Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I wake up to the sound of a songbird perched in the apple tree outside my open window. The pale blue light of predawn filters through the window of the room I share with my two older brothers. Rolling onto my side, I see that the oldest of them, Bannock, is already up and getting dressed, pulling a faded red shirt over his head. We look just alike, the three of us: the same ashy blonde curls, cornflower blue eyes, and broad shoulders. Only Bannock’s a bit taller than Rye and me. He sees me watching him and gestures with his head towards the door.

“C’mon, Peeta. Pa’s going to need all the help he can get today.”

I sit up and stretch, glancing up towards the place where my other brother sleeps in the bunk above me. “What about Rye?” I whisper. “You think we ought to wake him?”

“Naw, let him sleep. It's gonna be a hard day for him. He's useless in the kitchen, anyway.”

That's true enough. All three of us have been helping our parents in the bakery since we could walk, but Rye never enjoyed the work like I did or felt the weight and responsibility of the future of the business like Bannock. He can mix and knead like the rest of us, but he lacks the patience and finesse required of a baker.

I dress quickly in the faded trousers and simple white shirt I usually wear for baking, then lace up my boots, knotting the laces twice. In the hallway, I tiptoe past my parents’ bedroom door, wincing as the floorboards creak beneath my feet. Downstairs, Bannock and Pa are already hard at work. I grab my apron off a hook near the kitchen door and tie it around my waist. “What are the specials today, Pa?” I ask.

“Braided loaves and blackberry tarts,” he answers. “Oh, and Peeta, I was hoping to get out a couple of cakes and some iced sugar cookies. People tend to be in a festive mood after the reaping.”

As long as their kid isn't the one who's been reaped, I think darkly, but I don't say anything as I gather the ingredients for the cookies. I'll whip them up first so they can bake and cool while I ice the cakes.

Today is reaping day, one of our busiest days of the year. It's a holiday, so the coal miners and most everyone else has the day off. The only people working today will be Peacekeepers and merchants like us. Shortly before two o'clock, the town square just outside our front doors will fill up with every man, woman, and child in the district. Attendance is mandatory and enforced by Peacekeeper if necessary—not that anyone would ever risk missing it. After the reaping, everyone in the district is meant to celebrate the holiday, although this isn’t strictly enforced like attendance at the ceremony is. Many families celebrate anyway, though; most of them will be so relieved that their children made it through another year that they’ll splurge on something a bit more expensive than their usual fare. Today, we’ll want to make sure our window display is extra festive since there will be Capitol camera crews and government officials staying in town overnight. They'll all have more money to spare than even some of the wealthiest citizens of the district.

I finish rolling out the cookie dough and cut rounds out, laying them carefully on a cast iron pan before putting them in the oven under a row of beautifully rising braided loaves of bread. My father must have been up for a half hour at least for the ovens to already be this hot.

I move to our ice box and take out the cake layers I baked yesterday. I notice that we are running low on ice and frown, wondering if the iceman is going to come by this morning or if I’ll have to make a stop by his place tonight after the reaping. If we run out of ice, our eggs and buttermilk won’t keep long. If only we had a fancy refrigerator like the ones in the Capitol—it would be pretty useless here, though, since the district is lucky to have more than two or three hours of electricity a day. Most families here still use oil lamps to light their homes and coal to heat them.

As I whisk together icing sugar and milk, I mull over what kind of design I should decorate the cakes with. I pull out a small sketchpad I keep in my apron pocket, a luxury allowed by my parents since I use it to brainstorm designs for the bakery, and flip through it until an image catches my eye; a sketch of dusky pink flower buds growing tightly together in a clump, each bud burst open in the shape of a tiny star. I showed Lobelia Bailey, whose parents run a seed and gardening shop in town, the sketch after I drew it, and she told me the flower was called a Swamp Milkweed, which I thought was an unfortunate name for such a beautiful flower.

I set to work first covering the entire cake in a plain layer of white frosting, then carefully mix up two other bowls of frosting, adding food dye drop by drop until the colors are exactly right. Finally, I'm satisfied, and I load up an icing bag with the pink color and set to work piping out the flowers. I go into a kind of trance when decorating cakes, losing myself in the shapes and colors, but today, I’m pulled out of it by the sound of a knock on the back door.

We all pause and look up at each other. “Early today, isn’t she?” Bannock says. “The sun’s not even over the horizon yet.”

I hold my breath as my father wipes his flour-covered hands on his apron and moves to open the door. There are only a few people in town who use our back door. Will it be her?

Disappointment floods through me when I hear the deep voice on the other side of the door. “Mornin’, Mr. Mellark. Sorry for calling on you so early—thought I’d try and catch you before your missus was up. I found this squirrel in one of my snares this morning and wondered if you might be willing to trade. I’m goin’ hunting early today and fancied a couple of biscuits for my breakfast if you’ve got any ready.”

The boy standing in the doorframe is tall and lean, with olive skin and straight black hair hanging almost to his shoulders. He’s got the look of many people living in the part of the district closest to the coal mine entrances. ‘The Seam,’ as it is called by us in 12, is made up entirely of company houses, really no more than hovels, assigned to the families of those working in the mines. A lucky few own their homes, but most have the monthly rent taken out of their already meager paychecks.

My father takes the offered squirrel and inspects it, but I know this is just for show. He’ll take any game offered by the few folk from the Seam that hunt and trap. He likes having a chance to help them out, and they don’t ask too much for it. We can rarely afford butcher meat. We raise a few pigs a year for my aunt Rooba, the only butcher in 12, but most of that meat is traded to other merchants for things we need, like the tailor and cobbler. Mother is always going on about the cost of keeping three teenage boys in shoes and clothes. I offered once, a little too innocently, to go to school naked and barefoot to help out the family and earned a smack upside the head for my trouble.

“Hey there, Hawthorne,” Bannock says, wiping off his hands and leaning against the door frame. He's only a little older than Gale Hawthorne and in the same year in school, though I don’t think they’re close. Like most of the coal miners' kids, he mostly hangs around other kids from the Seam. “Feeling ready for the reaping today?”

Gale shrugs. “As ready as I can be. Still gotta go and catch dinner for my family tonight. Lots of mouths to feed. Yourself?”

“I’m out this year, finally—just turned nineteen a couple of weeks ago. Still got my two little brothers to worry about, though,” he says, tilting his head towards where I stand at the counter, still frozen in place with my icing bag suspended above the cake. Gale’s gray eyes meet mine, and I can see the derision in them. He must be thinking about how very different the odds of our names being read at the reaping are.

Everyone’s name is added to the reaping balls once a year from the time they turn twelve, but families have the option to enter their children’s names more times in exchange for tesserae, rations of grain and oil delivered on the Capitol train once a month. Since many of the families in the Seam live on the edge of starvation, it is usually them taking out tesserae, which means the odds of a poor kid from the Seam being reaped is much higher than someone like me. It’s just one of the many cruel methods the Capitol uses to keep us in the districts at each other’s throats, pulling each other down like crabs in a bucket.

“Well, good luck to your family,” Gale says, a slight edge to his voice.

My father looks at him, his eyes sad. “You’ve got younger siblings, don’t you?”

“Yessir. Three.”

“And you support them all on your own?”

Gale stares at him for a moment, his eyes a little suspicious, like my father is trying to catch him out or something. “My mother does some washing for other families in the Seam. But it’s mostly my hunting and trading that keeps us,” he answers reluctantly.

A family of five, and him the main breadwinner. That must mean he’s taken out dozens of tesserae over the years. His odds aren’t looking great.

My father crosses to the oven and removes one of the beautifully braided loaves of bread. He carries the hot loaf over to Gale on a peel and beckons with his head at his game bag. Gale’s eyes go wide with surprise—this is in no way an equal trade for one squirrel. “Sir, are you sure—”

“Take it. For your family.”

Gale eagerly opens his game bag, and my father tilts the peel to let the bread slide in. “Thank you, Mr. Mellark.”

My father, never a man of many words, just nods. “Good luck today, boy.” He shuts the door and pulls a knife from the pocket of his apron, quickly skinning and cleaning the squirrel with the ease of habit.

Bannock resumes his work on the biscuits, scooping up spoonfuls of dough and dropping them onto a sheet pan. “Better not let Ma find out what you gave him for that.”

Pa ignores him and starts frying up the squirrel in a pan. I fill a kettle with water and place it on the stove next to him for the tea. Soon enough, the sizzle of grease and the smell of frying meat fills the bakery kitchen. Pa divides up the meat onto three plates alongside yesterday’s stale biscuits, and Bannock and I both pause our work for a minute to wolf down breakfast. This is our little tradition: baking bread before dawn, sharing stale biscuits for breakfast, and, occasionally, when someone stops by to trade, squirrel meat. I tear my biscuit into pieces and dip them in my mug of tea; it makes the dry bread slide down my throat a little easier.

After breakfast, we continue baking for the next hour in companionable silence, turning the lamps down as the sun slowly rises over the horizon and the rays slant through the bakery windows. My first cake is finished: two tiers of white buttercream covered in delicate swamp milkweed blossoms surrounded by long green leaves. I’ve just started frosting the cookies when my mother comes downstairs.

My shoulders tense up as she walks over to me, inspecting the newly finished cake. She used to decorate the cakes before I got older and discovered I had a talent for it. She knits her eyebrows together, eyeing the design critically. “What’s that flower supposed to be?” She asks.

“It’s milkweed,” I reply. “I see them growing along the fence line. Pretty, aren’t they?”

She makes a little scoffing noise and moves on without responding to me, but I can hear her mutter under her breath, said just loud enough so I can hear: “Always putting weeds and wildflowers on everything . . . why he can’t stick to the traditional designs is beyond me . . .”

I ignore her. It’s reaping day, so I know why she's in a foul mood—fear always sets her on edge.

She pauses in the middle of pulling out the flour can and looks around sharply. “Where’s Rye?” She tries to stare down first me, then Bannock, but we both avoid her gaze, eyes cast down on our work. Then she rounds on my father. “That boy isn’t still up in bed, is he?”

My father’s voice is soft, placating. “I just thought we ought to let him sleep while he can. It’s a difficult day—”

“Oh, a difficult day for him? And what about the rest of us? What about me, who has to sit there and watch and hope my boys’ names don't get called at the reaping? But we’re all up, we’re all working. None of us gets the luxury of sleeping in!”

Technically you did, I think, but I know better than to say it out loud.

My mother stomps up the stairs, muttering, “I’ll show him a difficult day.” My father stares after her unhappily, but he doesn’t interfere.

From downstairs, we can hear the sound of the bedroom door banging open, of Rye’s groggy voice. “Ma? What—” and the smack and corresponding yelp of pain. And then the screaming match begins.

“What the hell was that for? I haven’t done anything!”

“That’s just right! You haven’t done anything! Meanwhile, your father and your brothers have been slaving away in the kitchen for over an hour! What did I ever do to make you turn out so rotten? How did I raise such a lazy son? You know, I’m this close to turning you out of this house. I don’t care if you do have one more year of school. If you can’t contribute to this family, you’re dead weight!”

They go at it for a while, back and forth. My father keeps working. I used to feel sorry for him, being married to my mother. Then, for a while, I hated him. I hated him for his inaction, for never stepping in to protect us from her, or even to stand up for himself. Then I got older, bigger. Bigger and stronger than her, and capable of intervening myself if I had a mind to. But I never do. None of us do. We take our licks when her wrath is turned on us, and we stay out of the way when someone else is on the receiving end. So how can I blame him anymore?

Eventually, Rye stalks down the stairs past us and straight out the back door. My mother comes down a moment later and gets to work kneading, but her hands are shaking. The rest of us continue working in silence, but it’s no longer comfortable.

I finish up the cookies and move on to my second cake—roses this time. Red, yellow, and pink, circled around the edge of the cake, carefully piped on top. It’s well past sunrise now, around nine in the morning, and my brother and parents are finished with most of the baking and are currently arranging the shelves in the shop. We can only open up for an hour or two this morning before we’ll have to close shop for a while in observance of the holiday, but we will need every customer we can get in those hours. I carry over my cake and set it next to the first one. My mother looks at it, but she doesn’t say anything.

Taking off my apron, I look over at Pa. “Anything else you need this morning?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers, “there’s a new shipment of flour that came in on the train last night. Will you run down to the station and pick it up?”

I nod, eager to escape the mood inside the bakery. Rye never came in after feeding the pigs and must have run off with his friends. He’ll pay for it later, I’m sure. Maybe he’s counting on Mother’s mood improving after the reaping is over.

Outside of our front door, the square is quiet but not completely empty. A stage has been constructed in front of the crumbling brick façade of the Justice Building. Crews of workers hired for the day are hanging up garish signs on several of the storefronts, proclaiming things like “Happy Hunger Games!” and “May the Odds be Ever in your Favor!” The bakery storefront now sports an aquamarine banner with fuschia letters that reads “Glory! Honor! Sacrifice!”

I stare at the sign for a moment, my jaw clenched. What a joke. The Games are not a chance for glory or honor. They’re just an opportunity for the Capitol to remind us of what we really are: slaves. It’s not a real sacrifice because it’s not our choice. Our lives belong to the Capitol, and our deaths do too. The reaping is a demonstration of our complete and utter helplessness; they can, and will, take anything they want from us, and there’s nothing any of us can do to stop them. Because after all, the entire thing is a reminder of what happened the last time the districts tried to rebel. A reminder of our failure.

I’m pulled out of these thoughts by the sound of a bright voice saying, “Hey there, Peeta!” I turn, and I can't help but smile. Down a few doors, Delly Cartwright stands in front of her family’s shoe shop wearing a frilly pink dress, her hair curled in tight ringlets and tied up with a lacy bow. She’s my age, and we grew up together; she's almost like a sister to me. She skips over to me and peers in the bakery window behind me. “Let’s see your cakes today. Ooh! Peeta, they’re gorgeous!”

“Thanks, Delly.” I shake my head a bit in amazement. Not even the reaping can put a damper on her mood; always the optimist, Delly. “You look real pretty today—you’re dressed for the reaping early though, aren’t you?”

She grins. “Thanks! Ma and Pa thought I needed a new dress for it this year, and I was just so excited to put it on I couldn’t wait. We don’t get too many opportunities to look nice, do we? Wish we were dressing up for a dance instead of the reaping, though. Aren’t you going to get dressed up?”

“I’ve got to go and pick up a delivery at the train station first—it’s so hot out, I’d sweat through my nice clothes by the time I get back home. I’ll clean up and change once I’m finished.” Though still morning, the July sun reflects brightly off the paving stones of the square.

Delly frowns. “I wish your parents wouldn’t work you so hard today, of all days. It doesn’t seem right.”

“Peeta! Delly!” We both turn and look across the square, where a group of our friends stands in the shaded front porch of the tailor shop across the way. Levi, Ira, and Clementine. We all grew up here together, playing in the square since we were toddlers. I glance at the handcart waiting for me in the tiny alley between the bakery and the sweet shop, but I decide to follow Delly over to join them. A little delay won’t hurt any, and I want a chance to see my friends before the reaping.

“Nice dress, Delly,” drawls Ira. “You look even more like a pig than usual.”

‘Oh, you be quiet, Ira!” Delly slaps his arm.

“Don’t listen to him, Delly—he’s just mad that his parents haven’t bought him new pants even though his are at least three inches above his ankle at this point,” Clementine says.

I try to head off the bickering before they can pick up steam. “Well, you’ll all look nicer than me today, that’s for sure. My reaping pants are hand-me-downs that went through both my brothers, and Rye tore at least three holes in them when it was his turn.”

They laugh. “Do you and Rye want to join us tonight, Peeta?" asks Levi. "We’re playing poker.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you still have two coins to rub together. Didn’t I clean you out good last time?”

Levi scowls while the others laugh. “That’s why I need you there; got to get my money back.”

“Give it up, Levi, you’ll never beat Peeta at poker,” Clementine teases. She smiles at me. “You should come though, Peeta. Lobelia will be there.”

My gut squirms. Lobelia grew up with us all too, living above her parents’ shop in the square, and we’ve been friends since before we could walk. Last year, though, our relationship changed when she grabbed my arm as we were walking home from school one day and planted a kiss on me. I’d been surprised, never having noticed her changing feelings, and I couldn’t say I’d had any thoughts about her that way, but kissing her back had felt like the right thing to do at the time. After that, we’d spent quite a few moonlit nights sneaking out after dark, kissing in her parents’ back garden. But my heart hadn’t really been in it, and I was getting ready to cool things off when she opened my sketchbook up one day while we were relaxing under the apple tree behind my house. Inside, she found flowers, yes, but also sketch after sketch of a girl—a long dark braid, a head leaning against a fist while in class, a side profile, a pair of intense gray eyes ringed in thick, dark lashes. Lobelia had cried, then yelled. I apologized, but I couldn’t explain myself. Everything was over after that.

“Maybe I’d better not.”

“Oh, come on, Peeta!” Delly pleads. “I hate that we can't all hang out together anymore. I’m sure if you just say sorry about whatever it is that happened, she’ll give you a second chance.”

Well, that’s my cue to end the conversation. I can’t very well tell them I don’t want a second chance, not without inviting a barrage of questions that I'd rather not answer. “I’ll see you all at two,” I wave and back away, ignoring their protests and knowing I can’t put off my errand any longer. I duck under the handle of my family's handcart and get on my way down the half-mile road to the train station.

When I arrive, the tribute train is already waiting in the station. I feel a pit of dread in my stomach at the sight of it. It’s sleek and covered in smooth steel and glass, much fancier than the usual coal cars that can be heard barreling through the district at any hour of the day or night, but I don’t find it beautiful. It looks unnatural and cold, like something that shouldn't exist.

The station attendant, a middle-aged man named Clyde, looks up at my approach. “Oh, Peeta—I’ve been expecting one of you Mellark boys to drop by. Here to pick up the order for your father? I’ll unlock the storehouse.”

I haul the bags of flour and sugar from the storehouse into the handcart. Sweat beads on my brow as the sun rises still higher in the sky, and soon my shirt sticks to my back and the hair on my forehead is soaked. Finally, I’m finished loading the cart, and I start for home, breathing hard as I pull the load behind me along the hard-packed dirt road.

I’m halfway back to the square when I see them. Gale Hawthorne, the boy who sold the squirrel to my father just this morning, and next to him a small, thin girl, similar to him in coloring, with olive skin and long, straight black hair which usually hangs down her back in a single braid but is currently tucked up under a wool cap. Katniss Everdeen.

I can tell at a glance that they’ve been out in the woods beyond District 12. He’s got a string of four fish hanging alongside his game bag, and she’s holding a bucket of strawberries in one hand. My heart thumps painfully in my chest, and not just because of the heat or the heavy load I’m pulling. I feel the old familiar ache of jealousy rear up in my chest, as it always does when I see them together. She started spending time with Gale Hawthorne three or four years ago. I’ve seen them together often since then, in the open-air market in the town square, even occasionally showing up side by side at our back door to haggle with my father. I had hoped he was her cousin, at first—they look alike enough to be—but I’ve never been able to confirm that, despite many furtive attempts to find out. No, if I’m honest with myself, I know the cousin theory is no more than wishful thinking. While I spent years hesitating, too intimidated to approach her, Katniss became close with someone else.

There had been plenty to discourage me from talking to her. The people of District 12 are separated by a strict social divide inherited from our ancestors and reinforced by the sadistic systems of the Capitol. Many of the merchants view coal miners as little more than animals, and in return, coal miners and their families look down on those of us who live in town as weak and reliant on the Capitol. Friendships between the two groups are rare, and marriages nearly unheard of, with a few notable exceptions, including Katniss’s own parents. Her mother grew up just across the square from the bakery that I call home, in an apothecary shop that’s been in her family for generations. When she eloped with a coal miner, her parents disowned her, and the scandal rocked the entire neighborhood. It’s still occasionally discussed at houses in town nearly two decades after the event. She would never again be able to rely on her parents or any merchant friends for help, but instead would have to survive off of the meager wages of her coal miner husband. Even after he died in a mine explosion a few years ago, her parents and older brother, who still live above the apothecary shop, didn’t reach out to help her or her children. I know because I was watching and hoping that they would.

That didn’t bother me so much, though; I have nothing against coal miners, and on some days, I think I wouldn’t mind being estranged from my family. But Katniss is also reserved and withdrawn, never speaking much to other kids at school. On the few occasions I thought about approaching her, she made it clear from her body language that she didn’t want to talk to me. Even that could have been conquered though, if I was brave enough. I’m naturally social and have a gift for putting people at ease and knowing what they want to hear. No, Gale Hawthorne was just the latest in a string of excuses I used to avoid having to face the truth: I’m beneath her notice. She's brave and strong and gentle and kind all at once. She provides for herself and cares for her family. She's self-sufficient and, above all, free. I am an insignificant third son of a baker, with a dubious future and nothing to offer someone like Katniss Everdeen.

As I draw closer to the pair, I notice with interest that Gale doesn’t look happy—his brow is furrowed broodingly, his eyes angry and withdrawn—and Katniss looks almost . . . annoyed. She glances at him sidelong, scowling slightly. Did they have a fight or something? My heart lifts hopefully at the thought.

I was trying to look at her covertly, but I’m caught off guard when her gray eyes suddenly flick over and meet mine. She seems startled to see me, which is all I discern before I quickly break eye contact by turning my head forward. My heart races, as it always does when our eyes accidentally meet. It’s been this way for years—I find her in the classroom, in the schoolyard, walking through the town square. I can never keep my eyes away for long. But I’ve also noticed that, more often than not, her eyes find me too, and we share a glance before one of us gets embarrassed and looks away.

After twenty yards or so, I risk a glance behind my back and see the pair of hunters retreating down the road, still standing stiffly apart. I continue down the coal dust-laden path, my thoughts racing. I replay the look on Katniss’s face over and over in my mind. It’s not an unfamiliar expression of hers—actually, she scowls quite a lot—but it’s the first time I’ve seen it directed at Gale Hawthorn, and I can’t help but wonder what it meant.

I’m still thinking about it as I pull the handcart into the alleyway that separates the bakery from the sweet shop next door. I hear the bell above the sweet shop door ring and glance up to see a girl in a pretty white dress step out of it. She lifts a hand above her eyes to block out the bright sun and notices me.

“Oh—hello, Peeta.”

“Hey, Madge,” I answer. I don't know Madge Undersee particularly well, even though we're classmates. She mostly keeps to herself. She's the daughter of District 12’s mayor, which, along with her quiet, reserved personality, makes her a bit of an outsider at school. The mayor's role of tax collector for the Capitol means he’s unpopular with nearly every merchant family living in town, and his family’s relative wealth compared to the rest of the district breeds resentment and dislike. It’s stupid, really; it's not like Mayor Undersee, or by extension his daughter, can do anything to change the amount of taxes collected. He’s as much a slave to the Capitol and their whims as the rest of us are. But unlike the leaders of Panem, he's here in District 12, which makes him a more attractive target for the pent-up rage and hopelessness so many in the district feel as they struggle to make ends meet.

“Visiting your aunt and uncle?” I ask Madge.

She nods, holding up a small paper bag full of sweets. “Just picking up a gift for my mother. She likes peppermints.”

It's customary to give gifts on reaping day, although I'm not sure where the tradition originated. My own family doesn’t usually bother with them; my mother isn’t a fan of spending money in such a frivolous way.

The sight of the paper bag sparks something in me, and I see Katniss Everdeen’s face in my mind’s eye once again, startled as her eyes catch mine. Maybe . . . no, that’s crazy. I couldn’t. She’d never accept it. But then again . . . I nod absently at Madge, distracted by the new idea swirling in my head. “Well, Happy Hunger Games to you and your family,” I say politely, moving to push the handcart into the alley once more.

“Oh, Peeta,” Madge says quickly, “I wanted to ask you—if I brought by some strawberries after the ceremony, would you be able to make me another one of those shortcakes in time for our dinner tonight? We’ll be hosting some dignitaries from the Capitol. I’d love to surprise my father with it.”

“Sure,” I agree. My parents will be pleased to have the mayor’s business. “I’d be happy to make one. When should I drop it off?”

She smiles back at me, relieved. “Seven would be fine. I can meet you at the back door.” Her smile falters a bit. “That is, if I’m still in District 12.”

I frown, reaching out an arm to touch Madge’s shoulder. I notice, as I do so, a pretty brooch pinned to her dress, a bird with outstretched wings contained within a small circle. It looks like it could be made of solid gold, a trinket very few families in District 12 could afford. “I’m sure you will be,” I say reassuringly. “Your chances of being reaped can’t be high, can they?”

She turns her face away. “No,” she says, “no, they aren’t high at all.” Her face contorts slightly as if fighting off tears, but when she turns to face me again, her face is smooth and impassive. “But there’s always a chance, isn’t there? Anyways, thank you for agreeing to the cake, Peeta. I’m sorry to make more work for you on a holiday. I’ll see you after the reaping?”

“Sure,” I answer. Madge gives me a brief, forced smile and turns away, walking away from me towards the street that leads to the nicest neighborhood in town, a handful of stately but slightly decrepit houses, including the mayor’s manor. I stare after her for a moment, then shake my head and continue pulling the handcart through the alleyway. Strange girl, I think to myself. I wonder what that’s about.

Bannock looks up from the counter where he's rolling out dough when I open the back door. He rushes over to help me unload the handcart. “Ma and Pa closed up out front already,” he pants as we heave the last of the flour bags under the counter. “They're upstairs getting dressed. I think the shower is free, though.”

I nod and move to head upstairs, but I hesitate at the door to the shop, still thinking of the idea sparked by Madge Undersee and her bag of peppermints. A reaping gift . . . that wouldn't be too odd, right? People give reaping gifts for all sorts of reasons. It didn't necessarily have to be romantic . . . It could just mean, “Hey, I'm glad you weren't chosen for nearly certain death.” And if she just happens to be looking for someone new to hang out with because she's fighting with her boyfriend . . . Glancing behind me to check that Bannock is once again absorbed with his dough, I slip through the door to the storefront.

The sunlight of midday shines through the bakery shop windows, alighting on the colorful treats and loaves of bread in their display cases. I glance curiously over at the cake display and can't contain my smirk when I see the first one I made, with wildflowers on it, has apparently been sold, while the rose cake remains. I just know that must have irritated Mother.

I stride over to the sugar cookie display case and quickly count them. It looks like we've sold a handful, but not too many. I glance around the empty shop one more time, then I grab one of our white pastry bags and the tongs and look over the cookies. I hesitate for a moment, wishing I knew Katniss’s favorite flower or color. My brain races through all of my observations of her over the years and freezes on a particular image: Katniss leaning over to pluck a yellow-headed dandelion from the grass, staring at it in wonder as she twirled the flower between her fingers. I didn’t pipe any dandelions today, but I carefully select three cookies with bright yellow flowers: marigolds, daffodils, and daisies.

I’ve just finished putting the last cookie in my paper bag when I feel a hand close around my wrist. My heart sinks down to the pit of my stomach as fingernails dig into the tendons of my wrist, causing me to involuntarily open my hand and drop the tongs. As they clatter to the floor, I turn my head and see my mother’s livid, red face just over my shoulder.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she hisses.

I shake her hand off of me roughly, taking two steps back. “What?” I ask in a casual tone as my heart thumps in my ears. “I just wanted to give a friend of mine a reaping gift.”

“So you decided to steal from us?” she shouts, her eyes bulging.

My father pokes his head through the door. He frowns. “What's going on in here?”

