others had gone to bed. “She’s coming back.”

Mama just nodded, too tired to argue. “We need to believe that.”

The arena was merciless. I watched as storms rolled in, rivers swelled, and the forest grew darker and more dangerous. I saw Maysilee and Haymitch evade hunters and survive deadly falls. The way Maysilee’s eyes flicked to Haymitch, sometimes with frustration, sometimes with gratitude, made my heart twist. They were holding on to each other as best they could.

One night, the broadcast showed a rare quiet moment: Maysilee sitting by a small fire, hair messy but face serene, writing something on a scrap of paper. Maybe a letter. Maybe a prayer.

I whispered to the screen, “I’m writing you too. I’m sending you all the strength I have.”

The letters piled up on my bedside table. I’d write through the night, pouring every ounce of hope and fear onto the page, convinced that somehow my words might reach her.

Dear May,

I saw you take a breath today. Really take one. Like you believed you could survive this. That’s the bravest thing I’ve seen.

Haymitch is rough, but he’s your anchor. Keep holding on. You’re not just fighting for yourself, you’re fighting for all of us back here.

I miss you so much it hurts, but I’m not scared anymore. Not like before. Because you’re alive. And that means you have a chance. A real one.

Come back. Please come back.

— Mer

I kept the screen on, even when the images blurred and the noises of the arena bled into the silence of our house. Each glimpse of Maysilee, whether slipping through thick brush or crouched behind a fallen log, was a lifeline I clung to. Her face, always guarded, always fierce, felt like the only thing steady in the world.

At night, I wrote to her like she was right beside me. My fingers trembled over the paper, tracing words I hoped would find her somehow.

Dear May,

I don’t know how you keep going, but you do. I saw you move today, calm and sure, like you own the forest. You and Haymitch, more than just allies now. I think you need each other. You deserve that much.

Papa said something today. He said maybe she really can come back. I almost didn’t believe it, but hearing it made my chest lighter.

Mama’s still scared, but I see her hold her breath less now. We’re all holding onto you.

Come back. I’m waiting.

— Mer

Maysilee escaped the Cornucopia clutching little more than a blowgun, a bowl, some dried beef, and a coil of rope slung over her shoulder. It wasn’t much, but it was everything she needed. Watching her move through the forest, I saw her transform from a frightened girl into a force of nature—silent, deadly, and unyielding.

She was clever beyond anything I could have imagined. She dipped her blowgun darts into poisons distilled from the plants and creatures around her, turning every weapon into a silent killer. On the second day, I saw her take down Loupe single-handedly, the boy from District 6 who had been stalking other tributes relentlessly. That moment, when the camera lingered on her face, calm, focused, eyes sharp as a hawk, it felt like the first time I really believed she could survive.

Haymitch, rough and scarred as ever, wasn’t alone. Maysilee found him when he was cornered, the Career Panache Barker pressing a knife to his throat. I saw her blowgun dart fly straight and true, hitting Panache in the neck. The man collapsed, and Haymitch’s ragged breath finally steadied. They made a quiet pact then, an alliance born out of necessity. Maysilee told him, “We last longer together,” and for the first time, I thought maybe they really would.

At home, I shared that hope with Mama and Papa, though it felt fragile.

“May’s stronger than they think,” I said one evening, holding my letter close.

Mama wiped her eyes. “She’s brave. But brave doesn’t mean safe.”

Papa just grunted, but I caught the flicker of something in his eyes, pride, maybe, or the barest hint of hope.

Day five brought a cruel reminder of the Games’ mercilessness. I watched, helpless, as Maysilee and Haymitch arrived too late to save Hull, Buck, and Chicory, who were being torn apart by the porcupine mutts, engineered monsters with razor-sharp quills. They fed Hull the antidote, but it spilled, and he died agonizingly, just like the others. Maysilee’s face twisted in sorrow and fury, and Haymitch’s jaw clenched as he looked away.

“I can’t lose anyone else,” she said, voice barely a whisper.

“Then don’t,” Haymitch said gruffly, but there was a softness beneath his harsh tone. “We stick to the plan. Survive. That’s all that matters.”

On day six, the arena shifted again. Ambushed by Silka and Maritte, they fought fiercely, the tension so thick I could almost feel it from miles away. I watched as Maysilee took out a Gamemaker, one of those masked officials, with a poison dart to the neck after Maritte had killed one with a trident. The other Gamemaker fell, tripping into the Sub-A river, and a bomb detonated nearby, scattering everyone.

There was a moment, brief but sharp, when Maysilee confronted Silka with fierce words.

“Stop sucking up to the Capitol to win,” she said, voice cold and steady.

It was the kind of bravery I wished I had.

But the alliance couldn’t hold forever.

When only five tributes remained, Maysilee pulled away from Haymitch. She said she couldn’t bring herself to kill him.

I wrote her:

Dear May,

I understand. Some things are harder than the Games. You and Haymitch, what you have means more than just survival. I hope that’s enough to get you both through.

I’m so proud of you. You’ve become everything we ever hoped you would be. Fierce, kind, unstoppable.

Come back. Please.

— Mer

Sometimes Papa would join me in front of the screen, eyes narrowing as he studied the tiny figures running through trees. “She’s tough,” he’d say quietly. “And smarter than most.”

Mama sat close, fingers entwined in her lap. “I want to believe,” she whispered. “But what if…” Her voice cracked, and the words caught in her throat.

I squeezed her hand. “We have to believe.”

But hope was a fragile thing. It swelled inside me like a sudden tide, lifting me up and holding me there, until it crashed down, crushing and cold.

That day, I watched the broadcast with my heart pounding.

Then came the day I dreaded, the day my hope shattered like glass.

Minutes after they parted, the screen showed Maysilee alone, her back straight, her eyes searching. Suddenly, a flock of candy-pink birds burst from the trees, their beaks sharp as needles. They swarmed her, pecking viciously at her neck.

I screamed at the screen, tears blinding my eyes, “No! No, May! Run! Fight!”

Haymitch appeared at her side, grabbing her hand, his face etched with desperation. But the birds ignored him, relentless in their attack. I saw Maysilee’s eyes flutter as the life drained away. Haymitch held her, whispering something I couldn’t hear over the roar of my own heartbreak.

The birds retreated only after she was gone.

At home, the silence that followed was suffocating. Mama’s sobs wracked the room. Papa’s face was unreadable, but I knew the weight crushing his heart.

I sat with my hands trembling, clutching the last letter I had written.

Dear May,

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

You fought like a warrior. You killed to protect yourself and Haymitch, and you were brave beyond measure.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to come home.

But you’re not gone, not really. You live in every breath I take.

I love you.

— Mer

The world felt colder without her.

But even as the tears fell, a tiny spark inside me refused to die. Because Maysilee had shown me what it meant to fight, to hope, and to be brave. And that was something no Games could ever take away.

The screen went black.

Papa’s hand was on my shoulder, steady but cold.

Mama’s sobs filled the room.

I sat frozen, clutching the pins, mockingjay and hummingbird, pressed tight against my heart. The flame of hope that had burned so fiercely inside me snuffed out in an instant.

I wanted to scream at the world, at the Capitol, at fate itself.

But all I could do was whisper, “Come back... come back…”

And know she never would.

It was raining, but only a little. Just enough to cling to your lashes and sting when you blinked.

