Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)

by Suzanne Collins

There was hope that this had not been an act of madness, that in some way, if they could get the word out to other districts, an actual overthrow of the government in the Capitol might be possible. But then the ax fell. Peacekeepers began to arrive by the thousands. Hovercraft bombed the rebel strongholds into ashes. In the utter chaos that followed, it was all people could do to make it back to their homes alive. It took less than forty-eight hours to subdue the city.

“We think the people moved underground when everything on the surface was destroyed. We think they’ve managed to survive. And we think the Capitol leaves them alone because, before the Dark Days, District Thirteen’s principal industry was nuclear development.”

Mockingjays are about as rare as rocks. And about as tough. If they could survive the initial bombing of 13, they’re probably doing better than ever now.

Yes, my holding out the berries had been the spark, but I had no way to control the fire. He must have known that. So why visit my home, why order me to persuade the crowd of my love for Peeta? It was obviously a ploy to distract me and keep me from doing anything else inflammatory in the districts. And to entertain the people in the Capitol, of course. I suppose the wedding is just a necessary extension of that.

“It means we’re on your side.” That’s what Bonnie said. I have people on my side? What side? Am I unwittingly the face of the hoped-for rebellion? Has the mockingjay on my pin become a symbol of resistance? If so, my side’s not doing too well. You only have to look at what happened in 8 to know that.

But I don’t want him to go. In fact, I want him to climb in with me, to be there when the nightmares hit tonight. For some reason that I can’t quite form, I know I’m not allowed to ask that.

“Stay with me.” As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back, but I don’t quite catch it.

I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him.

She’s not in District 13 at all. Which begs the question, What is?

Spring would be a good time for an uprising, I think.

Then I get it, what it means. At least, for me. District 12 only has three existing victors to choose from. Two male. One female . . . I am going back into the arena.

Yes, victors are our strongest. They’re the ones who survived the arena and slipped the noose of poverty that strangles the rest of us. They, or should I say we, are the very embodiment of hope where there is no hope. And now twenty-three of us will be killed

While I was wallowing around on the floor of that cellar, thinking only of myself, he was here, thinking only of me. Shame isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel. “You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know,” Haymitch says.

“It’d be better if he were easier to hate.”

He is perfedctg sorry

“Tell me about it,” I say. “If I could’ve just hated him in the arena, we all wouldn’t be in this mess now. He’d be dead, and I’d be a happy little victor all by myself.” “And where would we be, Katniss?”

let the woman breathe please

Since I don’t plan on making it back alive a second time, the sooner Gale lets me go, the better.

And I’m left staring out the window, watching District 12 disappear, with all my good-byes still hanging on my lips.

Before my first Games, I promised Prim I would do everything I could to win, and now I’ve sworn to myself to do all I can to keep Peeta alive. I will never reverse this journey again.

I’d actually figured out what I wanted my last words to my loved ones to be. How best to close and lock the doors and leave them sad but safely behind. And now the Capitol has stolen that as well.

But I have a mission. No, it’s more than a mission. It’s my dying wish. Keep Peeta alive.

Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” he says. Because I can’t handle the nightmares. Not without you, I think.

Instead he pulls me in close and buries his face in my hair. Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.

He holds her hand while she dies, and all I can think of is Rue and how I was too late to save her, too.

She’s thinking perhaps that she can outlast Haymitch, who’s starting to convulse on the ground. But what she doesn’t know, and what he does, is that the ax will return. And when it flies back over the ledge, it buries itself in her head. The cannon sounds, her body is removed, and the trumpets blow to announce Haymitch’s victory.

I’ve spent all these weeks getting to know who my competitors are, without even thinking about who my teammates are. Now a new kind of confidence is lighting up inside of me, because I think I finally know who Haymitch is. And I’m beginning to know who I am. And surely, two people who have caused the Capitol so much trouble can think of a way to get Peeta home alive.

