“Well, that cuts both ways, madam. I am at your service,” he said, laying it on so thick she was sure to be suspicious. But not Ma. Her eyes filled with tears and she made a gurgling sound, having been rendered speechless by his magnanimousness. She dug in her handbag, a ghastly thing the size of a small suitcase, pulled out a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and began blowing her nose. Fortunately, Tigris, who was genuinely sweet to everyone, came backstage to find him and took over chatting with the Plinths.
Things finally wound down, and as the cousins walked home together, they analyzed the evening, from Lucy Gray’s restrained use of the blush to the unfortunate fit of Ma’s dress. “But really, Coryo, I can’t imagine things going any better for you,” said Tigris.
“I’m certainly pleased,” he said. “I think we’ll be able to get her some sponsors. I just hope some people aren’t put off by the song.”
“I was very moved by it. I think most people were. Didn’t you like it?” she asked.
“Of course I liked it, but I’m more open-minded than most,” he said. “I mean, what do you think she was suggesting happened?”
“It sounded to me like she had a bad time of it. Someone she loved broke her heart,” Tigris answered.
“That was only the half of it,” he continued, because he couldn’t let even Tigris think he’d felt envious of some no-account in the districts. “There was the part about her living by her charms.”
“Well, that could be anything. She’s a performer, after all,” she said.
He considered it. “I suppose.”
“You said she lost her parents. She’s probably been fending for herself for years. I don’t think anyone who survived the war and the years after can blame her for that.” Tigris dropped her gaze. “We all did things we’re not proud of.”
“You didn’t,” he said.
“Didn’t I?” Tigris spoke with an uncharacteristic bitterness. “We all did. Maybe you were too little to remember. Maybe you didn’t know how bad it really was.”
“How can you say that? That’s all I remember,” he shot back.
“Then be kind, Coryo,” she snapped. “And try not to look down on people who had to choose between death and disgrace.”
Tigris’s rebuke shocked him, but less than her alluding to behavior that might be considered a disgrace. What had she done? Because if she’d done it, she’d done it to protect him. He thought about the morning of the reaping, when he’d casually wondered what she had to trade in the black market, but he’d never really taken that seriously. Or hadn’t he? Would he have just preferred not to know what sacrifices she might be willing to make for him? Her comment was vague enough, and so many things were beneath a Snow, that he could say, as she had of Lucy Gray’s song, “Well, that could be anything.” Did he want to know the details? No. The truth was he did not.
As he pulled open the glass door to the apartment building, she gave a cry of disbelief. “Oh, no, it can’t be! The elevator’s working!”
He felt doubtful, as the thing hadn’t worked since early in the war. But the door stood open and the lights reflected off the mirrored walls of the car. Glad for the distraction, he made a low bow, inviting her to enter. “After you.”
Tigris giggled and paraded into the car like the grand lady she was born to be. “You’re too kind.”
Coriolanus swept in after her, and for a moment they both stared at the buttons designating the floors. “The last time I remember this working, we’d just been to my father’s funeral. We got home, and we’ve been climbing ever since.”
“The Grandma’am will be thrilled,” said Tigris. “Her knees can’t take those stairs anymore.”
“I’m thrilled. Maybe she’ll get out of the apartment once in a while,” Coriolanus said. Tigris smacked him on the arm, but she was laughing. “Really. It would be nice to have the place to ourselves for five minutes. Maybe skip the anthem one morning, or not wear a tie to dinner. Then again, there’s the danger of her talking to people. ‘When Coriolanus is president, it will rain champagne every Tuesday!’”
“Perhaps people will just put it down to age,” said Tigris.
“One can hope. Will you do the honors?” he asked.
Tigris reached out and gave the penthouse button a nice long push. After a pause the doors slid shut with nary a squeak, and they began to ascend. “I’m surprised the apartment board decided to fix it now. It must’ve been costly.”
Coriolanus frowned. “You don’t suppose they’re spiffing up the building hoping to sell their places? You know, with the new taxes.”
The playfulness drained out of Tigris. “That’s very possible. I know the Dolittles would consider selling for the right price. They say the apartment is too big for them, but you know it’s not that.”
“Is that what we’ll say? That our ancestral home has gotten too large?” Coriolanus said as the doors opened to reveal their front door. “Come on, I’ve still got homework.”
The Grandma’am had waited up to sing his praises and said they’d been replaying highlights from the interviews nonstop. “She’s a sad, trashy little thing, your girl, but oddly appealing in her way. Perhaps it’s her voice. It gets inside a person somehow.”
If Lucy Gray had won over the Grandma’am, Coriolanus felt the rest of the nation could only fall in step. If no one else seemed to be bothered by her questionable past, why should he be?
