The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

Even so, I always take a moment to listen carefully for the hum that means the fence is live.

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 make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others.

“Prim, let go,” I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don’t want to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I’ll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no one that satisfaction. “Let go!”

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.

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.

Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol?

his blue eyes show the alarm I’ve seen so often in prey.

Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older brothers, I know, I’ve seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other won’t. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What I did was the radical thing.

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

particularly hated that year. Many contestants were bitten by venomous snakes or went insane from thirst.

We spent one Hunger Games watching the players freeze to death at night. You could hardly see them because they were just huddled in balls and had no wood for fires or torches or anything. It was considered very anticlimactic in the Capitol, all those quiet, bloodless deaths. Since then, there’s usually been wood to make fires.

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

I peel off my mother’s blue dress and take a hot shower. I’ve never had a shower before. It’s like being in a summer rain, only warmer.

A mockingjay. They’re funny birds and something of a slap in the face to the Capitol.

the rebels fed the Capitol endless lies, and the joke was on it. So the centers were shut down and the birds were abandoned to die off in the wild. Only they didn’t die off.

My father was particularly fond of mockingjays.

Still, there’s something comforting about the little bird. It’s like having a piece of my father with me, protecting me.

Haymitch can well be the difference between your life and your death!”

The woods became our savior, and each day I went a bit farther into its arms.

“As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.”

“Here’s some advice. Stay alive,” says Haymitch, and then bursts out laughing.

it. I realize that if I want Haymitch’s attention, this is my moment to make an impression.

My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of my eyebrows have been stripped of the stuff, leaving me like a plucked bird, ready for roasting.

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

I can’t imagine the Peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child.

I can’t stop looking at Rue, smaller than ever, a baby animal curled up in a nest of netting.

Numerous animals have lost their lives at my hands, but only one human. I hear Gale saying, “How different can it be, really?”

“I guess all those hours decorating cakes paid off.” Peeta smiles. “Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.”

“Lean down a minute first,” he says. “Need to tell you something.” I lean over and put my good ear to his lips, which tickle as he whispers. “Remember, we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.” I jerk my head back but end up laughing. “Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.”

Impulsively, I lean forward and kiss him, stopping his words. This is probably overdue anyway since he’s right, we are supposed to be madly in love.

The way she almost stopped living when he died.

“I want to go home, Peeta,” I say plaintively, like a small child. “You will. I promise,” he says, and bends over to give me a kiss.

“I remember everything about you,” says Peeta, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the one who wasn’t paying attention.” “I am now,” I say.

Who will he transform into if we make it home? This perplexing, good-natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly the whole of Panem believes him to be hopelessly in love with me, and I’ll admit it, there are moments when he makes me believe it myself? At least, we’ll be friends, I think. Nothing will change the fact that we’ve saved each other’s lives in here. And beyond that, he will always be the boy with the bread. Good friends.

Twenty-one tributes are dead, but I still have yet to kill Cato. And really, wasn’t he always the one to kill? Now it seems the other tributes were just minor obstacles, distractions, keeping us from the real battle of the Games. Cato and me.

But what was it Haymitch said when I asked if he had told Peeta the situation? That he had to pretend to be desperately in love? “Don’t have to. He’s already there.” Already thinking ahead of me in the Games again and well aware of the danger we’re in? Or . . . already desperately in love?

All I know is that the only thing keeping me on this love seat is Peeta —

Of course, the previous victors didn’t have the Capitol looking for a way to destroy them.

Oh girly, you are so wrong here lol

This year, for the first time, they tell a love story.

There’s this sort of upbeat soundtrack playing under it that makes it twice as awful because, of course, almost everyone on-screen is dead.

They play her death in full, the spearing, my failed rescue attempt, my arrow through the boy from District 1’s throat, Rue drawing her last breath in my arms. And the song. I get to sing every note of the song. Something inside me shuts down and I’m too numb to feel anything. It’s like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers. Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.

President Snow gives it a twist and it separates into two halves. He places the first around Peeta’s brow with a smile. He’s still smiling when he settles the second on my head, but his eyes, just inches from mine, are as unforgiving as a snake’s.

That it’s no good loving me because I’m never going to get married anyway and he’d just end up hating me later instead of sooner. That if I do have feelings for him, it doesn’t matter because I’ll never be able to afford the kind of love that leads to a family, to children. And how can he? How can he after what we’ve just been through?

I see Peeta extend his hand. I look at him, unsure. “One more time? For the audience?” he says. His voice isn’t angry. It’s hollow, which is worse. Already the boy with the bread is slipping away from me.