The Capitol sent the coffins back polished, pristine, untouched by the horrors they’d endured. But we knew. We knew what had happened in that arena. No satin lining could soften the truth of what they’d done to her.

The coffin bearing Maysilee’s name looked too small. Too clean. Too final.

I stood by Papa, Mr. Donner to everyone else, but to me, he was suddenly a man aged a decade in a week. His hand trembled as he gripped mine, but neither of us let go. We couldn’t. If we did, we might both fall apart.

And then I saw him.

Haymitch Abernathy. The boy who held her hand as she died. The last person to speak to her. The one she chose to trust.

He stumbled when he looked up and caught sight of me.

“Maysilee!” he gasped.

My heart clenched. My face must have betrayed everything I felt, grief, horror, recognition. But it wasn’t her name I wanted to hear. Not from him. Not like this.

I turned away and buried my face in the same white handkerchief Maysilee used to tie her hair with before the reaping. My shoulders shook. I didn’t care who saw.

“Not Maysilee,” someone told him softly. “That’s her sister. Her twin.”

Haymitch blinked. His eyes were rimmed red, dark hollows beneath them. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he hadn’t stopped seeing the pink birds or hearing her last breath.

He was led away like a drunk or a ghost. And maybe he was both. I didn’t blame him.

I didn’t know what I felt toward him anymore.

I clung to Papa as the coffins were lowered. The sound of the ropes creaking and the dull thud of wood against soil made me want to scream. I wanted to dig her out, to hold her again. I wanted to say everything I never had time to say. But instead, I stood there and let the world take her from me all over again.

Shovels bit into the earth. The sound of dirt hitting the casket was unbearable.

And then, Burdock began to sing.

That voice. Clear. Sweet. A lullaby for the dead.

“You’re headed for heaven,
The sweet old hereafter,
And I’ve got one foot in the door…”

The mockingjays went still.

Even the wind stopped to listen.

The words curled around my ribs like vines. I couldn’t breathe.

“But before I can fly up,
I’ve loose ends to tie up,
Right here in
The old therebefore…”

I thought I’d cried every tear I had, but they still came. Slower now. Deeper.

People around us wept openly. Mama clutched the handkerchief Papa gave her and let herself sob. He held her gently. I wondered how much pain two people could carry before they broke.

Haymitch stood a few rows away now, shoulders hunched, lips pressed tight. He didn’t cry. But I could see it in his eyes, whatever piece of him hadn’t died in that arena had been buried here, with her.

“When I’ve paid all my debts,
When I have no regrets…”

I wondered if he did have regrets. About leaving her. About walking away. But I also knew, deep down, I wouldn’t have wanted him to stay and die beside her. That wouldn’t have brought her back.

“When I’m pure like a dove,
When I’ve learned how to love…”

The mockingjays stayed silent long after the song ended.

They knew.

And so did I.

She was gone.

But I would carry her with me. Always.

In every step I took, in every breath, in every letter I wrote that could never be sent.

And maybe, just maybe, in every mockingjay’s song, she’d find her way back to me.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m going mad.

I wake up thinking I heard her laugh. I reach for a hairbrush only to remember it isn’t mine, it’s hers. I move through the house like a ghost, picking things up and putting them down. I set the breakfast table for two before realizing there’s only one of me now.

Time passes, but it doesn't move. The sun rises. The trains run. Children walk to school. But none of it touches me. None of it matters. Grief presses against my lungs like a second skin. I want the world to stop. To pause, just for a moment, long enough for the pain to devour me completely.

It doesn’t.

Everyone says I’m lucky. I didn’t go to the arena. I didn’t die. But they don’t understand. I was Reaped too. The moment they said “Maysilee Donner,” I felt the blade at my throat. I didn’t just lose my sister. I lost half of myself.

And still, it replays.

Over and over again.

The anthem had ended. I remember that part vividly. My ears still ringing from the false grandeur of it, the way the Capitol paraded tragedy like a prize ribbon. Mayor Allister had stepped up, reading the Treaty of Treason in a voice that couldn’t hide its weariness. Everyone around us pretended to care, to nod, to remember. But no one remembered. We weren’t alive during the war, and yet we paid the price, year after year.

Then she arrived.

Drusilla Sickle, plastic-faced, eyes too bright, dressed like a daffodil in military drag. Her hat looked like it was about to fly off and strangle someone. I remember wondering how her skin didn’t just tear apart under all those pins pulling it back.

“Ladies first,” she had said, with a smug little smile. Her hand dipped into the glass bowl.

“Louella McCoy!”

The air left my lungs. Sweet, smart Louella, just thirteen, lived three doors down. She walked like she was twice her height and talked like she knew the world. I felt Papa tense beside me.

Then Drusilla reached again.

“And this year, ladies second as well! Joining Louella will be…”

I knew it before she said it. The name settled in my chest like a stone.

“Maysilee Donner.”

My ears rang.

I gripped her hand like a lifeline. Our foreheads pressed together. “No. No, no, no.”

She was so calm. She smoothed her dress, lavender, just like mine, a shade softer, and held her head high like it was a crown, not a noose. She kissed my cheek and whispered, “You’ll live. That’s how you help me.”

But how do you live through this?

I watched our father shove his way up the stage with a fistful of cash. “Take this! Take it, dammit! She’s not meant for this—”

“Papa, stop!” Maysilee cried, tears finally breaking through. “Don’t—please!”

They threw him down like he was garbage. The money scattered like confetti. Mama fell to her knees. And I—I ran. I had to see her again. I ducked under an arm, past the guards.

For one second, one impossibly fragile second, we were whole again.

Our arms locked. Our faces pressed close. “I’ll be with you,” I said.

“You already are,” she whispered.

Then they tore us apart.

The image of her screaming haunts me. No one told me how she died. I saw it on the screen, like everyone else. I watched it happen as if from far away, like I was outside my body.

I see her, trapped under the tarp, slashing with her dagger, screaming as candy-pink birds dive at her with beaks like daggers. She kills some, but there are too many. Too fast. Too cruel. Blood blooms on her cheek, her chest, her hand.

I screamed too.

I begged the screen, “Stop it! Stop it, please!”

Haymitch fought beside her. He tried. I know he did. I don’t blame him. He was the only family she had left in there.

He held her hand while she died.

Her fingers curled around his. Her blood soaking through the necklace she never took off. She couldn’t speak, the birds had taken her voice, but her eyes were still on fire. Even as her life drained away, she wasn’t afraid.

She died the way she lived: refusing to bow.

The day of the funeral, Haymitch looked at me like he’d seen a ghost. He called out her name, “Maysilee!”, before realizing it was me.

I hid in a handkerchief. I couldn’t bear it. I saw the way Papa sobbed beside me, the way Mama went silent and hollow.

We buried her beneath wildflowers.

And when Burdock sang, even the mockingjays went quiet.

“When I’m pure like a dove,
When I’ve learned how to love,
Right here in
The old therebefore…”

She’s gone.

And I’m still here.

I find her necklace some mornings, just in the corner of my eye. A glint on the mirror. A shadow on the pillow beside mine. I talk to her when no one’s listening.

Sometimes I write letters again. Not because I believe she’ll read them, but because I don’t know what else to do with all this love that has nowhere left to go.

Dear May,

You were always the brave one. Even when we were little, even when you pretended to be scared, I knew you weren’t. You protected me. You still do.

