drapetomonia - the overwhelming urge to run away.
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When Junia Beaumont, her brother and their classmates get a last assignment before the end of the school year, she doesn't know just how quickly things will change for her.
Who would have thought t...
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59. epilogue
In the Capitol, the news of the Beaumont family's oldest children leaving spreads like wildfire.
Max, the youngest child, finds himself in the middle of it all, unable to make complete sense of their disappearance and what follows after. Even at the tender age of ten years old, he's able to grasp that there's something bigger at play here than just his sister's affection for her tribute or his brother's disdain for the Capitol.
Nevertheless, it seems as though no one wants to tell him the truth. He has their letters, and Ma Plinth often sneaks him little notes he knows come from them, but the story his parents fabricate and tell him is completely different. At least his father's. He says they've left because they were unable to understand the Capitol's greatness and that they took their privileged lives for granted.
Max knows that's not true. His siblings wouldn't just leave unless they had a good reason to. Right? They'd never leave him for their own selfish reasons... right?
His mother's silence is unnerving, but he hears her cry at night. June's departure hit her hard, but Cas leaving truly was the final blow Max knows his big brother never wanted to deal. It's just not his style.
Against everything his father tries to tell him, Max is firm in his belief that his siblings didn't just leave because they're ungrateful or hate the Capitol now. The only thing that hurts him is that they were never able to tell him why.
Is it because he's too young? Because they were worried he might tell someone? Their letters are a testament to their regret; however, he can easily decipher that, wherever in Seven they are, they're happy.
And maybe that's all that matters. To him, that's all that should matter. But still, a part of him misses his siblings in a way he never felt before. He was never as close with them as they were with each other, but the house feels deserted and void of life without them.
Both of his parents bury themselves in their work. Without his siblings, he's a stranger in his own home. He wants them to come back, but no matter how much he hopes, it never happens. All he has are their letters and written words of regret and sorrow.
He misses them more than anything else in the world. So much that he wishes they had just taken him with them.
Adeena Beaumont is unable to make amends with the fact that her work is ultimately one of the factors that drove her oldest children away from her. She drowns herself in her research because the day the 10th Hunger Games came to an end, the preparations for the 11th Hunger Games were already well on their way.
And so, she seeks revenge in the one way that she knows no one will see coming. Not even her own husband.
After the success of the 10th Hunger Games, Adeena is unable to grasp the idea that Dr. Gaul considers them a failure. Every single copy is to be eradicated and wiped off the face of the earth. Even after everything, after all the work that was put into the Games, nothing seems to be enough to satisfy the woman. Adeena's admiration turns sour, but she's still one of the first to dive into research for next year's Games.
