Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games)

by Suzanne Collins

“What did you do?” I hiss. Silka makes an effort to focus on me. She holds up Wellie’s head defensively. “She attacked me.” Now I notice the poison dart hanging harmlessly from Silka’s blousy sleeve.

“Oh, you’re not going home, Silka.” I pull the ax from my belt. We’re neither of us going home. I will kill her, and Snow will kill me. These Games will have no victor.

Ax to ax, we go at it. I wish I could claim greater speed or strength, but we’re fairly matched.

Well, I may not be trained, Miss Silka, but I bet I’ve spent more time wielding an ax than you have,

“Haymitch. Haymitch Abernathy. You are to stop all activity immediately.”

A cannon fires. No victor’s crown for you, Silka. Just the claw. Listen, those trumpets must be for me.

A moment of relief as I spot my old friend, the gray rabbit from the arena. My dove in the coal mine, who warned of danger, who led me from the maze. Has it come to save me once again? Help me. Can you help me? The green eyes stare unblinking from the tank. It presses into the glass. Why does it tremble so? From the shadows, something strikes. A six-foot snake swallows up my ally.

I start shaking as hard as the rabbit. Harder. Awaiting my snake. Please send the snake and end this.

Gingerly, I wiggle my fingers and toes. All the tubes and restraints have vanished, but a pump identical to Lou Lou’s has sunk its teeth deep into my chest, defying me to remove it.

Oh, Lenore Dove, what have I done to you? How will you pay for my surviving the Hunger Games? I lose it, smashing a chair into the window, shattering glass onto a table

A pair of heavily armed Peacekeepers has materialized, their rifles trained on me. Behind them, my prep team huddles and would likely flee if Effie Trinket didn’t have a firm grip on their grooming belts.

My delivery of milk from Snow has evaporated. As I run through the woods, they’ve added the sound of Wellie screaming, which didn’t happen. I appear to have finally remembered that I belong to a wider alliance so I’m going to the rescue, when the cannon sounds and I come upon Silka, Wellie’s head in hand.

Their lack of discernment transforms the recap, validating it as truth. I hope those in the districts can still see it as the piece of propaganda it is, but no telling what they’ve been fed.

The camera pulls back slowly as they carry me away, for the first time revealing the arena as a whole. It looks like a giant eye. The Cornucopia marks the pupil. The wide circle of spring-green meadow makes up the iris. On either side, the darker green of the forest and mountain terrain narrows to points, forming the whites of the eye. Well, the symbolism has been lost on no one. Even the little kids in the Seam know the Capitol powers are watching us.

The after-party’s held in the ballroom of the presidential mansion. I’m displayed in a giant golden birdcage that dangles from the main chandelier at about eye level.

He’s moved on, leaving me to dissect those horrible words. Never released. That was a lie, theirs or possibly hers. A gift she gave me so I wouldn’t worry about her, only myself. And it worked. But now I know that she has been absolutely helpless, completely at their mercy, this whole time while I sabotaged their arena. Confined. Starved. Tortured. Raped. Murdered. I grip the golden bars, petrified, as the words I’ve been refusing to consider pound in my brain.

“Why aren’t we moving?” I ask. “Been waiting for your friends,” he replies, with a nod to the window, then goes. My friends? I have no friends here. Does he mean my team? I look out the window of my cell. Three carts are being rolled down the platform. Each carries a plain wooden box. After a momentary confusion, I put it together. They are coffins. Louella, Maysilee, and Wyatt will be riding home with me. I thought them long buried, peacefully resting in their family plots on the hill in District 12. Instead, we will finish this journey together.

Does the Capitol always send the fallen back with the victor? Or is this a parting gift for me in particular?

Maybe Lenore Dove and I will hang together. Could be easier to find her then, in that next world of hers.

I take the glow up ahead for the sunrise, until I realize it’s too local, too bright. A whiff of smoke drifts through the heavy, humid air. Fire. But not coal fire.

Any house can catch fire. What with rusted stoves and unwatched hobs. Maybe it’s not mine. I know it’s mine.

Outside, a plain pine box awaits. “They had hold of each other,” Mr. McCoy says. “Thought we’d let them stay that way.” Ma and Sid clinging to each other for eternity.

I go home before I remember I have no home. Just a pile of blackened beams and a pump.

Snow would have no cause to target her if I was dead or gone. The right thing to do is take off on my own and leave her to lead her life.

“You came back,” she says, tears streaming, but happy tears. “You came back to me. In this world!” “And you managed not to get hung!” I crow back.

I can’t leave her. She’ll want to run away with me, and I’ll let her. We’ll figure out a way to live. Because I don’t think either of us can live without the other.

Then I notice the gumdrops. Not a variety of colors. Not a rainbow. They’re all a deep bloodred. I remember Snow’s rose, his final words to me, and the pieces fall into place. “Spit it out!”

And so, I drive away anyone and everyone who could ever have been considered dear to me. Old neighbors. Hattie. Customers. Schoolmates.

The world goes silent. I see no one. I have never really been alone before, always with my family. Or my friends. Or my love.

A small, secret graveyard with beautifully carved headstones. Covey. Each marked only with a snippet of their name poems.

Full of surprises. Full of secrets, even from me. But Maysilee had put it together. Orange paint on her fingernails. This is Lenore Dove’s work. Her sign. Her message to me now. Her reminder that I must prevent another sunrise on the reaping. And it says, “You promised me.” With that, she condemns me to life.

It’s Effie Trinket who finds me thus, the morning of the Victory Tour. I come to, startled, to discover she’s taken possession of my knife. “I’m so sorry about your family’s accident, Haymitch. And then your girl’s appendicitis right after? Tragic. But this just won’t do. We have a responsibility to carry on.”

A different train than I rode before. Fancier. Lots of steel and chrome. Dove-colored velvet upholstery, lest I forget. Trying to forget is my full-time job now.

Effie does her best to keep me sober, but the train’s loaded with booze.

“Respite and nepenthe,” I mutter into my bottle. Plutarch yanks it from my hand. “Listen, Haymitch, we don’t have long. This attic is the only spot in the entire Justice Building that isn’t bugged.”

I’m guessing Beetee’s dead.” “Beetee’s too valuable to kill.” “I thought he’d have killed himself.” “He can’t. His wife’s pregnant. Besides, he wouldn’t let Ampert down that way.” “Oh, I see. He’s going to overthrow the Capitol, is he?” “Maybe one day. But we can’t any of us do it alone. You demonstrated a lot of nerve and intelligence in that arena. We need your help.” “Me?” I say in disbelief.

am living proof that the Capitol always wins. I tried to keep that sun from rising on another reaping day, I tried to change things, and now everybody’s dead.

“All right there, Haymitch?” “I have nothing to live for.” I say this without even a note of self-pity. I am simply stating a fact. “Then you have nothing to lose. That puts you in a position of power.”

I make no plans, have no hopes, keep no company, speak to no human being except old Bascom Pie when my nepenthe runs low. But I can’t say I have no future, because I know that every year for my birthday, I will get a new pair of tributes, one girl and one boy, to mentor to their deaths. Another sunrise on the reaping.

I first saw the girl at the Hob when she was just a baby. Burdock was so proud of her, he toted her around everywhere. After he died in that mine explosion, she started coming alone, trading the odd squirrel or rabbit.

Tough and smart, her hair in two braids then, reminding me for all the world of Louella McCoy, my sweetheart of old. And after she volunteered for the Games, that nickname couldn’t help but slip out.

She’s not an easy person; she’s like me, Peeta always says. But she was smarter than me, or luckier. She’s the one who finally kept that sun from rising.