Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games)

by Suzanne Collins

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.

You can take several things from me — my ma, my brother, my love — that are the only things worth keeping.

Are the sweet moments of my previous life, always taken for granted before the Games, once more in reach? Can there be happiness again for a miserable wretch like myself?

“Let me go with them. Please!” But they don’t, they hold on to me tight. I lie there, sobbing, begging, calling for Ma and Sid, until no more sounds come out.

We’ll do what can be done.

We all started in with the water. But the pump’s slow and your cistern’s dry.” I’m the reason that cistern’s dry. Running off the morning of reaping day, leaving the chores to Sid. “My fault,” I mumble.

“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.

“Hung himself yesterday when his boy returned. Couldn’t bear the shame.” A Booker Boy’s death.

When I’m pure like a dove, When I’ve learned how to love, Right here in The old therebefore, When nothing Is left anymore.

As my eyes sweep the crowd, I see person after person press the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and then extend it to their dead. Our way of saying good-bye to those we cherished. I follow suit, raising my hand high, because I have so many to honor.

The shards of my heart shift and drive into my lungs, making breathing an agony.

“I can’t stop it. You know I can’t stop it.”

Oh, no. Don’t leave me with that. Don’t leave me at all.

And I don’t check the bag. I never check the bag. Why can’t I remember to check the bag?

I will never get to love anyone ever again. Nevermore. Because he will make sure they end up dying a horrible death. And so, I drive away anyone and everyone who could ever have been considered dear to me.

Blair finally acknowledges the truth of my position, gives me one final hug and leaves sobbing. Even then, Burdock insists on showing up, sometimes along with Asterid, who bears bottles of sleep syrup. Defiant. Deaf to my pleas. I resort to throwing rocks, hard, at them. It takes one hitting Asterid on the forehead, blood pouring down her perfect face, to finally get them to leave me alone. Hurting her that way feels worse than anything I did in the arena.

I have never really been alone before,

He has not forgiven me, will never, but is not beyond pity. Perhaps because he knows what it is to love.

I tell her everything and beg her to return to me, to wait for me, to forgive me for all the ways in which I have failed.

I ask her to free me from my final promise. I ask her to let me come to her now. I ask her for a sign.

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

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.

Trying to forget is my full-time job now.

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

“How is it you’re looking so well, Plutarch? Wiress and Mags were tortured, right? And I’m guessing Beetee’s dead.” “Beetee’s too valuable to kill.”

“I 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.

You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”

we need someone exactly like you.” “Just luckier?” I say. “Luckier, or with better timing.

“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’m nobody’s idea of a hero, Haymitch. But at least I’m still in the game.”

Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore!

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.

When Lenore Dove comes to me now, she’s not angry or dying, so I think she’s forgiven me.

I fulfilled my promise about the reaping, or at least lent a hand, but she says I can’t come to her yet. I have to look after my family.

Tough and smart, her hair in two braids then, reminding me for all the world of Louella McCoy, my sweetheart of old.

I didn’t want to let them in, her and Peeta, but the walls of a person’s heart are not impregnable, not if they have ever known love.

What use? What point? To relive all the loss.

I finally told our story.

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.

Lenore Dove likes it best there, and I’m content where she’s content. Like the geese, we really did mate for life.

I’m not sure I’ll be here in the old therebefore much longer.

When my time comes, it comes, but I’ve no idea when that will be.

The Capitol can never take Lenore Dove from me again. They never really did in the first place. Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping, and she is the most precious thing I’ve ever known. When I tell her that, she always says, “I love you like all-fire.” And I reply, “I love you like all-fire, too.”