Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

Outside of Prim, my mother, and Gale, how many people in the world love me unconditionally?

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. To make myself put a name to the thing I’ve lost. But what’s the use? It’s gone. He’s gone. Whatever existed between us is gone. All that’s left is my promise to kill Snow. I tell myself this ten times a day.

CRYING

I didn’t tell him his presence would make it even more difficult for me to mourn Peeta.

“What’d you think?” I ask. “Something selfish,” says Gale. “That you don’t have to be jealous of him anymore?” My fingers give a yank, and a cloud of feathers floats down around us. “No. Just the opposite.” Gale pulls a feather out of my hair. “I thought . . . I’ll never compete with that. No matter how much pain I’m in.” He spins the feather between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t stand a chance if he doesn’t get better. You’ll never be able to let him go. You’ll always feel wrong about being with me.”

Can he like not say one of the millions of stupid thoughts that come to his head?

So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for all the kisses I’ve withheld, and because it doesn’t matter anymore, and because I’m so desperately lonely I can’t stand it.

“Then it’s like kissing someone who’s drunk. It doesn’t count,” he says with a weak attempt at a laugh. He scoops up a pile of kindling and drops it in my empty arms, returning me to myself.

“Take Peeta. Take me. Or even Finnick. I was starting to worry he had his eye on you, but he seems back on track now.”

BRUHHHHHHH

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.

Gale said things like this and worse. But then they were just words. Here, put into practice, they become deeds that can never be reversed.

“I would sacrifice a few, yes, to take out the rest of them,” he replies. “And if I were a spy in there, I’d say, ‘Bring on the avalanches!’ ”

Waiting for me to collect her as I’d promised I would if the sirens ever sounded.

a light snow dusted the earth.

Stone conquers people every time.

couldn’t, Haymitch. He never heard me sing that song.”

Peeta was small, probably six or seven, but he remembered it because he was specially listening to see if the birds stopped singing,” says Haymitch. “Guess they did.”

I miss him so badly it hurts.

I get this girly

I wish Peeta was here — the old Peeta — because he would be able to articulate why it is so wrong to be exchanging fire when people, any people, are trying to claw their way out of the mountain. Or is my own history making me too sensitive? Aren’t we at war? Isn’t this just another way to kill our enemies?

But I’m tired of being a piece in their Games.” 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.

“Always.” In the twilight of morphling, Peeta whispers the word and I go searching for him. It’s a gauzy, violet-tinted world, with no hard edges, and many places to hide. I push through cloud banks, follow faint tracks, catch the scent of cinnamon, of dill. Once I feel his hand on my cheek and try to trap it, but it dissolves like mist through my fingers.

But some part of my brain had trapped his single word of reply and let it swim up through my dreams to taunt me now. “Always.”

A hollow of dead brush where flowers used to bloom.

“You think I’m heartless.” “I know you’re not. But I won’t tell you it’s okay,” I say. Now he draws back, almost impatiently. “Katniss, what difference is there, really, between crushing our enemy in a mine or blowing them out of the sky with one of Beetee’s arrows? The result is the same.”

“Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

“Oh, no, Katniss. Not your wedding. Finnick and Annie’s. All you need to do is show up and pretend to be happy for them.”

As surely as the embroidery stitches in Annie’s gown were done by Cinna’s hand, the frosted flowers on the cake were done by Peeta’s.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Never was I supposed to hear the words He says he’d like to see you. But now that I have, there’s no way to refuse.

“You’re not very big, are you? Or particularly pretty?”

DAMN

“Katniss. I remember about the bread.” The bread. Our one moment of real connection before the Hunger Games.

You looked away. And then . . . for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion.”

“I must have loved you a lot.”

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.

Ok fair tho

That’s good. I’m going to need an ally.

Finnick’s real charms of self-effacing humor and an easygoing nature are on display for the first time. He never lets go of Annie’s hand. Not when they walk, not when they eat. I doubt he ever plans to.

and remind them it’s not a mistake to go on living.

Watching me. I choke momentarily as the gravy bread sticks in my throat.

“Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the Capitol. We’re very familiar with each other’s screams.”

OH

The open distrust of Finnick, the implication that Peeta has his eye on Annie, that Annie could desert Finnick, that I do not even exist.

“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.”

SHUT UPPP

Roses. Wolf mutts. Tributes. Frosted dolphins. Friends. Mockingjays. Stylists. Me. Everything screams in my dreams tonight.

His voice is quiet, but mine rings through the room. “Let the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games begin!”

“This time Snow will be a player, too.”

A token of the boy with the bread.

The following evening, the newest member of our squad arrives. With no manacles. No guards. Strolling out of the train station with his gun swinging from the strap over his shoulder. There’s shock, confusion, resistance, but 451 is stamped on the back of Peeta’s hand in fresh ink. Boggs relieves him of his weapon and goes to make a call.

That I’m of more use to her dead than alive.

“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.”

“Because you’ve earned it,”

“You do! You’re punishing him over and over for things that are out of his control.

He would be trying to get me back at any cost.

I don’t know how to find him, let alone lead him out. I can’t even conceive of a plan. It makes the task of crossing a loaded arena, locating Snow, and putting a bullet through his head look like child’s play.

“These last couple of years must have been exhausting for you. Trying to decide whether to kill me or not. Back and forth. Back and forth.”