The Hunger Games Trilogy

by Suzanne Collins

“You’re going to be the best-dressed rebel in history,” says Gale with a smile. Suddenly, I realize he’s been holding out on me. Like Cinna, he’s wanted me to make this decision all along.

I dart around the distracted guard, push open the door marked 3908, and find them. Half-naked, bruised, and shackled to the wall. My prep team.

😭

“Perhaps we’re a little more necessary to the war effort than you give us credit for,” says Plutarch, unconcerned. “Of course you are. The tributes were necessary to the Games, too. Until they weren’t,” I say. “And then we were very disposable — right, Plutarch?” That ends the conversation.

And now Coin, with her fistful of precious nukes and her well-oiled machine of a district, finding it’s even harder to groom a Mockingjay than to catch one. But she has been the quickest to determine that I have an agenda of my own and am therefore not to be trusted. She has been the first to publicly brand me as a threat.

With my acid-damaged hair, sunburned skin, and ugly scars, the prep team has to make me pretty and then damage, burn, and scar me in a more attractive way.

As a rebel, I thought I’d get to look more like myself. But it seems a televised rebel has her own standards to live up to.

She told me she had several mice at home as pets. The thought repulsed me at the time, since we consider mice vermin, unless cooked. But perhaps Octavia liked them because they were small, soft, and squeaky. Like her.

“Katniss is not going to hurt us,” she says quietly but firmly to Octavia. “Katniss did not even know we were here. Things will be better now.” Octavia gives a slight nod but doesn’t dare look me in the eye.

sob

“You’re green. Are you sick?” “It’s a fashion thing, Posy. Like wearing lipstick,” I say. “It’s meant to be pretty,” whispers Octavia, and I can see the tears threatening to spill over her lashes. Posy considers this and says matter-of-factly, “I think you’d be pretty in any color.”

“You’re still angry.” “And you’re still not sorry,” I reply. “I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?” he asks. “No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion,” I tell him. But this just makes him laugh. I have to let it go. There’s no point in trying to dictate what Gale thinks. Which, if I’m honest, is one reason I trust him.

He points it around the room, peering through the scope. “That doesn’t seem very fair to the deer,” I say. “Wouldn’t be using it on deer, would I?” he answers.

There’s something else. I have to hold very still to make sure I’m not imagining it. No, the bow is alive in my hands. I press it against my cheek and feel the slight hum travel through the bones of my face. “What’s it doing?” I ask. “Saying hello,” explains Beetee with a grin. “It heard your voice.” “It recognizes my voice?” I ask. “Only your voice,” he tells me.

It’s amazing, really, how long I have survived the cameras. The credit for that, of course, goes to Peeta. Alone, I can’t be the Mockingjay.

For a second, I’m afraid he’s dying. I have to remind myself that I don’t care.

guarantee her safety,” says Boggs. “She’ll be a target for every —” “I want to go,” I break in. “I’m no help to the rebels here.” “And if you’re killed?” asks Coin. “Make sure you get some footage. You can use that, anyway,” I answer.

Haymitch takes the seat across from me. “We’re going to have to work together again. So, go ahead. Just say it.” I think of the snarling, cruel exchange back on the hover-craft. The bitterness that followed. But all I say is “I can’t believe you didn’t rescue Peeta.” “I know,” he replies.

“Now you say it,” I tell him. “I can’t believe you let him out of your sight that night,” says Haymitch. I nod. That’s it.

Finnick appears in a state of agitation. “Katniss, they won’t let me go! I told them I’m fine, but they won’t even let me ride in the hovercraft!” I take in Finnick — his bare legs showing between his hospital gown and slippers, his tangle of hair, the half-knotted rope twisted around his fingers, the wild look in his eyes — and know any plea on my part will be useless. Even I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring him.

my baby 😭

“Finnick?” I say. “Maybe some pants?” He looks down at his legs as if noticing his outfit for the first time. Then he whips off his hospital gown, leaving him in just his underwear. “Why? Do you find this”— he strikes a ridiculously provocative pose —“distracting?”

Frankly, our ancestors don’t seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars and the broken planet. Clearly, they didn’t care about what would happen to the people who came after them.

“And if we lose?” I ask. “If we lose?” Plutarch looks out at the clouds, and an ironic smile twists his lips. “Then I would expect next year’s Hunger Games to be quite unforgettable. That reminds me.” He takes a vial from his vest, shakes a few deep violet pills into his hand, and holds them out to us. “We named them nightlock in your honor, Katniss. The rebels can’t afford for any of us to be captured now. But I promise, it will be completely painless.”

The drone of black flies, the moaning of people in pain, and the sobs of their attending loved ones have combined into a wrenching chorus.

My ongoing struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.

