The Hunger Games Trilogy

by Suzanne Collins

Gale and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other’s survival means our own death. How do you sidestep that?

As I try to avoid looking at his family, I learn that his name was Marvel. How did I never know that? I suppose that before the Games I didn’t pay attention, and afterward I didn’t want to know.

I really can’t think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite.

I have a mission. No, it’s more than a mission. It’s my dying wish. Keep Peeta alive. And as unlikely as it seems that I can achieve it in the face of the Capitol’s anger, it’s important that I be at the top of my game. This won’t happen if I’m mourning for everyone I love back home. Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.

I find a partial container of bloodred berry juice that will serve my needs. The flesh-colored fabric of the dummy’s skin makes a good, absorbent canvas. I carefully finger paint the words on its body, concealing them from view. Then I step away quickly to watch the reaction on the Gamemakers’ faces as they read the name on the dummy. SENECA CRANE.

By the time the anthem plays its final strains, all twenty-four of us stand in one unbroken line in what must be the first public show of unity among the districts since the Dark Days. You can see the realization of this as the screens begin to pop into blackness. It’s too late, though. In the confusion they didn’t cut us off in time. Everyone has seen.

“Katniss, when you’re in the arena,” he begins. Then he pauses. He’s scowling in a way that makes me sure I’ve already disappointed him. “What?” I ask defensively. “You just remember who the enemy is,” Haymitch tells me. “That’s all. Now go on. Get out of here.”

But I guess I had hoped people might show some . . . what? Restraint? Reluctance, at least. Before they jumped right into massacre mode. And you all knew each other, I think. You acted like friends.

I try rubbing my hand across my belly, hoping some sympathetic pregnant woman will become my sponsor and Haymitch can send in some water. No luck. I sink to the ground.

Real

musty stink of the monkeys.

I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me.

I look coolly into the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent, the person who would keep me alive at his own expense. And I promise myself I will defeat his plan.

The citizens of District 12 had no organized resistance movement of their own. No say in any of this. They only had the misfortune to have me.

It’s not wondering what I breathe in, but who, that threatens to choke me.

Boggs’s

It’s automatic. Shutting Prim and my mother out of things to shield them.

She’s really gone, then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail, the one who needed help reaching the dishes, and who begged to see the frosted cakes in the bakery window. Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.

Ughhhhhhhh such a good paragraPh

I feel the kind of relief that follows an actual solution.

Too good

For instance, if you don’t finish something and want to save it for later, you can’t take it from the dining hall.

Sounds familiar !

“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.

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

Sure girl

I’m not blaming you, Katniss. It’s just that very few people are born with camera-ready faces. Like him.” She snags Gale, who’s in a conversation with Plutarch, and spins him toward us. “Isn’t he handsome?” Gale does look striking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both, given our history. I’m trying to think of a witty comeback, when Boggs says brusquely, “Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” I decide to go ahead and like Boggs.

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.

Yup

“They’re targeting the hospital!” “Not your problem,” says Plutarch firmly. “Get to the bunker.”

Bro this is too on the nose

The more people who gather, the stronger the fumes are. My stomach turns and the lights suddenly seem too bright.

Most relatable passage ive ever read perhap

Fulvia’s studio approach was such a flop.

PLEEK KUNTY KATNISS VJKCFHKGF

Haymitch is giving me a deadly smile and saying sweetly, “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to lose our little Mockingjay when she’s finally begun to sing.”

But the truth is, I don’t trust the rebels or Plutarch or Coin.

Me neither girl

I used to think the murderer was the creepiest guy imaginable. Now, with a couple of trips to the Hunger Games under my belt, I decide not to judge him without knowing more details.

The glue of mutual need that bonded us so tightly together for all those years is melting away.

“I knew you’d kiss me.” “How?” I say. Because I didn’t know myself. “Because I’m in pain,” he says. “That’s the only way I get your attention.” He picks up the box. “Don’t worry, Katniss. It’ll pass.” He leaves before I can answer.

Nice guys finish last hmph!

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.

Maybe I’m even having a heart attack, but it doesn’t seem worth mentioning.