My mother snatches the bag of cookies from my hand and shakes them in front of his face. “Your son is a thief, that's what's going on!”

“A thief?” I scoff. “I made those! They're mine to begin with!”

Before I have time to even flinch, she strikes me across the cheek with her open palm. I stagger backwards but resist the urge to raise my hand to my stinging cheek and watering eyes.

“Ida!” my father pleads, “Ida, please! It’s reaping day!”

“Don’t worry, Pa,” I say coldly. “She knows how to avoid leaving a mark when she wants to.”

My mother clenches her hands into fists, but just as I start to prepare myself for another blow, she hisses, “Get upstairs and get changed. You look filthy. We’ll finish this conversation after the ceremony.”

I don’t wait to be told twice, rushing past both of them and up the stairs, leaving behind both the cookies and my half-baked plan.

When I open the door to my room, I find Rye looking through our closet for his reaping clothes. He's clearly just come from the shower, his blond hair still damp and a towel wrapped around his hips. He glances up at me, immediately noticing the red mark on my face.

“What did you do this time?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I mumble, grabbing my own clothes from the closet.

Bannock slips into the room behind me and quietly closes the door behind himself. “Are you insane?” he asks in a low voice. “What possessed you to steal from the shop?”

Rye lets out a low whistle. “Way to go, Peet. I bet she’s forgotten all about me running off this morning, now.”

I roll my eyes. “Nice to have a protective big brother around.” I turn to Bannock. “And I wasn’t stealing. I made those cookies myself.”

“Oh come on,” he replies, “I know you know that’s not an excuse. This is serious, Peeta—I bet she gives you a real beating this time. When’s the last time you had one of those?”

“I can answer that for you,” Rye says with a grin. “It was last May, our wrestling championship. I thrashed him.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoff. “You barely won that match. And I’ll thank you to get off your high horse,” I say to Bannock. “It’s not as if you’ve never stolen from the shop before.”

“I was never stupid enough to get caught doing it,” he shoots back.

I don’t say anything to that, leaving the room with my reaping clothes tucked under my arm and slamming the bathroom door behind me.

I stand under the shower doing nothing for several minutes, raising my face to the cold spray and letting the water trickle in rivulets down my body. The water slowly washes away my disappointment from my thwarted plans, my irritation with my older brothers, even my anger at my mother, until nothing is left but a building sense of dread about the approaching reaping.

I dress in the nicest of my clothes—a blue and white striped collared shirt with brass buttons down the front, a pair of worn-in tan slacks with several mended holes, and my cleanest pair of leather shoes. I peer into the tiny, cracked mirror hanging in the bathroom and try to arrange my hair into something that looks presentable, but it’s not cooperating, and I finally just run my hands through it in frustration, mussing it up and letting it flop over my forehead. I probably should have asked Mother to give me a haircut this morning, but with the mood she was in, I thought it wasn't wise to have her near my head with a pair of scissors.

Finally, it’s time. We all step out onto the porch of the bakery, where other parents are already starting to gather. Rye and I turn to look at our parents and Bannock. I wonder if we should hug or something, but my father just nods his head at us. “We’ll see you both when it’s done,” he says quietly. My mother says nothing at all, her lips pursed together in a thin line.

Together, we walk over to check in and then separate into two of the roped-off pens set up in the middle of the square. Rye is near the front with the other 17-year-olds, and I’m just behind him with the 16-year-olds. I find Levi and Ira and join them. They don’t say anything—the bravado of the morning has evaporated in the baking hot sun of midafternoon—but just give me small nods as I join them. Soon, Delly, Clementine, and Lobelia approach as well, the latter pointedly refusing to look at me. Delly gives me a small smile, but her mood is much more subdued now than it was earlier today.

Next to me, I hear Levi whisper to Ira, “Whoa. Look over there at Everdeen.”

My neck swivels reflexively, my eyes searching the crowd. There she is, just joining the pen a little farther to my left, standing with a group of kids from the Seam. Oh . . . oh, she looks so pretty. I hardly ever see her in anything other than our drab gray and white school uniform or her too-large leather hunting jacket, but now she stands in a beautiful blue dress the color of an iris that hangs on her just right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear anything like it. Her hair is pinned up in an elaborate and beautiful braided style.

“She sure cleans up nice,” Ira whispers back. “Wish she would take me into the woods with her.”

I elbow him in the ribs.

“Ouch! What’s your problem, Peeta?” he says, but I ignore him and stare straight ahead. The square is full now, and Mayor Undersee is taking to the stage alongside Effie Trinket, the Capitol escort of the District 12 tributes, who is dressed in a vivid spring green suit and has her hair dyed pink, a truly horrible color combination.

The clock tower of the Justice Building strikes two, and as the bells ring out, Mayor Undersee rises from his seat to speak at the podium. I’ve heard the spiel at least a dozen times, so I don’t bother listening, but instead sneak glances over at Katniss. She looks bored as well, but a little worried. I can’t seem to stop myself from worrying about her odds. Has she taken out tesserae? She must have. But how many?

“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,” the mayor concludes. He clears his throat and unrolls a small scroll of parchment. “The previous Hunger Games victors from District 12 are: Lucy Gray Baird, winner of the 10th annual Hunger Games. Haymitch Abernathy, winner of the 50th annual Hunger Games and 2nd Quarter Quell.”

We hear the list every year, and every year, I can't help but think of all of the names left unsaid. Over 140 children taken from District 12 to the Capitol only to return home in wooden boxes. Two children survived out of 73 years’ worth of tributes. It's the smallest number of victors of any district. It just serves to reinforce 12's status as the poorest, most wretched district in Panem. And to remind us, the ones waiting to see if we are the next to be sent, just how much the odds are stacked against us.

As his name is read, District 12’s only living victor stumbles out onto the stage, waves to the crowd while yelling something unintelligible, and falls into an empty chair next to Effie Trinket, incredibly drunk. I roll my eyes, and Levi and Ira titter beside me as the crowd applauds politely. Haymitch throws his arms around Effie, who struggles to extricate herself from his embrace.

Mayor Undersee looks nearly as distressed as Effie at this display; the entire thing is being broadcast live, which means District 12 is currently the laughingstock of Panem. I can almost guarantee that this clip will be replayed ad nauseam on the late-night Capitol talk shows tonight. “Erm, let’s see, yes, please welcome to the stage District 12’s very own escort, Ms. Effie Trinket! Ms. Trinket, if you will . . .”

Effie, ever the professional, manages to escape Haymitch’s clutches, although her hair seems oddly off-center now. She trots forward to take the mayor’s place at the podium. “Happy Hunger Games!” she trills out in her odd Capitol accent. “And may the odds be ever in your favor! It is such an honor to be here in District 12 with you all today! And what a lovely day it is, too! If only our viewers in the Capitol could feel how lovely and humid the air is out here! It’s wonderful for the skin, you know,” she says nervously, fanning herself as beads of sweat carve tracks through the white powder of her makeup.

Ira’s shoulders shake next to me with barely suppressed laughter, and I elbow him again. He curses under his breath and elbows me back, but when he catches my eye, we grin at each other. Our smiles fade away abruptly as Effie clears her throat to speak again. It’s time.

“Well, let's get started, shall we? Ladies first!” Effie trills out, walking purposefully towards one of the two large glass balls on the stage. She reaches in and digs her hand through the thousands of slips of paper, finally withdrawing it with one single paper clutched in her manicured fingernails. Next to me, Delly reflexively reaches over to grip my hand, and I give hers a squeeze. I would whisper reassurances, but I find I can’t breathe as Effie’s heels click back towards the podium, paper in hand. Please, don’t be Katniss, I think to myself. Anyone but Katniss.

Effie clears her throat and reads out the name, her magnified voice echoing around the silent square as the entire district seems to collectively hold their breath.

“Primrose Everdeen!”

Chapter Text

No!

My head whips around as I seek her out; not Primrose, the tiny blonde twelve-year-old who I always see peering in the bakery windows at my cakes, who trades goat cheese for fresh bread with my father at our back door, but her older sister, Katniss. She stumbled as the name was read out, and now a Seam boy I don’t know is holding her up, his face stricken. Her eyes are wide and staring, her mouth hanging open, as if all the wind has been knocked out of her.

Why her? I think despairingly, and now I see the little girl marching forward from the very back of the crowd of children in the square, her face pale and her hands balled into fists at her sides as she takes small, determined steps towards the stage.

“Oh no . . . she’s so small,” Delly breathes beside me.

“She’ll be dead by the first day for sure,” mutters an unfamiliar voice to my right. The whole crowd is alive with muffled complaints. No one likes it when a 12-year-old is picked, but this is a special case. Almost everyone in the district knows Katniss and Primrose Everdeen, or at least knows of them, having benefited from their trades in some way.

As her sister passes the pen of sixteen-year-olds, I see Katniss come back to life. “Prim,” she chokes, her voice strangled. “Prim!” The crowd parts for her as she stumbles forward, giving her a straight path to the stage where Primrose is just mounting the steps.

“What does she think she's doing?” Ira mutters beside me. “Does she think she can stop them?”

I lean forward on the balls of my feet, suddenly afraid for her. Because this isn't what's done. No matter who is picked, we all know the rules: you cannot make a scene. You cannot resist. To defy the Capitol is to sign your own death warrant. But before I can do anything more than take a hesitant step forward, Katniss reaches her sister, shoving her behind her back and throwing her arms wide, creating a physical barrier between Primrose and the Peacekeepers with her body.

“I volunteer!” she shouts. “I volunteer as tribute!” Her words ring out across the square, silencing every whisper and muttered complaint, leaving only stunned silence.

I can’t breathe. Around me, people are either staring at Katniss in awe or looking at each other in confusion. Volunteer? They’ve seen it happen on TV, in other districts that train children especially to enter the Games. But there’s never been a volunteer in District 12. Not that anyone can remember.

There is some confusion onstage. Effie Trinket is saying something, complaining that this isn't how the volunteer procedure is supposed to go.

“What does it matter?” Mayor Undersee’s deep voice interrupts Effie’s babbling. He stares down at Katniss and Primrose where they stand at the foot of the steps, his eyes filled with pain. The pain of the district—because this isn’t fair. This is cruel. And who cares about proper procedure in the face of this much cruelty and bravery? “What does it matter?” he repeats, his voice louder now and edged with grief and anger. “Let her come forward.”

Primrose is screaming now, high-pitched desperate cries. “No, Katniss! No! You can’t go!” She wraps her thin arms around Katniss’s waist, clutching desperately at her.

“Prim, let go,” Katniss says sharply. She grabs at her sister’s arms, trying to extricate herself from her grip, but can’t pull her off. “Let go!”

I see Gale Hawthorn break from his position in the frontmost pen, striding forward and grabbing Primrose around the waist to pull her off of Katniss. He holds her against his chest, her arms and legs flailing, kicking him in the shins. He says something quiet to Katniss that I can’t quite make out over the sound of Primrose’s continued screaming, and then turns and carries the girl away to the side of the square where I see their mother waiting, her face pale and drawn.

My eyes return straightaway to Katniss’s face. With her sister safely out of the way, I see the resolve settle on her features. She sets her face in a defiant scowl and marches up the steps to the platform.

I'm reminded suddenly of the first time I ever saw Katniss Everdeen. I was five years old. Pa had walked me to the schoolhouse for the first day of school. He was holding my hand as we stood a little ways away from a crowd of merchant parents and their children, all of us waiting for the teachers to arrive and line the children up for class. It had been a bad morning; I’d woken up to the sounds of my mother screaming at Pa about I don’t know what. I stayed under the covers, hands covering my ears to block out the noise, until she finally came upstairs. She was upset that I wasn’t up and dressed already, so she had pulled down my pants and whipped my bare bottom with a leather belt. The lashes still stung underneath my shorts.

I was staring at my feet, kicking a rock on the ground, when Pa squeezed my hand. “Look, Peeta.”

I looked up at him sullenly. “What?”

“Do you see that little girl over there? The one with the braids?”

I looked, and saw her. Small and black-haired and bursting with smiles. She wore a red plaid dress and had small red ribbons tying up the ends of both of her braids. She was holding onto the hands of a man dressed in a coal miner’s jumpsuit, and he was playing a game with her where he swung her by her arms high in the air in front of him and then in between his legs. She was giggling. A pretty blonde woman stood by them, laughing and holding a baby. I had never seen a family look so . . . happy.

“I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner,” my father said.

I looked closer at the girl's parents, their happy, smiling faces. I felt a pang of jealousy. I wondered if I could have been that happy, had that woman been my mother. Then I felt guilty for having such an awful thought.

“A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could’ve had you?” I asked him. My mother had told me about coal miners—that they were dirty, and smelly, and mean. That they were thieves, and I should always watch them closely when they came into the bakery to shop.

My father stared across the schoolyard at the little girl's father. His eyes were unfocused, as if he was seeing something from long ago. “Because when he sings . . . even the birds stop to listen.”

I looked at the man with renewed interest. She married him because of his singing? That didn't make any sense. Already, at five, I knew that wasn’t why people got married. You were supposed to marry someone who could help you survive. That would keep you out of the Seam and the dangerous coal mines. Life in District 12 was precarious, as my mother liked to remind us. She used to say we were all a few poor choices away from starving to death.

My father knelt down and put his hands on both of my shoulders. “Peeta. I want you to know, always, that you are a good boy. And you deserve every good thing that will come to you. But first, you need to be honest with those around you, and most of all, yourself. Always remember who you are. Do you understand?”

I nodded my head, but at the time, I wasn't sure at all what he meant. How could I forget who I was? I lined up with the rest of my class, watching the little girl with the two braids. Throughout the day, my eyes kept being drawn back to her, like the needle of a compass seeking true north. I kept thinking about how, if things had been different, we would be brother and sister. Or—no—is that how it worked? Maybe instead of either one of us, there would be a third, different person in the world, one who was a little mix of the two of us. As I watched her listen to the teacher, eat her lunch, and play hopscotch on the playground, I tried to imagine who that person would be.

During music assembly, I sat near the window. There were songbirds in the trees outside chirping to each other. I watched them for a while as the class filed in. The music teacher was an old Seam woman who sat on a stool in front of the class holding a banjo.

“Alright children, settle down. Now, what we're going to begin with today is a very old song, older than Panem itself. Does anyone here know The Valley Song?”

I perked up as I noticed the little girl with the braids raise her hand in the air eagerly. The teacher smiled at her. “Yes, Katniss, I figured you would. Your daddy probably knows just about every song that's ever been played in these hills. Why don't you come on up, dear, and sing it for us?”

I watched in awe as she marched up to the front of the classroom, and the teacher helped her onto the stool to stand in front of the whole class. I thought it was the bravest thing I'd ever seen. The teacher began playing softly on the banjo, and right on cue, the girl broke into song:

Down in the valley, valley so low,
Late in the evening, hear the train blow.
The train, love, hear the train blow.
Late in the evening, hear the train blow.

My eyes grew wide as I watched her. Her voice was so clear, so strong, but also had a gentle sweetness to it that pierced right through me. I couldn't look away.

Go build me a mansion, build it so high,
So I can see my true love go by.
See him go by, love, see him go by.
So I can see my true love go by.

One by one, the birds outside the window hushed their singing, as if they were recognizing one of their own.

Go write a letter, send it by mail.
Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail.
Capitol jail, love, to the Capitol jail.
Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail.

The mentions of baking and jail were confusing to five-year-old me. I didn't completely understand the meaning of the song, but I still couldn't tear my eyes away from her face as she sang so sweetly, her voice softening as she began the fourth verse.

Roses are red, love; violets are blue.
Birds in the heavens know I love you.
Know I love you, oh, know I love you,
Birds in the heavens know I love you.

She finished her song and grinned around at the class. My heart, which before then had felt dark and damaged, felt so full that I thought it might burst out of my chest. In that moment, I knew: I didn't want anything in the world so much as I wanted to be loved by this girl.

Now, I watch her as she climbs onto the stage and turns to stand defiantly in front of the entire district, hands clasped behind her back just as she had stood in front of the class on that first day of school so long ago. And now I know: this is the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Well, bravo!” Effie Trinket reaches out to grab Katniss by the shoulder and ushers her towards the microphone, her eyes alight with excitement. “That’s the spirit of the Games! What’s your name?”

I see Katniss’s throat bob as she swallows, but her voice comes out steady and calm. “Katniss Everdeen.”

Effie raises her pink eyebrows, smiling in recognition at the name. “I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don’t want her to steal all the glory, do we?” She grabs the mic and turns to the crowd. “Come on everybody! Let’s give a big round of applause to our newest tribute!”

It’s sick. All of it. The suggestion that she volunteered for glory when what she’s actually done means so much more than that. She’s done something no one else in the district, maybe not even in all of Panem, has dared to do. She’s denied the Capitol their chosen tribute and sacrified herself to stop them. I can see it in the faces of the kids surrounding me, in the faces of the adults, even Mayor Undersee on stage. Katniss’s act of self-sacrifice, of defiance, has touched something inside all of us, and all at once the years of her denying the fate mandated to her by the Capitol, refusing to live by their mercy alone, taking her survival into her own hands, crystallizes in this final, greatest act of rebellion.

I’m not sure who is the first in the crowd to do it, but one by one, hands come up around me as each member of the crowd, moved by her sacrifice, raises the three fingers of their right hands to their lips, then lifts them towards Katniss. My heart swells with so many conflicting emotions; pain and grief chief among them, but also awe, respect, and love for this remarkable, selfless, brave girl. I kiss my fingers reverently, then lift them out to her, sending with my kiss all of the words I never had the courage to say.

Effie Trinket and the Capitol camera crews look perplexed by the silent salute. She dithers at the microphone for a moment, as if unsure whether to move on with the ceremony or keep the attention on Katniss, the most exciting thing to happen in a District 12 reaping ceremony, maybe ever. Before she can take action, Haymitch staggers across the stage and throws an arm around Katniss’s shoulders.

“Look at her. Look at this one!” he slurs into the microphone, shaking Katniss slightly. “I like her! Lots of . . .” he pauses for a moment, trying to think of the word. “Spunk!” he finishes triumphantly. “More than you!” He lets go of Katniss and staggers forward towards the edge of a stage, pointing his finger at a Capitol cameraman stationed just below him. “More than you!”

I gape at Haymitch, revolted but also a little impressed; I've never seen someone directly challenge the Capitol in this way before, drunk or not. I barely have time to wonder what he'll say next before he walks right off the front of the stage and plummets to the ground. The crowd gasps, and the cameramen gleefully gather around him like vultures, making sure to capture the washed-up victor’s disgraceful position from every angle.

I keep my eyes on Katniss throughout the ensuing commotion. With the crowd and cameras distracted, I see her drop her façade for the briefest moment as an expression torn between despair and terror flits across her face. She quickly rearranges her face back into a disinterested scowl, straightens up, and clasps her hands behind her back, staring off into the distance.

How will I bear the next few weeks, watching her be transformed and paraded before the country in a grotesque display before being thrown into the arena to be hunted down? How can I possibly stand watching her die? My hands clench into fists at my sides. I feel more helpless than I ever have.

Maybe she can win, the voice in my head tries to reassure me. She’s tough. She knows how to take care of herself. And she can use weapons—she’s good at it, even. That’s true enough; how many times have I heard my father or my aunt Rooba sing her praises when she brings them prey, always cleanly shot right through the eye? I briefly imagine Katniss’s arrows piercing a child through the eye and flinch; can she even do that? If she does win, what kind of damage will that do to her? Is it worth winning, worth surviving, if the path there requires such acts?

But then I imagine again watching her die on a television screen a thousand miles away. Yes, I think insistently. At least she’ll be alive. She can heal from anything, as long as she stays alive. I have to believe in it. I have to believe she’ll come back home. I can't give up hope yet. Maybe I should go visit her in the Justice Building after the reaping—the tributes have an hour to say their goodbyes to friends and family. Is it wrong, when I've never spoken to her before, to visit her now and tell her how much I need her to make it through this? Will it give her courage, or would my presence just be a burden to her, an unwelcome distraction from her actual loved ones?

This train of thought is interrupted as Effie tries to regain control of the ceremony which has gone completely off the rails. Her pink hair, which must be a wig, is listing severely to one side. “What an exciting day!” she says breathlessly into the microphone. “But more excitement to come! It’s time to choose our boy tribute!” My eyes are still focused on Katniss as Effie grabs the first slip of paper her fingers encounter from the other glass reaping ball. She hurries back to the microphone and reads out the name “Peeta Mellark.”

My friends react before the sound of my name even registers in my head. Delly gasps and grips my hand tighter than ever, and Ira’s hand clamps over my shoulder as if to hold me in place. I shake them both off, walking forward robotically as my mind races to catch up to this new twist. My fate is not to sit at home and watch Katniss Everdeen die on a television screen. My fate is to be thrown into the arena alongside her.

The crowd is quiet as I mount the stage. My eyes focus on Katniss, and for the second time today, their gray depths look into mine for a brief moment. I see something there: recognition, panic? But in a flash, whatever it was is gone, replaced by her same stoic, slightly bored looking scowl as she looks away. Why? I can’t help thinking. Why did it have to be her? Why did it have to be me? But of course, there isn’t a reason. I turn to face the crowd, fighting to keep my face free of emotion even as panic wells up inside me, tightening my chest and making my fingers tingle with numbness.

“Now that we’ve introduced our tribute,” Effie says, clearing her throat pointedly, “Do we have any volunteers?”

The only response to Effie’s question is the muffled hum of the cicadas singing in the trees. The silence rests heavily on my shoulders as I realize how truly alone I am. I look out at the sea of faces in the crowd: every face in the district, but not one willing to take my place. Not my brother, who stands near the front of the crowd, staring down at his feet, his shoulders rigid. Not Levi or Ira, who look back at me unhappily. I lift my eyes resolutely to the horizon, looking away from my friends and family, lest I break my composure. It’s not that I expected anyone to volunteer for me. In fact, I would have been shocked if they had. But it’s a hollow feeling, being sentenced to death while everyone I’ve ever known watches on in silence.

Effie returns to her seat, and the mayor stands at the podium to read the Treaty of Treason in its entirety, as he does every year. I can’t focus on the words: I’m too busy confronting my new reality. Katniss and I are going into the arena together. Only one of us can come out of it alive. The Capitol has done what I thought was impossible: they’ve made my survival dependent on Katniss’s death. They’ve turned her into my enemy.

The thought pulls me up short. My enemy? My entire being revolts against the idea. How could I hurt Katniss? Kill Katniss? That’s one thing the Capitol could never make me do. Could they? I try to picture it for a moment, facing Katniss in the arena, her bow drawn back, poised to shoot me. Would she do it? I mean, why not? She hardly knows me. And would I just let it happen? Or would I fight for my life?

“In penance for their uprising,” the mayor concludes, “each district shall offer up a male and female between the ages of 12 and 18 at a public Reaping. These tributes shall be delivered to the custody of the Capitol and then transferred to a public arena where they will fight to the death until a lone victor remains. Henceforth and forevermore, this pageant shall be known as the Hunger Games.” He rolls the scroll of paper shut again, to be read out next year, and the year after that.

He turns towards Katniss and me and motions for us to shake hands. I reach out my hand to her, and after a moment’s hesitation, her small hand slips right into mine. Her skin is soft, despite the calluses on her palm. Her touch steadies me, sensation returning to my numb fingers as warmth radiates from her hand up my arm and throughout my entire body. Her eyes meet mine, and for the first time in our lives, neither of us looks away from the other. This close, I can see in them every emotion she is so carefully hiding from the crowd and the cameras: fear and sorrow, disbelief and uncertainty. All of the same things I’m sure she can see reflected back to her in my own eyes. For the first time since Effie Trinket called my name, I don’t feel alone. Could I hurt Katniss? No. Never. Even if it costs me everything, even if it costs my life. I squeeze her hand with my own, hoping to convey this message to her, to let her know that I understand how she’s feeling and that at least from me, she’s safe. Other than looking at me curiously, she doesn’t react.

Too soon, I drop her hand, and we turn to face the crowd again as the anthem of Panem plays through the crackly loudspeakers set up behind us on the stage. I squeeze my fingers into fists at my sides, already missing the feeling of her hand in mine.

Chapter Text

As the final strains of the anthem ring out over the square, a squad of Peacekeepers approaches and marches us through the doors of the Justice Building. One has a hand on my arm, as if worried I'll make a run for it. I look over my shoulder as they split Katniss and me off in different directions, but I only catch the back of her blue dress disappearing through a doorway. I'm led into a room of my own and left alone.

I sink onto the sofa, my heart racing as if it knows now that its beats are numbered and it's trying to get in as many of them as it can. My hands begin to shake, and I clasp them together in front of me, trying to still them.

A few minutes pass in solitude before the door bursts open and there's my family, all four of them. My mother reaches me first and throws herself at me with a choked sob, wrapping her arms around me and digging her fingers into my back.

“Shh, shh,” I murmur automatically, stroking the back of her head. “Don't cry, Ma.”

“What am I going to do without you?” She wails into my shirt.

“What do you mean?” I say soothingly. “You're going to be just fine. Look around. You've got Pa, Bannock, and Rye all here to take care of you. You don't need me. Rye is just going to have to learn how to frost the cakes.”

She chokes out a laugh in between sobs, but when I look at my brother, his face is stricken. “Peet . . . I'm sorry.”

I shake my head, gently disentangling myself from my mother. “You don't have anything to apologize for.”

“No, I do! I know I do. I just . . . I couldn't say anything. It's like my mouth wouldn't open. I don't know . . .”

“What would be the point?” I ask. “You or me—either way, one of us goes in there. It doesn't make any difference which one of us it is.”

“He's right, Rye,” Bannock backs me up, putting his hand on Rye’s shoulder. And I know I'm the one who said it, but my heart still squeezes painfully to hear him agree with me.

Rye’s face is anguished. I don't think I've ever seen him look like this. “I just wish . . . I wish I could have been brave, like her. But I'm not. I'm a coward.”

I smile a small, tight smile. “We can't all be like Katniss Everdeen.”

My mother sniffs and wipes at her eyes, slightly recovered. “That's the truth, that is. You know, I think maybe District Twelve might actually have a winner this year. She's a survivor, that one.”

Her words cut through me like a knife. My father closes his eyes and presses his hand to his face. My brothers look furious, but I send them a quelling look. I don't want my last moments with my family to be a fight. “Yeah, maybe we will,” I agree in a quiet voice.

I give each of my brothers a tight hug. Bannock pounds me on the back, several times. “I'm going to miss you, little brother,” he chokes out. “The bakery won't be the same without you.”

I nod, but I don't trust myself to say anything in response. Rye doesn't say another word, just looks miserably at his feet.

A peacekeeper opens the door again, a young, red-headed one that I vaguely recognize from around town. “Time's up, folks.”

My mother and brothers leave, but my father hesitates. He hasn't said a word the entire time, but he approaches me now, pulling a package from his jacket pocket, which he holds out to me. “Here, son. Take them.” I take the package and he turns towards the door without another word.

I look inside the package and see the cookies I iced so carefully just this morning. The ones I had picked out for Katniss: marigolds, daffodils, and daisies. When did he take these? Had he kept them after my confrontation with my mother, intending to slip them to me after the reaping? Or did he have time to stop by the bakery for them before coming here?

“Pa, wait,” I say, reaching out to grab his arm. He looks back at me and then forward at the Peacekeeper, his face anxious. “Please,” I plead with the Peacekeeper. “I just need five more minutes. It won't hold us up; I won't have many visitors.”

