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The mayor’s daughter, Madge, opens the door. She’s in my year at school. Being the mayor’s daughter, you’d expect her to be a snob, but she’s all right. She just keeps to herself. Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends, we seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at assemblies, partnering for sports activities. We rarely talk, which suits us both just fine.
“It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine. If it wasn’t reaping day. If a girl with a gold pin and no tesserae had not made what I’m sure she thought was a harmless comment.
But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make things fair.
Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still alive. Haymitch Abernathy,
“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!”
“Ladies first!” and crosses to the glass ball with the girls’ names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. 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.
One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.
He doesn’t know me really, but there’s a faint recognition there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for her father, vaporized in the mines. Does he remember that?
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.
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.
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?
The heat of the bread burned into my skin, but I clutched it tighter, clinging to life.
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.
“Really, really try. I swear it,” I say. And I know, because of Prim, I’ll have to.
Madge walks straight to me. She is not weepy or evasive, instead there’s an urgency about her tone that surprises me. “They let you wear one thing from your district in the arena. One thing to remind you of home. Will you wear this?”
“Here, I’ll put it on your dress, all right?” Madge doesn’t wait for an answer, she just leans in and fixes the bird to my dress. “Promise you’ll wear it into the arena, Katniss?” she asks. “Promise?”
“Yes,” I say. Cookies. A pin. I’m getting all kinds of gifts today. Madge gives me one more. A kiss on the cheek. Then she’s gone and I’m left thinking that maybe Madge really has been my friend all along.
and maybe there is nothing romanti...
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“Katniss, it’s just hunting. You’re the best hunter I know,” says Gale. “It’s not just hunting. They’re armed. They think,” I say. “So do you. And you’ve had more practice. Real practice,” he says. “You know how to kill.” “Not people,” I say. “How different can it be, really?” says Gale grimly. The awful thing is that if I can forget they’re people, it will be no different at all.
Except for the weekly lecture on the history of Panem. It’s mostly a lot of blather about what we owe the Capitol. I know there must be more than they’re telling us, an actual account of what happened during the rebellion. But I don’t spend much time thinking about it. Whatever the truth is, I don’t see how it will help me get food on the table.
I can handle a fork and knife. But I hate Effie Trinket’s comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers.
I began to trade at the Hob. It was frightening to enter that place without my father at my side, but people had respected him, and they accepted me.
“Here’s some advice. Stay alive,” says Haymitch,
He presses a button on the side of the table. The top splits and from below rises a second tabletop that holds our lunch. Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey. I try to imagine assembling this meal myself back home. Chickens are too expensive, but I could make do with a wild turkey. I’d need to shoot a second turkey to trade for an orange. Goat’s milk would have to substitute for cream. We can grow peas in the garden. I’d have to get wild
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For the first time, I look at him and realize that ablaze with the fake flames, he is dazzling. And I must be, too.
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. A warning bell goes off in my head. Don’t be so stupid. Peeta is planning how to kill you, I remind myself. He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likable he is, the more deadly he is. But because two can play at this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.
‘Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls!’”
“Whose idea was the hand holding?” asks Haymitch. “Cinna’s,” says Portia. “Just the perfect touch of rebellion,” says Haymitch. “Very nice.”
hear Peeta’s voice in my head. She has no idea. The effect she can have. Obviously meant to demean me. Right? But a tiny part of me wonders if this was a compliment. That he meant I was appealing in some way. It’s weird, how much he’s noticed me. Like the attention he’s paid to my hunting. And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either. The flour. The wrestling. I have kept track of the boy with the bread.
Somehow the whole thing — his skill, those inaccessible cakes, the praise of the camouflage expert — annoys me. “It’s lovely. If only you could frost someone to death,” I say. “Don’t be so superior. You can never tell what you’ll find in the arena. Say it’s actually a gigantic cake —” begins Peeta. “Say we move on,” I break in.
Rue is a small yellow flower that grows in the Meadow. Rue. Primrose.
Haymitch guffaws and we all start laughing except Effie, although even she is suppressing a smile. “Well, it serves them right. It’s their job to pay attention to you. And just because you come from District Twelve is no excuse to ignore you.” Then her eyes dart around as if she’s said something totally outrageous. “I’m sorry, but that’s what I think,” she says to no one in particular.
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 say.
The girl tribute from District 1, looking provocative in a see-through gold gown, steps up the center of the stage to join Caesar for her interview. You can tell her mentor didn’t have any trouble coming up with an angle for her. With that flowing blonde hair, emerald green eyes, her body tall and lush . . . she’s sexy all the way.
Poor girl
“Stay alive,” says Haymitch. It’s the same advice he gave us on the train, but he’s not drunk and laughing this time.
“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.”
Only 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,” says Peeta.
We follow instructions to my destination, a chamber for my preparation. In the Capitol, they call it the Launch Room. In the districts, it’s referred to as the Stockyard. The place animals go before slaughter. Everything is brand-new, I will be the first and only tribute to use this Launch Room. The arenas are historic sites, preserved after the Games. Popular destinations for Capitol residents to visit, to vacation. Go for a month, rewatch the Games, tour the catacombs, visit the sites where the deaths took place. You can even take part in reenactments. They say the food is excellent.
A grin crosses my face. Thanks for the knife, I think.
The last thing I think is it’s lucky I don’t snore. . . .
sleep apnea for the win: id be dead night 1. maybe night 2 cause i function well with no sleep but eventually it would catch up to me
What’s funny was, Prim, who’s scared of her own shadow, stayed and helped. My mother says healers are born, not made.
I reach Glimmer just as the cannon fires. The tracker jackers have vanished. This girl, so breathtakingly beautiful in her golden dress the night of the interviews, is unrecognizable. Her features eradicated, her limbs three times their normal size. The stinger lumps have begun to explode, spewing putrid green liquid around her.
thank you suzanne collins for not letting them have her
The world begins to bend in alarming ways. A butterfly balloons to the size of a house then shatters into a million stars. Trees transform to blood and splash down over my boots. Ants begin to crawl out of the blisters on my hands and I can’t shake them free. They’re climbing up my arms, my neck. Someone’s screaming, a long high-pitched scream that never breaks for breath. I have a vague idea it might be me.
It’s interesting, hearing about her life. We have so little communication with anyone outside our district. In fact, I wonder if the Gamemakers are blocking out our conversation, because even though the information seems harmless, they don’t want people in different districts to know about one another.
information is dangerous
“Really? How?” You can see the glint of excitement in her eyes. In this way, she’s exactly the opposite of Prim, for whom adventures are an ordeal.
“We sing at home. At work, too. That’s why I love your pin,” she says, pointing to the mockingjay that I’ve again forgotten about.
Unexpectedly, Rue throws her arms around me. I only hesitate a moment before I hug her back. “You be careful,” she says to me. “You, too,” I say. I turn and head back to the stream, feeling somehow worried. About Rue being killed, about Rue not being killed and the two of us being left for last, about leaving Rue alone, about leaving Prim alone back home. No, Prim has my mother and Gale and a baker who has promised she won’t go hungry. Rue has only me.