I saw how he held your hand. I saw how you died fighting.

You didn’t go quietly.

You never did.

— Mer

---

The day of the funeral, Haymitch looked at me like he’d seen a ghost.

His eyes locked onto mine, wide, stunned—and for a second, just a second, the name slipped from his lips like a prayer too late.

“Maysilee.”

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t relieved. It was shocked. Like he’d seen a miracle he didn’t trust. Like he thought death had reversed itself.

And then came the moment when his face changed—when he realized. The corners of his mouth tightened. His brows dropped. His gaze flickered, then fell. Disappointment.

That’s what gutted me.

He wished it was her. Not me.

And I understood.

Because I did too.

I wish every day that I had been the one they called.

I wish I didn’t have to wake up in this body, with this face, with her absence ringing like a bell inside my ribs.

What do you even do with this much grief?

When does it stop?

Does it ever stop?

Will it ever stop?

Will I live like this everyday for the rest of my life?

Where does Maysilee end and the hollowness begin? I don't know anymore. Sometimes I look in the mirror and can't tell who I am. Was she the dead one, or am I?

I catch myself imagining it. If I had been born an only child. If there had never been another girl beside me with the same laugh and matching teeth and slightly different part in her hair. If I didn’t have the memory of her reading to me under the covers. If I didn’t know the sound of her singing while brushing her hair. If there was nothing to remember, then maybe there wouldn’t be anything to miss.

But the happy memories are the ones that destroy me. The ones where we’re laughing in the kitchen, making strawberry sugar cookies, where we’re walking to school with our arms linked, whispering secrets, where she’s playing that old waltz on the piano and I’m humming along. They sneak up on me, these bright fragments, and they cut deep, because every joy now feels like a betrayal.

The house is unbearable.

It’s filled with her. The smell of her perfume still clings to the curtains. Her coat is still hanging by the door. Her room still looks lived in. But it’s a lie. A cruel joke.

She’s not coming home.

One afternoon, I tried to sit at the kitchen table and write her a letter, just to feel close, just to breathe. But I couldn’t. The light was slanting through the window in that soft golden way she loved, and I realized, I was sitting in her spot.

I bolted.

I ran into her room, slammed the door, curled into the corner with one of her cardigans clutched to my chest. I couldn’t stop shaking.

I couldn’t breathe.

The air was too thick. Too quiet. The walls were pressing in. Her photographs on the dresser were screaming at me. I was drowning in her absence.

My chest clenched like a fist and wouldn't release. I gasped for air, my hands scrabbling against the floor. The room spun. My vision blurred. I don’t know how long I was there, curled in the corner, trying to drag in breath after breath that wouldn’t come.

It felt like dying.

Maybe it was.

Maybe that’s what grief really is: dying, but slower.

Piece by piece.

I don’t remember how I got out. Maybe Mama found me. Maybe I crawled. But I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stay in that house where everything was so full of Maysilee, and so emptied of her all at once.

Even the walls missed her.

Even the floors creaked differently without her step.

I walked until my feet blistered. Past the Seam, through the market, beyond the fence. I just kept walking, hoping maybe, if I got far enough away, my heart might not break so loudly.

But no matter how far I went, she was still there.

In every shadow.

In every silence.

In me.

Because the worst part of being a twin isn’t the sameness.

It’s what happens when one half dies.

And the other half is left behind, echoing.

I’m beginning to resent the grief.

It clings to me like smoke, curling through my lungs, thick and heavy. It sits in my throat, choking every word before it leaves. I hate it. I hate how it feels. I hate that I can’t escape it. I hate that I need it.

Because it’s all I have left of her.

It’s so twisted, so vile, that pain is the only thing tying me to Maysilee now. I tell myself I want to heal, but the thought of letting go terrifies me more than anything. Because what happens when the grief fades?

What happens when the ache dulls?

Does she fade too?

Sometimes I think… maybe I already have.

Merrilee Donner. That name doesn’t fit anymore. I’m a ghost of her. A hollow echo. Somewhere in the weeks after the funeral, I stopped speaking in full sentences. I stopped brushing my hair. I stopped being anything that felt separate from Maysilee.

And in a strange, sick way, I’m glad.

Because she was always the stronger one.

She was the brave one. The clever one. The girl who laughed louder, ran faster, stood taller. I was always just her echo, her reflection. If someone had to die, it should have been me.

It should have been me.

I think it every time I pass the bakery where we used to sneak sweets, every time I see a lavender dress in the window. It should’ve been me in that arena. At least then she would be alive. She’d be painting her nails again. She’d be humming in the kitchen. She’d be, here.

But I’m the one left behind. I’m the one who wakes up to silence. Who looks in the mirror and sees her staring back.

That’s the worst part. The mirror.

I can’t stand it.

I avoid it as much as I can, but sometimes I forget. I pass by a storefront window or glance at the basin while washing my face, and suddenly, there she is.

Sixteen forever.

Her hair parted just like mine. Her nose. Her cheekbones. Her eyes.

My eyes.

I see Maysilee in every detail of my face, frozen in the version the Capitol turned into a martyr. It’s not fair. I age. I grow. My skin bruises, my hands shake, my voice cracks. But she never will.

She’ll always be sixteen.

Beautiful. Brave. Burning.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

Sometimes I scream it into my pillow, until my voice breaks. Sometimes I whisper it to the ceiling. And sometimes I say nothing, because there’s no one left to listen.

Not the house. Not the town. Not even her.

Because I’m starting to forget what she sounded like.

Her voice, so sure, so steady, like she was always five steps ahead. I knew it. Every rise, every rhythm. But lately, when I try to recall it, it slips through my fingers like sand.

And that’s when I break down.

I fold onto the floor and press my hands over my ears, hoping that maybe, in the silence, I’ll hear her again. But I don’t. There’s only the bloodrush of my own heartbeat and the terrible stillness of a world without her.

And yet… even in the hate, even in the hollow… she’s still here.

She’s in the way my breath hitches when I see something she loved. In the way I instinctively reach for two spoons instead of one. In the stupid joke I nearly say out loud before remembering no one’s there to hear it.

She’s in me.

In everything.

And I hate that too, sometimes.

Because I can’t run from her. Not really. Not when she’s stitched into the same skin. Not when our faces match. Not when the only way to know what she’d look like at seventeen, or eighteen, or twenty, is to look at myself.

It’s cruel.

It’s mercy.

It’s both.

I miss her so much it physically hurts.

But she’ll never truly leave me.

And maybe that’s the most unbearable truth of all.

I tried to write a letter again.

Just like I used to. Just like I did every night during the Games, curled on the floor with both pins in my hand, whispering please, come back into the page.

But I didn’t get past the first word.

May—

I stared at it for a long time. The shape of the “M.” The way the “a” curled like a half-closed eye. And then the ink bled sideways, warped by the tears I didn’t even know I was crying.

I crumpled the page in my fist.

What’s the point?

You’re dead.

You’re dead.

And you’re not coming back. Not in one piece, not even in fragments. You came back to us in a box. Shipped home like you were something they borrowed and broke. They buried you with a Capitol flag draped over your coffin, like that made it honorable. Like any of this was noble.

It wasn’t.

It was murder. It was theft. They stole you from me, and all I got back was a pile of ashes and an empty room.

So what’s the point of writing?

You’ll never read it.