The red-haired young man stares at me for a moment, his face torn, then nods once, closing the door after my brothers and mother.

“Pa, listen to me.” I push the packet of cookies back into his hands, but he resists. “No, take it. Thank you for bringing them to me. But they were meant to be a gift. You know for whom. I want you to give them to her. Don't tell her they're from me. And please—please—promise me you'll look out for her little sister. If she comes around looking for something, you find a way to get it to her. You see her looking too thin, you feed her. I don't care what Mother says. You be strong, and you find a way to do it. You hear me?”

“Peeta,” my father grips my shoulders in his broad hands as he speaks. “I'll do it.” His voice trembles just a bit, and it's enough to bring tears burning behind my eyes. “You're a good boy. You remember that, son. When you're in the arena. I have faith in you. And I always will.”

I can't help it. I wrap my arms around his thick chest and bury my face in his shoulder like a little kid as my own shoulders shake with sobs. I'm scared. Scared of dying without ever doing anything in my life that I truly wanted to. Scared of being so afraid of dying that I'll do anything just to stay alive. Scared of surviving and having to live in a world where Katniss Everdeen no longer exists.

We're interrupted by the Peacekeeper’s return. “Come on, you've had your five minutes,” he says gruffly.

My father pulls back and looks at me with watery eyes. He rubs his thumbs across my cheeks, wiping away my tears. He accepts the packet of cookies that I shove into his hands, then turns and is gone.

My next visitors arrive: Delly and Clementine. They're both crying before they even walk in the room and seeing me in tears only brings on more. For a while, we just hold onto each other, not saying anything. Finally, I break the silence. “Levi and Ira?”

Clementine shakes her head, mouth trembling. “I'm sorry, Peeta. They just couldn't face it.”

I nod. I understand—it's too difficult to come and say goodbye when there is also so much relief that it's me, and not them, going to the Capitol. When they had the chance to volunteer for me but didn’t. I wish they would come, that I could tell them there are no hard feelings. After all, I don’t think I would have volunteered for them, if our positions were reversed. But it would still be hard to look them in the eye afterward, knowing I chose not to save them. “Well, tell Levi I said he can't win his money back now,” I say. “In fact, tell him he should give up playing cards altogether. He's got the worst poker face.”

Clementine laughs through her tears. Delly squeezes me tight. “Oh Peeta, it's too horrible for words!” she wails.

I let them go, knowing our time is almost up. “You two take care of each other, ok? And take care of the boys. Make sure Rye stays out of trouble.”

They promise to do so, and then I'm left alone again, sure that they'll be my last visitors. I lie on the couch and throw my arm over my eyes, wishing I could blot out the world.

But they’re not the last people who've come to say goodbye today. I lift my arm when I hear the door open again and see a girl with long, wavy, dirty blonde hair standing in the doorway. I sit up quickly on the couch. “Lobelia? What—”

She’s across the room before I can finish my sentence, throwing her arms around me with a sob. I awkwardly reach my arms around her, patting her on the back.

“I couldn't let you go without saying goodbye,” she chokes out between sobs, her face buried in my chest. “I couldn't let those h-horrible things be the last words I ever said to you.”

I don't know what to say. To be honest, I can’t even remember exactly what was said during our breakup. I mostly remember the guilt I felt for hurting her and the fear that she might say something to someone about what she had seen in my sketchbook. She never did, as far as I know. I’m grateful for that. She's been a good friend to me, despite how I treated her. I should have never kissed her back or led her on, letting her think we could be something. I had been miserable about Katniss at the time, hoping I could finally give up on my futile dreams of her if I paid more attention to other girls. But of course, it never worked. In the classroom, Lobelia wasn’t the one who drew my eye. She wasn’t the one who had me holding my breath each time there was a knock on the door, hoping she’d be on the other side. I can't help but feel like this desire for some other last words between us is more for her sake than mine. But I guess I can't begrudge her that; we're friends, aren't we?

“So I just w-wanted to let you know,” she continues, tilting her face to look up at me, “before you go, how much I cared about you, Peeta. I always thought—even after—well, I always thought it would be you and me, someday.” Tears slide down her cheeks. “But I guess not.”

“I guess not,” I respond, my voice hollow. She speaks as if I'm dead already.

She continues to stare up at me, and I realize what she's waiting for. Oh no. Really? I think, alarmed and unsure what to do. I don't want to kiss her, to make one of my last moments in District 12 about some kind of closure for her when I'm the one being shipped off to die in an arena. I'm about to give in anyway, just to avoid hurting her feelings, when the red-haired Peacekeeper returns.

He hesitates for just a moment when he sees Lobelia embracing me, then clears his throat and says, “Time's up.”

Lobelia breaks contact with me, staring up at my face sadly for a moment. “Goodbye, Peeta,” she finally says, then turns and runs out the door.

It's not until I'm left utterly alone in the room that I remember the mayor's daughter and her request for a strawberry shortcake. I should have told my family—a commission like that means good money. I wonder if she will realize this and bring her strawberries to the bakery, or if she'll be too afraid to bother my family with it today. I hope not.

I sink back onto the sofa, my head in my hands. Not a single one of my visitors asked me to try to win, pleaded with me to come back home. Do they just assume my death is a foregone conclusion? Or do they not really care if I come back? I let the tears come again, not even attempting to stop them. What does it matter, anyway? Whether the cameras see my tears? I'll die either way. Clearly. Everyone can see it. My friends. My brothers. Even my own mother. No one believes in me enough to even suggest that I might come home again. And why should they? What reason would they have to think I might make it out of the arena? I don’t know how to fight. I don’t know anything about survival. I’ve never had to learn, with all of my time consumed either by school or helping out in the family business. I am uniquely unqualified to play the Games.

I don’t have to wallow in self-pity for too long before the Peacekeepers return to collect me and lead me out of the Justice Building. I climb into the back of a car for the short ride to the train station, with Effie sitting between Katniss and me. Katniss has not been crying as I have; her face is blank, her gray eyes staring straight ahead but slightly unfocused. I can’t help wondering what her final goodbyes with her sister and mother were like, and I feel ashamed. I’ve been sitting around feeling sorry for myself, but my family is going to get on just fine without me. I’m helpful in the bakery, sure, but not essential for survival. Katniss is the main provider for her family. How will they get by if she never comes home? My father will do what he can, I feel sure of it, but will it be enough to keep them from starvation?

They make us pause in front of the train doors so the cameramen on the platform can get a good shot of our final moments in District 12. I glance around at the ugly, gray station, and say a silent goodbye to my home. I'm sure I’ll never see it again. Finally, we are relinquished from the cameras and the doors of the train slide closed behind us with a hiss. I feel a hum beneath my feet as the train begins to move, and I reach out to grab onto a support bar near the door. The train station falls away and sunlight beams through the train car’s windows, banishing the dim gray light of the station. The train continues to gather speed, and I watch as the forested mountains surrounding District 12 meld into a blue-green blur as we race along the track.

“Well!” Effie Trinket claps her hands together, clearly relieved to be underway. “Let me show you two to your rooms. You will want to wash up before dinner, which will be in an hour. Feel free to change out of those clothes—the Capitol has provided clothes, toiletries, anything to make your journey as comfortable as can be. The whole train is at your disposal—nothing but the best for my tributes!”

She leads the two of us down a narrow corridor to another train car, with me following behind Katniss. Staring at the back of her head, I get a closer look at the intricate pattern that her hair has been carefully, lovingly braided into. Her mother's work? Or maybe her sister’s? I have a sudden, absurd wish to braid her hair myself. I wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers through it.

Effie leaves Katniss in her room and then takes me a little further down the car to mine. The room contains a bed at least twice the size of mine back home, a large walk-in closet, and a private bathroom with a shower and tub. I wonder briefly what this train is used for when The Hunger Games aren't happening—surely this luxurious room isn't used only once a year for a single person? Effie leaves me to wash up with another reminder of when dinner will be served. I get the sense that punctuality is extremely important to her, so I resolve to get there early.

In the mirror hung over the bathroom sink, I can see for the first time how red my face is, my eyes bloodshot and puffy. I think of Katniss’s stoic face back at the station and wonder how she got through her goodbyes to her family and friends without tears. I decide to save my shower for later tonight, not yet wanting to change out of my clothes and give up my last connection to District 12. Instead, I scrub my face with cold water, hoping it will reduce some of the swelling, and I walk back down the corridor.

A capitol attendant in a white uniform spots me and directs me toward the dining car where a couple of servers are busy setting the long mahogany table with silverware and delicate ceramic dishes. Not wanting to get in their way, I busy myself looking out the train windows again. The scenery has changed, the low, green mountains of home giving way to gently sloping hills covered in long grasses, with trees dotted here and there. There are no signs of civilization that I can see. I wonder how much empty space there is between districts. We were never shown a map of Panem in school, but I do know that the Capitol is roughly 2,000 miles away from home. District 12 is only a few square miles in size, so either the other districts are much larger than 12, or there’s a whole lot of empty wilderness between us.

Haymitch stumbles into the dining car, his hand gripping the neck of a green bottle. He looks around blearily. “Is it . . . hic . . . time to eat?”

I glance over at the servers setting the table, who are looking at Haymitch with thinly veiled disgust. “I think there’s still a half hour or so to go, Haymitch,” I tell him.

He narrows his eyes at me, probably trying to figure out who I am. “Is that so? Think I’ll go take a nap, then,” he slurs, and then stumbles back out of the car.

“Unbelievable,” the female server mutters to her coworker after Haymitch leaves. “It’s barely half past four, and he’s already sloshed!”

“Didn’t you catch the live footage of the reaping? He was drunk even then. Took a nosedive right off the stage. Classic District Twelve behavior.”

They titter together. My ears burn. I don’t know Haymitch Abernathy well—I can’t say I’ve ever even spoken to him before today—but I hate to hear these sheltered Capitol people mock him. Sure, he might be a hopeless drunk, but at least he’s not betting on which children will die first in an arena. That puts him a step above them, in my estimation.

I continue watching the scenery fly by as the servers finish setting the table. Eventually, Effie pokes her head into the train car. “No Katniss yet?” she asks. I shake my head. She tuts and then backs out of the compartment.

I take a seat at the table, excited despite everything for the meal. I can smell delicious things from the next car along, particularly roasting meat, which is a nearly unheard-of delicacy in my house unless you count squirrels. Effie returns to the car with Katniss, and I notice she’s changed out of the pretty blue dress she wore to the reaping into a dark forest green shirt and pants. The color looks beautiful against her olive skin. I also notice, with surprise, a bright golden pin on her shirt depicting a bird with outstretched wings. I recognize it immediately as the same one I saw just this morning pinned to Madge Undersee’s dress. Did Madge visit Katniss in the Justice Building and give it to her? She must have; how else would she have gotten it?

They’re friends, I think; at least, they both seem to spend more time in each other’s company at school than they do with anyone else. It all started years ago, in our fourth year of school. We were eight or nine. Madge had brought her pet mouse to school one day for show and tell. She carried it around with her all day in a small wire cage. After school, I was hanging around in the yard with my friends when a trio of older boys cornered Madge.

“What you got there, Mayor’s girl?” One of them taunted her, darting a hand out at her cage. She twisted it away from him only for it to land in the waiting hands of one of the other boys.

He ripped the cage out of her hands, lifting it to his eyes to peer inside. “Ugh!” he said in disgust. “It’s a rat!”

“It’s not,” Madge said in her soft voice. “It’s a mouse.”

The boys laughed at that, the one boy tossing the cage to his friend. The rodent inside squeaked in alarm, while Madge looked close to tears.

“Oh no!” Delly said, noticing the commotion. “Do you think we ought to help?”

“No way am I helping out an Undersee,” Ira said with a scowl on his face.

“Besides, those boys are a lot bigger than us,” Levi added.

Delly looked to me next, her face worried. “Come on, Peeta, don’t you think we should do something?”

I looked over at the group, uncertain what to do. They were definitely bigger than us, and I wasn’t confident I could take them without Levi and Ira backing me up. I thought maybe we could talk them into giving the mouse back, but just as I was about to open my mouth to say so to Delly, one of the boys cried out in pain. He was rubbing on the back of his head, looking around wildly.

“Who threw that?” he shouted.

“I did,” came a voice from above. The trio of boys, Madge, my group of friends, and everybody else in the schoolyard stopped and looked up at the big old maple tree on the lawn. My eyes widened in surprise when I saw her; Katniss, perched in the branches of the tree like a bird, a handful of pebbles in one hand, the other poised to throw one of the rocks. “And you’ll get more comin’ your way soon if you don’t leave her be.”

The boy in the lead, ugly as sin and tall for a 12-year-old, shouted, “What’s it to you? You’re from the Seam, why do you care what happens to the Mayor’s girl?”

“I don’t like seeing bullies like you pick on little girls,” she said simply. It was a funny remark, considering she was the same size as Madge, if not smaller. “Now, give her back the cage and then go on and get out of here.”

The boy refused to move, crossing his arms in front of his chest, although his companion who was hit in the head by the first rock looked a little dubious standing behind him.

I heard Katniss let out a sigh, and then the pebbles began to fly, one after the other, peppering the boys with startling accuracy. They shouted and lifted their arms over their heads as they ran for it. The one holding the mouse cage dropped it and Madge dove for it, just catching it in her arms and hugging it to her chest.

I watched as Katniss climbed down the tree with ease and strolled across the yard to Madge. She held out a hand, helping her to her feet. “Is your mouse alright?” she asked.

Madge peered inside the cage, then nodded her head, wiping a tear off her cheek. “I think so. Thanks . . . Katniss, right?”

Katniss nodded, then peered inside the cage at the animal. “I still think it’s silly to keep a mouse as a pet. We get them in the house sometimes. They scare my mother half to death, but my pa always catches them. He skins them and adds them to the stew. They don’t taste half bad.”

Madge looked a little uneasy at this tale, clutching her cage to her chest a little tighter. Katniss hadn’t said another word, just turned away and headed down the road towards the Seam.

“Wow!” Delly breathed. “Katniss is so brave!”

“More like stupid,” Levi muttered, clearly embarrassed that a girl had been willing to take on three older boys when he had been too scared to do it himself.

“Did she just say she eats rats?” Clementine asked, looking queasy.

“Mice,” I corrected her.

“As if there's a difference. Decent people don't eat rodents,” Lobelia said, flipping her ponytail. I wondered what she would think if she knew I ate squirrels nearly every week with my Pa.

“She better watch out for those boys,” Ira said. “I bet they’ll come after her next.”

I had been afraid of the same thing, but her aim must have really scared them, because they never did try to get revenge, at least as far as I saw. They never bothered Madge Undersee again either. She stuck to Katniss like glue after that day, sitting with her at lunch, partnering up with her during gym and class projects. I watched them interact at times and noticed they never spoke much, despite all the time they spent together. I wasn't ever sure if they were actually friends or if Madge just stuck close to her for protection. Seeing the pin, I realize that they must have been much closer than I thought.

I recognize the bird, on closer inspection. A Mockingjay. It's a songbird, really the most talented of all songbirds, since they're descended from Capitol Muttations especially bred to mimic human speech. I like seeing it on her: it's fitting, what with her beautiful singing voice. I wonder if that's the reason Madge gave it to her.

“Where’s Haymitch?” Effie asks brightly.

“Last time I saw him, he said he was going to take a nap,” I answer.

“Well, it's been an exhausting day,” Effie concedes, although she seems a bit too happy about his absence. Probably still miffed at him for nearly pulling her wig off at the reaping.

Katniss takes the empty seat next to me, and I watch her from the corner of my eye as we begin our meal. She eats with gusto, nearly inhaling the soup and salad courses. I'm pretty fairly matched with her for enthusiasm—this Capitol cooking sure beats the stale bread and boiled vegetables that are the usual fare at my house. The lamb chops are particularly delicious. I’ve never had a cut of meat so tender.

After we finish up the main course, Katniss and I carefully lay our used utensils down on our plates. The two servers take them away and replace them with dessert, platters of brightly colored sliced fruit and fragrant cheeses. Best of all, they bring out a chocolate cake coated in a reflective glaze and topped with raspberries. I study the cake in fascination, wondering how they managed to make the glaze so smooth and shiny.

Effie looks at the two of us approvingly. “At least you two have decent manners. The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages. It completely upset my digestion.”

I pause and stare at her in disbelief, speechless. She escorts children to their deaths year after year, and she has the audacity to criticize their manners?

Katniss drops her fork with a clatter beside me. I look over at her and see her staring down Effie, her gray eyes hard as flint. She grabs cheese and fruit from the platters with her fingers, popping them in her mouth as she stares defiantly at Effie. Worst of all, she reaches over to the cake and carves a handful right off of it, eats it, and then licks each finger before finally wiping her hands on the embroidered white tablecloth. Effie purses her lips. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

I eat my share of dessert—with my fork—but as I finish up my last bites of chocolate cake, I realize I’ve overindulged on the rich, sugary food. My stomach squirms in protest, and I will myself not to vomit in front of Katniss. I glance surreptitiously over at her and notice that she is looking a little sick herself.

After dessert, Effie leads us into the adjacent train car, which contains a long, low sofa and a large television screen, so we can watch the recap of the reapings held through the districts that day. The first few districts include a lot of volunteers—tall, strong, well-fed kids, who make my already upset stomach even more squeamish as I envision facing them down in the arena. With each successive reaping, my heart sinks lower and lower as I watch a parade of shocked, scared kids torn away from their homes, brought up on stage, and marched away as I was hours ago. Many of them cry, while others look stoic or just plainly shocked. The volunteers are the only ones smiling, swaggering as they take the stage.

Finally, we get to District 12. I lean forward in my seat as I watch the scene play out. Primrose’s name being called. The murmur of the crowd as she approaches the stage, and then Katniss’s outburst, the crowd parting for her as she runs to her sister and sweeps her behind herself with one arm, standing defiantly against the evil designs of the Capitol. Her voice ringing out over the crowd. The mayor’s voice interrupting Effie and her Capitol protocol: “Let her come forward.” Prim’s desperation as she screams Katniss’s name and clings to her. Gale Hawthorn coming to the rescue, picking Prim up, and taking her back to their mother. And then the most chilling moment of all: the district’s silent dissent from the Capitol, their final salute to Katniss. I can tell the Capitol broadcasters don’t grasp the magnitude of this moment, but I am sure that it’s playing far differently in the districts.

I notice that they removed Haymitch’s small moment of rebellion, when he berated the Capitol directly, from the replay, although they left in his dive off the stage, replaying it forwards and backward, even in slow motion. The broadcasters share a hearty laugh at that and another one at Effie’s expense as she tries to keep her wig straight while pulling my name from the reaping ball. She calls my name. It’s strange, seeing myself on screen, knowing my face is now one that could be recognized across Panem—that is, if I was more memorable. After Katniss’s act, I appear as an afterthought even at my own death sentence. I watch as I shake her hand, and I idly rub the fingers of my right hand together, remembering the feel of her small hand on mine.

Effie clicks off the program with a huff. “Your mentor has a lot to learn about presentation. A lot about televised behavior.”

I laugh aloud at this. “He was drunk. He’s drunk every year.” As if this was Haymitch’s first rodeo—he’s been in the mentor role for over 20 years.

To my surprise, Katniss adds, “Every day,” and smirks over at me. I feel a swooping sensation in my stomach, which doesn’t do much to help with my lingering nausea after dinner. These are the first words she’s ever said directly to me.

“Yes,” hisses Effie, glaring through narrowed eyes at both of us. “How odd you two find it amusing. You know your mentor is your lifeline to the world in these Games, the one who advises you, lines up your sponsors and dictates the presentation of any gifts. Haymitch can well be the difference between your life and your death!”

At that moment, Haymitch himself stumbles back into the room and looks around blearily. “I miss supper?” he manages to say before vomiting onto the carpet, tripping, and falling into his own sick.

“So laugh away!” says Effie Trinket. She hops carefully over the pool of vomit and stomps out of the compartment.

Chapter Text

Katniss and I stare down at the pathetic sight of our mentor trying and failing to get up out of the pool of sick as Effie’s words sink in. We’re definitely in trouble here. I glance over at Katniss and she meets my eyes, which would normally excite me, but in the circumstances, the overpowering stench of vomit precludes any feelings of romance. By some unspoken agreement, Katniss and I rise and we each grab one of Haymitch’s arms, helping him to his feet between us.

“I tripped? Smells bad.” He wipes a hand across his nose, smearing vomit on his face.

“Let’s get you back to your room,” I say consolingly. “Clean you up a bit.” Between us, Katniss and I half carry, half drag Haymitch through the train cars to his room. Not wanting to leave him to sleep in his filthy clothes, we lead him into the bathroom, where I lift him into the tub. I turn the shower on him and am leaning over to unbutton his shirt when I notice Katniss looking not only green in the face but also distinctly alarmed at the prospect of a naked Haymitch.

“It’s okay—I can take it from here,” I say, smiling up at her.

Relief floods her face, but also a little guilt. “All right. I can send one of the Capitol people to help you,” she offers.

“No. I don’t want them,” I answer, shaking my head. I don’t want to see their sneering, disgusted faces, or hear their belittling remarks. Despite his shortcomings, Haymitch deserves to be treated with dignity.

Katniss nods her head, her face unreadable, and leaves the compartment.

I continue unbuttoning Haymitch’s shirt, then slip the soiled garment off of him, along with his pants, underwear, and socks. I freeze when I see the scar on his belly; ugly and puckered and at least six inches long, it stretches across his lower abdomen like a smile. Somebody tried to disembowel him. How could he have survived that? How could anybody? Cold dread creeps down my back as I realize that there's only one place he could have gotten a wound like that and survived. The arena. And I'll be heading into my own arena in a matter of days.

The Capitol must have worked hard to save him when he was the last one left standing. It would have been humiliating for them to lose their victor; it would undermine the purpose of the Games. They need someone to pin all the deaths and bloodshed on, after all. I've seen victors come out of their Games horribly disfigured, or missing limbs, or half-mad, but I've never seen a Games without a victor.

I grab the shower head and spray it over his body, letting the vomit swirl down the drain. I turn the spray onto his hair and face and he chokes, spluttering for a moment, and I have to hold down his arms as he swings them at me. He’s fairly strong, but in his inebriated condition, it’s not much of a challenge. There is a bottle of floral-scented shampoo in the bathroom that I lather up and comb through his hair. I notice that there are gray hairs streaked throughout his long black curls.

Finally, I deem him clean enough to sleep and help him up out of the bathtub and into bed. He’s a little heavy, but not as much as I might expect—I suspect he gets most of his calories from the booze he drinks. I grab a towel from the bathroom and wipe him off as best I can, then try to wrestle him into a fresh pair of underwear. I turn him onto his side so that if he throws up again in his sleep he won’t choke on it, then pull the soft comforter up to his shoulders. I spy an empty glass turned upside down on his nightstand, and I fill it with water from the sink and try to make him drink. He makes a face and turns away.

“Come on, Haymitch, or you’re going to hate yourself in the morning,” I say.

He peers up at me blearily. “Who’re you?”

I press the cup to his lips again and he reluctantly opens them and takes a small sip. “I’m Peeta. I’m the other tribute. You didn’t hear my name get called because you fell off the stage and passed out.”

He chokes on the water a bit and swallows. “Mmm . . . doesn’t sound like . . . hic . . . me . . .”

I roll my eyes. “Sure it doesn’t. Well, you’re my mentor now, and even more importantly, you’re Katniss’s mentor. And we’re going to need all the help we can get. So enjoy this last night of being drunk, because starting tomorrow, you’re helping us out.”

He groans, rolling away from me onto his belly. “Why . . . helping me . . . can’t save you . . . you all just die . . .” His slurred words give way to heavy breathing, and after a moment, to gentle snoring.

I gaze down at our mentor. The hopelessness, the inevitability in his voice chills me to the bone. Is there really no chance? No point in trying? Is any plan, any attempt to cling to life futile already? He would know, wouldn’t he? He’s been on this train for 24 years now, making this same trip west. Every return trip has been made alone. Well, not alone, exactly: two pine boxes carrying the tributes’ corpses arrive every year on the same train that brings him home. What must it be like doing this year after year, with no end in sight? It’s enough to drive someone insane. To drive them to consign themselves to the oblivion of alcohol.

Sighing, I leave the water glass on his nightstand for the morning. I turn out the light and shut his door, hoping I can somehow head off his drinking in the morning so he doesn’t end up in this state again.

Back in my room, I peel off my soiled clothes and look at them one last time before dropping them in the hamper. I probably won’t see them ever again—I’m sure the attendants on the train won't bother washing my patched-up pants and vomit-stained shirt when they have provided so many clothes of far superior quality for my use. Especially since I only have a week or so left to live.

Stripped naked, I step into the shower and turn the water on—nice and hot, far hotter than the tepid water we get at home. I stand with my arms braced against the tiled walls for several minutes, letting the water pour over my head and drip down my body. I allow myself to cry again as I think of my family. Are they settling into bed yet? Or is sleep evading them tonight? Have they begun to mourn me already? Did they close the doors to the bakery and shutter the windows, or did my mother and father roll up their sleeves and work through the pain? What about the poker night planned by my friends? Did they cancel their plans, or are they together now? Are they talking about me at all, or trying to pretend none of it happened? Are they sad that I’m gone, or just relieved that they made it through one more reaping?

I turn away from these miserable thoughts and think instead of Katniss. I try to catalog every new thing I learned about her today, every new experience. First touch. First time really talking to each other. She’s funny—I think of her grabbing that cake with her bare hands, her willingness to join in on my joke about Haymitch. She’s brave—well, I knew that one already. She loves her sister, is even willing to die for her. I should have known what she would do as soon as Primrose’s name was called at the reaping. She’s devoted almost her whole life to keeping her family alive. Hunting in the woods, trading in the black market, haggling fiercely with my father and our merchant neighbors. I’d seen the look on Katniss’s face as she stared down with loving devotion at her sister, a rare, soft smile gracing her lips as the little girl gazed excitedly inside the bakery windows at the cakes I’d spent so much time decorating. I always hoped one day she’d come inside and have something valuable enough to trade for one—I knew she occasionally found large game, like deer or wild pig or turkey—but it never happened. I’m sure to her, it would have been too much of a luxury, of a waste, when her family had so little and needed so much. But still—I desperately wanted to feed her something I’d made with my own hands, something I was proud of. I wonder about the cookies I sent to her with my father. She didn’t mention them at dinner. What did she think of them? Did she eat them?

I wonder if she’s thinking of me at all.

I step out of the shower and towel off my hair, not bothering to comb through it. Instead, I grab the first pair of underwear I find in the closet and pull them on. They appear to be made of silk. I hate them. I miss my normal cotton briefs. I miss my room with the familiar sound of my brothers’ snoring. I miss the comforting smell of yeast and flour and baking bread that was ever-present in our home.

I cross to the small window in my room, but I pause. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to open the window when the train is moving this fast. Sighing, I turn away and sprawl over the covers of the huge bed. I’m used to falling asleep to the sounds of District 12: the wind rustling through the leaves of an apple tree, rainfall pattering on the paving stones in the square, the hum of cicadas in the summertime. Without the window open, the air feels stale and oppressive, and the only sound is the hum of the train as it speeds along the track.

