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Acid burned at the back of Iphigenia’s throat. Sweat dripped down her neck and her chest heaved, cheeks a bright red. She spat, a pathetic attempt to clear her mouth. Staring up a her, from the inside of a porcelain toilet bowl, was her lunch. Nothing more than colourful mush. It makes her sick, just looking at it.
Sighing, she shut the toilet lid, trying not to let anymore of her tears fall. Iphigenia eyes were already puffy from earlier. Later, when she’s washing away any signs of her plight is when the guilt hits her. There are people starving, who’d give anything for a scrap of food, and here she is, stuffing herself full just to throw it back up.
(Awful, awful girl. Wicked wench. All this food yet she denies it. Trading comfort for stomach pains. Trading life for petty reasons. She’s an awful, awful girl.)
Iphigenia shoves those thoughts away, fiddling with her uniform. Those thoughts shouldn’t be there. Gone, they should be. They slip like water from her hands, and she lets them, slip away and away.
Vaguely, she registers the fact that her fingers look more like a skeleton with thin skin stretched over them. Iphigenia can count her ribs now, she frequently does before bed, running her feeble hands down her torso becoming a late night habit. It’s terrifying yet fascinating, the way her body feels, bones and organs separated by only a delicate layer of skin and minuscule fat.
Iphigenia ignores the looks people give her when she leaves the bathroom. They are all aware, but choose to say nothing. Iphigenia feels as though she’s supposed to be grateful for their lack of questions. Instead, she wants to scream for their wandering eyes and spectral empathy. She doesn’t, because they won’t hear her.
Floating through the streets, Iphigenia feels weightless. A byproduct of her plight. She can’t tell if she likes it or not. Reaching the zoo is an easy feat for the average citizen but it makes her dizzy, stopping to catch her breath or rest her feet more then once. She tells herself it’s the heat, though she knows it’s a lie. The ten minute walk from the academy to the zoo surely doubles in time, despite what Iphigenia tells. An empty burn settles in her stomach when she passes the zoo’s entrance.
Busy crowds stand at the monkey house, ogling at the grimy plebes caged inside. She has trouble joining in at first, but most onlookers let her weave through once they recognize the familiar academy rouge.
Chatter fills her ears as she reaches the front, thick metal bars of the enclosure still standing proudly. Iphigenia takes a moment to look over the tributes, scanning them for her girl. The girl from seven is curled up near a boulder, pausing her crying to watch as the boy from her district juggles walnuts in order to gain some food. The pair from six huddle together, giggling over something or other. The boy from eight fusses over his district partner, the small girl waving to the onlookers without a hint of malice. It stings Iphigenia’s heart, as she hesitantly waves back.
A wheezy cough makes her look over and dark black eyes bore into her. Her tribute, the girl from five, is patting her district partners back in a comforting gesture as he hacks and wheezes. Her eyes stay fixed to Iphigenia as she meekly walks over to them.
The two whisper back and forth for a bit before the girl stands up, slinking her way over to the bars. She’s tall, Iphigenia realizes, as they stand across from each other. (She’s pretty too, her mind whispers. Iphigenia shoves that thought away.)
“Um, hi?” Iphigenia’s says lamely, immediately cursing her brain for not finding something better to say. Not even five seconds into their introduction and she already manages to embarrass herself.
“Your hands are shaking.” Iphigenia tears her gaze away from her tribute to look down. Her hands are in fact trembling, as the tribute observed. “You afraid of me or something?”
Iphigenia scoffs. “Not a chance.” She says, putting her hands down. Looking back up, the dark haired girl has seemingly gotten closer than the wary distance she’d first maintained. Up close, Iphigenia can see that her eyes aren’t black, but a deep brown, like freshly brewed coffee. A few flyaway hairs stick to her face, and Iphigenia fights the urge to brush them away.
“I’m your mentor,” She begins. “Iphigenia Moss.” She sticks her hand out to shake, as if the girl was a potential suitor of hers, out of muscles memory. Embarrassment, at the notion that this district girl even comes close to being her equal makes her cheeks flush, but before she can retract her hand the tribute grabs on.
Calloused hand grip hers with an unexpected gentleness, treating her as though she was made of the finest porcelain. “Sol.” She says, with a cheeky grin. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Moss.”
As if the hand shake wasn’t enough, she brings Iphigenia’s hand up to her face before depositing a soft kiss to the back of it, much like a knight greeting a fair maiden.
