Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

Yesterday afternoon, as the door was closing behind me, I heard Coin say, “I told you we should have rescued the boy first.” Meaning Peeta. I couldn’t agree more. He would’ve been an excellent mouthpiece.

I know that Finnick can’t focus on anything in 13 because he’s trying so hard to see what’s happening in the Capitol to Annie, the mad girl from his district who’s the only person on earth he loves.

And it takes too much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.

“Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?” says Peeta. “It costs everything you are.”

“Katniss blew it out, Peeta,” says Caesar. “You’ve seen the footage.” “She didn’t know what she was doing.

“Really? And was it part of her plan for Johanna to nearly kill her? For that electric shock to paralyze her? To trigger the bombing?” He’s yelling now. “She didn’t know, Caesar! Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive!”

Behind me, I can hear the accusations against Peeta building. The words traitor, liar, and enemy bounce off the walls.

“Why do you think he said it?” “He might have been tortured. Or persuaded. My guess is he made some kind of deal to protect you. He’d put forth the idea of the cease-fire if Snow let him present you as a confused pregnant girl who had no idea what was going on when she was taken prisoner by the rebels. This way, if the districts lose, there’s still a chance of leniency for you. If you play it right.” I must still look perplexed because Gale delivers the next line very slowly. “Katniss . . . he’s still trying to keep you alive.”

The Games are still on. We have left the arena, but since Peeta and I weren’t killed, his last wish to preserve my life still stands.

“I’m going to be the Mockingjay.”

My mockingjay pin. Peeta’s token, the gold locket with photos of my mother and Prim and Gale inside. A silver parachute that holds a spile for tapping trees, and the pearl Peeta gave me a few hours before I blew out the force field.

I feel around for the parachute and slide my fingers inside until they close around the pearl. I sit back on my bed cross-legged and find myself rubbing the smooth iridescent surface of the pearl back and forth against my lips. For some reason, it’s soothing. A cool kiss from the giver himself.

“Cinna,” I whisper. “Yes. He made me promise not to show you this book until you’d decided to be the Mockingjay on your own.

On the final page, under a sketch of my mockingjay pin, Cinna’s written, I’m still betting on you.

In other words, I step out of line and we’re all dead.

“Katniss, she’s running this district. She can’t do it if it seems like she’s caving in to your will.” “You mean she can’t stand any dissent, even if it’s fair,” I’d countered. “I mean you put her in a bad position. Making her give Peeta and the others immunity when we don’t even know what sort of damage they might cause,” Gale had said.

“I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?” he asks. “No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion,” I tell him. But this just makes him laugh. I have to let it go. There’s no point in trying to dictate what Gale thinks.

It’s amazing, really, how long I have survived the cameras. The credit for that, of course, goes to Peeta. Alone, I can’t be the Mockingjay.

“Wash her face,” says Dalton. Everyone turns to him. “She’s still a girl and you made her look thirty-five. Feels wrong. Like something the Capitol would do.”

“Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” I decide to go ahead and like Boggs.

Frankly, our ancestors don’t seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars and the broken planet. Clearly, they didn’t care about what would happen to the people who came after them. But this republic idea sounds like an improvement over our current government.

As a stricken man clutches my face between his hands, I send a silent thank-you to Dalton for suggesting I wash off the makeup. How ridiculous, how perverse I would feel presenting that painted Capitol mask to these people. The damage, the fatigue, the imperfections. That’s how they recognize me, why I belong to them.

You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?”

“Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”

IF WE BURN YOU BURN WITH US

“Katniss . . . how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you . . . in Thirteen . . .” He inhales sharply, as if fighting for air; his eyes look insane. “Dead by morning!”

But between the images, we are privy to the real-life action being played out on the set. Peeta’s attempt to continue speaking. The camera knocked down to record the white tiled floor. The scuffle of boots. The impact of the blow that’s inseparable from Peeta’s cry of pain. And his blood as it splatters the tiles.