I stare at the ceiling, willing sleep to come, but Effie’s words about lining up sponsors and Haymitch being the difference between life and death for Katniss and me keep ringing in my ears. I finally decide to give up on trying to sleep, pull on a pair of pajamas from the closet, and slip out into the train hallway. I glance down at Katniss’s door, wondering if she’s faring any better than I am tonight, then walk back down to the train car with the television.

When I arrive in the room, the sharp smell of antiseptic hits me and I spot a Capitol attendant, different from the two that were serving us at dinner, mopping up the pool of vomit left by Haymitch.

“Oh—sorry about that,” I say guiltily. “Haymitch was . . . having a bad night.”

He just nods and says in his affected Capitol accent, “It’s no trouble at all. Can I get you anything?”

I blink. He seems friendlier than the other Capitol people I’ve met today. “I was just wondering . . . is there anything on television now about reaping day? Commentators or talk shows, things like that?”

“Oh, definitely.” He crosses to the television and flips it on. “Want to see what they’re saying about you in the Capitol, eh?”

I smile politely. “Something like that.”

And so I watch the Capitol commentators as he finishes cleaning. The betting pools won’t open until after the tribute parade, but they are already predicting odds. Most highly favored are the tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4, who are always favorites to win the Games, but the huge boy tribute from District 11—his name is Thresh—is also getting a lot of attention. His district mate, a tiny 12-year-old girl with large brown eyes, is dismissed out of hand.

“And now we come to, last and most often least, District Twelve—but they actually had a bit more excitement than the usual year, wouldn’t you say, Lucia?”

“Oh, you bet, Gaius! And I’m not just talking about Haymitch Abernathy’s little accident on stage! Today we had our first-ever volunteer from District Twelve, with Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take the place of her little sister, Primrose! And you know, Gaius, volunteers usually get quite far along in the Games!”

“Well that may be true, but I have to say, while Katniss Everdeen may have shown bravery today, she’s so small it will be hard to take her seriously as a competitor! She’s nearly as tiny as the sister she volunteered for!” They both laugh heartily at that.

Just you wait, I think fiercely to myself. She’ll show them what she can do.

“And finally, the last tribute of the day—Peeta Mellark! Now, of course we don’t know anything about these tributes yet, but I have to say he looks a sight better than the usual offerings from District Twelve! He’s not covered in filth, for one, and just look at that build! Do we think he might have a fighting chance, Lucia?”

“I agree, Gaius! Not to mention those dreamy blue eyes! But, I have to say, they didn't look so dreamy after visiting with his family!” They flash an image on screen of Katniss and I standing at the train station, her face stoic, mine red and puffy. “Clearly, this tribute wasn't feeling too confident about his chances when he said goodbye to his friends and family today! Maybe he's not as strong as he appears at first glance? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!”

News of the reaping over, they turn to babbling on about which prominent people will make an appearance at the tribute parade tomorrow, and I tune them out. It’s sickening, listening to them pick apart our appearances and our emotions, sizing us up and theorizing how likely each of us is to die. It’s as if this really is nothing more than a big game to them, and we’re just chess pieces. My tears aren’t a sign that I’m a human boy being ripped from his family and condemned to die, but just another data point for those making odds on my demise. And they can’t even get that right! I can’t help but think how stupid it is of them to make their predictions based only on size and relative attractiveness when clearly survival skills are what counts in an arena. I mean really, what does it matter how big I am or how blue my eyes are when I don’t know the first thing about how to feed myself in the wild?

“She’s a survivor, that one.” That’s right. My mother knew it. I’m sure all of District 12 knows it—I don’t have a fighting chance. If anyone’s going to make it out of the arena from District 12, it’s going to be Katniss. The sooner I come to terms with my death the better. So what does that mean for me, then? What will my death mean? What has my life meant? A baker’s third son, helpful as labor but a problem once I’m old enough to want a family of my own. There’s only one business to pass down, after all. Never found the courage to tell the girl I’ve had a crush on my whole life how I feel about her. And now, just a pawn in the games the Capitol plays to keep the districts subdued. Dying for the sake of entertainment. Worse—for propaganda.

Despair washes over me. If I don’t have any hope of survival—and I don’t—then how can I endure the next few days? I wish suddenly that I could just end it all right here, right now. I don’t want to give the Capitol the satisfaction of deciding when and how I die. Maybe I could force open one of the emergency doors; leaping from a moving train would probably be enough to kill me. But—surely denying them their show, their tribute, would only come back on my family, maybe even on the entire district. They could execute my family, or return to District 12 and pluck a different boy from the crowd to face my same fate. No—I can’t run from this and put this fate on another. So then, what?

You could try and help her. The thought surfaces in my mind—or maybe it’s been there all along, ever since my name was called at the reaping, just unacknowledged. It’s true that I want to help her, but helping Katniss live necessarily means working towards my own death. Accepting it as inevitable is one thing, but actively working towards that end is another. It seems pathetic, a little, to sacrifice my life for someone who has barely acknowledged my existence. But is it? That kind of flies in the face of the Gamemakers and the Capitol, doesn't it? The message of the Hunger Games is clear: humanity is, at its core, violent, hostile, and selfish. We are easy to control because we prioritize self-preservation over everything; when threatened, everyone will kill to save their own life. Year after year, we watch children turn on each other, betraying alliances, and hunting down the weak. There’s no room for compassion in the Games—no room for sacrifice. But what if there could be? Would there be a way to send a message to the Capitol, or even just to the people who love me and know me best back home?

Could that be it? I won’t be able to save my life, but maybe my death could be meaningful. I could subvert the Capitol’s message and send my own. The only question is: how? How can I be sure the Capitol won’t edit whatever I do or say when they air the Games, transform me into a person I’m not? I’m not sure. But now I have a goal, and that means I will have to work hard, do whatever I have to do, to stay alive long enough to see it through, to send that message. Which means I can’t check out just yet. I hadn’t cared about how my tears would play for the audience earlier; I wasn’t worrying about how I would come across on camera. Clearly, that was a misstep. I can’t afford to have another. The Capitol audience doesn’t reward tears. I need to be smarter, to think about how to present myself. What will get through to the viewers in the Capitol? What will make them see me as a human, will make them relate to me instead of betting on my life? Clearly, pity isn’t the way to reach them.

I switch off the television and look curiously at the Capitol attendant, who has just finished mopping up Haymitch’s vomit and is wringing his mop out in a bucket. “Thanks for cleaning up,” I say.

He glances up at me in surprise. “No need to thank me. It’s my job.”

I have to think about that for a minute. His job? In District 12, we’re all so used to thinking of Capitolites as privileged and pampered, yet I would take baking bread any day over wiping up puddles of sick. I guess it makes sense that even in the Capitol, someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. “Can I ask . . . ” I begin before pausing, unsure.

He looks at me again. “Yes?”

“I’m just curious,” I continue, “what sort of tribute do you like in the Games? I mean, how do you choose who to root for?”

He thinks about it for a moment, leaning against the handle of his mop. “That’s a good question. I guess it depends on the year? It’s always nice when someone unique comes along, but you don’t really know what ‘unique’ is until you see it, right?”

“Sure, that makes sense,” I agree, but internally I sigh. It’s not exactly a helpful answer.

Maybe he sees the disappointment on my face because he hurries to add, “Maybe I could tell you what makes me dislike a tribute?” Taking my silence as an affirmation, he continues, “I mean, the quiet ones who hardly say anything are always boring. But the worst are the ones that come in and act like they’re entitled to the crown, you know? The ones who already think they’re a victor before they’ve put in the work. I always root for those tributes to be put in their place, to have someone teach them a lesson.”

I choose not to point out that a tribute being ‘put in their place’ in this scenario would learn no lessons at all since they’d be dead. But his words remind me of something. It’s like in a wrestling match when your opponent is overly cocky and full of bluster. It always makes me want to try extra hard to win, knock them down a peg. I smile a bit, thinking of Rye. He loves to talk trash before a match. I guess these Capitol people aren’t too different from me.

I rise from the sofa, stretching my arms over my head. “Thanks, er–”

“Publius,” he supplies.

I smile. “Thanks, Publius. That’ll come in handy, I think.” I glance over at the digital clock on the wall. It’s getting close to midnight. “Well, I’d better head to bed.” I walk towards the end of the train car but turn back just before I leave. “You’ll be rooting for me, right, Publius?”

He laughs. “Show me something I haven’t seen before, and maybe I will!”

When I get back to my compartment, I crawl under the heavy down comforter. Fragments of strategies flit through my mind as, finally exhausted from the day and lulled by the movement of the train, I fall asleep.

The night is restless and I wake just as dawn is breaking, rosy fingers stretching across a pearl-gray sky. After brushing my teeth, I dress in a collared shirt in a pale blue shade that brings to mind the dress Katniss wore yesterday. I pair it with some light brown linen pants and leather loafers, then venture over to the dining car. Once again, I’m the first one to arrive, although Effie joins me after a few minutes.

She looks rather unhappy to be awake but pleased to see me. “Oh, Peeta. How sweet of you to be up already. You hardly need my help at all.” She heads straight for a silver pot and pours herself a large, steaming cup of coffee. The smell reminds me of home—my father occasionally enjoys a cup on the mornings when he wakes up before the break of dawn to prepare the dough and set it to rise. I often join him on those mornings, kneading out the bread side by side in companionable silence.

Effie takes a long sip from her cup and seems to revive a bit. “Would you like some coffee, dear?”

I shake my head. “No thanks—it’s a little bitter for me.”

“If it’s sweet you want, there’s hot chocolate here as well,” she replies, gesturing towards mugs of warm brown liquid gently steaming at each table setting.

I raise an eyebrow. “Hot chocolate? I can’t say I’ve ever tried it.” I sit down and pick up one of the mugs, taking a cautious sip. My eyes widen as the sweet, rich flavor hits my tongue. It might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

The servers from yesterday enter the compartment bearing breakfast—eggs and ham, fried potatoes, slices of melon and cantaloupe on ice. My mouth waters at the smell. Apparently, I’ve recovered my appetite after gorging myself last night.

Effie leaves to wake up Katniss and Haymitch. I decide to wait for them before I dig in, but I continue sipping my hot chocolate, holding the sweetness on my tongue before swallowing each gulp. The servers return with a huge basket of fragrant white rolls, shiny with melted butter. I snatch one off the top of the pile and bring it to my nose, breathing in the familiar scent. They’re still warm from the oven. I feel a pang of homesickness as I think about my family, who must be awake by now. What is it like for them this morning, baking without me there? My mother must be decorating the cakes today. I wonder what designs she’ll choose.

Haymitch lumbers into the compartment, his face puffy and red. He squints in the light pouring through the train windows and digs the heel of his hand into his temple. He sits down heavily at the table across from me, groaning, and snaps his fingers at one of the servers to summon her over.

“Be a dear and bring some vodka for the table?” he asks. I see her shoulders stiffen, but she nods and walks back into the kitchen car, returning momentarily with a squat, clear bottle. Haymitch smiles and pours some of the liquid into his glass of cranberry juice, then winks at me. “Hair of the dog.”

I just shake my head, rolling my eyes. Keeping him sober is going to be harder than I thought.

“You the one who cleaned me up last night?” he asks.

I nod.

“That’s too bad—I was hoping it was Effie who gave me a bath. Payback for our early morning wake-up call. Waking up to that woman screeching and banging on my door has got to be the worst part of this trip every year. Have you ever heard anything more grating?”

I grin in spite of myself. “She does have a pretty shrill voice, I guess. She even puts our old sow to shame.”

I jump as the door to the compartment slams shut behind me and I turn sheepishly to see Effie standing in the door frame, glowering at the two of us.

“Well! So nice to know how appreciated I am around here! I suppose I should just stay in my room and see how well any of you do without me!”

I blush. “I’m so sorry Effie, I didn’t mean—I just . . .”

Haymitch barks out a laugh. “Aw c’mon Effie, don’t be like that. I’m sure Peeta’s pig sounds perfectly lovely. He meant it as a compliment!”

I glare at Haymitch, sure he must have seen Effie standing there and set me up on purpose. Just then, Katniss walks in, dressed in the same clothes she wore last night. Effie stalks past her out of the train car, muttering obscenities under her breath and clutching her coffee mug to her chest.

Haymitch is in the best mood I’ve ever seen him in. “Sit down! Sit down!” He waves Katniss over. She glances curiously between the three of us before taking the seat next to me. She surveys the meal laid out before her, eyes landing on the gently steaming cup of hot chocolate set by her plate.

“They call it hot chocolate,” I say, still a little shy to be talking to her. “It’s good.”

She raises the mug to her lips and takes a sip, and I swear I can see her shudder with the taste of it. She quickly drains the rest of the cup in swift, gasping gulps before turning with gusto to the other dishes. I can hardly tear my eyes off her as she eats—she has so much enthusiasm and pure pleasure in the act that I almost want to smile before I remember we’re being fattened up like pigs before the slaughter. I eat my own breakfast more slowly after this thought. I tear my roll into pieces and dip them in my hot chocolate. The combination of sweet, fluffy bread and rich chocolate is divine, and I find myself wishing I could share the flavors with my father, brainstorming new ideas for chocolate rolls and coffee cakes together.

Finally, Katniss seems to have eaten her fill and leans back in her chair, glaring at Haymitch as he adds even more vodka to his cranberry juice. “So, you’re supposed to give us advice,” she says.

“Here’s some advice. Stay alive,” he responds, then bursts out laughing at his own joke.

Rage rises up inside me hot and fast, as I think of all I did for him last night. Cleaning him up, keeping him from embarrassing himself in front of these awful Capitol people, just for him to laugh in the face of our deaths? Katniss and I share a look, and I see my own anger reflected in her gray eyes.

“That’s very funny,” I say, then strike out at the glass in his hand. It flies across the car and shatters on the ground. “Only not to us.”

For a moment, Haymitch just stares at the pattern the red liquid has made on the floor. Then, without warning, he swings at me, connecting hard with my jaw and knocking me from my chair. I land heavily on the floor, stars bursting across my vision. It takes me a moment to catch my breath, but I’m determined not to appear weak in front of Haymitch, and luckily I have plenty of experience managing this kind of pain.

Above me, I hear a thunk, followed by a brief silence and then Haymitch’s voice once more. “Well, what’s this? Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year?”

I push myself up off the floor and notice the knife stuck in the table, inches from Haymitch’s hand. Did Katniss do that?

I scoop up a handful of ice from a tureen on the table; I can tell from the throbbing in my jaw that the blow will bruise. I hate having visible bruises on my face—hate seeing the looks of pity from my friends, the way teachers and others glance quickly away, pretending not to notice—but Haymitch stops me as I bring the ice up to my jaw. “No—let the bruise show. The audience will think you’ve mixed it up with another tribute before you’ve even made it to the arena.”

I lower my eyebrows, confused. “That’s against the rules.”

“Only if they catch you. That bruise will say you fought, you weren’t caught, even better.”

I shrug and drop the ice onto my plate. That makes sense enough to me.

He turns to Katniss. “Can you hit anything with that knife besides a table?”

She casually yanks the knife out of the table and then with a flick of her wrist sends it spinning across the compartment until it lands quivering in the seam between two wall panels. A shiver races down my spine. She really is deadly.

“Stand over here. Both of you,” says Haymitch, ushering us toward the middle of the room. I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Katniss as Haymitch circles us. He pokes and prods us, squeezing my bicep, grabbing my jaw, and tilting my face from side to side. Finally, he steps back, arms folded. “Well, you’re not entirely hopeless. Seem fit. And once the stylists get hold of you, you’ll be attractive enough.”

I think this is severely understating Katniss’s beauty, but I bite my tongue on that remark, sure she won’t appreciate it.

“All right, I’ll make a deal with you. You don’t interfere with my drinking, and I’ll stay sober enough to help you,” says Haymitch. “But you have to do exactly what I say.”

I’d prefer he stop drinking altogether, but realistically this is probably the best offer we’re going to get out of him. “Fine,” I agree.

“So help us,” Katniss demands. “When we get in the arena, what’s the best strategy at the Cornucopia for someone—”

“One thing at a time,” Haymitch cuts her off. “In a few minutes, we’ll be pulling into the station. You’ll be put in the hands of your stylists. You’re not going to like what they do to you. But no matter what it is, don’t resist.”

“But—” Katniss begins again, exasperated.

“No buts. Don’t resist,” Haymitch reiterates. He grabs the bottle of vodka from the table and walks out of the compartment, leaving me alone with Katniss.

No sooner has he left than the car is plunged into darkness. I look around in alarm but quickly realize that we must just be traveling through a tunnel. I remember learning in school that the Capitol lies to the west of a large mountain range, what used to be called the Rockies in pre-Panem days. We must be traveling through those mountains now.

My heartbeat starts to pick up as the tunnel stretches on and on. It must be miles. I’ve never been alone in a room with Katniss Everdeen in my life, and in the small dark train compartment, with my jaw throbbing and the taste of hot chocolate on my tongue, it feels for a moment like anything could happen. Like I could gather the courage to tell her, right here, how important she is to me. I notice the sound of her breaths coming faster and for an absurd, fleeting moment, I wonder if she is feeling the same thing I am, nervous about our close proximity in this dark room. But then I see, through the glow of the dim train lights, her eyes wide with fear, staring straight up at the ceiling. Is she claustrophobic? I wonder. I wish I could do something to comfort her, but then the moment passes and the sun breaks through the train windows once again, bright and dazzling.

We both race to the windows and peer out for our first glimpse of the Capitol city. It sits nestled in a valley, hemmed in by the rocky peaks of the mountains we just passed through on one side and a glittering lake in the distance. Unlike 12, which sprawls haphazardly with no clear plan, each city block of bright, glittering skyscrapers is neatly divided by a grid of wide streets down which roll hundreds of cars. The colors of the city are bright, garish—the yellows an acidic neon that hurts the eyes, the blues and greens artificial and saturated, the reds and pinks far too loud. It's nothing like District 12, which may have a layer of ugly gray coal dust coating most everything, but also has earthy, rich browns, deep soft greens, and rusty reds. I hate it.

The train slows as it nears the station and I see crowds of freakishly modified people pointing excitedly at our train, at us. This is it—time to win these people over. I paste on my most winning smile and wave back at them. This excites them and I see several literally jump up and down, competing for my attention. It’s almost too easy.

As the train slows to a stop, I glance back and see Katniss glaring at me in disbelief, her eyes accusatory. I can tell she’s judging me for appealing to the crowd, and I’m annoyed—wasn’t she listening to Haymitch and Effie like I was? Isn’t she serious about winning?—but I hide my feelings behind an indifferent mask and shrug my shoulders. “Who knows? One of them may be rich.”

I see something shift in her eyes and my heart sinks. Whatever goodwill I thought I had with Katniss is gone. Her eyes, her expressive face, say clearly what her lips do not: I don't trust you.

Chapter Text

Snip, snip, snip. I stare straight ahead as Albina, a middle-aged woman whose face is covered in a thick layer of white powder that obscures all of her features except for her lips, which are drawn back on in an exaggerated heart shape of deep fuschia, cuts my hair. The ashy blonde strands fall to the floor around me. Another beautician, Cicero, sits on a stool near my feet giving me something he called a ‘pedicure,’ which consisted of scrubbing my feet with multiple tools (one of which suspiciously resembled a cheese grater), slathering on 4 different rounds of chemicals and oils, and then filing my toenails down to an acceptable length and coating them in a layer of clear polish.

“You know Peeta, your hair actually looks quite nice now that we’ve washed it!” chirps Claudia, a tall woman with absurdly long electric blue eyelashes, as she stands back and looks me over. Other than a barber’s cape, I am completely naked, reclining on a plastic-covered chair. “And those biceps and shoulders of yours—they’ll look absolutely marvelous in the outfit Portia designed!”

I wonder just how much skin I’ll be showing in my costume and—I might as well admit it—how much skin Katniss might be showing. I grin at Claudia and raise one of my arms, flexing. “You think the crowd will like them?”

Cicero, whose hot pink hair sticks up in little spikes all over his head like a porcupine, makes an appreciative sound. “Definitely! You must spend so much time in the gym.”

“I do wrestle a bit, but I think I mostly get them from kneading dough.”

They all seem to find this comment hilarious, giggling loudly. I’ve spent the last several hours being fussed over and remade by these three odd people, my prep team. They started by stripping me bare and hosing me off, then they scrubbed my skin with some kind of gritty serum until it glowed pink. Then there was a great deal of attention paid to my face, as they waxed my eyebrows and facial hair in an incredibly painful process and brushed a burning, stinging liquid onto my jaw and cheeks that they told me would inhibit facial hair growth for the next few weeks. I guess the Capitol wants to keep their tributes looking as boyish as possible in the arena.

“Finished!” Albina announces, whipping off the barber’s cape with a flourish and revealing me in all my glory. I had been a little self-conscious when they first stripped me down, but their complete non-reaction to my nudity oddly made me feel more comfortable. They treat me more like a dog being groomed than a person. I stand up and approach the long, full-length mirror on one side of the room, examining myself from top to bottom. I have to admit, I definitely look nicer than usual. My hair is soft and shiny, its usual wavy texture tightened into loose curls. My skin is free of dust and flour and looks rosy and smooth. My usually ragged nails and toenails are smooth and neat. Thankfully, they haven’t slathered me in makeup or given me some of the strange alterations they have on their own bodies. I still mostly look like myself—complete with a bruise on my jaw that has started to turn dark purple in color.

I turn to my preps, who are waiting with anticipation, and smile. “You three are amazing. I hardly recognize myself!”

“Oh! How sweet you are, Peeta!” Albina actually wipes a tear from her eye.

“I just wish we could have done something about these scars.” Claudia grabs one of my hands and holds it up, pressing one of her long, talon-like blue fingernails into the skin of my forearm. “The Capitol won’t do any kind of skin polishing on a tribute—it’d be a waste. You have to be a victor to get that treatment.”

I gently disengage my arm from her hands. “Oh well—all the more reason to win!” I say.

They giggle appreciatively at that and then bustle out of the room to fetch my stylist, leaving me alone. I rub the fingers of my right hand along a long burn mark on my left forearm. I got it a few years ago when taking a pan out of the oven. It reminds me of home, and I’m grateful they couldn’t get rid of it, even if it is just because it would be a waste perfecting a body that will be cold and moldering within a week or two.

It’s odd, hearing them casually make these comments about my imminent demise. They don’t seem malicious; I even think they might like me, a bit. I’ve worked hard to make them laugh, thinking it’s a good idea to get the people whose job it is to make me look my best on my side. Yet they don’t seem at all uncomfortable or unaware of the fact that I’m being sent into an arena to die for their amusement. I don’t quite know what to make of them. Are they stupid? Or just brainwashed by Capitol propaganda?

I continue staring at myself in the mirror as I wait for my stylist. I do look strong, and my shoulders and arms are fairly big, I’ll admit, but my strength will mean next to nothing in an arena full of kids who are trained with weapons. I've never wielded anything more deadly than a butcher's knife. All of the tributes from the career districts and a handful of others, like Katniss, could easily kill me with the weapons they're sure to find in the arena.

The door slides open again and my stylist enters. I’m a bit surprised—she’s not one of the District 12 stylists I remember from the last few Games. She’s young and very pretty, with tightly curled blonde hair, brown skin, and lips and eyelids coated in black makeup. She almost looks like a normal person, albeit better dressed than anyone from back home. She smiles at me and reaches out her hand. “Peeta. So good to meet you. If only it was under different circumstances.”

I take her hand and shake it, a little startled; this isn’t the greeting I was expecting. I look carefully into her dark brown eyes, but I don’t see any falseness there. “You must be Portia.”

“Yes. Can you stand very still for a moment? Then I’ll let you cover up. I just need to get a look at you.”

I stand still, but my eyes track her as she walks a couple of circles around me, looking me up and down. She reaches out a hand to grab my chin and gently moves my face to the side, examining the bruise on my jaw.

“Courtesy of Haymitch,” I explain. “He said he wanted me to show it off—that it might give the impression that I’ve been fighting the other tributes.”

She nods and drops her hand. “We spoke. It’s not how I’d prefer to present you, but Haymitch has been doing this much longer than I have, so I'll defer to him on this.”

She hands me a robe and beckons for me to follow her into a sitting room through a door off of the prep room. I slip into the robe, which is warm and comfortable, and take a seat across from her on a red loveseat. Between us sits a low table with lunch, which smells amazing. What captures my attention most are the tiny rolls, each one intricately folded into the shape of a rose. I pick one up and examine it, wondering how it was done.

Portia smiles. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

I give her a sheepish grin in return. “My family runs a bakery back in District Twelve. We’ve never sold anything like this before, though.”

As we eat, I look out of the huge window that takes up one entire wall of the room. I can see the central avenue leading from this building down to the City Circle, where the Tribute Center awaits. It's only noon, but already a crowd is gathering along the street where we will soon ride our chariots. I wonder with irritation why all of the buildings lining the street are painted such bizarre colors. Magenta and cerulean and chartreuse. Their large windows reflect the other buildings around them, creating a cacophony of clashing colors. It looks hideous.

“What do you think of the city? It's pretty different from District Twelve, I imagine,” Portia asks, watching me closely from the other sofa.

I try to think of something polite to say. “It's very . . . colorful here. The buildings are much brighter than the ones back home.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Almost unnaturally so?”

I search her eyes for a moment, trying to figure out what she means by this remark that hints at disapproval of the Capitol. “I suppose so. But I guess in the Capitol you can make any color of paint you want. You’re not constrained as much as we are in the districts.”

“Do you paint, then?”

I shrug. “A little bit, in school. Mostly I sketch and decorate cakes. People don’t have much use for art back in Twelve.”

“I think everyone needs art and beauty in their lives,” she says.

“It’s hard to worry about something like beauty when you don’t know where your next meal will come from.” The words come out bitter, and harsher than I intended. I look up at her, stricken. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

She reaches across the low table, placing her hand over mine placatingly. “Don’t apologize. Of course, you’re absolutely right, Peeta. I spoke from a place of privilege.”

I stare into those dark eyes, ringed by smoky black makeup. I don’t know what I’m searching for—deceit, some hint of artifice—but I only see kindness and earnestness. “You’re . . . not what I was expecting. Are you new? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

Her eyes crinkle as she smiles. “It’s my first year.”

“So you were given the worst district?”

She lifts an eyebrow. “My partner and I requested your district, actually. We’ve always found District Twelve very interesting.”

I stare at her, wondering if this is a joke. I know the words used to describe District 12 in the Capitol from hearing them on television, and ‘interesting’ has never been one of them. “How so?” I ask.

“Well, you’re so far away from the Capitol, and so isolated, that you haven’t assimilated as much to Capitol culture, or even the culture of other districts. Your district seems to be more spontaneous, more unpredictable than the others. Just look at what happened at the reaping; we were very impressed with your district’s spirit.”

“You mean you were impressed with Katniss.” I lean back against the sofa. “Of course you were. She’s an impressive person.”

Portia watches me carefully. “Are you and Katniss close?”

I laugh shortly. If only. “No. We'd never officially spoken before yesterday. But she's something of a legend back in Twelve. She’s supported herself and her family on her own ever since her dad died when she was eleven. She's brave. Strong, you know. But a little intimidating. I've been trying to build up the courage to talk to her for years.” I frown, thinking of Katniss’s accusatory glare on the train. “Now that I finally have, I don't think she likes me much.”

“But you want her to like you.” It's not posed as a question, just a statement of fact hanging in the air between us. I blush. Have I been that transparent?

