The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

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

The sight of him waiting there brings on a smile. Gale says I never smile except in the woods.

We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits.

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

I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. “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.

To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. 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.

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.

For a moment, I yearn for something . . . the idea of us leaving the district . . . making our way in the woods . . . but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have volunteered for Prim?

Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day.

Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.

Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who still polished my father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam.

It didn’t occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me.

To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed.

Besides, it isn’t in my nature to go down without a fight, even when things seem insurmountable.

Obviously Haymitch isn’t much, but Effie Trinket is right about one thing, once we’re in the arena he’s all we’ve got.

“I tripped?” Haymitch asks. “Smells bad.” He wipes his hand on his nose, smearing his face with vomit.

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.

Prim forgave her, but I had taken a step back from my mother, put up a wall to protect myself from needing her, and nothing was ever the same between us again. Now I was going to die without that ever being set right. I thought of how I had yelled at her today in the Justice Building. I had told her I loved her, too, though. So maybe it would all balance out.

The thought of that scruffy old Buttercup posting himself on the bed to watch over Prim comforts me. If she cries, he will nose his way into her arms and curl up there until she calms down and falls asleep.

One time, my mother told me that I always eat like I’ll never see food again. And I said, “I won’t unless I bring it home.” That shut her up.

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.

“Excellent! You almost look like a human being now!” says Flavius, and they all laugh.

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.

It’s not until we enter the City Circle that I realize I must have completely stopped the circulation in Peeta’s hand. That’s how tightly I’ve been holding it. I look down at our linked fingers as I loosen my grasp, but he regains his grip on me. “No, don’t let go of me,” he says. The firelight flickers off his blue eyes. “Please. I might fall out of this thing.”

I realize I’m still glued to Peeta and force my stiff fingers to open. We both massage our hands. “Thanks for keeping hold of me. I was getting a little shaky there,” says Peeta. “It didn’t show,” I tell him. “I’m sure no one noticed.” “I’m sure they didn’t notice anything but you. You should wear flames more often,” he says. “They suit you.” And then he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.

Perhaps the girl doesn’t even remember me. But I know she does. You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.

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!” bursts out Peeta.

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

Suddenly I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don’t even have the decency to pay attention to me.

Being out in the woods with Gale . . . sometimes I was actually happy.

I call him my friend, but in the last year it’s seemed too casual a word for what Gale is to me.

I just . . . I just miss him. And I hate being so alone. Does he miss me? He must.

They’re already taking my future! They can’t have the things that mattered to me in the past!”

You’ve got about as much charm as a dead slug,”

Only . . . I want to die as myself.

“I don’t want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not.”

Stupid people are dangerous.

My mother says healers are born, not made.