When Gale questioned the existence of the hospital, he was not thinking of disease, but this. Because he never underestimates the cruelty of those we face.

“President Snow says he’s sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?” One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. “Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”

Boggs quickly examines my face, then scoops me up and jogs for the runway. Halfway there, I puke on his bulletproof vest. It’s hard to tell because he’s short of breath, but I think he sighs.

feel fine, really. Except for my head, and my leg, and the soreness from the bruises, and the nausea that hit a couple minutes after I ate. Maybe the wheelchair’s a good idea.

happen, I try to pretend that I’m watching this on my television at home in the Seam. An anti-Capitol statement. There’s never been anything like it on television. Not in my lifetime, anyway.

The decision? To send me into combat? Then she doesn’t know that I flagrantly disregarded orders, ripped out my earpiece, and gave my bodyguards the slip? What else have they kept from her?

I remember that Plutarch is a Head Gamemaker, not a member of the crew. Not a piece in the Games. Therefore, his worth is not defined by a single element, but by the overall success of the production. If we win the war, that’s when Plutarch will take his bow. And expect his reward.

How abandoned by me he must feel. In his first interview, he tried to protect me from the Capitol and rebels alike, and not only have I failed to protect him, I’ve brought down more horrors upon him.

Maybe everyone is just trying to protect me by lying to me. I don’t care. I’m sick of people lying to me for my own good. Because really it’s mostly for their own good.

Pollux whistles a few notes of his own. The bird answers him immediately. Pollux’s face breaks into an expression of delight and he has a series of melodic exchanges with the mockingjay. My guess is it’s the first conversation he’s had in years.

So, before I actually think about what I’m doing, I sing Rue’s four notes, the ones she used to signal the end of the workday in 11. The notes that ended up as the background music to her murder. The birds don’t know that.

But between the images, we are privy to the real-life action being played out on the set. Peeta’s attempt to continue speaking. The camera knocked down to record the white tiled floor. The scuffle of boots. The impact of the blow that’s inseparable from Peeta’s cry of pain. And his blood as it splatters the tiles.

steel beams

“What were you thinking?” I give Prim an angry shake and then hug her, squashing Buttercup between us. Prim’s explanation is already on her lips. “I couldn’t leave him behind, Katniss. Not twice. You should have seen him pacing the room and howling. He’d come back to protect us.”

I knot the pearl into the corner of the parachute, bury it deep in the recesses of the bag, as if it’s Peeta’s life and no one can take it away as long as I guard it.

“Convince me,” Snow said. It seems, under that hot pink sky with Peeta’s life in limbo, I finally did. And in doing so, I gave him the weapon he needed to break me.

“How do you bear it?” Finnick looks at me in disbelief. “I don’t, Katniss! Obviously, I don’t. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there’s no relief in waking.”

“The more you can distract yourself, the better,” he says. “First thing tomorrow, we’ll get you your own rope. Until then, take mine.”

I spend the rest of the night on my mattress obsessively making knots, holding them up for Buttercup’s inspection. If one looks suspicious, he swipes it out of the air and bites it a few times to make sure it’s dead. By morning, my fingers are sore, but I’m still holding on.

The sickeningly sweet smell hits my nose, and my heart begins to hammer against my chest. So I didn’t imagine it. The rose on my dresser. Before me lies Snow’s second delivery. Long-stemmed pink and red beauties, the very flowers that decorated the set where Peeta and I performed our post-victory interview. Flowers not meant for one, but for a pair of lovers.

It’s impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this one sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta. Result in his torture. But not his death, no, nothing so merciful as that. Snow will ensure that his life is much worse than death.

Several sets of arms would embrace me. But in the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too. I reach out for him and say something like his name and he’s there, holding me and patting my back. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay, sweetheart.”

😭😭😭

The sixteen-year-old boy who won the second Quarter Quell must have had people he loved — family, friends, a sweetheart maybe — that he fought to get back to. Where are they now? How is it that until Peeta and I were thrust upon him, there was no one at all in his life? What did Snow do to them?

*shakes fists at the sky*

Making knots. Making knots. No word. Making knots. Tick-tock. This is a clock. Do not think of Gale. Do not think of Peeta. Making knots. We do not want dinner. Fingers raw and bleeding. Finnick finally gives up and assumes the hunched position he took in the arena when the jabberjays attacked. I perfect my miniature noose. The words of “The Hanging Tree” replay in my head. Gale and Peeta. Peeta and Gale.

“Finnick!” And suddenly, it’s as if there’s no one in the world but these two, crashing through space to reach each other. They collide, enfold, lose their balance, and slam against a wall, where they stay. Clinging into one being. Indivisible.

literally crying

A pang of jealousy hits me. Not for either Finnick or Annie but for their certainty. No one seeing them could doubt their love.

My lips are just forming his name when his fingers lock around my throat.