The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

“District Twelve. Where you can starve to death in safety,”

Gale says I never smile except in the woods.

I watch as Gale pulls out his knife and slices the bread. He could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes. But we’re not related, at least not closely. Most of the families who work the mines resemble one another this way.

I try to forgive her for my father’s sake. But to be honest, I’m not the forgiving type.

How could I leave Prim, who is the only person in the world I’m certain I love?

“It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,”

Her clothes from her past are very precious to her.

“Tuck your tail in, little duck,” I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.

Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you.

Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still alive.

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!”

The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I’m feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me. Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not me. It’s Primrose Everdeen.

So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong. Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don’t expect it because I don’t think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim’s place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

People deal with me, but they are genuinely fond of Prim.

I immediately wonder if this will be his strategy in the Games. To appear weak and frightened, to reassure the other tributes that he is no competition at all, and then come out fighting. This worked very well for a girl, Johanna Mason, from District 7 a few years back. She seemed like such a sniveling, cowardly fool that no one bothered about her until there were only a handful of contestants left. It turned out she could kill viciously. Pretty clever, the way she played it.

A kind Peeta Mellark is far more dangerous to me than an unkind one. Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.

It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.”

All of the pieces are still fitting together, but I sense he has a plan forming. He hasn’t accepted his death. He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill me.

I stand there, completely naked, as the three circle me, wielding tweezers to remove any last bits of hair. I know I should be embarrassed, but they’re so unlike people that I’m no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds were pecking around my feet.

It’s hard to hate my prep team. They’re such total idiots. And yet, in an odd way, I know they’re sincerely trying to help me.

“Katniss, the girl who was on fire.”

It crosses my mind that Cinna’s calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.

No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire.

“Whose idea was the hand holding?” asks Haymitch. “Cinna’s,” says Portia. “Just the perfect touch of rebellion,” says Haymitch. “Very nice.”

You know what my mother said to me when she came to say good-bye, as if to cheer me up, she says maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner. Then I realized, she didn’t mean me, she meant you!”

“She has no idea. The effect she can have.”

“Thank you for your consideration,” I say. Then I give a slight bow and walk straight toward the exit without being dismissed.

I can’t help comparing what I have with Gale to what I’m pretending to have with Peeta. How I never question Gale’s motives while I do nothing but doubt the latter’s.

They want to know about you, Katniss.” “But I don’t want them to! They’re already taking my future! They can’t have the things that mattered to me in the past!”

“I don’t think it’s going to work out. Winning . . . won’t help in my case,” says Peeta. “Why ever not?” says Caesar, mystified. Peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. “Because . . . because . . . she came here with me.”

The more anxious I am to find sleep, the more it eludes me.

“I don’t know how to say it exactly. Only . . . I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense?” he asks. I shake my head. How could he die as anyone but himself? “I don’t want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not.”

I keep wishing I could think of a way to . . . to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games,”

remember this. I’m not allowed to bet, but if I could, my money would be on you.”

This is an okay place to die, I think.

Somewhere, in a cool and spotless room, a Gamemaker sits at a set of controls, fingers on the triggers that could end my life in a second.

My mother says healers are born, not made.

Destroying things is much easier than making them.”

Let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin, Cato, I think. Let them begin for real.

She just has time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.

I do know a few songs. Believe it or not, there was once music in my house, too. Music I helped make.

The song that comes to me is a simple lullaby, one we sing fretful, hungry babies to sleep with. It’s old, very old I think. Made up long ago in our hills. What my music teacher calls a mountain air. But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece of time we call today.

It’s the Capitol I hate, for doing this to all of us.

remember who the real enemy is.

“Bye, Rue,” I whisper. I press the three middle fingers of my left hand against my lips and hold them out in her direction. Then I walk away without looking back.

Another mockingjay, a young one by the look of it, lands on a branch before me and bursts out Rue’s melody. My song, the hovercraft, were too unfamiliar for this novice to pick up, but it has mastered her handful of notes. The ones that mean she’s safe. “Good and safe,” I say as I pass under its branch. “We don’t have to worry about her now.” Good and safe.

I lift my face and step into the last falling rays of sunlight. “My thanks to the people of District Eleven,” I say. I want them to know I know where it came from. That the full value of their gift has been recognized.

I will die, in my own small way, undefeated.