“Katniss, I don’t think President Snow will kill Peeta,” she says. Of course, she says this; it’s what she thinks will calm me. But her next words come as a surprise. “If he does, he won’t have anyone left you want. He won’t have any way to hurt you.”

After your first Games, I thought the whole romance was an act on your part. We all expected you’d continue that strategy. But it wasn’t until Peeta hit the force field and nearly died that I —” Finnick hesitates.

“That you what?” “That I knew I’d misjudged you. That you do love him. I’m not saying in what way. Maybe you don’t know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him,” he says gently.

And Snow’s got Peeta. Gale can think whatever he wants.

Prim, I think. And Gale. They were in the bunker only a couple of minutes before the first missile hit. Peeta might have saved them. Add their names to the list of things I can never stop owing him for.

Today I might lose both of them.

“Do you want me to have them sedate you until it’s over?” asks Haymitch. He’s not joking. This is a man who spent his adult life at the bottom of a bottle, trying to anesthetize himself against the Capitol’s crimes. The sixteen-year-old boy who won the second Quarter Quell must have had people he loved — family, friends, a sweetheart maybe — that he fought to get back to.

“President Snow used to . . . sell me . . . my body, that is,” Finnick begins in a flat, removed tone. “I wasn’t the only one. If a victor is considered desirable, the president gives them as a reward or allows people to buy them for an exorbitant amount of money. If you refuse, he kills someone you love. So you do it.”

Finnick was someone bought and sold. A district slave. A handsome one, certainly, but in reality, harmless. Who would he tell? And who would believe him if he did? But some secrets are too delicious not to share.

At some point, Gale and Beetee left the wilderness behind and focused on more human impulses. Like compassion. A bomb explodes. Time is allowed for people to rush to the aid of the wounded. Then a second, more powerful bomb kills them as well.

“So anything goes?” They both stare at me — Beetee with doubt, Gale with hostility.

Sometimes when I’m alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena.

His intent, his full intent, becomes clear. Gale has no interest in preserving the lives of those in the Nut. No interest in caging the prey for later use. This is one of his death traps.

Peeta. On the rooftop the night before our first Hunger Games. He understood it all before we’d even set foot in the arena. I hope he’s watching now, that he remembers that night as it happened, and maybe forgives me when I die.

All those months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly. And I hate him for it.

“Yeah, a lot of things should count for something that don’t seem to, Katniss. I’ve got some memories I can’t make sense of, and I don’t think the Capitol touched them. A lot of nights on the train, for instance,” he says.

“I told you he hated me,” I say. “It’s the way he hates you. It’s so . . . familiar. I used to feel like that,” he admits. “When I’d watch you kissing him on the screen. Only I knew I wasn’t being entirely fair. He can’t see that.”

“He started arguing with himself like he was two people. The guards had to take him away.

And suddenly, I realize what the military will think my biggest weakness is. From my first moment in the Games, when I ran for that orange backpack, to the firefight in 8, to my impulsive race across the square in 2. I cannot take orders.

Finnick’s fingers caress a steady red glow over a doorway. “Ladies and gentlemen . . .” His voice is quiet, but mine rings through the room. “Let the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games begin!”

Maybe they do. But if Coin sent Peeta here, she’s decided something else as well. That I’m of more use to her dead than alive.

“Here’s as much as I know. The president doesn’t like you. She never did. It was Peeta she wanted rescued from the arena, but no one else agreed. It made matters worse when you forced her to give the other victors immunity. But even that could be overlooked in view of how well you’ve performed.”

“She doesn’t need you as a rallying point now. As she said, your primary objective, to unite the districts, has succeeded,” Boggs reminds me. “These current propos could be done without you. There’s only one last thing you could do to add fire to the rebellion.” “Die,” I say quietly. “Yes. Give us a martyr to fight for,” says Boggs. “But that’s not going to happen under my watch, Soldier Everdeen. I’m planning for you to have a long life.”