And still… weeks later… I tried again.

This time I didn’t sit at the kitchen table, or your bed, or the old bench at the shop. I sat behind the Donner house, under the willow tree where we used to play with marbles and make crowns out of grass.

It was slow. Scribbly. My hand shook the whole time. But the words came, one bleeding into the next like a cut that wouldn’t close.

And when I finished, it felt like I’d carved something out of my chest and laid it bare on the paper.

But I didn’t burn it.

I didn’t throw it away.

I folded it carefully, like I used to. Pressed it into the hollow behind the loose brick under the window. The place only we knew.

Then I wrote another the next day. And the next.

Each letter is a wound.

But I keep writing.

Because I think, I know, this is what you would have wanted.

You’d want to be remembered. Not as a Capitol darling, not as a martyr. Not even as a Victor, though God, you deserved that. You’d want to be real. You’d want your stories told the way we knew them.

So I write.

About the first time we stole a peach from Old Petrov’s stall and split it behind the seamhouse.

About the time we took turns wearing that blue silk scarf like we were royalty.

About how, when you were twelve, you swore you’d never fall in love with someone who couldn’t out-argue you.

About the way your laugh used to bounce off the walls in the morning, long before the shop opened.

I write to remember you.

I write to keep you.

Some nights, I stare at my reflection and wonder how many more years I’ll have to live before your face stops looking back at me.

But then I pick up the pen anyway.

Because this pain, this ugly, clawing, ravenous grief, it means I haven’t let you go.

And I’m not ready to.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

I don’t know when I started calling it “the Donner house” instead of home.

Maybe when you left.

Maybe before that. Maybe the second they called your name at the Reaping and the ground dropped out from beneath my feet and no one, not even Ma or Pa, could catch me fast enough.

But when was that?

Everything’s hazy now. Your smile. Your voice. The way your hands always found mine in the dark. Some days I can’t remember what your laugh sounded like. Other days it’s too clear, like it’s still echoing in the kitchen, waiting for me to walk in and say something stupid so you could roll your eyes and grin at me anyway.

I tried to grieve with Ma and Pa.

But they don’t understand. Not really. You weren’t just their daughter.

You were my other half.

We came into this world together, you and I, identical and inseparable. And then you left. And I didn’t.

Now I’m stuck here. A twin with no twin. An echo with no voice.

Sometimes I think maybe it would’ve been easier if I’d never known you. If I’d been an only child. If I didn’t have to carry around a thousand little memories like knives tucked under my ribs.

You haunt everything, May.

The house. The store. The color lavender. Even the taste of strawberry ice cream.

I can't stay here. Not in the place where your ghost lives in every corner.

I can’t breathe in this house.

That night, I tried. I tried to leave the way you did.

I took the old vial of laudanum from Ma’s cabinet and sat on the floor of your room, our room, just staring at the swirling amber liquid in the glass.

I thought about seeing you again.

I thought maybe, maybe, you were waiting somewhere. Maybe if I was quiet enough, still enough, I’d hear you.

But I didn’t.

And in the end, my hand shook too much. I knocked the vial over. The contents soaked the floorboards. I collapsed with it. Cried so hard I nearly choked. And when Ma found me hours later, she didn’t say anything. Just gathered me up like I was four again and rocked me while I bled salt into her nightgown.

They don’t know. They can’t know.

They’ve already buried one daughter.

But I buried myself too that night.

And I’ve never really come back.

It’s weeks later when I see him.

Haymitch Abernathy.

At the edge of the market, flanked by Peacekeepers, face drawn, eyes older than the rest of him.

He sees me and he stops.

His mouth opens.

And then he says it.

“Maysilee!”

again, just like that day you came back home in a box, instead of alive, towards me, back to me, but huh, i guess you did come back to me, just not the way i wanted.

Just like that.

So certain.

So desperate.

But then his face shifts. Crumples. And I know the exact second he sees me, really sees me, and realizes what he’s done.

I don’t know what I expect to feel. Sadness? Comfort?

I feel like throwing up.

I hate that he looked at me like I was a ghost.

I hate that I’m not.

I want to scream at him. You had her. You were there. She trusted you. But my throat closes before the words can rise.

He takes a step forward. Hesitates. Then reaches into his jacket pocket.

“I kept this,” he says, voice gravelly. “Thought… you should have it.”

It’s her necklace.

The copper medallion with the pressed flower.

Still stained.

Still warm from wherever he kept it.

I don’t move.

I just stare.

“She wore it the whole time,” he says. “Even at the end.”

“I know,” I say.

Because I do.

Because I remember her hands fastening it at the mirror that morning.

Because I saw it on her corpse on the screen.

Because it’s part of her.

I take it. My fingers shake.

And the second it touches my palm, I break.

I clutch it to my chest and sob, loud and ugly, like I’m trying to cough my soul out. Haymitch doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, awkward and rigid, like grief is a language he barely speaks.

“She was better than both of us,” I finally say.

He nods.

“She hated the Capitol,” he says. “But she didn’t hate me. Not at the end.”

“You held her hand.”

“She held mine.”

We sit on the curb. We don’t talk much. There’s not much to say. I don’t ask him what it was like. He doesn’t ask me what it’s been like since. We both know. In different ways.

He lost someone he might’ve grown to love.

I lost someone who was me.

And even then, he can’t fully understand my grief.

He can’t feel it the way I do.

So this is what it feels like.

To be completely, entirely alone.

I hate it.

I hate her.

I hate Maysilee for leaving me. I hate her for being so brave. For being so easy to love. For laughing too loud. For trusting Haymitch. For dying.

I hate her for every second I loved her, because now every second hurts.

But I love her, too.

Still. Always.

I tuck the necklace under my shirt and walk home.

Not the Donner house.

Not yet.

Just somewhere I can sit.

And maybe write.

Because if nothing else, I know this:

She would have wanted me to keep going.

Even if I don’t know how.

It’s been exactly one year.

Twelve months.

Three hours and two minutes since I last saw you alive.

You were brushing a strand of hair from your face, that little flick you always did when you were nervous but didn’t want anyone to know. You didn’t look back. You didn’t have to.

You knew I was watching.

And then you were gone.

People say time heals. I used to want to believe that. Now I know better.

Time doesn't heal. It doesn’t touch the wound. It just… builds a bigger bottle to store it in. A stronger shell. A deeper silence. Grief doesn’t get smaller. But I get bigger around it.

Sometimes.

Other times, I’m drowning again.

I tried to meet you, May. I really did.

It was quiet. Early spring. The lake was cold, but I didn’t care. I walked until the water was at my chest, then my neck, then—

Then someone grabbed me.

Dragged me out, coughing and kicking and crying.

Haymitch.

Of course it was him.

He kept yelling something I couldn’t make out. My ears were ringing. My heart was screaming. But I heard one word through it all.

Maysilee.

Your name. Said like it could still save someone.

That was all it took.

I started screaming. Hitting him. Clawing at his coat, his chest, his face. I hit him until my hands hurt, until my arms went limp, until all I could do was sob and whisper why not her, why not her, why not her over and over.

He didn’t stop me.

He didn’t flinch.

He just stood there, soaked and shivering, letting me fall apart in his arms.

He didn’t say she’d want me to live. He didn’t say it would get better. He didn’t say anything.

And somehow, that made it easier to breathe again.

