The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

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

“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. Just as we did in District Thirteen.”

“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!”

Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? I’ll never know because just as he’s opening his mouth to continue, Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.

Oh Haymitch. What an introduction.

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

This worked very well for a girl, Johanna Mason, from District 7 a few years back.

Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.

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

And some small gnarled place inside me hated her for her weakness, for her neglect, for the months she had put us through.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?

He lets out a sigh of relief. “It works.”

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

I remember how strongly they responded to his confession. Star-crossed lovers. Haymitch is right, they eat that stuff up in the Capitol. Suddenly I’m worried that I didn’t react properly.

After dinner, we watch the replay in the sitting room. I seem frilly and shallow, twirling and giggling in my dress, although the others assure me I am charming.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!”

Peeta smiles. “Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.”