Me

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.

“Katniss, I know this whole thing with Peeta is terrible for you. But remember, Snow worked on him for weeks, and we’ve only had him for a few days. There’s a chance that the old Peeta, the one who loves you, is still inside. Trying to get back to you. Don’t give up on him.” I look at my little sister and think how she has inherited the best qualities our family has to offer: my mother’s healing hands, my father’s level head, and my fight. There’s something else there as well, something entirely her own. An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.

Not only does he hate me and want to kill me, he no longer believes I’m human. It was less painful being strangled.

Despite what I feel for Peeta, this is when I accept deep down that he’ll never come back to me. Or I’ll never go back to him. I’ll stay in 2 until it falls, go to the Capitol and kill Snow, and then die for my trouble. And he’ll die insane and hating me. So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for all the kisses I’ve withheld, and because it doesn’t matter anymore, and because I’m so desperately lonely I can’t stand it.

I cant

All those months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly. And I hate him for it.

If a spat with Delly can reduce him to arguing with himself, he’s got no business learning how to assemble a gun.

Youd think...

My squad. I’m not only in, I get to work under Boggs. With my friends. I force myself to take calm, soldierly steps to join them, instead of jumping up and down.

If you’d been taken by the Capitol, and hijacked, and then tried to kill Peeta, is this the way he would be treating you?” demands Haymitch. I fall silent. It isn’t. It isn’t how he would be treating me at all. He would be trying to get me back at any cost. Not shutting me out, abandoning me, greeting me with hostility at every turn.

But since Peeta’s greatest confusion centers around me — and not everything can be explained simply — our exchanges are painful and loaded, even though we touch on only the most superficial of details. The color of my dress in 7. My preference for cheese buns. The name of our math teacher when we were little. Reconstructing his memory of me is excruciating. Perhaps it isn’t even possible after what Snow did to him. But it does feel right to help him try.

Underground. Which I hate. Like mines and tunnels and 13. Underground, where I dread dying, which is stupid because even if I die aboveground, the next thing they’ll do is bury me underground anyway.

We’re halfway down the first tunnel when I realize what was so remarkable about the exchange. Peeta sounded like his old self, the one who could always think of the right thing to say when nobody else could. Ironic, encouraging, a little funny, but not at anyone’s expense. I glance back at him as he trudges along under his guards, Gale and Jackson, his eyes fixed on the ground, his shoulders hunched forward. So dispirited. But for a moment, he was really here.

Slowly, as I would with a wounded animal, my hand stretches out and brushes a wave of hair from his forehead. He freezes at my touch, but doesn’t recoil. So I continue to gently smooth back his hair. It’s the first time I have voluntarily touched him since the last arena. “You’re still trying to protect me. Real or not real,” he whispers. “Real,” I answer. It seems to require more explanation. “Because that’s what you and I do. Protect each other.” After a minute or so, he drifts off to sleep.

Im gnna frow up

As one yanks back his head to take the death bite, something bizarre happens. It’s as if I’m Finnick, watching images of my life flash by. The mast of a boat, a silver parachute, Mags laughing, a pink sky, Beetee’s trident, Annie in her wedding dress, waves breaking over rocks. Then it’s over.

It’s a long shot, it’s suicide maybe, but I do the only thing I can think of. I lean in and kiss Peeta full on the mouth. His whole body starts shuddering, but I keep my lips pressed to his until I have to come up for air. My hands slide up his wrists to clasp his. “Don’t let him take you from me.” Peeta’s panting hard as he fights the nightmares raging in his head. “No. I don’t want to . . .” I clench his hands to the point of pain. “Stay with me.”

Tigris’s furry stock,

Tigris gives a throaty cackle. “No one knows what to do with you, girlie.”

“That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her.” “Well, we never have,” Gale says. They both laugh. It’s so strange to hear them talking like this. Almost like friends. Which they’re not. Never have been. Although they’re not exactly enemies. “She loves you, you know,” says Peeta. “She as good as told me after they whipped you.” “Don’t believe it,” Gale answers. “The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell . . . well, she never kissed me like that.”