“It's just that . . . these Games have a way of turning us all against one another. Of course they do—there can only be one winner, after all. Only one person gets to live. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to . . . to let my circumstances,” I'm careful not to say the Capitol, “change how I feel, how I act. I wish I could be on her side, instead of pitted against her. You know?”

Portia tilts her head to the side. “I do know. I think that’s very noble of you, Peeta. And I actually think the Capitol audience would respond well to that, too. My partner, Cinna, is Katniss’s stylist, and we were already thinking along those lines. We’ve designed complementary costumes for the tribute parade. You probably know that it’s tradition for the parade costumes to reflect the principal industry of the tribute’s district?”

I nod, my stomach sinking. They’re sure to put us in some kind of stupid imitation of a coal miner’s outfit. I remember Claudia’s comment from earlier and can see it now—me in a sleeveless jumpsuit, hoisting a pickaxe over my shoulder, my face artfully smudged with black powder. Back home, I’m sure to be mocked by my neighbors in town and hated by the Seam folk—the baker’s boy, who was, in their eyes, never in danger of entering the dark, dangerous pits of the mines, presented to the world as a coal miner in a skimpy outfit and makeup.

“Well, we were thinking about coal—its meaning, its purpose,” Portia says, “and we wanted to do something with that.”

I raise an eyebrow. The ‘meaning’ of coal? I swear these Capitol people have too much time on their hands, to be contemplating such a thing. “I didn’t think coal had much of a purpose, other than keeping your house warm.”

“That’s exactly it—coal burns. And with its burning, it provides energy, warmth, comfort. All things that humans need.” She looks at me expectantly, as if this should be some sort of revelation.

“I’m sorry . . . I’m not quite following,” I say.

Portia smiles widely. “Fire, Peeta.”

A few hours later, I am dressed and ready for my public immolation. My initial favorable impression of Portia dissipated when I realized she was willing to literally set me on fire to come out on top as the most creative and talked-about stylist in the Games. As it is, I stand rigidly, cursing Haymitch over and over in my mind, as Portia dresses me in a sleeveless black unitard that clings tightly to my body, knee-high black leather boots, and a fluttering cape and headpiece of yellow, orange, and red streamers.

Finally, she declares that I am “just perfect” and says it’s time to go down to the chariots. She notices my stiff posture and gives my arm what I’m sure she thinks is a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t you worry, Peeta—Cinna and I are quite sure this is perfectly safe.”

Quite sure. Quite sure! I nod once, jerkily, but I can’t stop my teeth from grinding together. I’ve experienced burns firsthand, many times. I know exactly how it feels. What about you, Portia? I think with venom. Do you have any idea what it feels like?

I’m distracted a little bit when we meet Katniss and her team at the elevator. Her face looks different with her eyebrows waxed and makeup applied with a light hand. Her outfit is identical to mine and I try not to stare too conspicuously at the curves of her body, more exposed than I’ve ever seen them. She seems so small, so slight in the unitard—muscular, but far too thin. She’s never getting enough to eat. I wish I could feed her. The prep teams are fawning over us and congratulating Portia and Cinna on their vision. I think dark thoughts about each one of them in turn.

We take the elevator down to the ground floor of the Remake Center where our chariots await. Glancing around, I see that the other tributes are dressed up in costumes ranging from boring, like the train conductors from District 6, to corny, like the tributes from District 7 dressed as literal trees, to beautiful, like the silver-spray-painted tributes from District 1, wearing tunics embroidered with hundreds of gemstones. Cinna and Portia lead us to our chariot, last in line and pulled by four coal-black horses. I get my first close-up glimpse of the District 11 tributes in front of us, who are wearing togas with flower crowns on their heads and carrying branches with fake, painted fruit stuck to them. The little girl looks charming and sweet with her flower crown, but the image of the large, hulking boy next to her wearing a daisy crown with his glowering stare would be ridiculous if he wasn’t so intimidating. I notice him staring back at me when I remember the bruise on my face and wonder what conclusions he’s coming to.

Cinna and Portia direct us into our chariot and arrange our bodies and the drape of our capes, then stand back a bit to look at us and consult with each other. To my surprise, Katniss leans towards me until her lips are mere inches from my ear and whispers, “What do you think? About the fire?” I can hear the same fear that sets my teeth on edge in her worried voice.

“I’ll rip off your cape if you rip off mine,” I answer, deadly serious.

“Deal,” she agrees, looking a little relieved. “I know we promised Haymitch we’d do exactly what they said, but I don’t think he considered this angle.”

I clench my hands into fists. “Where is Haymitch, anyway? Isn’t he supposed to protect us from this sort of thing?”

“With all that alcohol in him, it’s probably not advisable to have him around an open flame,” Katniss says.

I’m so taken off guard that her joke breaks through my anxiety and I double over with laughter, and a second later Katniss is laughing too. It’s a nervous laughter, just a little bit deranged, and several other tributes look over at us with surprise and suspicion on their faces.

The opening ceremony music blares out of speakers embedded down the street and we watch as the first chariots begin to roll out. I puzzle over Katniss’s moods. She’s swung between being cold and hostile to smiles and banter almost every other time I’ve seen her in the last two days. I suppose it's only natural, with the situation we're in. I find myself wishing I had just talked to her ages ago. We have the same sense of humor, I think. Maybe we could have been friends. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel quite so alone here.

I’m distracted by these thoughts when Cinna appears with a lighted torch and abruptly sets our capes on fire. Katniss gasps and I reach towards her to rip off her cape, but I realize as I raise my arm that the fire isn’t painful; just a faint tickling sensation around my neck and arms. I drop my hand, craning my neck to look at the coat of flames billowing out behind me. Cinna climbs up into the carriage with us and lights our headdresses as well. He sighs in relief. “It works.”

I look at him in alarm. Shouldn’t he have been sure it would work before setting us on fire?! But he’s lifting Katniss’s chin now. “Remember, heads high. Smiles. They’re going to love you!”

And now I’m looking at Katniss, and my heart might stop in my chest. Flickering tongues of fire lick her face and reflect off of her glossy black braid. She is a being not of this world. A word comes to mind, a drawing from a book of old-world legends I read in the school library long ago: phoenix.

Cinna waves at us and shouts something in our direction.

“What’s he saying?” Katniss turns to me, and do I imagine it? The expression of wonder on her face as she stares at mine?

I look at Cinna and see him holding his hands together, gesturing towards us.

“I think he said for us to hold hands,” I say to Katniss. Not waiting to second guess myself, I reach out with my left hand to grab her right, interlocking her fingers with mine. She looks a little surprised, but not displeased, and we look to Cinna for confirmation. He nods and gives us a thumbs up, and then our chariot starts to move.

As we first roll into view several people in the crowd nearest us shriek with alarm, but the roar of the crowd soon transforms to one of delight. I smile and wave to those nearest us, and the screaming is deafening. The cameras have found us and are projecting our faces on the large television screens lining the streets, and I can see Katniss’s unearthly beauty projected and multiplied around the city. I’m pleased to see that I look impressive too, but I’m nothing compared to her. I notice her hand is rigid in mine and I give it a squeeze, trying to re-center her and bring her back to what needs to be done. In response, her hand tightens on mine like a vise, but after a quick worried glance over at me, she rallies and beams out at the crowd, and even begins to wave and blow kisses. What happened to the girl who glared at me on the train earlier? I wonder briefly, but I’m too deliriously happy to be here, standing at her side, her hand in mine, to hold a grudge.

As we proceed down the avenue it becomes clear that we are the stars of the show. Shouts of “District Twelve!” bombard us from all sides, and even “Peeta! Katniss!” People in the crowd throw flowers at us, each person vying for our attention. I wave back, then curl my right arm in a flex, which brings renewed shrieks. Next to me, Katniss catches a rose in her hand and blows a kiss out to the crowd, which causes a commotion as hundreds of hands reach up to catch her kiss, audience members stumbling and falling over each other. Through it all, Katniss's hand in mine steadies me, tethering me to the chariot and to this moment when the noise of the crowd starts to become overwhelming.

After twenty long minutes, we arrive in the City Circle, which is packed with people peering at us from the balconies and windows of every surrounding building. I feel Katniss’s grip on my hand slacken but I tighten my own grip in response. She gives me a quizzical look.

“No, don’t let go of me,” I say. I don’t want to let go of you yet, I think. I don’t want to let go of you, ever. But what I say instead is, “Please. I might fall out of this thing.”

Her eyes hold mine for a second, an unspoken question in them, but all she says is, “Okay.”

The music blaring out over the city ends with a flourish as our chariot pulls right up to the presidential mansion and rolls to a stop. The president of Panem, a very old and thin man with snowy white hair, stands at a podium on the balcony.

“Welcome, welcome! Tributes, we welcome you. We salute your courage and your sacrifice. And we wish you—Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!” The crowd roars their approval. He waits for them to quiet down then continues his address, talking about the Dark Days, the defeat of the rebellion, and what an honor it is for us to be here and keep alive the memories of the Capitol citizens who were killed. It's the same old drivel he says at the parade every year, and I tune it out.

Katniss and I are illuminated on every screen. As the day fades into darkness, we only seem to shine brighter. While the flickering firelight looks alright on me, Katniss is something else altogether. Her delicate but sharp features are thrown into relief by the flames, the straight line of her nose and the beautiful curve of her upper lip accentuated by dark shadows. The hollows of her deep-set eyes are cast into shadow, but the firelight glints off of her irises, causing them to almost glow in the dark like some ethereal creature. No, it’s no wonder the cameras only briefly cut to other tributes, even to President Snow, before returning once again to focus on us—on her.

Finally, the president takes a seat and the anthem plays. The tribute chariots take one last loop around the City Circle before disappearing into the Tribute Center.

Our prep teams greet us inside, nearly incoherent as they congratulate us on our performance. I keep my fingers locked around Katniss's as Cinna and Portia help us step down from the chariot. Cinna carefully removes our capes and headdresses and tosses them on the concrete floor, where Portia sprays them out with a fire extinguisher. I glance at her suspiciously—synthetic fire, huh?—but shrug it off. They certainly helped us make an impression tonight, so I guess they’ve earned my trust. Plus, I can’t stay mad at Cinna after he gave me the opportunity to hold Katniss’s hand for an entire half hour.

Speaking of, I feel Katniss’s hand twitch in mine and I quickly loosen my grip, knowing there’s no longer a pretense I can use to keep holding on. My fingers are stiff after being gripped so tightly by hers, and we smile sheepishly at each other while massaging our hands. “Thanks for keeping hold of me. I was getting a little shaky there,” I lie.

“It didn’t show. I’m sure no one noticed,” she responds.

Does she see through my façade? Just tell her what you really think! You’ll be dead in a week anyway, what’s the worst that can happen? “I’m sure they didn’t notice anything but you,” I say. “You should wear flames more often. They suit you.” I smile at her, but I can’t resist ducking my head a little in embarrassment.

To my utter amazement, she actually blushes—blushes!—and casts her eyes downwards, her long dark lashes obscuring her eyes. My heart hammers in my chest, and I’m aching to reach out my hand and brush my fingers across the pink flush of her cheeks. Then, she does something that surprises me even more: leaning into me, she grips my bare arm in her hand, stands on tiptoe, and kisses my cheek.

Chapter Text

Katniss pulls back and gives me a sweet, slightly mischievous smile before turning away to talk to Effie, who has just joined our group. The spot on my cheek where she pressed her lips burns with heat, and now it’s my turn to blush. I stare after her open-mouthed, lifting my hand to touch my cheek, until I notice Cinna looking at me curiously. I clear my throat and drop my hand, following behind Katniss as Effie leads us to the elevators.

Effie’s chattering at us nonstop, but I don’t hear a word. My mind is racing along as fast as the train that took us here. What was that? What did she mean by it? It doesn’t fit with the image of Katniss I’ve constructed in my head, pieced together from eleven years of observation. At school she's always been quiet and shy, even aloof. She keeps to herself at lunchtime and in the hallways, only ever talking or sitting with Madge Undersee. I’ve never seen her flirt with anyone, let alone kiss them. Sure, she seems to spend a lot of her free time with Gale Hawthorne, but I’ve never actually witnessed any physical affection between them (to my great relief). I’ve seen her be affectionate with her sister—holding her hand as they walk home from school, stroking her hair—but she clearly loves her sister, while she hardly knows me. So what does it mean, her blushing and kissing me now? Did she just like my compliment that much? Maybe I can compliment her again, I think. I can already think of several.

I begin to daydream about what her reaction to some of these might be before I remind myself how stupid I’m being. Why am I fantasizing about flirting with Katniss when we will both be in the arena in just a few days? Aren’t there more important things I should be focusing on? Anyways, what would be the point? It's not like there's any future for us. Even if I somehow managed to survive and win the Games, Katniss would be dead. And I've already accepted my death as pretty much inevitable. Still . . . maybe it is all just a waste of time, but I have to admit, if I had to choose how to spend the final days of my life, flirting with Katniss, talking with her, laughing with her, kissing her . . . these things would all be at the top of my bucket list.

I don’t know why she kissed me. All I know is I'd love to get her alone and see if I can’t make it happen again.

I tune back into the conversation as Effie is bragging about how she’s been chatting us up to potential sponsors. “Everyone has their reservations, naturally. You being from the coal district. But I said, and this was very clever of me, I said, ‘Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls!’”

I catch Katniss’s eye in the silence that follows. With eleven years of coal-based education under our belts, we’re both aware of just how wrong this is. Hopefully, the rich sponsors she was speaking to aren’t quite as knowledgeable. “That’s brilliant, Effie!” I say in a slightly choked voice.

“Yes, I’m sure that will get them on our side. Thank you, Effie!” Katniss adds. She bites down on her lip, trying to hide a smile. My eyes catch on the spot where her teeth press down on the soft flesh of her lip, and I feel heat rise in my face again. I look away hurriedly.

Effie accepts our praise graciously. “Unfortunately, I can’t seal the sponsor deals for you. Only Haymitch can do that. But don’t worry, I’ll get him to the table at gunpoint if necessary.”

I stare at her, surprised; do they allow ordinary people like Effie to carry weapons here in the Capitol? I can't really picture her with one. Back in 12, possession of a weapon is punishable by death. Only the Peacekeepers carry guns.

The elevator doors open onto our penthouse, which is huge and even more luxurious than the train. It includes a dining area with a long table and matching buffet, and a sunken sitting area with a crescent-shaped purple sofa and an absolutely massive television. The decor is obviously expensive, but at the same time garish and tasteless.

The bedroom assigned to me is as large as my family’s entire apartment back home. The bed is even bigger than the bed on the train and covered in a silky duvet. Nothing in the room is simple; everything seems hi-tech, with complicated gadgets and buttons that do things I can’t begin to imagine. I try to take a shower and wash the makeup off my face, but I end up getting sprayed head-to-toe in a smelly rose-scented oil that stings my eyes and chokes me. I blindly punch buttons trying to find a simple stream of hot water, but only succeed in adding other oils, soaps, and shampoos to the mix in a variety of artificially strong floral and fruity scents. I finally stumble out of the shower and resort to scrubbing the concoctions off of myself with a wet towel. I must reek of perfume.

The closet has a glass pad on it that I use to program an outfit in my size and taste. The closet doors open to reveal the outfit I selected on the pad neatly folded on the single shelf; a pair of soft, light trousers, a cotton shirt, and a thin black jacket with round silver buttons. Where are the clothes coming from, I wonder? Some central location in the Tribute Center? And what happens to them when I’m done wearing them? Have these same clothes been worn by some other doomed tribute in a previous year? Or are they single-use, destroyed after I’m done with them? I’m not sure which would be worse; the first is morbid, but the second seems wasteful beyond belief.

I leave my room quickly after dressing, eager to see Katniss again, but she’s nowhere to be found. I remember how she spent most of her free time alone on the train as well, only coming to meals after Effie called her. I wonder why; does she just like to be alone, or is she avoiding the rest of us? I hesitate, thinking about knocking on her door, but unsure what my excuse would be for doing that.

“Hello, Peeta.” The voice interrupts my thoughts, making me jump. I hadn’t noticed Cinna sitting on the purple sectional, watching television.

“Oh—hello, Cinna. Are you and Portia staying with us too?” I ask. He flips the television off as I walk over to him.

“No, we’ll be staying in our homes, but we’ll come for dinners and any other strategy meetings you two or Haymitch want us at. We’re here to help you both in any way we can.”

“Well, you two definitely helped us out with those parade costumes,” I say. “I had my doubts about the fire, but we looked spectacular.”

Cinna smiles. “I'm glad you liked the costumes. You and Katniss seemed to be enjoying yourselves.”

I pause, unsure what to say in response to that. I know he saw the kiss; what does he make of it? Or does he not think anything at all? Maybe I'm the only person making it out to be a huge deal. That’s probably it. My brothers always tell me I overthink everything. I’m sure they’d be laughing at me, seeing me get so worked up over a kiss on the cheek.

Cinna looks down at an elegant gold watch on his wrist. “I don’t think dinner will be served for at least another half hour, unfortunately.” He pauses, looking up at me with an interesting expression on his face. “Peeta, how would you like to get a bird’s-eye view of the city?” he asks. “This suite has roof access—one of the perks of being from District Twelve.”

“Sure, why not?” I reply. He stands and I follow him down a hallway to a small spiral staircase that leads up to a domed room with a door. He opens it and we step out onto the roof.

I let out a low whistle. It’s an impressive sight. I’ve never been so high up in my life. The city stretches out before us in a thousand sparkling electric lights. The sun has set, but the air is still buzzing with the sound of people shouting and laughing, cars barrelling down the wide grid-like streets and honking their horns. I wonder if it’s ever truly quiet here, or if the noise and lights continue through the night. Cinna and I walk over to the railing on the edge of the roof, and I peer over it. My head spins with vertigo—it must be a 200-foot drop at least to the hard pavement below.

“I’m surprised they allow tributes to come up here. Aren’t they afraid we’ll . . . you know.” I tilt my head towards the steep drop below.

Cinna raises an eyebrow. “Been considering it, have you?”

I shrug. “Maybe once or twice.” I wonder briefly if I should be admitting this to Cinna, but I don’t really see why the Capitol would punish me just for having the thought.

Cinna reaches out a hand into seemingly empty space, but it encounters some kind of barrier. I hear a loud zap, and he jerks his hand back. “Electromagnetic force field. It prevents anything from going over the edge. I guess the Gamemakers have thought about it once or twice, too.”

“Well, they wouldn’t want us dying off-camera. Where’s the fun in that?” I say dryly.

Cinna looks at me for a long moment. “I’m sorry this is happening to you, Peeta,” he says softly.

I look at him in surprise. This is not how we are supposed to think or talk about the Games. Tributes are meant to be grateful for the opportunity to bring honor to their district and to make amends for the wrongdoings of our ancestors. Is he being sincere? He appears so, but I know people can be convincing when they want to be.

“Thank you for saying so,” I say carefully, looking back out over the glowing city. “It’s not all bad though. I’ve been enjoying the food. And the company.” I reach up absently and brush the spot on my jaw where Katniss kissed me. It feels a little tender, and I’m confused until I realize it’s the same spot Haymitch punched me earlier.

Cinna tilts his head. “Want to take a look at the garden? I requested it myself. I thought the roof could use a little brightening up.”

I nod and follow him around the dome. On the other side is a small garden of potted flowers and trees under a pergola with vines creeping up the sides. Bright pink, red, and orange blooms are just visible in the lights of the city. From the branches of the trees dangle hundreds of little windchimes made of glass, metal, and wood. When a breeze blows, the noise is almost overwhelming, but not entirely unpleasant.

I reach out and grab one of the chimes, rolling the hollow metal tube between my fingers. “This is an interesting addition.”

“Aren’t they nice?” Cinna says offhandedly. He cups his hands around a lovely pink-orange dahlia. “I was glad to see you and Katniss getting along so well at the tribute parade. I didn’t know you knew each other already.”

“We don’t—didn’t. Not really.” I pause, trying to think how best to describe our relationship—or lack thereof. “I mean, we’re in the same class at school, so we’ve seen each other a lot. District Twelve isn’t very big. But we haven’t ever spoken before. Well, before yesterday, that is.” I pause for a moment, then say, “Portia said you were impressed with her during the reaping.”

Cinna has a thoughtful look on his face. “What Katniss did was very brave. But we were impressed with all of you—the people of District Twelve. That moment with the . . .” he lifts the three middle fingers of his left hand to his lips, then holds them up. Not high, like we do in District 12, but close to his chest. Almost as if he’s trying to hide the gesture. Why? Could there be cameras up here, recording us?

“The funeral salute?” I ask.

Cinna raises his eyebrows. “Is that what it is?”

I nod. “Yes, it’s an old gesture in Twelve. A way to honor the dead that we loved. To say goodbye.”

We’re both quiet for a moment. When Cinna finally speaks again, his voice is soft, barely audible over the wind chimes. “That’s beautiful. I was very moved by it, even not knowing what it was. You were showing solidarity.”

I frown. “Solidarity? I don’t think I’ve heard that word before.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s not a concept that would be taught in your school back in District Twelve; it’s not even taught in universities here in the Capitol. It means you were united in purpose, in identity. You share the same burdens and the same future.”

I think back to the three-fingered salute given to Katniss at the reaping, to the feelings that swelled within me, within the whole crowd, during that moment of silent protest. Everyone in the crowd participated in the salute, whether they were from the Seam or town, young or old, poor or very poor. Before that moment, I never would have thought of District 12 as a population of people united in purpose or identity. And as for burdens and future, many in the District wouldn’t say those were shared; this disparity was the cause of most of the friction within the district. But despite that, Katniss was able to bring us all together, people who had hated and distrusted each other for years, with her act of sacrifice. For a moment, we were just one people facing the same injustice year after year, standing with the one person who had ever dared to fight against it.

I watch Cinna from the corner of my eye. There’s something secretive about this conversation, both in Cinna’s behavior and in the things he’s said. Nothing overtly rebellious, but dancing on that line. Like his apology to me, and his praise of District 12’s defiant act. And then there’s the matter of Portia’s remarks to me before the tribute parade. Could there be people in the Capitol who are opposed to the Games, even to the exploitation of the districts? But if that's the case, why would he and Portia have volunteered to be a part of the Games, the Capitol's greatest and cruelest weapon?

“I think dinner is starting soon,” Cinna says. “Shall we?”

I follow him back into the domed room and down the staircase to the suite, where we find Portia waiting. She smiles at us. “I was wondering where you two were. You’re not trying to steal my tribute from me, are you Cinna?”

We both chuckle. “Cinna was just showing me a view of the city,” I say. “It looks beautiful from up here.”

“I’d like to see that myself! I've never been this high in the Tribute Center before. Come with me, there’s a balcony over here.”

We follow her out onto the balcony that opens off of the main sitting area. The view is still nice, although not quite as impressive as it is from the roof. The sultry July night is starting to cool off. I’ve noticed that it’s much less humid here than it is in District 12, where the heat of the day clings to the air of the sweltering summer nights long after the sun has set. There’s also no sound of cicadas or other insects buzzing in the trees, but only the human and machine sounds of the city.

“So, what did you think of the parade costumes, Peeta?” Portia asks, eyes twinkling. “I could see you sweating before Cinna lit you up.”

I laugh. “I might have been planning my escape just before that. They were brilliant, though—I don’t think I’ve ever seen the crowd react like that to tributes in any of the Games I’ve watched.”

“Oh, we can’t take all the credit for that. You and Katniss were absolutely perfect. You both played to the crowd so well,” she replies.

“I was pretty shaky at first; it helped having Katniss to hold on to.” I glance over at Cinna. “What was the point of that, anyway?”

He smiles mysteriously and simply says, “Solidarity.”

Before I can think about this too much, we’re interrupted by Effie summoning us to dinner. Katniss is already in the dining room, looking lovely in a simple white shirt under overalls, her hair hanging loose in a glossy black curtain around her shoulders. I have to try hard not to stare; I’ve never seen her with her hair down before. She almost always has it braided in some fashion, kept out of her face. I watch her accept a glass of wine offered by one of our servers. That’s interesting—I didn’t take her for a drinker. I accept my own glass, but make sure to sip it sparingly. I don’t like the way alcohol messes with my head, making my tongue looser and less controlled. My family only ever has wine on special occasions, like New Year’s Eve or during the Harvest Festival, but my friends and I occasionally sneak a case of the cheap, weak beer sold at the local grocers into our poker nights. We’re technically not old enough to purchase it legally, but Clementine’s folks own the place, and they’re nowhere near as strict as mine about her taking an occasional treat from the shop.

Haymitch joins us just as the meal is beginning. He’s also drinking, but eating too, and he looks as sober as I’ve ever seen him, so I don’t mention it.

“Cinna, Portia—what a debut. In my twenty-four years of doing this, that’s the best take on coal I’ve ever seen. Far better than what my stylist dressed me in back in the Quarter Quell,” Haymitch praises them.

“Oh, yes!” Effie pipes in. “That’s the first time I’ve ever had any interest in my tributes on the first night!”

Cinna accepts their praise with a modest and tired-looking smile, but I can tell Portia is pleased, her dark eyes lit up with excitement as she chatters about their inspiration for the costumes and the number of prototypes they had to go through before they figured out how to make the fire work.

“Where were you during the parade, Haymitch?” I ask. My vitriol from earlier is long gone by now, but I’m still curious.

“I was on one of the balconies in the City Circle with the other victors, figuring out who’s mentoring who this year. Trying to get an idea of who’s open to alliances,” he answers.

That’s something to think about—I’ve seen them happen in the previous Hunger Games, brief truces between two or more tributes who agree not to kill each other for a time in the interest of joint survival. These alliances are by definition temporary, though, and often end in a betrayal that plays as dramatic and exciting in the Capitol, but always disgusts those of us in the districts.

“So, what do you two have planned for the interview costumes? Staying with the fire theme?” Haymitch asks.

“Oh yes, I’ve already started on Peeta’s suit—oh, look at that!”

The conversation is interrupted as one of the servers, a young and pretty woman with red hair, brings a three-tiered cake covered in elegant black icing to the table. She pulls a lighter from her pocket and touches it to the cake; fire races in a circle down each tier, flickering brightly against the shiny frosting.

“What makes it burn? Is it alcohol? That’s the last thing I wa—oh! I know you!”

The entire table goes silent as Katniss stares at the red-haired server. I notice that her eyes are slightly out of focus—just how much did she drink? As I watch, her face changes from surprise to something like guilt; the server looks terrified and shakes her head, backing away from the table.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Katniss,” snaps Effie. “How could you possibly know an Avox? The very thought.”

“What’s an Avox?” Katniss asks. I’m just as confused as she is, having never heard the term either.

Haymitch is the one who answers. “Someone who committed a crime. They cut her tongue so she can’t speak. She’s probably a traitor of some sort. Not likely you’d know her.”

“And even if you did, you’re not to speak to one of them unless it’s to give an order,” Effie adds. “Of course, you don’t really know her.”

My stomach twists uncomfortably, and I feel like I might be sick. So this is how the Capitol creates a class of people meant to serve them? They cut the tongues out of people who . . . what? What does one have to do to be branded a traitor and receive this punishment? Is she even from the Capitol, or could she be district? No—she definitely has that Capitol look about her, even without the crazy modifications of someone like Effie. I look around at the other servers in white tunics; are they all Avoxes? How many people are subjected to this? Is it all servers in the Capitol, or do they specifically assign them here to serve the tributes?