He got a glass of buttermilk, changed into his father’s silk robe, and settled down to write about everything he loved about the war. He began with As they say, war is misery, but it’s not without its charms. It seemed a clever intro to him, but it led nowhere, and half an hour later he’d made no headway. It was, as Festus had suggested, destined to be a very short assignment. But he knew that would not satisfy Dr. Gaul, and a halfhearted effort would only bring him unwanted attention.
When Tigris came in to say good night, he bounced the topic off her. “Can you remember anything at all we liked?”
She sat on the end of his bed and thought it over. “I liked some of the uniforms. Not the ones they wear now. Do you remember the red jackets with the gold piping?”
“In the parades?” He felt a bit of a rush as he remembered hanging from the window with the soldiers and bands marching by. “Did I like the parades?”
“You loved them. You’d be so excited that we couldn’t get you to eat your breakfast,” said Tigris. “We always had a gathering on parade days.”
“Front-row seats.” Coriolanus jotted the words uniforms and parades on a scrap of paper, then added fireworks. “Any sort of spectacle appealed to me when I was little, I suppose.”
“Remember the turkey?” Tigris said suddenly.
It had been the last year of the war, when the siege had reduced the Capitol to cannibalism and despair. Even the lima beans were running low, and it had been months since anything resembling meat had made its way to their table. In an attempt to raise morale, the Capitol had proclaimed December 15th National Heroes Day. They put together a television special and honored a dozen or so citizens who’d lost their lives in defense of the Capitol, with Coriolanus’s father, General Crassus Snow, among them. The electricity came on in time for the broadcast, but it had been off — and with it the heat — for a solid day before. They’d been huddled together on the Grandma’am’s boat of a bed, and so they remained to watch their heroes honored. Even then, Coriolanus’s memory of his father had faded, and while he knew his face from photos, he was startled by the man’s deep voice and uncompromising words against the districts. After the anthem played, a knock on the front door roused them from the bed, and they found a trio of young soldiers in dress uniforms delivering a commemorative plaque and a basket with a twenty-pound frozen turkey, compliments of the state. In an apparent attempt at the Capitol’s former luxury, the basket also included a dusty jar of mint jelly, a can of salmon, three cracked sticks of pineapple candy, a loofah sponge, and a flowery-scented candle. The soldiers set the basket on a table in the foyer, read a statement of thanks, and bid them good night. Tigris burst into tears, and the Grandma’am had to sit down, but the first thing Coriolanus did was run and make sure the door was locked to protect their newfound riches.
They’d eaten salmon on toast and it was decided Tigris would stay home from school the next day to figure out how to cook the bird. Coriolanus delivered a dinner invitation on the Snows’ engraved stationery to Pluribus, and he came bearing posca and a dented can of apricots. With the help of one of Cook’s old recipe books, Tigris had outdone herself, and they’d feasted on jelly-glazed turkey with bread and cabbage stuffing. Nothing had ever, before or since, tasted so good.
“Still one of the best days of my life.” He wasn’t sure how to phrase it but finally added relief from deprivation to the list. “You were a wonder, the way you cooked that turkey. At the time you seemed so old to me, but you were really just a little girl,” said Coriolanus.
Tigris smiled. “And you. With your victory garden on the roof.”
“If you liked parsley, I was your man!” He laughed. But he’d taken pride in his parsley. It had livened up the soup, and sometimes he could trade it for other things. Resourcefulness, he put on the list.
So he wrote his assignment, recounting these childish delights, but in the end he did not feel satisfied. He thought about the last couple of weeks, with the bombing in the arena, losing his classmates, Marcus’s escape, and how it all had revived the terror he’d felt when the Capitol had been under siege. What had mattered then, what mattered still, was living without that fear. So he added a paragraph about his deep relief on winning the war, and the grim satisfaction of seeing the Capitol’s enemies, who’d treated him so cruelly, who’d cost his family so much, brought to their knees. Hobbled. Impotent. Unable to hurt him anymore. He’d loved the unfamiliar sense of safety that their defeat had brought. The security that could only come with power. The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he’d loved best of all.
The next morning, as the remaining mentors straggled in for the Sunday meeting, Coriolanus tried to imagine who they would’ve been had no war occurred. Barely more than toddlers when it started, they’d all been about eight when it ended. Although the hardships had eased, he and his classmates were still far removed from the opulent life they’d been born into, and the rebuilding of their world had been slow and disheartening. If he could erase the rationing and the bombings, the hunger and the fear, and replace it with the rosy lives promised to them at birth, would he even recognize his friends?
Coriolanus felt a twinge of guilt when his thoughts landed on Clemensia. He hadn’t been to see her yet, between recovering and homework and readying Lucy Gray for the Games. It wasn’t just a time issue, though. He had no desire to return to the hospital and see what state she was in. What if the doctor had been lying, and the scales were spreading to cover her entire body? What if she’d transformed into a snake entirely? That was silliness, but Dr. Gaul’s lab had been so sinister that his mind went to extremes. A paranoid thought nibbled at him. What if Dr. Gaul’s people were only waiting for him to visit so they could imprison him as well? It didn’t make sense. If they’d wanted to hold him, his hospitalization would’ve been the time. The whole thing was ridiculous, he concluded. He’d go to see her at the first opportunity.
