The Hunger Games Trilogy

by Suzanne Collins

“Here, cover yourself with this and I’ll wash your shorts.” “Oh, I don’t care if you see me,” says Peeta.

big dick peeta

“You know, you’re kind of squeamish for such a lethal person,” says Peeta as I beat the shorts clean between two rocks. “I wish I’d let you give Haymitch a shower after all.”

Haymitch couldn’t be sending me a clearer message. One kiss equals one pot of broth. I can almost hear his snarl. “You’re supposed to be in love, sweetheart. The boy’s dying. Give me something I can work with!”

“Besides I like watching you sleep. You don’t scowl. Improves your looks a lot.”

“I can see why that day made you happy.” “Well, I knew that goat would be a little gold mine,” I say. “Yes, of course I was referring to that, not the lasting joy you gave the sister you love so much you took her place in the reaping,” says Peeta drily.

“You’re such a bad liar, Katniss. I don’t know how you’ve survived this long.” He begins to mimic me. “I knew that goat would be a little gold mine. You’re a little cooler though. Of course, I’m not going.” He shakes his head. “Never gamble at cards. You’ll lose your last coin,” he says.

Clove opens her jacket. It’s lined with an impressive array of knives. She carefully selects an almost dainty-looking number with a cruel, curved blade. “I promised Cato if he let me have you, I’d give the audience a good show.”

I understand that if Thresh wins, he’ll have to go back and face a district that has already broken all the rules to thank me, and he is breaking the rules to thank me, too.

“It’s like the bread. How I never seem to get over owing you for that,” I say. “The bread? What? From when we were kids?” he says. “I think we can let that go. I mean, you just brought me back from the dead.”

“I think we would like Thresh. I think he’d be our friend back in District Twelve,” I say. “Then let’s hope Cato kills him, so we don’t have to,” says Peeta grimly.

I’m startled by his intensity but recognize an excellent opportunity for getting food, so I try to keep up.

she’s so stupid I love her

I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.

No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else’s arms have made me feel this safe.

“Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.” “Without success,” I add. “Without success. So, in a way, my name being drawn in the reaping was a real piece of luck,” says Peeta.

“I remember everything about you,” says Peeta, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the one who wasn’t paying attention.” “I am now,” I say. “Well, I don’t have much competition here,” he says.

“What was that you were saying just before the food arrived? Something about me . . . no competition . . . best thing that ever happened to you . . .” “I don’t remember that last part,” I say, hoping it’s too dim in here for the cameras to pick up my blush. “Oh, that’s right. That’s what I was thinking,” he says.

Under the hood, I silently say good-bye to Thresh and thank him for my life. I promise to remember him and, if I can, do something to help his family and Rue’s, if I win.

I really don’t care, I just want something else to be mad about.

The music swells and I recognize the brilliance of it. As the notes overlap, they complement one another, forming a lovely, unearthly harmony. It was this sound then, thanks to Rue, that sent the orchard workers of District 11 home each night. Does someone start it at quitting time, I wonder, now that she is dead?

The green eyes glowering at me are unlike any dog or wolf, any canine I’ve ever seen. They are unmistakably human. And that revelation has barely registered when I notice the collar with the number 1 inlaid with jewels and the whole horrible thing hits me. The blonde hair, the green eyes, the number . . . it’s Glimmer.

And worst of all, the smallest mutt, with dark glossy fur, huge brown eyes and a collar that reads 11 in woven straw. Teeth bared in hatred. Rue . . .

As if in a last-ditch effort, Peeta raises his fingers, dripping with blood from his leg, up to Cato’s arm. Instead of trying to wrestle his way free, his forefinger veers off and makes a deliberate X on the back of Cato’s hand.

Peeta and I hold on to each other, waiting for the cannon, waiting for the competition to finish, waiting to be released. But it doesn’t happen. Not yet. Because this is the climax of the Hunger Games, and the audience expects a show.

The next hours are the worst in my life, which if you think about it, is saying something. The cold would be torture enough, but the real nightmare is listening to Cato, moaning, begging, and finally just whimpering as the mutts work away at him.

It takes a few moments to find Cato in the dim light, in the blood. Then the raw hunk of meat that used to be my enemy makes a sound, and I know where his mouth is. And I think the word he’s trying to say is please.

“You’re not leaving me here alone,” I say. Because if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really. I’ll spend the rest of my life in this arena trying to think my way out.