It was the first time since her funeral that I saw him sober.

Funny, isn’t it? That the day I tried to die again was the only day he didn’t need a drink to face me.

The next times, he wasn’t.

Each attempt, I could barely find the will to slip under. But somehow, Haymitch was always there. Always watching. Always reeking of whiskey. And somewhere between my third and fourth try, I stopped trying.

It wasn’t recovery. It was exhaustion.

It wasn’t healing. It was survival.

I didn’t want to die anymore, not because I wanted to live—but because I couldn’t put Ma and Pa through another funeral.

They still talk about you like you just stepped out of the room.

Ma sets two places at dinner, still. Pa forgets and calls me “girls,” plural. I don’t correct them anymore.

I help in the shop again. Sugar burns my hands. I barely notice.

Time moves on.

Even if I don’t.

Even if it drags me behind it, kicking and screaming.

Haymitch goes up on the stage again, each year looking more wrecked than the last. Effie Trinket arrives in her pastel wigs and Capitol cheer and I want to tear her throat out every time she smiles.

Another year. Another set of names. Another cannon’s silence.

District 12 goes back to losing.

Haymitch was a fluke. They say that now, like it’s a fact. One moment of rebellion, now smothered beneath statistics and tributes too young to hold a blade.

I sit by the screen and watch the blood spill.

Sometimes, I cry.

Sometimes, a small, twisted part of me is glad.

Because if you didn’t live, May, why should they?

I know that’s cruel. I know that.

But I’ve always been cruel in my grief. You just loved me so much it softened the edges.

You were the kind one. The gentle one. Even when you put up a hard front.

No one really saw how kind you were.

No one but me.

And now no one ever will again.

You’re frozen. Forever sixteen. Perfect and pale in your final image, lying in that coffin the Capitol sent back like some twisted gift.

Meanwhile I keep aging. I keep waking up. I keep breathing air you’re not in.

Every mirror I look into shows me your face.

Every puddle, every window, every metal spoon.

And I hate it.

I hate it.

Because I want to see you.

Not me.

Not this faded, watered-down echo of the girl you used to be.

But even now… I can’t stop writing.

It took months. But I picked up the pen again.

The first letter was jagged. Angry. I tore it up.

The second, I burned.

The third, I kept.

Each word feels like a blade carving out a piece of me. But I keep going. Because this, maybe, is what you’d want.

Maybe the words are the only way you’ll never leave me entirely.

Sometimes I whisper them out loud to myself in your voice.

Sometimes I write them and forget what I’m trying to say.

But I keep doing it.

Because I want to remember.

Even the pain.

Even the parts of me I hate.

Because they are ours.

And I’d rather be full of grief for you than empty of you entirely.

I love you, May.

I miss you.

Every second. Every breath.

Every Reaping. Every name.

Every time I see Haymitch standing alone on that stage, I know he’s carrying you, too. Just differently. Just quieter. Just in the way someone who survives always does.

But I’m still here.

Still writing.

Still holding on to every piece of you I can.

Because you are mine.

Forever and always.

— Merr

You used to say my laughter was loud enough to startle birds.

Well.

Today it startled me.

I’d forgotten what it sounded like. That sharp breath, that surprised snort. Like it wasn’t mine at all.

But it was.

It came out when Mayor Undersee walked into the shop and tried to ask if we had "those chewy peach ropes dipped in the sour sparkle dust." He said it so seriously I almost dropped the jar of licorice. His face was so earnest. Eighteen and trying to be important, in his too-big mayoral coat, and yet, always standing by the lemon drops, like they held the secrets to district diplomacy.

“How much of a sweet tooth do you have?” I’d muttered once, under my breath, half-joking.

He smiled, lopsided, a little sheepish. “Enough to fund your family’s entire next winter, apparently.”

I snorted. I actually snorted. You would’ve loved that.

Would’ve made some joke about “emotional bribery via hard candy.”

And I think… maybe your humor rubbed off on me more than I thought. That sharp, dark wit you wore like armor. I used to be the quiet one. The soft twin. You burned. I simmered.

Now all I do is bite.

And yet, he kept coming back.

Mayor Undersee. Barely older than I was. Polite. Clumsy. Earnest in a way that made my teeth ache. And awkward. So awkward.

Like a leech you couldn’t get rid of, but in the sort of way that made you… not want to.

It annoyed me.

And slowly, it didn’t.

I didn’t even see it happening. One day I was restocking the caramel shelf, and the next he was asking if I’d show him around the parts of District 12 he didn’t know yet.

I said yes. Because saying no felt like more effort than I could manage.

Just one outing. One loop around town.

I thought it’d be dull.

But it wasn’t.

He made it strange and funny. Pointed out clouds that looked like birds with hats. Tried (and failed) to hop across the stream rocks behind the bakery. Called the Peacekeeper barracks “the ugliest building since the invention of buildings” and got a warning from a nearby officer. I nearly choked on a raspberry chew.

And somehow… I said yes again.

And again.

And then it was summer, and he brought peaches from a friend’s orchard.

And then it was fall, and we walked through the dying leaves like the world wasn’t built of graves.

And I started laughing more.

Slowly, like a thaw. Carefully, like I didn’t want you to notice.

It’s been three years, May.

Three whole years since I last saw you alive.

Sometimes I still forget.

Sometimes I still expect the bell over the shop door to ring, and for you to step in, brushing dust from your coat, rolling your eyes, asking if we’re out of chocolate mice again.

Sometimes I still dream of you getting back up from the dirt.

From the screen.

From the box.

I want to hear your voice again. I want to rewind time. To live in the color again.

But the pin is still in my dresser. I haven’t worn it in years. I couldn’t bear to look at it without sobbing.

Today… I opened the drawer.

I touched it.

My hands didn’t shake.

The grief’s still there, that will never change. It lives in me like marrow.

But my world isn’t just grey anymore. It’s the pale pink of strawberry taffy. The soft gold of early autumn. The navy of dusk when the streetlamps start to flicker. It’s faint, fragile color. But it’s color.

And tonight, May, I looked in the mirror.

I saw you.

I saw me.

And I cried.

Because I looked beautiful.

Because we looked beautiful.

And because I’m still here. Still living. Still finding ways to remember you, not just in pain, but in joy, too.

I miss you every day.

But maybe… maybe I’m not broken anymore.

Maybe I’m just scarred.

And maybe that’s enough.

— Mer

He asked me to marry him.

And the first thing I said was, “I wish you were here.”

Not exactly the answer most people expect after a proposal. But Rufus understood. He always does, in that quiet way of his, like he’s been carrying his own invisible ghosts long before he met mine.

It was a small ceremony. Modest, especially for the wedding of a mayor. Just Ma and Pa attended. No Capitol pomp, no cameras. Just a threadbare veil, trembling hands, and the sound of wind catching in the eaves of the Justice Building.

He has no family. I didn’t ask much, but he told me once, they upset President Snow. Too well-known to disappear quietly, too connected to fully destroy. So they gave him District 12, I think, as both punishment and exile. A pretty smile and polished boots over quiet defiance.

He never talks about them. I don’t press. We each carry our own ruins.

Ma cried during the vows. Pa looked… tired. Happy, maybe, but mostly tired. I think some part of him never moved on after you didn’t come home. He said he’ll be handing the candy shop down to Uncle Fred soon.

It was supposed to be yours, you know.

