The Hunger Games Trilogy

by Suzanne Collins

I wish the tub would expand so I could go swimming, like I used to on hot summer Sundays in the woods with my father. Those days were a special treat. We would leave early in the morning and hike farther into the woods than usual to a small lake he’d found while hunting. I don’t even remember learning to swim, I was so young when he taught me. I just remember diving, turning somersaults, and paddling around. The muddy bottom of the lake beneath my toes. The smell of blossoms and greenery. Floating on my back, as I am now, staring at the blue sky while the chatter of the woods was muted by the water. He’d bag the waterfowl that nested around the shore, I’d hunt for eggs in the grasses, and we’d both dig for katniss roots, the plant for which he named me, in the shallows.