Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)

by Suzanne Collins

Yes, it’s great to have allies as long as you can ignore the thought that you’ll have to kill them.

But the only thing that distracts me from my current situation is fantasizing about killing President Snow. Not very pretty daydreams for a seventeen-year-old girl, I guess, but very satisfying.

that’s when I notice it. The silence. Our canary has stopped singing.

what Peeta can do so much better than the rest of us. He can use words. He obliterated the rest of the field at both interviews. And maybe it’s because of that underlying goodness that he can move a crowd — no, a country — to his side with the turn of a simple sentence. I remember thinking that was the gift the leader of our revolution should have.

I run wildly in the direction of the voice, heedless of danger, ripping through vines and branches, through anything that keeps me from reaching her. From reaching my little sister.

I waver, thinking of how Peeta can make anyone believe anything.

“Of course Peeta’s right. The whole country adores Katniss’s little sister. If they really killed her like this, they’d probably have an uprising on their hands,” says Johanna flatly. “Don’t want that, do they?” She throws back her head and shouts, “Whole country in rebellion? Wouldn’t want anything like that!”

So that’s who Finnick loves, I think. Not his string of fancy lovers in the Capitol. But a poor, mad girl back home.

“Because I don’t want you forgetting how different our circumstances are. If you die, and I live, there’s no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You’re my whole life,” he says. “I would never be happy again.” I start to object but he puts a finger to my lips. “It’s different for you. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard. But there are other people who’d make your life worth living.”

To let me know I shouldn’t ever have doubts about it. Everything. That’s what Peeta wants me to take from him.

And that’s how I know that none of this is part of the Games. That he is telling me the truth about what he feels.

“No one really needs me,” he says, and there’s no self-pity in his voice. It’s true his family doesn’t need him. They will mourn him, as will a handful of friends. But they will get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on. I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me. “I do,” I say. “I need you.”

I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more.

The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

Where Peeta’s child could be safe.

crack up, remembering that’s how a clueless Effie Trinket presented us to the people of the Capitol last year, before anyone knew us. As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.

For the few remaining hours of my life I will keep it close. This last gift from Peeta. The only one I can really accept. Perhaps it will give me strength in the final moments.

I have the pearl, though, secured in a parachute with the spile and the medicine at my waist. I hope it makes it back to District 12. Surely my mother and Prim will know to return it to Peeta before they bury my body.

Enemy. Enemy. The word is tugging at a recent memory. Pulling it into the present. The look on Haymitch’s face. “Katniss, when you’re in the arena . . .” The scowl, the misgiving. “What?” I hear my own voice tighten as I bristle at some unspoken accusation. “You just remember who the enemy is,” Haymitch says. “That’s all.”

Why would I need reminding? I have always known who the enemy is. Who starves and tortures and kills us in the arena. Who will soon kill everyone I love.

My bow tilts up at the wavering square, the flaw, the . . . what did he call it that day? The chink in the armor. I let the arrow fly, see it hit its mark and vanish, pulling the thread of gold behind it. My hair stands on end and the lightning strikes the tree.

I can’t reach Peeta. I can’t even reach my pearl. My eyes strain to capture one last image of beauty to take with me. Right before the explosions begin, I find a star.

I’m sorry, Peeta, I think. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. Save him? More likely I stole his last chance at life, condemned him, by destroying the force field. Maybe, if we had all played by the rules, they might have let him live.

“So it’s you and a syringe against the Capitol? See, this is why no one lets you make the plans.”

It’s an awful lot to take in, this elaborate plan in which I was a piece, just as I was meant to be a piece in the Hunger Games. Used without consent, without knowledge. At least in the Hunger Games, I knew I was being played with.

“For the same reason the rest of us agreed to die to keep you alive,”

“We had to save you because you’re the mockingjay, Katniss,” says Plutarch. “While you live, the revolution lives.”

I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol’s plans. The symbol of the rebellion.

Maybe I’m already going crazy and no one has the heart to tell me. I feel crazy enough.

Do I really want him dead? What I want . . . what I want is to have him back. But I’ll never get him back now. Even if the rebel forces could somehow overthrow the Capitol, you can be sure President Snow’s last act would be to cut Peeta’s throat. No. I will never get him back. So then dead is best.

Does he think he has a chance of surviving? Does he even care if he does? He wasn’t planning on it, anyway. He had already signed off on life. Maybe, if he knows I was rescued, he’s even happy. Feels he fulfilled his mission to keep me alive. I think I hate him even more than I do Haymitch.

They can pump whatever they want into my arm, but it takes more than that to keep a person going once she’s lost the will to live.

It’s enough to die of spite. To punish Haymitch, who, of all the people in this rotting world, has turned Peeta and me into pieces in his Games. I trusted him. I put what was precious in Haymitch’s hands. And he has betrayed me.

That’s true. No one in their right mind would let me make the plans. Because I obviously can’t tell a friend from an enemy.

“Don’t,” I whisper. But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. “Katniss, there is no District Twelve.”