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

by Suzanne Collins

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.

That’s when I see Lenore Dove. She’s up on a ridge, her red dress plastered to her body, one hand clutching the bag of gumdrops. As the train passes, she tilts her head back and wails her loss and rage into the wind. And even though it guts me, even though I smash my fists into the glass until they bruise, I’m grateful for her final gift. That she’s denied Plutarch the chance to broadcast our farewell. The moment our hearts shattered? It belongs to us.

Pain stabs my chest, and I wonder if a person’s heart can really break. Probably. The word brokenhearted had to come from somewhere. I imagine my heart busted into a dozen glassy red pieces, their hard, jagged edges stabbing into my flesh at every beat. It may not be scientific, but it matches what I feel. Part of me thinks I will die right now, bleeding out on the inside. But it isn’t going to be that simple.

It’s all been taken away. My love, my home, my ma, my sweet little brother . . .

In fifty years, we’ve only had one victor, and that was a long time ago. A girl who no one seems to know anything about. Back then, barely anyone in 12 had a television, so the Games were mostly hearsay. I’ve never seen her in the clips of the old shows, but then those early efforts are rarely featured, as they are said to be badly filmed and lacking in spectacle. My parents weren’t born yet, and even Mamaw couldn’t tell me much about the girl. I brought our victor up with Lenore Dove a few times, but she never wanted to discuss her.

“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?”

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. A terrible, dark grief begins to well up inside me, threatening to drown me, but I force it back down. Swallow the sadness, clamp a lid on it, dam it up. They will not use my tears for their entertainment.

“I want to remind people I’m here because the Capitol won the war and thinks that, fifty years later, this is a fair way to punish the districts. But I’d like them to consider that fifty years is enough.”