Funny, you always said you hated candy. Said it got stuck in your teeth and gave you headaches. But you were brilliant with it — molding sugar into roses, threading licorice into baskets, dreaming up combinations I never would’ve thought of.

Me? I followed the recipe. You rewrote it.

Our room, everything in it, has been moved into the mayor’s house now. My house. I live there. Still feels strange to say it aloud. I packed the dress you wore to the reaping. The one with your pin. It still smells faintly of citrus and powdered sugar. I haven’t touched the pin. But I know it’s there.

When I saw myself in the wedding dress, I nearly broke.

Not because of fear.

Not even sorrow.

But because I couldn’t stop imagining you, what you would’ve looked like. How you’d roll your eyes at the fuss, but secretly adjust the lace when you thought no one was looking. How you’d tease me for crying during the toasting.

And I did cry.

Not just because I’m happy, but because your absence filled the room louder than any song. And yet, there was color. Real color. In the glass, in the sky, in the wine Rufus raised.

He’s learning our customs. Toasted with that clumsy, crooked smile of his and said, “To memories and maybes.” I nearly lost it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m happy now. Really happy.

But I miss you with every part of me that happiness doesn’t quite reach.

I still cry, sometimes. Quietly, when Rufus is asleep. I wrap myself in that old quilt, the one you stitched bees onto, and I talk to you. Not out loud. Not really. But I pretend you’re there. Sitting at the foot of the bed. Braiding your hair like you used to do when you were nervous.

You’re still my sister.

Still my other half.

Still my home.

And even though your name’s become just another lost one in District 12’s endless reaping scrolls, I promise you, I’ll never let them forget.

Sweet forever 16.

My Maysilee.

My always.

I’m pregnant.

The words still don’t feel real, even after all the mornings I’ve spent curled over the basin, breathing like I might split in half. The midwife says the sickness is a good sign. “Means the baby’s strong,” she told me. And I believe her, but it doesn’t stop me from cursing the scent of anything too sweet, too sour, or even the thought of Rufus’s burnt toast.

I feel horrible.

Physically, yes. But more than that, I feel horrible in ways I can’t explain. I’m bringing new life into a world that took yours. I’m envious. Grief is like that, isn’t it? Twisting joy into something jagged. I think about how you’ll never feel this flutter in your stomach, never grip the edge of a bedpost with white knuckles, never cry in relief when the first cry fills the room.

And later, when she finally arrives, red-faced and furious and beautiful, I feel it again.

Envy.

Guilt.

Love.

Her name is Madge. Rufus suggested it. Simple. Clean. He said it sounded old-fashioned, like something you could wrap around yourself in the cold. I almost named her Maysilee.

I couldn’t.

It would’ve been too much. Too sharp.

But oh, May… she looks like you. Gods, she’s a dead ringer. Golden hair, that stubborn mouth, eyes like summer sky. The first time Ma held her, she dropped to her knees sobbing. Pa had to carry her out.

Sometimes I stare at Madge while she sleeps and wonder if maybe, just maybe, you didn’t leave completely. That you slipped into her, like candlelight finding an old bottle to glow through again.

She doesn’t have a twin. I thought about that a lot during the pregnancy. At first I was almost sad she’d never know what we had. That mirror-image bond. But now? I’m relieved. She’ll never wake up one day with half her world missing. She’ll never know what it’s like to feel hollow and full of grief at the same time. That impossible contradiction.

And I can’t imagine her surviving it. I barely did.

She grows. Madge. My little storm of a girl.

She’s clever, May. Too clever. Like you. She learned to walk early, then climb, then speak—always with questions. “Why do people cry in the Square?” “Why does Uncle Haymitch drink so much?” “Why don’t we have parties like the Capitol?”

She met Haymitch when she was four. He was drunk, of course. Slouched outside our candy shop with his head against the brick like it might be holding him up. She marched right up to him and said, “You smell like sick and sugar.”

He barked a laugh. A real one.

Didn’t even flinch when she poked his boot with a stick and asked, “Were you Mommy’s friend?”

He looked at me, and for once he wasn’t glassy-eyed. Just… tired.

“I knew her sister,” he said softly. “Her brave sister.”

Madge took to him like bees to clover. She calls him Uncle Mitch now. Sometimes he brings her books, or broken gadgets he says she should fix. They sit on the porch sometimes, quietly. She asks him what the arena was like. He never answers. But she doesn’t seem to mind.

When she turned seven, I gave her your pin.

I’d kept it tucked in the back of my dresser all these years, too painful to look at. But she wanted something hers to wear to the Reaping, and I—gods forgive me—I told her it was a good luck charm.

You hated that thing.

But it gave me hope.

Maybe it’ll give her something too.

I hope you can see her through it, Maysilee. I hope your spirit lives in the shimmer of that mockingjay. I hope, somehow, you’re close enough to watch her grow.

She would’ve adored you.

And you? You would’ve doted on her more than even Rufus does, and that’s saying something. He spoils her rotten. Lets her play with his mayoral stamps and eat candy before dinner. You would've taught her how to walk with her head high and her hands steady, how to command a room with grace and fire.

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine you sitting beside her. Brushing her hair back. Whispering all your clever, secret things into her ear.

And I ache.

I ache because you’re not here.

And I smile, because in a way, you are.

In every laugh she steals from me.

In every clever question.

In every stubborn glare and sideways smirk.

My Madge. Your echo.

I love her more than I ever thought I could love anything after you.

And while the Capitol might forget you…

I never will.

Not today.

Not tomorrow.

Not ever.

Sweet, forever sixteen.

My sister.

My heart.

My dear Maysilee.

It has been twelve years since you died.

Twelve years since I let out that gut-wrenching scream in our living room, the one that tore out of me like a dying animal when I saw you on the screen, your lifeless body crumpled in a bed of bloodied feathers, your black clothes soaked, your hand outstretched like you were reaching for me. For home. For us. I remember the way the camera lingered on your face just long enough for me to see that you were truly gone, not a glitch or a cruel Capitol delay. That was you. My Maysilee. Dead.

I was sixteen too. A girl standing in front of a screen, her twin’s death etched in her retina forever. I’m twenty-eight now. You’re still sixteen. You will always be sixteen.

That thought used to crush me, you know. Used to hollow me out in the middle of the night and leave me clawing at the bedsheets, as if I could somehow pull you back with my fists. But now? Now it just aches. A dull, familiar ache like an old wound pressed under the skin. I’ve lived so many lives since you left. I’ve been a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother. And yet, through it all, I have never stopped being your twin.

Sometimes I see you in my sleep.

You come to me in dreams, May. Sometimes you’re still wearing your Reaping dress, sometimes your training uniform. Sometimes you’re in that pink candy shop apron we both used to hate. You don’t speak. You just look. At me. At Madge. At the world you missed. And when I wake up, I can still feel the pressure of your hand against mine, like you were really there.

I used to be terrified of those dreams.

Now, I cherish them.

This grief that haunts me—it’s not just pain anymore. It’s a reminder. A reminder of you, who you were, and who you were never allowed to become. You are frozen in my memory like sunlight caught on water—sharp, dazzling, unreachable. You shine like a god in my head, Maysilee. My fierce, stubborn, whip-smart sister. I hold onto that image like a talisman. You never faded. Not for a second.

I love you.

I always have.

I always will.

Madge is seven now.