And he goes on about how he loves me,

😭

My fingers are still gripping the back of his jacket so tightly that when they take him away it tears leaving me with a fistful of black fabric.

I forget we’re out of the Games and I see the doctors as just one more threat, one more pack of mutts designed to kill him. Petrified, I lunge for him, but I’m caught and thrust back into another room, and a glass door seals between us. I pound on the glass, screaming my head off.

Icy cold, filled with orange juice, a straw with a frilly white collar. How wrong it looks in my bloody, filthy hand with its dirt-caked nails and scars. My mouth waters at the smell, but I place it carefully on the floor, not trusting anything so clean and pretty.

But I’m held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I’ve seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don’t they leave? Why do they stay to watch? And now I know. It’s because you have no choice.

I start to sit up but am arrested by the sight of my hands. The skin’s perfection, smooth and glowing. Not only are the scars from the arena gone, but those accumulated over years of hunting have vanished without a trace. My forehead feels like satin, and when I try to find the burn on my calf, there’s nothing.

“Where’s Portia? Is she with Peeta? He is all right, isn’t he? I mean, he’s alive?” I blurt out. “He’s fine. Only they want to do your reunion live on air at the ceremony,” says Haymitch. “Oh. That’s all,” I say. The awful moment of thinking Peeta’s dead again passes. “I guess I’d want to see that myself.”

And when we ride up to the twelfth floor, the faces of all the tributes who will never return flash across my mind and there’s a heavy, tight place in my chest.

It’s funny, because even though they’re rattling on about the Games, it’s all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. “I was still in bed!” “I had just had my eyebrows dyed!” “I swear I nearly fainted!” Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.

I immediately notice the padding over my breasts, adding curves that hunger has stolen from my body. My hands go to my chest and I frown. “I know,” says Cinna before I can object. “But the Gamemakers wanted to alter you surgically. Haymitch had a huge fight with them over it. This was the compromise.”

Without heels, you can see my true stature. I look, very simply, like a girl. A young one. Fourteen at the most. Innocent. Harmless. Yes, it is shocking that Cinna has pulled this off when you remember I’ve just won the Games.

It’s so much worse than being hunted in the arena. There, I could only die. End of story. But out here Prim, my mother, Gale, the people of District 12, everyone I care about back home could be punished if I can’t pull off the girl-driven-crazy-by-love scenario Haymitch has suggested.

He’s kissing me and all the time I’m thinking, Do you know? Do you know how much danger we’re in?

I realize I’m unprepared for this. I do not want to watch my twenty-two fellow tributes die. I saw enough of them die the first time.

There’s this sort of upbeat soundtrack playing under it that makes it twice as awful because, of course, almost everyone on-screen is dead.

A wave of gratitude to the filmmakers sweeps over me when they end not with the announcement of our victory, but with me pounding on the glass door of the hovercraft, screaming Peeta’s name as they try to revive him. In terms of survival, it’s my best moment all night.

He’s still smiling when he settles the second on my head, but his eyes, just inches from mine, are as unforgiving as a snake’s. That’s when I know that even though both of us would have eaten the berries, I am to blame for having the idea. I’m the instigator. I’m the one to be punished.

He stops to gather a bunch of wildflowers for me. When he presents them, I work hard to look pleased. Because he can’t know that the pink-and-white flowers are the tops of wild onions and only remind me of the hours I’ve spent gathering them with Gale.

STOP

“How you acted.” “Not all of it,” I say, tightly holding on to my flowers. “Then how much? No, forget that. I guess the real question is what’s going to be left when we get home?” he says. “I don’t know. The closer we get to District Twelve, the more confused I get,” I say. He waits, for further explanation, but none’s forthcoming. “Well, let me know when you work it out,” he says, and the pain in his voice is palpable.

NOOOOO

That if I do have feelings for him, it doesn’t matter because I’ll never be able to afford the kind of love that leads to a family, to children. And how can he? How can he after what we’ve just been through? I also want to tell him how much I already miss him. But that wouldn’t be fair on my part.

“One more time? For the audience?” he says. His voice isn’t angry. It’s hollow, which is worse. Already the boy with the bread is slipping away from me.

I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families whose children I have killed. . . .

Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness, and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there’s some of that, too. Only it has too much competition to ever win out.

All I was doing was trying to keep Peeta and myself alive. Any act of rebellion was purely coincidental.