I’m pulled out of my thoughts by the expression on Katniss’s face. She’s looking distinctly panicked, and it’s clear she does know this woman and the information about Avoxes has only unsettled her even more. “No, I guess not, I just . . .” she trails off, her eyes darting between Haymitch and Effie.

I snap my fingers. “Delly Cartwright. That’s who it is. I kept thinking she looked familiar as well. Then I realized she’s a dead ringer for Delly.”

Katniss looks at me gratefully. “Of course, that’s who I was thinking of. It must be the hair,” she agrees.

I see Haymitch's eyes narrow at me. I doubt he knows Delly, but he might recognize her family name as belonging to one of the merchants in town. And he has to know that no one living in town has red hair like the Avox girl. Well, if he has put it together, he chooses not to say anything.

“Something about the eyes, too,” I add.

The adults relax at this and we all move on to the cake, which is delicious. I watch Katniss covertly and notice that her hands are shaking slightly as she holds her fork—I guess she's done antagonizing Effie for now. Who is this Avox woman? How could Katniss possibly know her? I’ve never seen someone like her in District 12 before, I'm sure of it. But Katniss never left District 12 until yesterday, so where could she have seen her? On television, maybe?

We move into the sitting room after dessert and lounge on the purple sectional to watch the recap of the opening ceremonies. Katniss and I are the main story of the night, beautiful, bright, and charismatic in our flames.

“Whose idea was the hand holding?” Haymitch asks.

“Cinna’s,” says Portia, smiling over at her partner.

Haymitch nods. “Just the perfect touch of rebellion. Very nice.”

I sit up straighter at this, my eyes fixed on the television screen. He’s right; it's like what I said to Portia before the tribute parade, about wanting to be on Katniss's side, not pitted against her. Solidarity. It’s a total rejection of the Capitol’s agenda, their message about who we are. But subtle—so perfectly subtle, nothing that would invite retaliation. Only now does it strike me how impressive Cinna and Portia’s feat truly was, how lucky we are to have them as allies; with only costumes and a simple clasp of hands, they’ve commandeered the narrative of the Games.

When the program ends, Haymitch says to us, “Tomorrow morning is the first training session. Meet me for breakfast and I’ll tell you exactly how I want you to play it. Now go get some sleep while the grown-ups talk.”

I can see the wheels turning in his head, and I’m curious about what plans he’s going to discuss with the others, but I guess I’ll have to wait to find out in the morning. I walk with Katniss down the corridor to our rooms, but as we approach her door, I’m unwilling to just go to bed without getting the chance to talk to her again. As she reaches for her doorknob, I casually lean against the doorframe, not exactly blocking her way, but making myself difficult to ignore. She glances up at me, her eyes confused. “So, Delly Cartwright,” I say. “Imagine finding her lookalike here.” I’m curious about her connection to the Avox woman of course, but more than that, I see an excellent opportunity to talk with her alone, without the curious eyes of Cinna, Portia, and the others on us.

Katniss looks at me with a guilty expression, probably thinking about how she owes me an explanation after I covered for her at dinner. I can see her deliberating, but she looks a little confused—is it the alcohol? She really must have a low tolerance; she can't have had more than half a glass of wine.

She stares past me down the hallway, chewing on her lip as she tries to decide whether to tell me. Is she trying to figure out whether she can trust me? Or—no; she’s afraid. I can see it behind her eyes. But not afraid of me, surely? Then it occurs to me—the woman is a traitor. Whatever she has to say, she must be afraid of the Capitol overhearing it. Well, if that’s it, I think I might have the perfect solution. “Have you been on the roof yet?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Cinna showed me. You can practically see the whole city. The wind’s a little loud, though.” Her eyes snap to mine and I see the realization in them. She understands what I’m trying to tell her; we won’t be overheard.

“Can we just go up?” she asks, her voice skeptical.

I nod my head towards the hall behind me, indicating for her to follow me. “Sure, come on.”

We walk down the hallway and up the stairs to the small domed room. I open the door for her and then step out onto the roof after her. The temperature has dropped several degrees since dinner, but it’s not too uncomfortable.

Katniss gasps as she catches sight of the twinkling city lights. My heart races as I watch her take in the view with wonder. She looks so beautiful, with her glossy black hair shining under the moonlight. I have a wild impulse to put my arms around her, tilt her face up to mine, and surprise her with a kiss the same way she surprised me earlier. I refrain though; I get the sense that Katniss needs to be approached like a cat, slowly, carefully, and with plenty of warning. Move too quickly, and she’ll either bolt or lash out at me.

Together, we walk over to the railing. She leans her head over it and looks straight down at the street twelve stories below, which is still alive with people shouting and laughing, riding high after the excitement of the opening ceremonies. Completely unconcerned about the 24 tributes in the building next to them contemplating their looming executions.

“I asked Cinna why they let us up here,” I say. “Weren’t they worried that some of the tributes might decide to jump right over the side?”

She looks up at me, and I search those gray eyes, wondering—has she had any thoughts like this? Of taking her death into her own hands? Or is she planning on going out fighting? “What did he say?” she asks.

“You can’t,” I reply. I reach out my hand as Cinna did earlier, waiting for the shock. When it comes, it hurts worse than I expected, numbing my arm as electricity jolts from my fingertips up through my shoulder. I jerk my arm away. “Some kind of electric field throws you back on the roof.”

“Always worried about our safety,” Katniss responds sarcastically. She glances around the roof, her eyes cautious. “Do you think they’re watching us now?”

I think about it for a moment. There could be hidden cameras up here, or listening devices. “Maybe,” I say. Whatever she has to tell me, it’s clear she doesn’t want to be overheard. I think of the windchimes Cinna showed me, and how out of place they seemed. As if purposefully placed. Did he anticipate conversations like this? Or does he have his own clandestine conversations in mind? Who is he hiding them from? “Come see the garden,” I say.

She follows me around the dome. In the windy, cool night air, the windchimes are quite loud—loud enough that, if we talk quietly, I don’t think any microphone would pick up our words. I look down at Katniss and raise an eyebrow, waiting for her to talk. She must want to tell me, or she wouldn’t have followed me up here.

She moves so she’s only a foot away from me and leans over, her fingers reaching out to gently stroke the petals of a carnation. “We were hunting in the woods one day,” she whispers, and I lean in so I don’t miss a word. “Hidden, waiting for game.”

“You and your father?” I whisper, picturing them in my mind—him, tall and smiling, her, young and small and happy, as she often was in those days before his death when I saw them together. Of course; he must have been the one who taught her how to hunt. I remember all the times he would stop by the bakery to trade game or rare ingredients scavenged from the forest.

“No, my friend Gale,” she replies. The vision in my head disappears with a pop like a soap bubble. Gale. ‘My friend,’ Gale. So they do hunt out in the woods together—I suspected as much already, but this confirmation gives me a sinking sensation in my stomach.

“Suddenly all the birds stopped singing at once. Except one. As if it were giving a warning call. And then we saw her. I’m sure it was the same girl. A boy was with her. Their clothes were tattered. They had dark circles under their eyes from no sleep. They were running as if their lives depended on it.” She pauses for a long moment, her eyes staring past the flower she’s holding. I can tell she’s reliving the scene; she’s so descriptive, I feel like I can see it myself. Finally, she gives her head a little shake and looks up at me. “The hovercraft appeared out of nowhere,” she continues, whispering, “I mean, one moment the sky was empty and the next it was there. It didn’t make a sound, but they saw it. A net dropped down on the girl and carried her up, fast, so fast like the elevator. They shot some sort of spear through the boy. It was attached to a cable and they hauled him up as well. But I’m certain he was dead. We heard the girl scream once. The boy’s name, I think. Then it was gone, the hovercraft. Vanished into thin air. And the birds began to sing again, as if nothing happened.”

A chill races down my spine. I always knew her escapades in the woods were risky, but I never imagined she would witness something like this. How close did she come to being spotted by the Capitol herself? Killed without question, or captured like the girl and taken to the Capitol, her tongue cut out? What if she had one day disappeared from District 12 forever without warning? Could I have done anything, tried to find out what happened to her? Maybe I would have shown up here just to see Katniss serving dinner, a mute Avox.

“Did they see you?” I ask.

She hesitates, lifting a hand to her hair and twisting a strand of it between her fingers. “I don't know. We were hidden under a shelf of rock,” she answers, but she can’t look at me anymore, staring down at the flower instead. If I wasn't so disturbed by her story, I would laugh; she's a terrible liar. But why lie about this? There’s a strange emotion on her face, maybe . . . shame? She couldn’t feel guilty for not helping the couple, could she? What could she have done, shot an arrow at a Capitol hovercraft? But I can tell, watching her, that this is what she feels; guilty for standing by and watching and doing nothing, even though interference would have surely meant her death. It’s like at the reaping; no one would have blamed her for not volunteering for Prim. But she puts her life on the line to save others, can’t see others being mistreated without interceding.

I notice, as I watch her, that her hands have begun to shake—no, not just her hands, but her whole body. “You’re shivering,” I say. Her thin white shirt isn’t much protection against the chilly wind that blows across the rooftop. I quickly unbutton my jacket and slip it off, moving to wrap it around her shoulders.

She flinches and then stiffens, staring at me with suspicion in her eyes. I pause for a heartbeat, not breathing—will she bolt, or lash out?—but she does neither. Instead, she relaxes after a moment, and I finish pulling the jacket around her shoulders, fastening the top button so it hangs around her like a cape. I clear my throat, and then whisper, “They were from here?”

She nods but doesn’t say anything.

“Where do you suppose they were going?” I ask. I think of the long journey we took yesterday on the speeding train. How would a couple of people from the Capitol, so unused to hardship, even make it out to 12 on foot? Did they smuggle themselves away on a train? And if so, what could their goal have been? Surely they couldn’t have thought they’d be able to assimilate into District 12. It’s a very small community, and any outsider would stick out like a sore thumb—especially one of these strange, pampered Capitol people.

“I don’t know that,” Katniss whispers back. “Or why they would leave here.”

“I’d leave here,” I blurt out, thinking of the creepy mute servers, the constant feeling of surveillance that pervades this place, the ugly, artificial-looking architecture. But I’ve spoken too loudly; if there are cameras up here, they definitely would have caught that. I glance around, half expecting a Peacekeeper to burst out of the dome and arrest me for questioning the indisputable grandeur of the Capitol. I clear my throat. “I’d go home now if they let me. But you have to admit, the food’s prime.” There—that should hopefully be less suspicious if anyone is listening in on our conversation.

I look back down at Katniss, wrapped in my coat but still shivering slightly. My own arms are feeling cold now without my jacket, and as much as I don’t want to leave her, or this place, we probably need to get some sleep—we’ll have to strategize early in the morning and then train for the Games. “It’s getting chilly,” I say. “We better go in.”

She follows me over to the dome, where I open the door for her. The room inside the dome is warm and bright. There’s one more thing I want to ask before she leaves and the strange sense of openness between us on the roof evaporates. I try to adopt as casual a tone as I can, as if I don’t really care about the answer to my question. “Your friend Gale. He’s the one who took your sister away at the reaping?”

She glances up at me in surprise. “Yes. Do you know him?” she asks.

“Not really. I hear the girls talk about him a lot.” I pause, waiting for a reaction of some kind—possessiveness, jealousy—but the comment doesn’t seem to bother her. My heart lifts hopefully. “I thought he was your cousin or something. You favor each other.”

“No, we’re not related,” she answers.

My heart sinks, but I’m careful to keep my face impassive. I guess that was too much to hope for. So, the handsome, tall, older boy who she spends all of her free time alone in the woods hiding under shelves of rock with is not a relative. Great. I nod my head. “Did he come to say goodbye to you?” I ask, thinking there’s a chance that while they hunt together, they may not actually be that close.

I see her staring at me, watching my face carefully. What is she thinking? Does she suspect where my thoughts lie? “Yes,” she answers.

Well, so much for that thought.

“So did your father,” she continues. “He brought me cookies.”

“Really?” I raise my eyebrows, acting surprised. “Well, he likes you and your sister. I think he wishes he had a daughter instead of a houseful of boys,” I say. It’s only half a lie; he definitely has a soft spot for the Everdeen girls, but I’ve never heard him say something like that. I wonder about my father’s history with her mother; how much does she know? Did she ever mention my father to Katniss? For some reason, I hope desperately that she has, that my father has managed to keep a small foothold in some part of her heart. “He knew your mother when they were kids,” I say, watching her carefully.

There’s no faking the surprise on her face. “Oh, yes. She grew up in town.” We’ve reached her door, and she doesn’t say anything else, just stands there awkwardly. I try to think of something more to say to keep her talking, but she’s ready to leave. “See you in the morning, then,” she says, slipping my jacket off and handing it back to me.

“See you,” I respond, then turn and walk down the hall to my own door. I close it behind me with a thud and walk over to the large bed, flopping onto my back. I lift the jacket and press the fabric to my face. It’s warm from the heat of her body and has a pleasant but unfamiliar smell.

So, she’s definitely dating Gale Hawthorne. And her mother has never mentioned my father once in their house. What a night of revelations.

She still kissed you, though, pipes up a stubborn voice in my head. And she did trust me with the story about the red-haired girl. That’s got to count for something, right?

I sit up with a groan, scrubbing my hands over my face. What does any of it matter? We’ll probably both be dead in another week. I will certainly be dead in another week, at least. Shouldn’t I be glad that she might have a boyfriend to go home to, that she could be happy?

But I’m not glad. I’m seething with jealousy. And anyway, I wasn’t lying about hearing girls at school talk about Gale; I’ve heard rumors about his exploits, and once I even spotted him myself, making out with a Seam girl I didn't recognize behind the gym where we hold wrestling practice. That incident, more than anything, was what led me to believe he was Katniss’s cousin. How could he be spending all that time with her and not be dating her? So, what, is he two-timing her? I feel a surge of rage rise up in me, and I wonder if there’s a natural way for me to slip this tidbit into conversation with Katniss, but I stop myself. If they are dating, I don’t want to distract her or upset her with news like this days before we enter the arena.

Sighing, I stand up and kick off my shoes. I peel off my clothes as well, tossing them to the ground. There's a large window on one wall with a view of the city, and I worry at first that it’s sealed shut, but I manage to crack the bottom of it open a few inches. Shivering slightly in the cool air that rushes into the room, I let the sounds of the city wash over me. It's not quite like home, but at least it's something; I won't feel quite as trapped and suffocated here as I did on the train, although I'm as much a prisoner as ever. It’s interesting that the windows are designed to only open a sliver, not nearly enough to climb out of. The forcefield on the roof must not extend down the sides of the building. Staring down at the pavement twelve stories below, I imagine for a moment what it would feel like—a sudden rush of wind through my hair, arms and legs flung wide. Would it feel like flying? Would I feel the impact, or be gone instantly? I wonder how the Capitol would play it for the audience—they’d probably paint me out to be a coward. Would my family and friends see the meaning behind it? The refusal to play the Capitol's game? I think about the last time there was a ‘self-elimination,’ as the Capitol called it; I think it was sometime before I was born, or maybe when I was very young. I don't remember how the act was viewed in the districts, but I vaguely remember that the tribute's family was executed on live television.

I turn away from the window and crawl between the covers of the huge bed. No, suicide won't be an option for me. If I want to make a statement, I'll have to think of something else. Something that will hurt no one but myself. I lift my jacket back up to my face, breathing in the smell of it, and drift away to the sounds of the city floating through the open window.

Chapter Text

When I wake in the morning, I can tell I've slept in by the way the light streams through the window. I stretch and roll over, feeling the fabric of the black jacket I wore yesterday under my cheek. I can't remember the last time I slept in this late; I'm usually up before dawn to assist in the bakery. I did stay up later than I usually do talking to Katniss on the roof, and my body is probably exhausted from all the stress and activity of the last two days. Whatever the cause, I'm glad; I'm going to need all the sleep I can get this week. Today is the first of three days of training; if I’m to have a hope of surviving for any length of time in the arena, I have to start coming up with a strategy. I'll try and learn as many survival and combat skills as I can, of course, but in my view, the most important part of these next few days will be figuring out my competitors: interacting with and observing the other tributes, learning their fighting styles and getting to know their personalities. Anything that could give me an edge in the arena.

I notice when I open the closet that an outfit has already been selected for me, hanging near the front; slim black pants and a maroon tunic with brown leather shoes. I didn't realize Portia would be styling me even during training, but that reassures me; I feel confident, after last night, that she'll know the best way to present me to the Gamemakers. And I like how simple and tasteful the clothes are; they almost look like something I would wear back in District 12, although without the wear and tear of my normal hand-me-downs.

I wash my face in the bathroom and use a jar of pomade to try and style my hair in the same way the prep team did yesterday; even though I think it's stupid, I can't deny the role looking neat and attractive had in getting the crowd on our side last night, and the cameras will be there today again, broadcasting highlights from training. I try to tell myself this is the only reason I care about how my hair looks.

I run into Haymitch in the hallway as I leave my room. He looks completely sober and miserable for it. We nod to each other and head into the dining room together. Katniss is already there eating breakfast, dressed in an outfit identical to mine—is this some kind of training uniform? I think back to former Games to try and remember if the tributes are usually all dressed the same during training, but I can't recall. It looks like she's been here a while; she's surrounded by used plates and bowls and currently sits in front of a plate piled high with rolls.

“Good morning, Katniss,” I say. I notice that she's dunking pieces of her roll in a mug of steaming hot chocolate. “Oh, they’ve got hot chocolate here, too? That's great.”

She looks up at me and freezes, her face twisting into a scowl. I quickly turn away from her and start filling a plate from a number of breakfast dishes laid out on the sideboard. Did I say something wrong? I thought that we’d become a little closer with the events of yesterday; not friends, exactly, but friendly. She had kissed me, after all, and shared a secret with me. Was she regretting that today? Did she think I had pried too much into her personal life, asking about Gale?

I load up a plate with bacon, sausage, slices of melon and orange, pancakes, and rolls, pour myself a mug of hot chocolate, and take a seat at the table, leaving an empty chair between Katniss and me. I watch her out of the corner of my eye as I eat breakfast and notice that her face has gone a little green. She’s twisting a roll around and around in her hands, but her appetite seems to be gone. Did she overindulge again? She does have an awful lot of empty plates stacked in front of her. I can tell what she’s doing—probably trying to put on as much weight as possible before we’re thrown into the arena and food is scarce. It’s a smart strategy, but still—I know it’s not a great idea to completely stuff yourself right before exercising, and training is only another hour away.

I decide against saying anything to her—she doesn’t seem to be in a good mood—and continue eating, trying to pace myself and chew slowly. I’m happy to see Haymitch still has an appetite, devouring bowl after bowl of stew. He finishes a final bowl and pulls a silver flask from his pocket, taking a long draw from it before leaning forward to look at us across the table, his gray eyes intent.

“So, let’s get down to business,” he says. “Training. First off, if you like, I’ll coach you separately. Decide now.”

“Why would you coach us separately?” Katniss asks.

“Say if you had a secret skill you might not want the other to know about,” Haymitch answers.

I glance over at Katniss. I haven’t even been thinking of her as an opponent. I know I could never kill her, so I don’t really care if she sees anything I can do. Not that there’s much to show. Her gray eyes flit over and meet mine; is she thinking the same? Or has she been plotting out my death these past few days? I’m sure she’s determined to survive, no matter the cost. If she is planning on killing me, I think I can already guess what her best shot of doing it is.

“I don’t have any secret skills,” I say. “And I already know what yours is, right? I mean, I’ve eaten enough of your squirrels.”

Her eyes widen a bit with surprise and she tilts her head to the side, considering me. I will myself not to break eye contact, as I have so many times before. Finally, she is the first to look away, back at Haymitch. “You can coach us together,” she says.

I nod my assent to Haymitch, keeping my face impassive, but I feel a spark of hope kindle in my chest. What was the meaning of that look, and her decision? Does it mean she trusts me after all?

Haymitch rubs his hands together. “All right, so give me some idea of what you can do.”

“I can’t do anything, unless you count baking bread,” I say bluntly. No point in sugarcoating it, after all.

“Sorry, I don’t,” Haymitch answers. Well, fair enough. He turns to Katniss. “Katniss. I already know you’re handy with a knife.”

Katniss shakes her head. “Not really. But I can hunt. With a bow and arrow.”

“And you’re good?” Asks Haymitch.

Katniss pauses for a long moment, weighing her words carefully. Finally, she says, “I’m all right.”

“She’s excellent,” I add, seizing the opportunity to compliment her again. “My father buys her squirrels. He always comments on how the arrows never pierce the body. She hits every one in the eye.” I can see it in my mind’s eye, my father’s broad, flour-dusted hands holding out the animal to show me the precise shooting, a hint of pride in his voice as if she were his own daughter. “It’s the same with the rabbits she sells the butcher.” I continue. “She can even bring down deer.” I remember my aunt Rooba coming into the bakery late one afternoon and boasting about her good fortune: “You'll never believe what that Everdeen girl brought me today. A fully grown doe! Not a mark on its hide, near perfect condition. The girl's only thirteen years old, for goodness’ sake! She takes after her old man for sure. Most of the creature is spoken for already, but if you’ve got anything worth trading for a couple venison steaks . . .”

Katniss turns to me and scowls again, her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

I’m surprised, and not a little bit irritated, by the hostility. What is with her today? I’m only trying to be helpful, but she’s as prickly as a porcupine. “What are you doing? If he’s going to help you, he has to know what you’re capable of. Don’t underrate yourself.”

Her scowl deepens. “What about you? I’ve seen you in the market. You can lift hundred-pound bags of flour. Tell him that. That’s not nothing,” she snaps.

I stare at her incredulously. “Yes, and I’m sure the arena will be full of bags of flour for me to chuck at people,” I say sarcastically. “It’s not like being able to use a weapon. You know it isn’t.”

She ignores me and turns to Haymitch. “He can wrestle. He came in second in our school competition last year, only after his brother.”

“What use is that?” I ask angrily. “How many times have you seen someone wrestle someone to death?” My ‘secret skills’ sound so laughable compared to hers that I can’t help but feel like she’s mocking me. Why is she trying to make it seem like we're on some kind of equal playing field when it's so clear that we're not?

“There’s always hand-to-hand combat. All you need is to come up with a knife, and you’ll at least stand a chance. If I get jumped, I’m dead!” She’s practically shouting by the end of her speech, her gray eyes flashing with anger.

“But you won’t!” I can’t help shouting back, all of the fear and hopelessness and rage of the last few days bursting out of me. “You’ll be living up in some tree eating raw squirrels and picking off people with arrows. You know what my mother said to me when she came to say goodbye, as if to cheer me up, she says maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner. Then I realized, she didn’t mean me, she meant you!”

Katniss dismisses this with a flippant wave of her hand. “Oh, she meant you.”

“She said, ‘She’s a survivor, that one.’ She is,” I say, and I can’t keep the anguish out of my voice as I repeat the words that have been haunting me. It’s so obvious to everyone, even my own parents, that I am not going to make it through this. That I don’t have what it takes. So why does Katniss insist on talking me up? It's infuriating and humiliating to have her condescend to me this way when her chances of survival are so much higher than my own.

She looks at me now, her gray eyes wide with surprise and uncertainty as they search my face. Something changes behind them; all the hostility and guardedness drains away and is replaced with something softer. She looks almost . . . vulnerable, and a bit ashamed. “But only because someone helped me,” she says in a small voice.

I glance down at the roll she holds in her hand, and I’m transported back five years in an instant. It was a few months after the mine explosion that killed Katniss’s father. I had been watching her at school every day. The sparkling, fiery girl I knew had faded away. She didn’t speak in class, and during lunch break I could never find her around the schoolyard no matter how hard I looked. What scared me most of all was the way her body became thinner and thinner day by day. I’d seen it before—the hollow cheeks and bulging eyes of starving children. They’d slowly waste away to nothing until one day they disappeared from school entirely. Every day, I’d search the hallways with dread until I caught sight of her again.

Finally, I knew I had to do something. One night near the end of that bitter winter, I approached my parents as they were closing up the bakery for the day. Mother was prodding each item, deciding what could be left out for tomorrow and what was too stale to sell. She gathered up the stale items in her arms; these would be our dinner and breakfast the next day.

“Ma?” I asked tentatively, "Can I take one of those loaves to a . . . a friend of mine tomorrow?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Peeta, what have I told you about giving away bread? No one will shop here if we’re always giving the bread away for free. And then where will we be?”

“But this friend . . . she could never afford anything from here anyways. So we won’t be losing a customer. Please, Pa,” I said, turning to my father. “I think she’s starving. I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid she’ll die.”

He stared at me for a moment, deliberating. “Who, Peeta?”

I couldn't meet his eyes, or my mother’s, so I stared at the ground instead. “It’s Katniss. Katniss Everdeen.”

My mother’s voice came harsh and swift. “Everdeen? What are you doing sniffing around that Everdeen girl? She’s Seam trash. You stay away from her, Peeta. She’s not getting anything from us.”

My father knelt in front of me, his hand on my shoulder. “Why do you think she’s going to die, Peeta?”

“Her dad died in that mine explosion and I think her mother hasn’t found work. I don’t know what’s going on. She just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Please, Pa,” I pleaded with him.

Pa looked up at my mother. “Maybe we could spare something for the girls if things really are that bad.”

“If things are really that bad, their useless mother needs to do what it takes to feed them! Why should her children become our problem? We don’t make enough to be taking on charity cases! She chose that life, so she can make like every other Seam whore and do what she has to do! Or maybe she’s too old and haggard now for even Old Cray’s taste?”

My father was on his feet in a flash and leaning over Mother, his blue eyes sparking with rage. I shrank back; I had never seen him so angry before, even though my mother was always goading him.

“You going to hit me, Otho?” She spat, her eyes alight with a kind of excitement. “Do it. Hit me for that Seam bitch; make yourself feel like a big man, a protector. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to leave us all and go get her now? Think she’ll take you now that her true love has been blown to pieces?”

I began to cry. “Ma, Pa, stop it . . . don’t . . .”

My father was breathing heavily, his hands clenched into fists, but my voice seemed to bring him out of his rage. His shoulders sagged, and he turned away.

“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” my mother said scathingly. “You’re pathetic.” She stalked out of the front room to the kitchen, taking all of the stale bread with her.

I turned to my father, eyes pleading. “Pa . . . please . . .”

“Forget it, Peeta,” he said, his voice defeated. “You can’t do anything for her. It’s best to just let her go.”

I cried myself to sleep that night, feeling helpless and powerless. But the next evening, while I was baking in the kitchen, the back door propped open so the heat of the large oven wasn’t so overwhelming, I saw her. She was right there in our backyard, her hair and clothes soaked from the icy sheets of rain pouring down. She wore a large leather jacket, a man’s jacket, which engulfed her tiny, frail body. She was swaying slightly, eyes closed and nose lifted in the air. I watched as she opened her eyes, shuffled forward, and lifted the lid of our trash can.

I hadn’t noticed my mother hovering behind me. She pushed past me, barreling towards Katniss. “Get out of here, you filthy girl, before I call the Peacekeepers on you! I’m sick and tired of you Seam brats pawing through my trash cans!” She waved her rolling pin in the air threateningly.

Katniss slowly replaced the lid on the trash can and backed away, her hands raised in front of her. My mother muttered more threats under her breath as she went back inside. Lucky it was raining, or she would have chased her down the alley. I watched, expecting her to move on to the next house and the next trash can, but she just backed away until she reached the apple tree beyond our pigpen, and slid down the side of it until she was sitting on the ground. She closed her eyes.

