Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

What am I going to do?

and it becomes 18:00 — Cat Adoration.

“You’re alive,” I whisper, pressing my palms against my cheeks, feeling the smile that’s so wide it must look like a grimace.

A cool kiss from the giver himself.

She’s really gone, then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail, the one who needed help reaching the dishes, and who begged to see the frosted cakes in the bakery window.

that the whole thing has been an act.

But it seems a televised rebel has her own standards to live up to.

“Look at the courage Peeta just displayed!” It’s all I can do not to slap him.

bury it deep in the recesses of the bag, as if it’s Peeta’s life and no one can take it away as long as I guard it.

Peeta, the thing I want so badly to secure, is the light.

“Do you want me to have them sedate you until it’s over?”

For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me . . . no one could do that.

Snow has stolen him from me,

Programmed to murder me.

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.

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

Then he says, “I saw Peeta yesterday. Through the glass.”

“Something selfish,” says Gale.

Non maos meme la tu fais le vieux gars????

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.

I hear that old note of gentleness in his voice that I thought was gone forever.

Actually, Katniss isn’t complaining because she has no intention of staying with the “Star Squad,” but she recognizes the necessity of getting to the Capitol before carrying out any plan.

If you’d been taken by the Capitol, and hijacked, and then tried to kill Peeta, is this the way he would be treating you?”

“You and me, we made a deal to try and save him. Remember?”

“You’re still trying to protect me. Real or not real,” he whispers. “Real,” I answer. It seems to require more explanation. “Because that’s what you and I do. Protect each other.”

“Don’t let him take you from me.”

“I think . . . you still have no idea. The effect you can have.”

I don’t know why his voice reaches me when no one else’s can.

All the times these arms were my only refuge from the world.

I don’t know why, but this hurts me in a way Haymitch rarely can.

Those same blue eyes that used to meet mine and then flit away at school.