The pitter-patter of her heart lets Iphigenia know that her face must be scarlet by now, unable to stop blushing. Sol has long since let go but she can’t seem to remove her hand from where it rests in between the bars. Lost, are the words on her tongue.
A question from her tribute snaps her out of her stupor. “What’s in the bag?” Sol asks, staring at the brown paper clutched in her hands.
“Oh, it’s food.” Iphigenia says. She shoves it forward, so it’s just touching the bars of the enclosure. “Food, for you. Because um, I didn’t know if you’d eaten yet and I was worried.”
“Worried?” Sol raises an eyebrow. “For little ole me?”
Iphigenia wants nothing more then to to bury herself into the ground and disappear, humiliation at her slip up hitting her full-force. Instead, she stands her ground. Sol stares at her for a moment more before cautiously reaching into the paper bag, pulling out two water bottles, a sandwich, an orange, and a small bar of hazelnut chocolate. She looks at the chocolate in disbelief, like a child seeing snow for the first time.
Maybe she doesn’t like chocolate , she thinks. Iphigenia shifts awkwardly from foot-to-foot. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, but I can get you something else if you don’t want it.”
Sol snaps her head back up at an alarming rate, face shocked. It’s as if Iphigenia just told her that she’d set her house aflame. Sol shakes her hand. “No, no. This is perfect, I—“ Her eyes find Iphigenia’s. “Thank you, truly.”
The intensity in which they look at each other is something foreign to Iphigenia. Sol is looking at her like she’s the only person in the world and she wishes it would never end, that she could stay in this moment forever. She’s looking at her, not her body.
“You’re pretty.” Iphigenia blurts out. She slap her hand over he mouth in horror, forbidden words that shouldn’t have spoken aloud ringing through her head. Coming here was a mistake, she was sure now.
Sol’s eyes widen, surprise evident on her face before it melts into something else, something fond. She laughs, a smile that reaches her hooded eyes blooming on her face. “You’re quite the looker yourself. In fact, you might be the prettiest gal I’ve ever seen.”
Sol’s smile softens, and then melds into a look of concern. “But, are you alright? You look very skinny, yanno.”
Iphigenia flourishes at her observation. “I’m quite swell, actually! Thank you!”
Curiosity spreads across Sol’s face. “Why are you so thin then? Are you poor? I didn’t even know that was possible in the Capitol.”
“No, we aren’t poor.” Iphigenia frowns. “What’s so wrong with me being thin?”
“It looks like you’re starving.”
Iphigenia balks at the gall of this girl. Doesn’t she know that’s it’s hot to be thin? Her mind wanders back to her willfully ignorant classmates and the way they always look the other way.
Iphigenia opens her mouth to say something to defend herself, anything , but is interrupted by a phlegmy hacking from Sol’s district partner, a listless boy who could barely breathe.
Sol flinches as his wheezing continues and a sympathetic look, grieving for a boy who isn’t dead yet, settled over her. “Oh, my poor Hy.” She warbles, softly.
The boy — Hy, as Sol called him. — buries his head in his arms, a feeble attempt to muffle his coughing. Iphigenia watches his shoulders shake, body wracked by illness. She drowns in pity for the tribute and sinks in it when she thinks of Sol, in this ramshackle zoo, awaiting her death.
(Why should she care? It’s the districts fault. This is their punishment for the war they waged against the Capitol, the one they lost. She shouldn’t care, she shouldn’t.)
“I have to go.” The words leave Iphigenia’s mouth before she can even think, nausea pooling in her stomach and head. She can’t be here right now, she can’t .
Sol turns back, giving her a steady nod. Her arms clutch the food Iphigenia gave her like a lifeline, as if she’ll reach through the bars and snatch them back, proclaiming the other as undeserving of a basic life necessity.
Iphigenia takes this nod as a goodbye and turns on her foot to flee. The dizziness has spread through her body like a plague and Iphigenia fears she’ll be sick if she stays. She takes a few more steps before Sol calls out.
“Get some food, you hear me! There’s no point in starving here unless you want to end up like us!”
The words weight down on Iphigenia as she slips through the crowd and out of the zoo. Ringing through her mind and settling down, down in the pit of her stomach.
She turns into the nearest alleyway, out of sight and therefore, out of mind. The sun feels too hot, the breeze too cold, and the city smells too much. It’s all too much.
Iphigenia doesn’t want to end up like them. That’s the only thought she has before she turns and empties the rest of her lunch on the drab pavement.
She doesn’t want to die like them.