She’s dying. She’s going to die right here, I thought to myself, panicking. My eyes darted to the loaves of bread I was tending in the ovens; they were nearly finished. I picked up the peel, sliding it under the loaves to remove them as I had countless times before. But I wobbled it at the last second, tilting it to the side. The loaves slid off the peel and into the fire at the base of the oven.

Mother had seen. She gave a shriek of alarm. She shoved me to the side and grabbed the peel from my hands, scooting it under the loaves and flinging them out of the oven and onto the kitchen floor alongside several burning coals. It was too late; the crusts of both loaves were scorched black on one side. She stared at them for a moment, breathing heavily, then picked up her rolling pin and turned on me. I tried to raise my arms to protect myself, but she was too fast for me; the rolling pin struck me across one side of my face and I fell to the floor, stars dancing across my eyes.

“You clumsy fool! Do you have any idea how much that bread costs?” she shrieked.

I cowered on the floor, arms covering my head protectively. “I'm sorry,” I whimpered, my cheek throbbing from the blow.

“Pick it up!” she yelled. “Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!”

I struggled to my feet, scooping up both loaves in my arms and scurrying out the back door before she could change her mind. I approached the pigpen and began tearing off chunks of the worst part of the burned crust. I didn’t dare look in Katniss's direction as my mother watched me, but then the front bell rang and she left to help the customer. I glanced towards the kitchen door once, to see that the coast was clear; if she saw me give Katniss the bread, she would surely be on us in a second. But she wasn’t coming back. Without looking at Katniss, I threw first one loaf, then the next towards the apple tree, and marched back through the kitchen door, shutting it tightly behind me. I stood with my back pressed against it for a long minute, my heart pounding, waiting at any moment for my mother to come back and punish me. But she was still talking with someone in the front room. I risked a glance out the kitchen window, and I saw that the girl beneath the apple tree was gone. So was the bread.

The next day, I arrived at school with a black eye and purplish-red weal on my cheek. The teachers pursed their lips but didn’t say anything, as usual. A couple of my friends asked, but most knew better by then. I snuck glances at Katniss in the classroom and the hallway when I was sure she wasn’t looking; it might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn she already looked a little better.

After school, I raced to the schoolyard, determined to finally talk to her. This was a good enough reason, right? She wouldn’t think I was strange for approaching her after what happened yesterday. Maybe she’d even approach me. My heart was beating fast as I stood looking around, then I saw her. I watched as she waited for her little sister, too afraid to walk up to her, but wondering if maybe I should wave . . . when finally, for the first time I could remember, her gray eyes rose and looked directly into mine. My mouth went dry, wondering if that would be the moment, but almost immediately she dropped her gaze to the ground, her cheeks pink. My heart sank; she wasn’t going to say anything. And once again, my courage failed me. I couldn’t make my feet cross the scrubby grass to reach her.

Her little sister joined her, but she was distracted; I watched as she leaned down and picked a yellow dandelion that had pushed its way up through a crack in the pavement, staring at it in wonder. She didn’t look my way again, but grabbed her sister’s hand and started for home.

It wasn't two weeks later that a soft knock came on our back door. My father had paused in the middle of plaiting a loaf of bread, his head lifted towards the door with a mystified look in his eyes. No one had knocked on that door in months, not since the mine explosion. He dusted the flour from his hands and pulled the door open, revealing Katniss standing there, her hair in a braid and her too-large leather jacket draped around her. She held a squirrel in one hand, and her mouth was set in a determined scowl.

She thrust the squirrel out towards my father. “What can you give me for this?” she asked, her voice challenging, but with just the smallest trace of uncertainty.

My father blinked, taking the squirrel from her hands and staring at it for a moment. He turned into the bakery, picking a couple of biscuits up off of a pan. I shrank back behind a shelf, not wanting to be seen by Katniss, but keeping my ears open and peering at her from behind the bags of flour and sugar. He turned back towards Katniss with the two biscuits in his hands. “Would this do?” he asked.

I saw her lick her lips, staring hungrily at the biscuits, before shaking her head as if to clear it. “That's a nice fat squirrel,” she argued. “It's worth twice that at least.”

My father looked back at the squirrel. “You know, I think you're right. My apologies.” He grabbed another three biscuits, offering them to Katniss.

She blinked, surprised, I assume, at how easily she had won the bargain, but quickly cleared her face and gave a short, terse nod, taking the biscuits from my father and stowing them in her bag.

He closed the door but stood staring out the kitchen window. I joined him at the window, watching Katniss’s back as she walked down the alley. My father smiled a small, rare smile and looked down at me.

“She's going to be ok, isn't she?” I asked.

“I think she will, at that,” he had answered, lifting a hand to stroke the faded, greenish mark on my cheek with his thumb.

So she still remembers? I wasn’t sure . . . I had noticed, after that day, that when I found her and watched her in the hallway, in class, or in the schoolyard, more often than not her eyes would flit to mine, and then away. That never used to happen before. But she never said anything to me about the bread. To hear her now hint that I'm somehow responsible for her survival when she's the one that went out into the woods at 11 years old and has been providing for her family by herself ever since then by breaking the law daily . . . Maybe I did give her a helping hand when she needed it. But my single act is nothing to her continual strength and bravery over the years. And if it's a helping hand she needs, she'll have all that and more after the crowd's reaction to her at the parade last night. So I just shrug. “People will help you in the arena. They’ll be tripping over each other to sponsor you.”

“No more than you,” she protests stubbornly.

I roll my eyes and address Haymitch. “She has no idea. The effect she can have.” I can’t bring myself to meet her eyes, feeling my face start to heat up again, so instead I stare down at the wood grain of the tabletop, dragging my thumbnail through the grooves. I don't think Katniss has ever realized how alluring she is. She's not like the rest of us, beaten-down mongrels serving our masters in the Capitol, too afraid or too defeated to try to change things. When we were little, she used to say the most outrageous things about the Capitol and the government in class, things that would make the teachers’ faces fill with fear and the other children look at her in awe. She stopped saying those things eventually, but the spirit is still there in her every action; refusing to lie down and starve but instead hunting illegally in the woods and trading in the black market. Refusing to allow the Capitol to take her sister at the reaping. Standing tall and proud in the face of a Capitol that wants us small and humiliated. Cinna’s and Portia's costumes last night were prescient; there's a fire in her, a spark that can never be smothered even in the direst of circumstances. Even if people can't put a name to what it is exactly when they see her, they can feel it. The crowd last night certainly felt it.

After a long, silent moment, Haymitch clears his throat. “Well then. Well, well, well. Katniss, there’s no guarantee there’ll be bows and arrows in the arena, but during your private session with the Gamemakers, show them what you can do. Until then, stay clear of archery. Are you any good at trapping?”

“I know a few basic snares,” she mutters resentfully.

“That may be significant in terms of food,” Haymitch says before turning to me. “And Peeta, she’s right, never underestimate strength in the arena. Very often, physical power tilts the advantage to a player. In the Training Center, they will have weights, but don’t reveal how much you can lift in front of the other tributes.”

I shrug, not at all convinced by his argument, but bound by my promise to do whatever he asked.

“The plan’s the same for both of you,” Haymitch continues. “Spend the time trying to learn something you don’t know. Throw a spear. Swing a mace. Learn to tie a decent knot. Save showing what you’re best at until your private sessions. Are we clear?”

We both nod.

“One last thing,” Haymitch adds. “In public, I want you by each other’s side every minute.”

“Haymitch, come on—”

“No way—”

“Every minute!” Haymitch slams his open palm on the table, silencing us. “It’s not open for discussion! You agreed to do as I said! You will be together, you will appear amiable to each other. Now get out. Meet Effie at the elevator at ten for training.”

I glower at Haymitch. This directive is seriously going to mess with my plans for observing the other tributes—Katniss is not the friendly sort, and I’m sure she was planning on just avoiding all of them.

Katniss shoves her chair back from the table and stalks away. A moment later, I hear the slam of her door and I flinch, knowing somehow that the sound was meant for me.

Groaning, I lean my head forward on my hands, fingers digging into my scalp. How did this all go so wrong? I thought I had been making progress with her, that maybe a small part of her even liked me, trusted me. But clearly, she can’t stand me, hates the idea of being paired up with me for training. How am I going to make it through the next three days, appearing friendly and happy to be by her side knowing how much she resents my presence? I press my fists into my eyes as my heart gives a painful squeeze.

“So,” says Haymitch. I look up; I’d almost forgotten he was there. “How long has this been going on?”

“You’ll have to be more clear,” I answer tiredly.

He tilts his head towards the hallway where Katniss just disappeared. “You and the girl. How long have you two been sweet on each other?”

I stare at him as if he’s sprouted another head. “What are you talking about? She hates me.”

Haymitch snorts, then says in a high-pitched tone imitating Katniss, “‘He can lift hundred-pound bags of flour. He can wrestle. He came in second in our school competition.’ She doesn’t hate you, boy. And she’s not indifferent to you. So what options are left?”

Slowly, the meaning of his words sinks in. He thinks . . . she likes me? I roll my eyes, shaking my head incredulously. “You’re off your rocker. She barely acknowledged my existence before the reaping.”

“Clearly that’s not true, or she wouldn’t know those things about you.”

That brings me up short. It is strange, the things she’s noticed about me. The wrestling competitions at school aren’t required attendance; had she been there, watching me? Wouldn’t I have noticed her if she was? And the bags of flour . . . ‘I’ve seen you in the market.’ Has she been watching me, the same way I've been watching her? I consider this for a moment before dismissing the idea. “Twelve is a small place. Everyone is bound to know some things about everyone else.”

Haymitch scoffs. “I live in Twelve too, and I never noticed you until you smashed the drink out of my hand on the train.”

I wave my hand dismissively. “Well there you go—hard to notice things when you’re stumbling drunk most of the time, isn’t it, Haymitch?”

He laughs. “Well, that’s true enough.” He pauses for a moment, evaluating me. “What did she mean about getting help?”

I shift uncomfortably in my seat, looking down at my lap. “It was nothing.”

The silence stretches on for a long moment, and when I finally look up, I see that Haymitch is still watching me with his bloodshot gray eyes, leaning back in his chair, waiting.

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “I gave her bread once, when her family didn’t have anything to eat. Once, a long time ago. I don’t even know why she still remembers it.”

Haymitch leans forward, and I’m surprised at the intensity in his eyes. “And why would you do that?”

I shrug. “Isn’t wanting to help someone who’s starving reason enough?”

“Not in Twelve, it isn’t,” Haymitch answers.

I drop my eyes from his gaze because I know what he means, and I hate myself for it. In 12, there’s no shortage of starving people. Every winter I've seen them, but I've only ever helped one. Only risked my mother's wrath to save one life. And it wasn’t because of some innate goodness or selflessness of my own. It was because of her. Because of what she meant to me. Because of what I saw in her. The odd combination of strength and vulnerability that made her into a fierce protector of the weak. Her refusal to give in even when the odds were stacked against her. And that beautiful, tender voice that pierced into the darkest recesses of my heart, filling me with hope and the promise that the future could be happy if I could just manage to endure today. I knew I wouldn't be able to endure it any longer if that voice was silenced forever.

Haymitch finally gives up on waiting for an answer, clearing his throat and standing. “Fine, you’re not ready to tell me. Just remember what I said during training. You stick to that girl like glue.” He moves to the elevator and punches the button to summon it. “And try not to let her attitude get to you. She’s just as hostile to me, and I’m a very likable guy. I’m sure it’s a her problem.”

I snort, watching as he gets on the elevator and zooms downwards. A minute later, the doors open again and Effie appears wearing yet another extravagant and colorful outfit.

“Oh, Peeta! What a sweet boy you are, you’re always early, aren’t you? How did the strategy session with Haymitch go this morning? I saw him as I was getting on the elevator, but he wouldn’t even acknowledge me when I asked him!”

I get up from my spot at the table and walk over to join her near the elevator. “It was great,” I lie. “We’ve got a solid plan in place for the training sessions.”

“Oh, lovely! All the other escorts are just so curious about you two, you know. I barely made it home last night, so many people wanted the inside scoop from me!” She looks very pleased and self-important at the thought. She glances around, checking a jeweled watch on her wrist. “Where’s Katniss? She was with you earlier, wasn’t she?”

I nod, thinking about her angry disappearance and the slamming door. “I think she just went to . . . freshen up. She should be here soon; Haymitch told us to meet you at ten o’clock.”

Katniss joins us a minute later, gnawing on the fingernails of her right hand before abruptly dropping it to her side. I can tell she’s nervous, keyed up, and I wish I could give her hand a squeeze to calm her down like I did during the tribute parade, but I remind myself that this is probably the last thing she wants.

We all climb onto the elevator and it zooms downward. The elevator doors open onto a huge gymnasium, much nicer and better equipped than the school gym back home. The biggest difference of all is the addition of stations full of deadly-looking weapons, all of which would be illegal to own inside district boundaries. To Effie’s dismay, we’re the last tributes to arrive. The others are standing in a tense circle with little cloth squares pinned to their backs displaying their district numbers. I notice with surprise that they are not wearing the same burgundy and black outfit as Katniss and I; in fact, not a single district pair is matching the same way we are. Is this part of the strategy Haymitch gave us, to appear as a team during training? What’s the point? I don’t really understand how that helps us, either with the crowd or with the other tributes. It could just be more of Cinna’s ‘solidarity’ message, but won’t that fall apart once we’re in the arena? I’m sure after our confrontation this morning that Katniss would never ally herself with me. I try to think of how misleading the audience or the tributes into thinking we'll be allies could provide an advantage, but I can't come up with anything.

I shake these thoughts from my head to focus on the words of the head trainer, a tall and muscular woman named Atala, as she explains the different combat and survival skill stations and the training rules. I will need to be completely focused during these sessions if I hope to pick up some skills. More than that, I want to use this time to get a read on who we’re up against—figure out weaknesses to exploit, or see if I can suss out connections and alliances between the other tributes.

I discreetly take a look around the circle. Many of the tributes have that perpetually underfed look about them common in the Seam, and a handful of them are definitely younger than me. I grudgingly admit to myself that Katniss may have had a point earlier; even if they were armed, I think I could fairly easily overpower at least half of the tributes here. There are a few that are around my size; the male and female tributes from 1 and 4 and the female tribute from 2 are all around my height, give or take a couple inches, and the boys are about my weight. The boy from 2, Cato, has a good five or six inches on me though, and at least 50 pounds. And of course there's Thresh, who I swear is nearly a foot taller than me and built like an ox, the muscles of his biceps and forearms clearly defined. I wonder how he became so strong; does he do some kind of sport, like me? Or is all that muscle from working the fields in District 11?

Atala finishes her spiel and the tributes break away from the circle. I watch as Cato heads straight to the swords and selects a heavy one, twirling the blade once or twice in his hand before turning and lodging it deep in the chest of a practice dummy. My heart sinks. This is what I expected coming in; despite the prohibition on weapons in the districts, the Careers always show up to the Games trained and proficient in at least one weapon, usually more. How do they do it? Do they sneak them in, and the Capitol just looks the other way because it makes for a better show? His district partner, a tall and thickly muscular girl with long dark hair pulled up in a ponytail is at the throwing knife station, where she sends blade after blade into her targets. It’s obvious what their strategy is; intimidate the rest of the field from day one. Establish themselves as the ones to beat. It’s a lot more straightforward than our approach, but I have to say, it’s effective.

Katniss is chewing on her nails again, staring across the gym at the Career tributes. I gently nudge her arm with my own and she jumps, whirling to face me. No use in standing around getting more scared; we’ll both be better off if our hands and minds are busy.

“Where would you like to start?” I ask.

Her eyes dart around the gym, lingering on the different stations. They finally land on an empty one. “Suppose we tie some knots,” she says.

I was right about her—she doesn’t have any intention of interacting with the other tributes. I’ll have to observe them from afar. I sigh inwardly but keep my voice calm and polite. “Right you are,” I agree.

The knot-tying trainer is an enthusiastic young man, and he seems pleased to have any tributes at all interested in his station. “How can I help you?” he asks. “Are you familiar with knot-tying already?”

“I know a few used in creating snares. For prey,” Katniss admits reluctantly.

He has her demonstrate her skills and I watch with just as much interest, knowing it’ll be a great way to find food in the arena, but mostly interested in this insight into her life in the woods. The snares are delicate and beautiful in their simplicity, and I think even I might be able to replicate them if I had the right tools.

The trainer is impressed with her knowledge. “Let’s try something a bit more complex, but with the same basic idea. Here’s a snare that will leave a human competitor dangling in the air! Watch this.”

It's tricky, but we're both able to master the trap after an hour. As I look up at the training dummy hanging upside down from its foot, I wonder to myself what I would do if I were successful with this trap in the arena and I was able to catch somebody. Would I kill them as they hung there, helpless? Could the Capitol make me do that?

Suddenly I want to be anywhere but here, doing this. I look over at Katniss, who mastered the trap much faster than I have and has her own dummy strung up next to mine. “Ready to move on?”

“Sure,” she says, looking around the gym. “Why don't you choose the next one?”

I nod, glancing around at the stations. The weapons stations are still very popular, currently occupied by over half of the tributes. I spot an empty station near us. “Want to try camouflage next?” I ask.

Katniss silently nods her assent and leads the way to the new station. The trainer is a middle-aged woman who presents us with a variety of natural materials that can be used for camouflage. Jars of berry juices in dusky purple, brilliant scarlet, and blue-black; red, yellow, and orange clays; mud in shades of brown and black; moss, vines, and leafy branches. We start off following the instructions of the trainer on how to weave a convincing screen out of the vines and branches. I’m transported back to my hours sitting by the fenceline north of the square, staring through the chain links of the fence at the matted forest floor beyond, listening to the birdsong, and dreaming of what else was out there beyond the confines of our prison. I would spend whole afternoons when I could get them scouring the fenceline for wildflowers to sketch, wishing I had paints to more faithfully render them in my sketchbook so I could recreate them later in frosting. I’d never thought to use natural materials like this to paint; could I find berries and clays like this in our forest outside of 12? I suppose it doesn’t matter now, since I’ll never see that forest or the district again.

“What a brilliant blind!” The trainer says effusively. “That would blend right in in a forest environment! You have an eye for this, young man.”

I smile, pleased at her praise.

Katniss is struggling with her own vines and gives me an annoyed glance. “Has this stuff ever actually helped anyone win?” She asks the trainer.

“Oh, yes!” She answers. “In fact, we had a victor only thirteen years ago or so who won after disguising herself as a fallen log so convincingly that the other tributes didn’t notice her even while camping right next to her overnight! She was able to kill them after they fell asleep.”

I think about what it would feel like to spend an entire night in the arena, hidden in plain sight, with tributes who want you dead making camp right next to you. About how it would feel to slit someone’s throat while they sleep. I feel my decadent breakfast churning in my stomach, threatening to make a reappearance.

On that note, the trainer cheerfully moves on to instructing us how to camouflage our bodies with the berry juices and mud. I enjoy this even more than the vines, swirling the different colors onto my arm. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine myself lying on the forest floor, the canopy of leaves above me leaving dappled shadows on my skin. I try to recreate that pattern on my arm with the mud and clay; I’ve drawn it once before, in my sketchbook back home, but the vivid colors and materials have a far greater effect than the dull graphite of a pencil ever could.

“Amazing! Simply marvelous!” The trainer leans in to examine my arm in more detail. “Why, you might be the most talented tribute I’ve ever instructed!”

I smile again. “I’m sure that’s not true, but thank you anyway. You’ve been a great teacher.” I glance over at Katniss, a little disappointed to see she’s not noticed my success at all. In fact, she’s given up the pretense of paying attention to the camouflage lesson altogether. She’s nervously biting her nails again, watching Cato send spears flying through a dummy’s chest.

“I do the cakes,” I say, hoping to distract her from her anxious observation of the others and draw her back into the lesson.

It works. “The cakes?” she asks, looking back at me as if remembering I exist. “What cakes?”

“At home. The iced ones, for the bakery,” I say, a little shyly. This is one of the things I’m most proud of. The only thing in my life that I really feel I am the best at, out of anyone—at least in District 12. Even my mother couldn’t deny my talent and its usefulness to the family, despite her occasional gripes about my chosen subjects. The realization that this same talent could also help me survive in the arena fills my heart with a soft, warm feeling—with hope.

Understanding dawns in Katniss’s eyes, and I know she realizes which ones I’m talking about. I watch her face closely as she leans in to inspect the design on my arm. My breath catches in my throat; she’s so close, her downturned face just inches from mine.

I don’t know what I expected from her—praise?—but her face hardens unexpectedly, her eyebrows lowering. “It’s lovely. If only you could frost someone to death.”

Her words sting, but I keep my tone light and joking. “Don’t be so superior. You can never tell what you’ll find in the arena. Say it’s actually a gigantic cake—”

“Say we move on,” she cuts me off, rolling her eyes.

I use a wet towel to scrub my arm clean as Katniss looks around for a new station. What’s her problem? I wonder again, frustrated. She’s been on edge all day. It’s clear seeing the other tributes terrifies her, but I don’t understand why she’s taking so much of it out on me. It reminds me of my mother, the way fear makes her lash out at the smallest provocation. Despite my attempts to help and get to know her, she seems determined to keep me at arm’s length. It’s clear that she dislikes me. I just wish I knew what I’d done to deserve it.

We visit another couple of empty stations, not saying much to each other before the trainers shepherd us into a dining hall off the gymnasium for lunch. Katniss and I serve ourselves and silently find a table to sit at. No one else joins us or approaches us during the meal. We’re the only district pair sitting together aside from the six Career tributes, who are all gathered around one large table. Katniss glares at the rowdy group as they laugh and talk loudly together.

I nudge her foot under the table with my own and she tears her eyes away from the table of Careers, turning her scowl on me. “What?”

“We’re supposed to be acting like friends, aren’t we?” I remind her. “What’s going on with you today, anyways? You keep staring at the Careers.”

She grimaces. “I mean, they’re just so irritating, aren’t they?”

I lift an eyebrow, glancing over at the noisy table. “Not particularly, no?”

“Of course you wouldn’t think so,” she mutters with a scowl.

The other eyebrow comes up now. “Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Well, you usually are that kid at school, aren’t you? Always sitting at a table surrounded by friends, acting like you’re better than the rest of us.”

This description of me coming from her temporarily leaves me speechless. Is this what she thinks of me? That I’m some sort of . . . I don’t know, pretentious snob or something? Because what, I have friends?

Katniss spears a small tomato viciously with her fork and bites into it. “Clearly they’re trying to intimidate the rest of us by sitting together like that,” she says. “They’re saying we’re all beneath their notice.”

The comparison between what she thinks the Careers are doing now and what I do at school irritates me. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a meal with friends. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

She scowls. “Why are you defending them?”

“I’m not—I’m just saying, you don’t know them. You don’t know why they’re sitting together, and saying that people only sit and enjoy meals together to make others feel inferior seems like a pretty big leap to make.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sure. And I’m sure it just happened that you and your friends never had room for anyone from the Seam to sit at your table.”

I try to keep my voice calm and even as I answer. “We would have made plenty of space had anyone from the Seam ever asked to sit with us, but they didn’t.”

“Well, you certainly never went out of your way to be friends with any of us, did you?” She challenges me.

This makes me so angry that my mild expression slips and my eyes harden. I think of that day with the bread again, my cheek stinging in the rain. Of her looking away from me the next day, embarrassed. “Why are you acting like you know anything about me? Maybe I did try, but they never wanted to talk to me.”

Her gray eyes widen slightly before she drops them to her lap, her cheeks flushing red. She bites her lower lip, and I see with alarm that tears threaten to spill from her eyes.

“Katniss?” I say in a gentler, concerned tone, and reach my hand across the table toward hers. She jerks her hand away, standing up abruptly with her tray of food and taking it over to the Avox waiting to take our dirty plates.

I curse at myself internally. I made her cry? How did I manage to do that? I’ve never seen her cry, not at the reaping, not when her father died, not when she was starving to death. I can’t seem to say anything right today. I’m usually so good with my words, able to anticipate what people want to hear and how best to calm them down, but Katniss always seems to react in a way I can’t predict. Talking to her makes me feel off-balance, unmoored. This isn’t a great start to Haymitch’s grand plan of acting like friends during training. I glance around me to see if any of the other tributes noticed our fight, but thankfully most of them seem preoccupied with finishing their meals and preparing to return to the training stations. I breathe a sigh of relief, but then I spot her—the little girl from District 11, sitting at the table directly behind me and staring at me with wide brown eyes. Damn it. I can only hope that she’s too scared of the rest of the tributes to want to talk with them about Katniss and me. I give her a small, apologetic smile, but she just drops her gaze, looking embarrassed to be caught staring. Huh. She reminds me of Katniss, in a strange way. I hope, for her sake, that like Katniss, she’s a little sturdier than she looks.

As I stand in line to return my dirty dishes to the Avoxes serving us, my anger fades, and I feel ashamed of how I responded to Katniss, how angry I let myself become. Was I right in defending my friends? Would they have welcomed someone from the Seam at our table? I want to say yes, absolutely, but I'm not 100% sure. And what about me? Why hadn't I befriended any of my Seam classmates? I wasn't unfriendly; I always tried to treat them kindly, and occasionally paired up with them on school projects. But Katniss is right that I never went out of my way to befriend any of them. I guess I just never felt the need; I had a built-in friend group that had been with me for years, since we were toddlers. And it’s not like they were exactly lining up to talk to me. But was it more than that? Was I unconsciously submitting to what the Capitol wanted from me? Had I been complicit in the division they deliberately fostered in District 12 between the Seam folk and the rest of us? Is that why Katniss hates me now?

I leave the dining room and join Katniss at the shelter station. We don’t speak much to each other the rest of the day, but we stick together like Haymitch asked. As we work our way from the least popular stations to the more popular ones, it becomes impossible to have the stations to ourselves. Katniss still doesn’t speak much to the other tributes, but I’m able to observe them better, and even exchange a few words with some of them. The girl from 10, whose name is Gillie, and I bond over the fact that both of our families raise pigs. She informs me in a matter-of-fact way that pig anatomy is pretty similar to human anatomy, and I try not to think too hard about the implications of that for her strategy in the arena. I learn that her district partner, Colton, injured his foot after falling from a horse when he was only six years old. Apparently it healed wrong and he’s never been able to walk right since. He’s quiet and sober during our conversation, and his hands shake as he tries to light a fire with a flint and striker. I try to give him some tips, having lit hundreds of fires the same way in my life; in my family, whoever happens to wake first is expected to light the oven first thing. I think how unfair it is for the Capitol to send people like him into the arena, who have almost no chance of winning, but I suppose you’d get district parents maiming their children left and right if that could protect them from the reaping.

The male tribute from District 4, Delmar, speaks in a loud, carrying voice that I think must be a liability in the arena—then again, I suppose those in the Career pack are less concerned with hiding than the other tributes are. He always seems to have something to complain about, or else is boasting about his skills, which I can tell is starting to wear on his allies. The other Careers sometimes roll their eyes at him or make faces behind his back. His behavior reminds me of what Publius said on the train, about tributes who act like they’re already a victor before putting in any of the work. I wonder how long he’ll last in the arena before his allies kill him from sheer annoyance.

I notice, with slight trepidation, that the little girl from District 11 quietly slips up to join us at a couple of the stations. She keeps her distance, never interacting with us directly, but I catch her eyes sliding our way a few times throughout the afternoon.

