Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)

by Suzanne Collins

No way to control the outcome of the reaping or what follows it. So don’t feed the nightmares. Don’t let yourself panic. Don’t give the Capitol that. They’ve taken enough already.

I have to agree and, though I’m not a drinker myself, I’m glad to get the bottle.

You’d think the son of a washerwoman would be harmless enough, but we Abernathys were known rebels back in the day,

She wasn’t one of Burdock’s Everdeen cousins, but I knew he had some distant ones on his ma’s side.

Dove color: Warm gray with a slight purplish or pinkish tint. Her color. Her bird. Her name.

I scan the Meadow. It’s secluded, but we all know there are eyes everywhere. And eyes generally come with a pair of ears.

Because the reaping’s going to happen no matter what I believe. Sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.”

“And that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.”

She isn’t crying, so Plutarch won’t get his tearful good-bye. Not from her and not from me. They will not use our tears for their entertainment.

“You’re the man of the house now. If you were some other kid, I’d be worried, but I know you can handle it.” Sid starts to shake his head. “You’re twice as smart as me and ten times as brave. You can do this. Okay? Okay?”

I think he’s missed a lot of trouble down here on earth, because he’s always studying the sky.

I’m entirely the Capitol’s plaything. They will use me for their entertainment and then kill me, and the truth will have no say in it.

happy playthings are easier to handle than raging ones.

he gave them pure gold pins that had belonged to his mother. They’d been fashioned by Tam Amber over thirty years ago. I never saw them, but Merrilee’s featured a hummingbird and Maysilee’s a mockingjay, birds being one of the Covey’s great loves. Apparently, Merrilee wore hers all of five minutes before she lost it down a well. Maysilee threw a fit over hers, saying a mockingjay was an ugly old thing and why couldn’t Tam Amber melt it down and make her something pretty like a butterfly? When he declined, she stuffed the pin in the back of a drawer and never wore it once.

“You might not want me, but it’s a sure bet you need me.”

“In every way, you are a thousand times better than anybody in the Capitol. You are loved better, raised better, and a whole lot better company. You are the best ally I could ever hope for. Okay, sweetheart?”

You are on a high horse, mister. And someday someone will knock you off it straight into your grave.

Her body’s not even cold, and he’s reduced her to a number. But she was not a number, she was a little girl I met on the day she was born when Mr. McCoy, his face alight with joy, held her up at the window for all us kids to see.

Back home, she isn’t popular, she’s known. She’s not respected, she’s feared. Not deferred to, but avoided.

I think about how many people spent their lives building this place, how many died before its completion, so that the Heavensbees could have somewhere to hang their pictures.

Each book’s as precious as a person, she says, as it preserves someone’s thoughts and feelings long after they’re gone.

“It’s called nepenthe,” says Plutarch. “You probably haven’t heard of it.” You’d be wrong there, Plutarch. Not only have I heard of it, I know it from the poem that gave my love her name. I’m tired of being patronized, so I decide to put him in his place. “You mean, like ‘Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe . . .’ ?” Plutarch’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He completes the line. “‘. . . and forget this lost Lenore!’ ”

She said quaff means to drink, usually something with alcohol. And the guy telling the story in the song is trying to stop thinking about how he lost his true love.

At least the Trinkets aren’t mean, just clueless,

Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn’t have to be so terrifying. That’s on people, not the world.

They needed a place to be together, to raise their voices. Sometimes the hurt’s too bad to bear alone.”

“We will be together always,” I say with conviction. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know where, I don’t know anything, but I feel that in my heart. You and me, we will find each other, as many times as it takes.”

“You should know that, despite appearances, a desire for freedom is not limited to the districts.”

“Well, if you’re going to drag the potatoes into it, how can I say no?”

I just stare into those burning blue eyes, letting her know she’s not dying alone. She’s with family. She’s with me.

A sister is someone you fight with and fight for. Tooth and nail.

Proserpina wasn’t born evil; she just had a lot of unlearning to do.

Those thirty-one allies I boasted of to the Head Gamemaker? I can feel every one of them at my back.

The raven. The unforgiving songbird. Repeatedly reminding me of President Snow’s crystal-clear message to me on my homecoming. That I will never get to love anyone ever again. Nevermore. Because he will make sure they end up dying a horrible death.

“We do want you. You shook up the Capitol, both figuratively and literally, with that earthquake. 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?”

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.

the walls of a person’s heart are not impregnable, not if they have ever known love.