Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

He understands I don’t want anyone with me today. Not even him. Some walks you have to take alone.

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

“No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion,”

“You could snare them maybe,” Gale says. His face takes on that distant look it wears when he’s working something out. “Take a net with a very fine mesh. Enclose an area and leave a mouth of a couple square feet. Bait the inside with nectar flowers. While they’re feeding, snap the mouth shut. They’d fly away from the noise but only encounter the far side of the net.” “Would

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.

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

Thank goodness Peeta had the wherewithal to warn us.” The wherewithal. A general term that somehow includes everything that was needed for him to sound the alarm. The knowledge, the opportunity, the courage.

“How do you bear it?” Finnick looks at me in disbelief. “I don’t, Katniss! Obviously, I don’t. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there’s no relief in waking.” Something in my expression stops him. “Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.” Well,

“Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.” Well,

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.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I say. “I know,” he says. “All I can think of is — what he’s going to do to Peeta — because I’m the Mockingjay!” I get out. “I know.” Haymitch’s arm tightens around me.

“Katniss, I know this whole thing with Peeta is terrible for you. But remember, Snow worked on him for weeks, and we’ve only had him for a few days. There’s a chance that the old Peeta, the one who loves you, is still inside. Trying to get back to you. Don’t give up on him.” I

Cato . . . and he killed Thresh . . . and he killed Clove . . . and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. 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.

Morphling dulls the extremes of all emotions, so instead of a stab of sorrow, I merely feel emptiness.

about a place called Rome,” he explains. “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.”

“What do you think, Peeta?” I finally ask him. “I think . . . you still have no idea. The effect you can have.” He slides his cuffs up the support and pushes himself to a sitting position. “None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow.”

“Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can’t survive without.”

Closing my eyes doesn’t help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness.

Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes would expedite the war. But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen.

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this

That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.

So after, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.”