She’s in that sweet spot of childhood where everything is magic, everything is curiosity. She asks about you constantly, she calls you “Sweet Aunt May-May” like it’s a name she made up all by herself. I tell her stories about us. About the time we got caught painting the bakery window with icing. About how you used to make up songs while scrubbing the floors. How you secretly hated peppermint bark but pretended to love it because Ma made it every winter.

I bring her to your grave every weekend.

She likes to talk to it.

She sits on the grass cross-legged and chats to your headstone like you’re listening—like you’re just a little tired, lying beneath the flowers. She tells you about school and her drawings and the boy who pulled her braid. And sometimes I wonder… I hope you can hear her.

She would’ve adored you.

And you, you would have spoiled her rotten. Probably more than even Rufus does, and that’s saying something. He tries, you know. He really tries to be enough. But there’s a space in our lives only you could fill. A quiet shape that lives in our laughter, our traditions, our silences.

Sometimes, when Madge twirls in the sunlight or grins with her whole face, I have to look away. Because for a split second, it’s you. It’s you, alive again.

I no longer hate you for leaving me.

That was the selfish part of me, the part I always tried to hide, but you saw right through. You, with your big lovable heart and your mean-girl act. You were too kind for this world. You really were. And I hated you for it sometimes. Hated you because I couldn’t understand how you could love so deeply, fight so fiercely, be so much.

Now I just miss you.

Madge placed your pin on the grave today. I didn’t even ask her to. Said it was “for luck.” She doesn’t know you hated it. That makes me smile. Somehow, I think you would’ve let her keep it. You always had a soft spot for kids. Especially stubborn ones like us.

I miss you, May.

So, so much.

You were mine. My twin. My mirror. My world before the world took you.

And no matter how many years pass—ten, twenty, fifty—you will always be the brightest thing in my life. Forever sixteen. Forever gold.

Forever my Maysilee.

A Letter from Madge Underseed, age 7
(written on pink stationery with misspelled words, careful hearts drawn in the margins, folded with a sticky candy wrapper tucked inside)

Dear Sweet Aunt May-May,

Hi!!! It’s me again, Madge! I miss you even though I never met you before. Mommy says you were the best sister ever. She talks about you lots when she thinks I’m not listening, but I am listening because I always listen when it’s important. And you are important.

I made you another flower crown! This one has the yellow daisies you like (I think?) and sugar roses too. Mommy said you didn’t like candy that much but I think you like mine cause I made them all by myself with love and pink food dye (and a little glitter but not the bad kind, promise). I left it on your stone like last time, but the wind blew the last one away so I put rocks on it this time. Good idea right?

Mommy says you and her were twins. That means you were exactly the same. She says you were a little louder and smarter and she was a little sillier and messier but I think she’s just saying that ‘cause Mommy’s the smartest and prettiest lady in the whole District! But she always smiles really small when she talks about you. Not big smiles like birthday cake smiles. More like rain-on-the-window smiles. I think those are the saddest smiles.

She still has your picture by the bed. Sometimes at night she holds it. I saw her crying once. I didn’t say anything ‘cause I know sometimes people want to cry alone. But I held her hand after and she squeezed it. I think that means “thank you” in grown-up sad.

I think Mommy really really loved you, like more than anything. Even more than she loves Papa and she loves him a lot, even when he eats all the honey buns. I think you were her best friend and her other heart. That’s what I told my teacher when we had to write about our heroes. I picked you and Mommy. (But I only showed the Mommy part for class ‘cause they wouldn’t know who you were. That made me mad.)

Anyway, I drew you a picture too. It’s you and Mommy in your candy dresses with big crowns and swords and wings ‘cause I think you’re a fairy queen now. I hope you have friends in heaven. I hope you’re not lonely. Mommy says you never liked being alone.

I’ll bring you more flowers next week! And a sugar heart!

Love love love,
your niece,
Madge 💖🌸👑🍬

P.S. Please tell the other sky people to be nice to you. Or else I’ll come up there and karate them. Mommy taught me that word but I don’t think she knows what it really means.

"My Sweet Forevermore"

By Merrilee Donner

Once upon a spring so shattered, petals strewn and voices scattered,
Through the dusk I wandered, battered—heart a tomb without a door.
While the Capitol was cheering, I was drowning, disappearing,
Till I heard your name, endearing, whispered on the candy floor—
Just a ghost of something kinder—whispered on the candy floor.
“Maysilee,” and nothing more.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was July—not bleak December—
Still the frost bit through my fingers as I wept upon the floor.
Mama wept and Papa faltered, candy spoons and jars all altered,
I alone remained, unaltered—just a shell, a shadow sore.
You, the sun, had set too early—left me staring at the door.
Wishing you would come once more.

In the mirror, I would find you—your bright eyes forever blind to
Time and all its cruel winding, frozen still at sweet sixteen.
I would scream and beg for mercy, curse the gods for letting you leave,
Hating you for being lovely, for your heart too kind, too clean.
Twins in flesh, but not in ending—yours was sharp, and mine unseen.
Still I wake, as from a dream.

Then one night I heard a tapping, gentle, like your old girl-rapping—
When we’d knock in secret rhythm just outside our bedroom door.
I arose, my soul fast aching, hands all trembling, body breaking—
Was it grief again come taking? Was it madness I’d ignore?
So I followed where it led me, like I always did before…
To the dresser… nothing more.

There, your pin lay, cold and gleaming, with its mockingjay bird screaming—
A defiant, shining echo of the girl not here no more.
And I wept, and tried to follow, through the lake so deep and hollow—
Tried to sink inside the silence, where your laughter touched the shore.
But the voice that broke me came not from the sky, but from below.
“Maysilee,” Haymitch swore in woe.

Time crept on—so slow, so cruel—life became a faded jewel.
Grief, a bottle sealed with silence, gathering dust behind the store.
Then he came, the awkward stranger, full of kindness, free of danger,
Bringing back the light in stages, painting joy upon my floor.
Like a leak, it filled the corners—life I dared not seek before.
I said yes… and nothing more.

Years passed by in little footsteps—sugar crowns and teary sunsets,
And a child with your old smile running barefoot by the door.
Madge, my daughter, kissed your photo. “Sweet Auntie May-May,” sweet and slow.
She placed petals in the meadow. “Mama loves her evermore.”
And I smiled through all the aching, as she called you from the floor—
“Wake up, Auntie, just once more!”

Now I write, my fingers steady—not with sorrow, but with ready
Hands that hold both pain and memory, grief and love in sacred score.
Though you’re gone, you bloom inside me—through the echoes, you still guide me.
Now my mirror does not fright me—it reflects what came before.
You in me, and me with Madge, and joy that doesn’t fear the door.
You live on in me, in my memories. Forevermore.

 A Summer Afternoon in the Meadow of District 12

The air smelled like warm sugar and crushed wildflowers, just the way Maysilee used to like it.

Merrilee sat on the soft blanket with Madge curled beside her, a crown of buttercups slipping down the girl’s brow. The letter, the poem, trembled a little in Merrilee’s hands. Not from fear. Just reverence. She had written it in pieces, over years, folded it between recipes, tucked it into her old diary, and now, finally, read it aloud.

Her voice didn’t break. Not this time.

Madge listened with wide eyes, her face unusually quiet for a girl so spirited. When the final line came, Merrilee folded the paper gently and looked out across the hills.