Katniss, the girl on fire, has left behind her flickering flames and bejeweled gowns and soft candlelight frocks. She is as deadly as fire itself. “I think . . . this is just what I needed to face the others,” I say. “Yes, I think your days of pink lipstick and ribbons are behind you,”

Old or young, lovely or plain, rich or very rich, he’ll keep them company and take their extravagant gifts, but he never stays, and once he’s gone he never comes back.

“You’re absolutely terrifying me in that getup. What happened to the pretty little-girl dresses?”

“I outgrew them,” I say.

“Oh, I haven’t dealt in anything as common as money for years,” says Finnick. “Then how do they pay you for the pleasure of your company?” I ask. “With secrets,”

“He offered me sugar and wanted to know all my secrets,”

“Having an eye for beauty isn’t the same thing as a weakness,” Peeta points out. “Except possibly when it comes to you.” The

I look up into those blue eyes that no amount of dramatic makeup can make truly deadly and remember how, just a year ago, I was prepared to kill him. Convinced he was trying to kill me. Now everything is reversed. I’m determined to keep him alive, knowing the cost will be my own life, but the part of me that is not so brave as I could wish is glad that it’s Peeta, not Haymitch, beside me. Our hands find each other without further discussion. Of course we will go into this as one.

We star-crossed lovers from District 12, who suffered so much and enjoyed so little the rewards of our victory, do not seek the fans’ favor, grace them with our smiles, or catch their kisses. We are unforgiving. And I love it. Getting to be myself at last.

“They’re playing with you because you’re so . . . you know.” “No, I don’t know,” I say. And I really have no idea what he’s talking about. “It’s like when you wouldn’t look at me naked in the arena even though I was half dead. You’re so . . . pure,” he says finally.

“Yeah, but . . . I mean, for the Capitol, you’re pure,” he says, clearly trying to mollify me. “For me, you’re perfect. They’re just teasing you.”

I ADORE HIM SO

Then a chill runs through me. Because I know him, too. Not from the Capitol but from years of having easy conversations in the Hob, joking over Greasy Sae’s soup, and that last day watching him lie unconscious in the square while the life bled out of Gale. Our new Avox is Darius.

What would we say, anyway? That we’re sorry for the other’s lot? That we ache for the other’s pain? That we’re glad we had the chance to know each other? No, Darius shouldn’t be glad he knew me.

For just one moment our hands meet. I can feel his skin, rough under the buttery sauce from the dish. In the tight, desperate clench of our fingers are all the words we will never be able to say.

“I’m not sure. I just wanted to hold them accountable, if only for a moment,” says Peeta. “For killing that little girl.”

Because when Peeta and I each pull a twelve, we make Hunger Games history. No one feels like celebrating, though.

But while I know I’ll never leave that arena alive, I’m still holding on to the hope that Peeta will. After all, he didn’t pull out those berries, I did. No one has ever doubted that Peeta’s defiance was motivated by love. So maybe President Snow will prefer keeping him alive, crushed and heartbroken, as a living warning to others.

If I can make it clear that I’m still defying the Capitol right up to the end, the Capitol will have killed me . . . but not my spirit. What better way to give hope to the rebels?

The beauty of this idea is that my decision to keep Peeta alive at the expense of my own life is itself an act of defiance. A refusal to play the Hunger Games by the Capitol’s rules.

Because I will be more valuable dead. They can turn me into some kind of martyr for the cause and paint my face on banners, and it will do more to rally people than anything I could do if I was living. But Peeta would be more valuable alive, and tragic, because he will be able to turn his pain into words that will transform people.

“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peeta replies.

“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says.

Usually this sort of comment, the kind that hints of his undying love for me, makes me feel guilty and awful. But I feel so warm and relaxed and beyond worrying about a future I’ll never have, I just let the word slip out. “Okay.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Then you’ll allow it?” “I’ll allow it,” I say.

didn’t think you’d want to miss it,” he says. “Thanks,” I say. Because I can count on my fingers the number of sunsets I have left, and I don’t want to miss any of them.