Dr. Gaul, clearly a morning person, and Dean Highbottom, clearly not, reviewed the previous night’s performances. Coriolanus and Lucy Gray had obliterated the field, although points were given to those who’d at least managed to get their tributes to the interview stage. On Capitol TV, Lucky Flickerman was providing updates on the betting scene from the main post office, and while people were favoring Tanner and Jessup to win, Lucy Gray had racked up three times as many gifts as her nearest competitor.
“Look at all these people,” said Dr. Gaul. “Sending bread to a slip of a girl with a broken heart, even though they don’t believe she can win. What’s the lesson there?”
“At the dogfights, I’ve seen people back mutts that can barely stand,” Festus told her. “People love a long shot.”
“People love a good love song, more like,” said Persephone, showing her dimples.
“People are fools,” sneered Livia. “She doesn’t stand a chance.”
“But there are a lot of romantics.” Pup batted his eyes at her and made sloppy kissing sounds.
“Yes, romantic notions, idealistic notions, can be very attractive. Which seems like a good segue into your essays.” Dr. Gaul settled herself on a lab stool. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Rather than collect their essays, Dr. Gaul had them read bits and pieces of them aloud. Coriolanus’s classmates had touched on many points that hadn’t crossed his mind. Some had been drawn to the courage of the soldiers, the chance to maybe one day be heroic themselves. Others mentioned the bond that formed between soldiers who fought together, or the nobility of defending the Capitol.
“It felt like we were all part of something bigger,” said Domitia. She nodded solemnly, causing the ponytail on the top of her head to bob. “Something important. We all made sacrifices, but it was to save our country.”
Coriolanus felt disconnected from their “romantic notions,” as he didn’t share a romanticized view of the war. Courage in battle was often necessary because of someone else’s poor planning. He had no idea if he would take a bullet for Festus and had no interest in finding out. As to the noble ideas of the Capitol, did they really believe that? What he desired had little to do with nobility and everything to do with being in control. Not that he didn’t have a strong moral code; certainly he did. But almost everything in war, between its declaration and the victory parades, seemed a waste of resources. He kept one eye on the clock while pretending to be engaged in the conversation, willing time to pass so he wouldn’t have to read anything. The parades seemed shallow, the appeal of power still true but heartless compared to the ramblings of his classmates. And he wished he hadn’t even written the bit about growing the parsley; it just sounded puerile now.
The best he could do, when his time came, was to read the story about the turkey. Domitia told him it was touching, Livia rolled her eyes, and Dr. Gaul raised her eyebrows and asked did he have more to share? He did not.
“Mr. Plinth?” said Dr. Gaul.
Sejanus had been silent and subdued through the entire class. He flipped a sheet of paper over and read, “‘The only thing I loved about the war was the fact that I still lived at home.’ If you’re asking me if it had any value beyond that, I would say that it was an opportunity to right some wrongs.”
“And did it?” asked Dr. Gaul.
“Not at all. Things in the districts are worse than ever,” said Sejanus.
Objections came from around the room.
“Whoa!”
“He did not just say that.”
“Go back to Two, then! Who’d miss you?”
He’s really pushing it now, thought Coriolanus. But he was angry, too. It took two parties to make a war. A war that, by the way, the rebels had started. A war that had left him an orphan.
But Sejanus ignored his classmates, staying focused on the Head Gamemaker. “May I ask, what did you love about the war, Dr. Gaul?”
She looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. “I loved how it proved me right.”
Dean Highbottom announced the lunch break before anyone ventured to ask how, and they all filed out, leaving their essays behind.
They were given a half hour to eat, but Coriolanus had forgotten to bring any food, and none was provided because it was Sunday. He spent the time stretched out in a shaded area of the front steps, resting his head while Festus and Hilarius Heavensbee, who was mentoring the District 8 girl, discussed strategies for female tributes. He vaguely remembered Hilarius’s tribute from the train station, wearing a striped dress and red scarf, but mostly because she’d been with Bobbin.
“The trouble with girls is, they’re not used to fighting the same way boys are,” said Hilarius. The Heavensbees were ultrarich, the way the Snows had been before the war. But no matter his advantages, Hilarius always seemed to feel oppressed.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Festus. “I think my Coral could give any of those guys a run for their money.”
“Mine’s a runt.” Hilarius picked at his steak sandwich with his manicured nails. “Wovey, she calls herself. Well, I tried to train old Wovey for the interview, but zero personality. No one’s backed her, so I can’t feed her, even if she can avoid the others.”
“If she stays alive, she’ll get backers,” said Festus.