“You live on. Forevermore,” she whispered again, but this time to the wind.

Madge tugged on her mother’s sleeve. “Mama… Auntie May-May lived in you all this time?”

Merrilee nodded slowly, brushing a thumb over her daughter’s cheek. “Yes, darling. In my heart, in my memories. In how I laugh, how I cry, even how I cook candy. She’s there.”

“Did it hurt?” Madge asked, fidgeting with the edge of her crown. “Losing her?”

Merrilee inhaled deeply. “It did. Like losing the other half of myself. Like walking through the world with just one wing.”

“Are you still sad?”

There was a long silence. Then Merrilee smiled, softly, truthfully. “Sometimes. But not like before. It doesn’t cut like it used to. It’s a dull ache now. One I carry. Like an old scar that reminds me of how strong I had to be.”

Madge leaned into her side. “You’re strong, Mama.”

Merrilee chuckled, tears in her eyes. “I didn’t used to be. Not really. But grief… it doesn’t go away, sweetheart. It just becomes part of you. And someday, you find that the same love that shattered you is the same love that stitches you back together.”

Madge considered this, her brows furrowed like she always did when thinking hard. Then she asked softly, “Are you happy now?”

The question stilled Merrilee. Her gaze wandered toward the distant candy shop, then to the hills beyond it, where a quiet grave sat shaded under a tree that bloomed every spring.

She turned back to her daughter.

“I am,” Merrilee said. “I am finally happy. Not because I stopped missing her. But because I let the love I had for her become something more than sorrow. I made room for joy again.”

Madge reached for her hand and held it tightly. “You think she sees us?”

“I know she does,” Merrilee whispered. “Every time you laugh, every time you write her a letter or make her sugar flowers… I think her heart shines a little wherever she is.”

Madge smiled. “Then I’ll make her a big crown next week. With extra honey petals.”

Merrilee laughed through her tears. “She’d love that.”

As the sun lowered behind the trees, mother and daughter sat there in the meadow, grief and love, old wounds and blooming joy, woven together in the quiet hush of remembrance and the warmth of a life slowly, finally, healed.

The Day the Sky Fell

The sky wasn’t supposed to be that color. Not in autumn, not in the Seam. It had turned the color of bruised plums, thick, roiling, unnatural. Merrilee stood in front of the candy shop, apron dusted with flour, sugar staining her palms, watching black specks fall in the horizon like flocks of distant birds. But they didn’t flap or flutter. They dropped, mechanical, humming, cruel.

Peacekeepers were long gone. So was any sense of safety. Only the scent of scorched coal and singed pine clung to the air.

“Run!” someone screamed.

She didn’t.

She turned to the kitchen. “Madge?” Her voice cracked.

“I’m here!” came the small voice from under the prep table. Her little girl, barely seventeen, clutched a worn stuffed goose, its fur matted from years of affection. She scrambled into her mother’s arms, eyes wide with confusion, not quite fear. “Mama, what’s happening?”

Merrilee held her tight. Her fingers curled over the crown of Madge’s head like she could somehow shield her from falling fire. “The Capitol’s scared, baby,” she whispered. “And scared people hurt what they don’t understand.”

“Is it because of the rebellion?”

“Yes.”

“Is Katniss okay?”

Merrilee didn’t know. No one knew anything anymore except what the Capitol allowed. And right now, all she could hear was the shriek of incoming death.

The sirens had never sounded. No warnings. Just silence, and then—

boom.

The house rattled. Glass shattered. Screams tore through the district. The ground convulsed beneath them like it, too, was in agony.

“Mama!” Madge sobbed.

Merrilee pulled her close, kneeling in the basement stairwell, Rufus joining them moments later, his arm around her, face streaked with soot. “We’ll be okay,” he whispered.

She looked at him, heart tightening. Her husband. Her daughter. Her world.

Her fingers trembled as she clutched Madge tighter, whispering prayers into her daughter’s hair. She was not a devout woman. She hadn’t prayed since the day they shipped Maysilee off in a glass train, since her own scream had splintered against the Capitol’s cameras. But now—

Now, she prayed.

“Please,” she whispered to no god she could name. “Please, if someone has to go, let it be me. Let Madge live. Let her live and grow and never know what it’s like to bury half of your heart. I’ll go. Just… let her live.”

But the Capitol didn’t deal in mercy.

Another boom. This time closer. Fire poured through the world above them. Her ears rang. She felt the floor give.

Then—

Nothing.

White Silence

There was no pain. No sound.

Just light. Like soft snow or silk ribbon. Merrilee opened her eyes slowly, blinking at the brightness.

“Am I…” she whispered.

Dead.

She was sure of it now.

Her apron was gone. Her hands were clean. Her hair untangled from the hurried braid. No more ash. No more blood. The weight in her chest, the agony that had once screamed her sister’s name, then her husband’s, then her daughter’s, was gone. Not because it had healed, but because it was finally at rest.

She turned.

And saw her.

“Maysilee.”

The name broke from her like a prayer, like a song, like a lifetime of longing unfurling at once.

Maysilee stood beneath a tree that shimmered with silver leaves and golden blossoms, wearing the same lavender dress she’d worn on the stage. Still sixteen. Still radiant. Her mouth curled in that sharp smirk she wore when she knew Merrilee was about to cry over something dumb like her favorite ribbon tearing or the last caramel going to Lenore Dove.

“You took your time,” Maysilee said, arching a brow.

Merrilee ran into her arms. Her twin felt the same. Smelled the same—cinnamon and sweet sugar and fresh-cut grass. Her twin. Her heart.

They didn’t speak for a while. They didn’t need to.

But then Merrilee turned, her breath catching.

Rufus stood nearby, smiling gently. And Madge, little Madge, in a pink dress too big for her, held a crown of woven sugar roses in her small hands.

“No,” Merrilee whispered. “No, no, no. Not them. Not her.”

She knelt in front of her daughter. “Madge,” her voice cracked, broken open with love and grief. “My baby girl.”

Madge looked up with wide eyes, but there was no fear there. Just understanding.

“I didn’t want you here,” Merrilee sobbed. “You were supposed to live. You were supposed to grow up.”

“I know,” Madge whispered. “But it’s okay, Mama. I’m not scared.”

Merrilee pulled her close, cradled her like she had so many nights after nightmares, after scraped knees and lost toys. This time, the nightmare was real. And it was over.

In the Stillness Beyond

They sat under the golden tree.

Maysilee lay with her head in Merrilee’s lap. Rufus played with Madge’s hair as she braided daisy chains and talked about candy flavors.

“I made lemon sugar for you,” Madge said proudly. “Just like you liked.”

“I hated lemon,” Maysilee grinned.

“But you’d eat it if I made it. You always did.”

Maysilee rolled her eyes. “Fine. In the afterlife, it probably tastes better anyway.”

Merrilee laughed. A real one. Not bitter. Not broken.

She looked around at her family. Not whole, because nothing could undo what was done, but together.

Together, finally.

Final Thought

In the realm beyond war and fire, in the place where the Capitol’s cruelty could no longer reach, Merrilee was no longer a girl with a broken heart, or a mother buried in grief.

She was simply a sister again. A wife. A mother.

And for the first time in forever,

she was at peace.

Together with her dear sweet Maysilee, whom was forever sixteen and forever would be.