The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

I decide to keep them as reminder of who I am to the audience.

She has always been the girl on fire.

I want to see the sky and the moon on the last night that no one will be hunting me.

One . . . two . . . three . . . on and on until they reach eleven. Eleven dead in all. Thirteen left to play.

A lifetime of watching the Hunger Games lets me know that certain areas of the arena are rigged for certain attacks.

This is the nature of the tracker jacker venom, so carefully created to target the place where fear lives in your brain.

I drag myself over to the honeysuckle bush and pluck a flower. I gently pull the stamen through the blossom and set the drop of nectar on my tongue.

I've done this before too

and then I push the whole thing out of my mind because for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well together in my thoughts.

With a handful of moss, I polish the blood from my silver weapons.

So hardcore

“The Careers have two pairs. But they’ve got everything down by the lake,” Rue says. “And they’re so strong.” “We’re strong, too,” I say. “Just in a different way.”

Rue has only me.

“You blew up the food?” she whispers. “Every last bit,” I say. “You have to win,” she says.

Deep in the meadow, hidden far away A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray Forget your woes and let your troubles lay And when again it’s morning, they’ll wash away. Here it’s safe, here it’s warm Here the daisies guard you from every harm The final lines are barely audible. Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true Here is the place where I love you.

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

Slowly, one stem at a time, I decorate her body in the flowers. Covering the ugly wound. Wreathing her face. Weaving her hair with bright colors.

“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.

This bread came from District 11.

It had been meant for Rue, surely.

Sometimes when things are particularly bad, my brain will give me a happy dream.

Peeta, it turns out, has never been a danger to me.

This is the first kiss that we’re both fully aware of.

“Nice job, sweetheart,”

And when we ride up to the twelfth floor, the faces of all the tributes who will never return flash across my mind and there’s a heavy, tight place in my chest.

Haymitch had a huge fight with them over it.

But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.

but his eyes, just inches from mine, are as unforgiving as a snake’s.