The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)

by Suzanne Collins

“Is your whole family gone?” asked Coriolanus. “I have a couple of cousins. And the rest of the Covey.” She leaned in to check the paper. “Is there a space for them?” There wasn’t. But there should be, he thought, given how fractured families were by the war. There should be a place for anyone who cared for you at all. In fact, maybe that should be the question to start with: Who cares about you? Or even better, Who can you count on?

“Not that one. A mockingjay’s a bona fide bird,” she assured him. “And it sings in your show?” he asked. “Not my show, sweetheart. Yours. The Capitol’s anyway,” said Lucy Gray. “I think we’re up.”

It’s one thing to speak of humans’ essential nature theoretically, another to consider it when a fist is smashing into your mouth.