I’m glad that I took the time to talk to and observe the other tributes when we return to the penthouse for dinner that night, because Haymitch spends the entire meal grilling us for information: which stations we went to, what we learned, what we were good at, who was with us, who was watching us, who used which weapons, who talked to each other. The list goes on and on. Katniss isn’t able to answer nearly as many of his questions as I am, and she gets an earful from Haymitch about it.

“You need to be paying attention to these tributes. You never know what piece of information is going to help in the arena. Look at Peeta; clearly he understands that.”

This earns both Haymitch and me a scowl. I frown at him, not happy that he’s given Katniss yet another reason to be angry with me. “It’s fine, Haymitch. I don’t mind paying attention for the both of us.”

Now both of them turn identical scowls on me, and I sigh, ready to give up offering to help either of them ever again. “Or not. Whatever.”

“What about lunch?” Haymitch asks, moving on, “Who was sitting together?”

“Just the six Careers. Everyone else sat on their own,” I answer.

Haymitch narrows his eyes. “Except for you two, right? You sat together, you acted friendly during lunch?”

Katniss glares at Haymitch. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, we sat together.”

“And you were friendly?”

Their back-and-forth bickering is exhausting, so I jump in to put an end to it. “Very friendly, Haymitch. We were great.”

He narrows his eyes at me, but if he doubts my words, he doesn’t push it. “Good. You better be. I want every other tribute in there thinking you’re the best of friends.”

I still don’t understand what the point of this strategy is, but the next day, Katniss and I make an effort to appear more talkative and friendly during training. She listens to me prattle on about mostly baking-related topics with barely concealed boredom, and I remind her when to laugh. There’s still a frostiness in her attitude towards me, but I occasionally get her to let her guard down, especially when she’s talking about her time in the forest outside of District 12. She gets this peaceful, clear look in her eyes, and the corners of her mouth actually lift in a smile that I don’t think she’s fully aware of. I notice that we draw suspicious looks from some of the other tributes during our conversations; maybe there’s no deeper point to this plan than throwing them off about what our strategy will be in the arena, similar to the other part of the plan to hide our best skills until the private sessions.

Early on the second day, I suggest we visit the hand-to-hand combat station. I’d watched some other tributes receive rudimentary wrestling lessons here yesterday and it made me feel a little homesick. The trainer is excited when I tell him about my previous experience and he teaches me a couple of complicated moves that wouldn't be legal in a school wrestling match but could prove quite lethal in real combat. After we go over the moves, I strip down to my thin white undershirt and boxers and move into the ring with the trainer, dropping into my starting stance.

It probably would be smartest to downplay my skill, but I have trouble containing my competitive streak once the trainer and I start grappling, and I manage to overpower and pin him a few times as we go through the new moves. I notice as I shake his hand afterward that I’ve drawn the attention of the tributes from District 1 and the girl from District 4, who are standing and whispering together at the knife-throwing station nearby.

“Still think that’ll be useless in the arena?” Katniss leans against the edge of the ring, a smirk on her face. She followed along while I learned the moves, but opted not to spar with the trainer herself.

I roll my eyes and grimace at her playfully. “I suppose you think this means you’ve won our argument from the other day, huh?”

She smiles smugly. “I’m just saying, you pinned that trainer down pretty easily. Now imagine how easy it would be to pin me down.”

I can’t stop the images that flash through my mind, and I hesitate for just a moment; do I dare say it out loud? But I find I do dare. I feel braver than usual this week, maybe due to my impending death. “I’d love to give that a try,” I say with a light grin. I just stop myself from adding a wink, thinking that would be pushing my luck a bit too far.

The effect on Katniss is instantaneous. She freezes, her gray eyes searching mine in confusion, then a blush slowly spreads up her cheeks and she drops her gaze to the floor. After a moment she clears her throat and says in her usual surly tone, “Well, you won’t get to. It’s against the rules.” She straightens up and turns away from me. “Get your clothes on and let’s move on. Spears next?”

“Sure,” I agree, bemused by Katniss's reaction. Did she realize I was flirting with her? Or did she take that as a threat? What was that blush about? I find I need the few minutes it takes to wipe myself down and put my clothes back on to get my mind back on training and off of fantasies about wrestling with Katniss.

We're throwing spears when I notice the little girl from District 11 has followed us over to our station once again. She nervously holds a spear almost twice as tall as she is, listening to the trainer's instructions with wide, solemn eyes. I wonder with a pang if she'll even be able to lift the thing, let alone throw it.

“I think we have a shadow,” I whisper to Katniss after she's thrown her spear. She's getting better at it, usually hitting near the center of the target, even if she can't throw it with much force. Katniss slides her eyes over to the girl while she grabs another spear from the rack. I step forward and heft my own spear, aiming and throwing it as we were taught. I don't get as close to the center of the target as Katniss did, but mine ends up buried several inches deeper than hers.

I turn around and see the girl still watching us. “I think her name is Rue,” I murmur in Katniss’s ear.

Katniss bites her lip, and a flash of pain crosses her face. She appears to blink back tears, then says in a harsh voice, “What can we do about it?”

I shrug, surprised by her reaction. “Nothing to do,” I say mildly. “Just making conversation.”

Later, as we break for lunch, I notice that the tributes from District 2 have cornered the huge boy from District 11, Thresh, and seem to be having some kind of heated conversation with him. I touch Katniss’s arm, and she looks back at me curiously. I nod my head towards the group, and she follows my gaze, frowning. “What about it?” she asks.

“Just follow my lead,” I murmur, leaning down and swiftly loosening the laces on one of her shoes. I stand and we stroll past the trio, stopping just feet away, where I grip her arm. “Whoa! Watch out there, you nearly tripped. Your shoelace is untied.” I crouch down in front of her. “I told you you should have double-knotted them, didn’t I?”

“Fine, I admit it, you were right,” she responds in a deadpan voice, and I have to hide a smile at how bad her acting is.

The girl from District 2 rolls her eyes at us before continuing her conversation with Thresh. “This is the last chance we’re going to give you to join us, Eleven. You don’t want to pass this up.”

There is no response at all from Thresh. Then Cato finally breaks the silence, saying in frustration, “Don’t be an idiot. Our alliance is already seven strong. You won’t be able to beat us.”

“I wouldn’t join you if you had every other tribute in the arena on your side,” Thresh finally replies, his voice low and quiet, barely above a mutter, but threatening all the same.

Cato curses and stomps away, but the girl from 2 hangs around for another minute, eyeing Thresh, her lips curling up in a sadistic smile. “You’ll regret that choice, Eleven,” she says simply, before turning and following her district partner into the lunch room.

I finish tying Katniss’s shoelace and stand. ‘There. I knotted it properly this time, so you should be good for the afternoon.”

Katniss shoots me an annoyed look. Thresh looks at us as if noticing we’re there for the first time. He lowers his eyebrows, studying us, before shrugging his shoulders and heading off into the cafeteria.

“What did you think of that?” I murmur to Katniss.

She has a satisfied smirk on her face, staring after Thresh’s retreating back. “I think it’s great. It’s just what the Careers deserve.”

I agree that it’s good Thresh isn’t joining up with the Career pack—he would significantly increase their fighting power—but I’m more interested in who their seventh member is. In the afternoon, I keep an eye on the Careers to see if I can catch any of them interacting in a friendly way with the other tributes, but I don’t see anything that tips off who else could be part of their alliance.

That night at dinner, Haymitch drills me about this conversation over and over again, asking question after question about every interaction we saw between the Careers and the other tributes. I handle the questioning better than Katniss, who eventually refuses to answer altogether but instead glares at Haymitch with an increasingly irate expression on her face, but by the end of the meal even I am exhausted and irritable. I have a pounding headache behind my left eye when Haymitch finally dismisses us from the table. As Katniss and I walk down the hallway to our rooms, I lean toward her and mumble, “Someone ought to get Haymitch a drink.”

She snorts out a laugh, then appears to catch herself, pausing in front of the door to her room and scowling. “Don’t,” she says, refusing to look me in the eye. “Don’t let’s pretend when there’s no one around.”

I wasn’t pretending, I want to tell her. I want to argue with her, tell her how unfair she’s being, tell her that she’s not the only person this tragedy is happening to and that I’ll be in the arena by the end of the week just like her. But I’m so tired, so defeated, that all I manage to say is “All right, Katniss,” and continue down the hallway to my room.

I collapse onto the bedspread, my head throbbing, my limbs exhausted from wrestling and throwing spears and swinging swords, and my heart aching under the weight of the knowledge that I’ve spent most of my life avoiding: what Katniss Everdeen would really think of me if I ever got up the courage to talk to her. How foolish I’ve been, to ever think that I had a shot with her. That she might find me funny, or charming, or someone of value. She can’t stand me. Maybe she’s even disliked me for years, ever since I tossed that bread to her. Because why hadn’t I talked to her after that day in the rain? Why hadn’t I made sure she was okay after I’d seen her in a moment of such desperation? Instead, I had left her alone to fend for herself, because I’d been too afraid to approach her and be rejected. Because I’m despicable.

I press my fists against my eyes, trying to ward off a growing headache. What am I doing? What do I have to show for myself, after the costumes and the parade and the days of training? I’m no closer to figuring out how to make the Capitol acknowledge that I’m more than their plaything. Despite all my time spent training and watching the other tributes, I’m still not convinced I can survive for any length of time in the arena. Which means I’ll probably embarrass myself by dying of starvation or thirst or exposure, proving my mother right. Or, if I am forced to kill a tribute or two in self-defense before I eventually go down, I’ll be painted by the Capitol as some kind of bloodthirsty monster, and that’s how I’ll be remembered, if anyone bothers to remember Peeta Mellark from District 12 ever again.

A sharp pain builds in my chest as my breaths come faster and faster. The air in the room is stifling. Pointless, I think. It’s pointless. Why even keep trying? Give up. What are you trying to prove? My mother’s voice now. Who do you think you’re fooling? You’re not a survivor. Not like Katniss.

Katniss. How far we seem now from our first night in the Capitol, when we’d held hands in the tribute parade, facing it together. When she’d kissed me, shared her secrets with me, accepted the warmth of my jacket on the roof.

The roof!

I leap from my bed and I’m out the door before I realize I’ve made the choice to go. I race down the hall and up the stairs, bursting onto the roof with a gasp and breathing in deep lungfuls of the thin Capitol air. I stumble over to the railing, leaning over it and staring at the ground twelve stories below. I grip the bar as my head spins with vertigo. My arms tremble as I imagine falling, falling, falling . . .

“Not thinking of jumping, are you, boy?”

I start and whirl around. I can just make out Haymitch sitting on a bench in the little rooftop garden beneath the wind chimes. He tips a squat green bottle to his lips and takes a sip, sighing loudly and smacking his lips as the liquid sloshes. I guess someone got him that drink after all. “I'm sorry to inform you that you can't,” he says. “There's a—”

“Force field,” I interrupt him. “I know. Cinna showed me.”

“If you know that, then why are you up here?” he asks.

I don’t answer right away, my hands still gripping the railing tightly as my breathing slows. “I couldn’t breathe,” I finally admit, letting go of the railing and walking over to join him on the bench. “I think I was starting to panic a bit.” He doesn’t answer, instead taking another swig from his bottle. “I think this is where, as my mentor, you tell me that I shouldn’t panic, that I’ll be fine,” I joke.

He grunts. “I’m not going to lie to you. It’ll be hell in there.”

I shrug, because this is no more than I expected. “It’s already hell here,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “If you call me questioning you at dinner hell, you’re in for a shock in the arena.”

“It’s not that,” I say with a sigh. “Well, it’s not just that,” I amend. “It’s her. Trying to be friendly with her all day when she clearly can't stand me. She can't wait until I'm dead and out of her hair for good.”

Haymitch barks out a laugh. “You're a bigger idiot than I thought if that's what you think.”

“She just told me she wants to stop pretending to be my friend when no one's around,” I retort. “Tell me how else I’m supposed to see it.”

“She’s keeping you at arm’s length because she cares about you,” he says simply. “Or she’s worried that she might start to care about you if she lets you get too close. Which makes you dangerous, because where she's going, she can’t afford to care about anyone. She won’t be able to save anyone in there.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, yeah? Is that why you’ve ignored the District Twelve tributes for the last two decades, Haymitch? You just care too much?”

He scowls at me. “You know, you can be a real sanctimonious ass sometimes. Anybody ever tell you that?”

I’m quiet. Mostly because I don’t have anything to say, but also because I have in fact been told that before.

After a long moment of silence broken only by the sloshing of Haymitch’s drink, he asks, “Are you ready, then?”

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to tell me what it is you want.”

I stare out at the unblinking lights of the city. What I want? What do I want? My original plan, to send the Capitol a message, seems so foolish and naive now. What I really want is for Katniss and I to both live, and for her to somehow not hate me, but I know that's impossible on both counts, so it's not even worth saying. “I don't want anything,” I finally say.

Haymitch laughs at that. “Liar. Nobody who wants nothing tries as hard as you’ve been trying.”

I think about that for a long moment. Finally, I say quietly, “I don’t know what I want.”

He sighs and stands, stretching. “I think that might be true. Don’t worry, boy; I think you’re close to figuring it out. You know where to find me when you do.” he walks towards the domed room and pulls open the door.

“Haymitch?” I call out. He pauses and looks back at me. “Why haven’t you ever . . .” I trail away, gesturing towards the edge of the roof. He’d have plenty of opportunities, back in District 12. No force fields to stop anyone there. And he seems miserable enough. Maybe drinking himself to death is his form of suicide, but it seems a rather slow, painful method to me. “Don’t you ever want to?” I ask.

A shadow crosses his face, but he simply says, “Of course I do. But I have to live,” before disappearing inside the dome and leaving me alone on the roof.

The next morning, Katniss and I don’t speak a word to each other at breakfast or on the elevator ride down to the gym. We only start talking in our strange, artificial way when the other tributes are around to witness us. Every word is painful. I avoid looking her in the eye as much as I can.

After lunch, the tributes hang around the cafeteria as one of the trainers calls us one by one into our individual assessments with the Gamemakers. As usual, District 12 is slated to go last. Katniss and I keep up our charade as the lunch room slowly empties out until it’s just us and District 11 left. After Rue is called in for her private session, we sit in silence until fifteen minutes pass and the trainer returns for me. I rise from my seat to follow her.

“Remember what Haymitch said,” Katniss blurts out. “About being sure to throw the weights.”

I pause, staring at her. She looks embarrassed a little at her outburst, her cheeks flushing a faint pink.

“Thanks,” I say slowly. “I will. You . . . shoot straight.”

I turn and follow the trainer into the gym. Inside, the Gamemakers are mingling, around a dining table, talking, laughing, and drinking. One of them appears to be leading the others in song, waving a chicken leg like a baton.

Voice, fiddle, and flute,
no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot,
And, besides I'll instruct you, like me, to entwine
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine!

They show no interest in me at all, but I hardly care; I’m not paying much attention to them either. My mind races as I approach the rack of weights. Katniss wants me to do well in my private session. She basically wished me luck. Why? We’re not allies, so my training score doesn’t benefit her at all. And she doesn’t care what happens to me; hadn’t she made that obvious?

I lift the first weight by the handle, a 25-pound ball dangling from a chain. I swing it around a couple of times, loosening up my arm as I think. Something is nagging at my brain: the pained expression on Katniss's face when I pointed out Rue, her teeth worrying her bottom lip, her flash of anger. But why? Surely she wasn't angry at the girl for following us. She's hardly a threat.

I swing the weight around my head a couple of times then let the momentum of it twist my body around once, twice, three times before I let it go. It flies across the gym, landing with a thud fifty feet away. Not bad. I glance up at the Gamemakers, but they're still singing away.

Then over each head
My laurels I'll spread;
So my sons from your crackers no mischief shall dread,
Whilst snug in their club room, they jovially twine
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine!

As I lift another weight from the rack, I hear Haymitch's voice in my head: “Where she's going, she can’t afford to care about anyone.” And I realize, with a jolt, what that look meant. She was so upset, so hostile, about Rue because she cares about her. Or she might start to, if she lets her guard down. And it’s too painful to care about Rue here, in this place. Not with the arena looming over our heads, and a sister and mother at home that will starve to death without her.

I’ve been stupid; an idiot, just like Haymitch said. Haven’t I been watching Katniss for years? Don’t I know who she is by now? She’s a protector. I remember her perched in a tree, throwing rocks at Madge’s tormentors. She’s self-sacrificing. I remember her volunteering for Primrose at the reaping. She pushes people away because caring for them is too painful. I remember the anguish in her voice when she yelled at her sister to let her go.

As I swing the weight around my head I think of my conversation with Haymitch last night, and I feel ashamed of myself for mocking him. Of course he cares too much. Why else would he get blackout drunk every reaping day? Even his continual harassment of us at dinner every night and breakfast every morning. Why would he do it if he didn’t care, if he wasn’t fighting like hell to get us out of the arena alive? The weight flies from my hands and lands a few feet past the first one. Still, the Gamemakers are oblivious, singing their song.

Then, Jove, be not jealous
Of these honest fellows.
Cried Jove, “We relent, since the truth you now tell us;
And swear by Old Styx, that they long shall entwine
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine!”

I lift more weights from the rack, even other heavy objects in the room, heaving and tossing them at random. My heart races in my chest, and I can’t tell if it’s from the exercise or the dawning realization that Katniss cares about me. Not in the same way I do for her, I’m sure, but enough to want me to do well in the arena. She has asked me to do what none of those who loved me did: not my friends, not my family, not even my own mother. She told me to keep fighting. She told me to try to win. Which is even more remarkable, because unlike all of the others, this would come at the cost of her own life.

I pause and look up at the Gamemakers, breathing heavily. A handful are looking at me with a little interest, but most have joined the song at this point, arms linked together, raising their glasses in the air. They make me sick. Snug and safe and beyond caring about the tributes they're killing. My eyes land on a rack of medicine balls to my left, and I hear Haymitch’s voice once more: “What do you want?”

I lift the largest of the medicine balls, at least 50 pounds, and brace it on my shoulder. I spy a rack of throwing spears twenty feet away. I know what I want. What I’ve always wanted. It just took this reminder of who Katniss really is to realize it. And I know now how I’m going to show the Gamemakers, how I’m going to show everyone, exactly who I am.

While thus we agree,
Our toast let it be.
May our club flourish happy, united, and free!
And long may—

A crash interrupts them just as they surge into the chorus. Spears clatter and roll across the ground. The voices stutter to a halt as Gamemakers look around for the source of the noise, some of them seeming to notice that I’m in the room for the first time.

I stare up at all of them, my chest heaving. “My name is Peeta Mellark,” I say, breathlessly. “I am going to die in your arena.”

For just a moment, I’ve silenced them. It doesn’t last long, though. One of them laughs, then another, and within moments most of them go back to drinking and talking. One loudly asks if evaluations are over yet. Seneca Crane, the head Gamemaker, waves a hand at me. “Fine, District Twelve. That’s enough. You may go.”

I nod my head politely, then turn and get on the elevator. A new determination burns in me and my last thought, as the doors close on the gym, is, but Katniss won’t.

Chapter Text

When the elevator doors open on the 12th floor, Haymitch and Effie are there waiting for me.

“How did it go?” Effie asks anxiously, clutching my arm. Her long, fake nails dig into my skin.

“It was fine, Effie,” I reassure her. “Well, I think it was fine. I did what Haymitch asked. I threw the weights around. I’m not sure how impressed they were; the Gamemakers seemed pretty checked out at that point.”

Effie makes a frustrated sound in her throat. “I told Seneca Crane that we should randomize the order of the private sessions. It’s not fair that District Twelve is last every year! I told him, ‘If you can’t keep your Gamemakers in line–’”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Haymitch interrupts her, earning himself a vicious glare. “The boy did the best he could with what he was given. Come on, let’s sit down and wait for Katniss. Cinna and Portia are on their way; no use getting into it now when we’ll just have to repeat everything once they get here.”

I follow them into the sitting room and take a seat on the purple sofa. Effie taps her foot anxiously, checking her watch every couple of minutes. The red-haired Avox girl hands me a glass of ice water, which I take from her with an absent smile. I stare at my own hands around the cold glass as condensation drips down the sides, lost in thought. It's strange how calm I feel now compared to the last few days. Really, compared to every moment since the reaping. Finally having accepted my death, I feel a strange sense of peace about it. Now that I've given up trying to survive, it feels as though the Capitol’s stranglehold on me has lessened. What can they hold over me now, after all? I am free to make as outrageous a show of resistance as I can think of in the arena, knowing my end will be the same no matter what I do.

I still have a goal, and I'm more determined than ever to accomplish it. Because I know now there's something I want even more than my life; I want to do whatever I can to help Katniss survive the Games.

It won’t be easy, but I think I have a slightly better chance of getting her out of the arena alive than I had of getting myself out. The details are still fuzzy; how exactly can I help her, limited as I am in my own abilities? And how can I make sure the Capitol has to show it, show me subverting the message of their Games? Because it’s not enough to just keep Katniss alive; I want to make the Capitol see that we tributes are capable of more than just self-preservation. I want them, and my family and friends back home, and hopefully Katniss one day, perhaps during her victor celebration, when they show the recap of the Games, to see that in the Games my goal was to save Katniss's life, not my own.

It can't be as simple as teaming up—protecting her from mutts or tributes as her ally could just as easily be played off as self-defense. No, I have to be seen deliberately putting myself in harm's way with the goal of protecting her, and in a moment so exciting or integral to the story of the Games that the Capitol can't cut it out or manipulate it. The interview could be an interesting opportunity—I don't know if it's broadcast live or on a few minutes delay, but either way, they're hosted in front of a live audience nearly as large as the one at the tribute parade. They can't edit my words in real time. All those people would hear me, and if what I say is outrageous or exciting enough, it might get through to the rest of the country through word of mouth, even if the Capitol edits the broadcast. But what could I say?

“Peeta,” Effie says, interrupting my musings. “Do you have any requests for Monday’s dinner? I want to make it special, since it will be your last meal in the Capitol.”

I finish the unspoken part in my head: And maybe your last meal, ever. “Oh,” I say. “Let me think—”

I’m interrupted by the ding of the elevator arriving. “We’re in here,” Haymitch calls, but Katniss doesn’t appear; instead, we hear footsteps running down the hall and just catch a glimpse of her tear-streaked face as she passes the doorway.

“Katniss?” Effie calls in concern, rising to her feet. The only answer is the slam of a door.

Effie and Haymitch walk quickly after her. I get up, too, after hesitating for a moment, following them into the hallway. I find them standing with their ears pressed to her door, listening. I pause as I hear what they do: Katniss sobbing loudly inside her room.

“Katniss, dear,” Effie calls, rapping on the door. “Why don’t you come out and talk to us about it?”

“Go away!” comes the muffled yell from the other side of the door.

Haymitch bangs on the door himself, harder than Effie. “Katniss, get out here, now!” He tries the door handle, but it’s locked.

“Just leave me alone!” Katniss calls out in a choked voice.

What happened in there? I think worriedly as Effie and Haymitch continue to cajole, threaten, and plead with Katniss from the other side of the door. Did the Gamemakers just ignore her, as they had me? Had she not shot as well as she wanted to?

Finally, Haymitch throws his hands up. “I give up. She’ll come out when she’s hungry.”

“Maybe not,” I say. “She can order food to her room. Maybe she plans on staying in there until the Games start.”

Effie gasps and gives me a scandalized look. “And miss the interview? You can’t mean that, Peeta!”

I shrug. “Probably not. But I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Don’t worry, Effie,” Haymitch says grimly. “I’ll break down her door before I let that happen.”

“Come on, let’s just leave her be for now,” I say, trying to pacify them. I don’t think Haymitch is one to make idle threats. “Whatever happened in there, she probably just needs time to calm down. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”

I manage to usher them away from Katniss’s door and to the sitting room just as Cinna and Portia arrive. Cinna sees the three of us and frowns. “Where’s Katniss?”

As Effie fills him in, I sit down next to Portia, who puts an arm around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze. “How did your private session go?” she asks.

I just shrug, too distracted by Katniss’s disappearance to think of my time with the Gamemakers.

“And now she refuses to come out!” Effie finishes with exasperation.

“What could have gone wrong?” Cinna asks, his voice full of concern. “What was she planning on doing, anyway?”

“We had it all worked out,” Haymitch says. He’s pacing in front of the television now, brow furrowed. “She was going to show off her archery. Supposedly, she’s a crack shot.” Haymitch pauses his pacing, turning his suspicious eyes on me. “At least, that’s what the boy said. You weren’t talking her up just to spark her, were you?”

“Of course I wasn’t!” I snap, my face heating up.

“Have you ever actually seen her shoot?” Cinna asks me.

“No, but—”

I'm cut off by a wail from Effie as she collapses backwards onto the sofa.

“But—” I continue firmly, ignoring Effie’s hysterics, “I've seen dozens, maybe hundreds of her catches. Trust me, she can shoot.”

“You don’t see the ones she doesn’t hit!” Haymitch growls.

I open my mouth to snap back at him, but Portia lays a hand on my arm to stop me. “How did she seem this morning, Peeta?” she asks, sending Haymitch a warning look.

“I don’t know—normal, I guess. We didn’t talk much, other than when we were performing in front of the others.” I think of that moment right before my private session and add, “Well, there was one strange thing—just before I went into my session with the Gamemakers, she reminded me to throw the weights like Haymitch said.”

Cinna lowers her eyebrows, confused. “Why would that be strange for Katniss to do?”

“They’ve been fighting,” Haymitch tells him. “You two have missed out on all the teen drama I’ve had to put up with this week.”

I glare at Haymitch. “We haven’t been fighting. We just haven’t been talking much, not unless it was for show around the other tributes.”

Haymitch opens his mouth to say something, but Cinna cuts him off. “Maybe I could try talking to her?” he asks.

I let out a frustrated sigh. “Look, she just needs time alone. She’ll come out when she’s ready to face us, which definitely won’t be before she’s finished crying.”

Haymitch sinks onto the sofa with a groan. He snaps his fingers at one of the Avoxes and asks them to bring him a drink. “The boy’s right. We’ll know by tonight how badly she did when they broadcast the training scores, whether she comes out or not. Might as well sit tight and try to enjoy ourselves.”

I don’t know how much any of us enjoys the next few hours, but there certainly is a lot of sitting around. Haymitch drinks, but he sticks to beer, so he doesn’t get wasted. Effie frets and keeps getting up to listen at Katniss’s door, although we make her promise not to knock again. After one of these trips, about an hour into our vigil, she returns and says, “Well, she’s finally stopped crying.”

The atmosphere in the room is eventually too much for me, so I get up and walk through the glass doors to the balcony just off the sitting room. I lean my arms against the railing, looking out as the sun sets over the vivid Capitol buildings. Despite the calm I showed around the others, my stomach feels knotted with tension. I can’t stop myself from imagining what could have happened during Katniss’s private session to upset her so much. I feel sure that it must have something to do with how distracted the Gamemakers were. I’m kicking myself for not doing more to get their attention back on the sessions again, but half of them were so drunk that I don’t see what I could have done.

I hear the door open behind me, and a moment later feel a hand on my back. “How are you doing, Peeta?” Portia asks gently.

I smile softly at her. Portia. She always seems to be checking in on me, watching out for me even when everyone else is distracted. She’s shown me kindness that I didn’t expect to receive in the Capitol. I still have trouble knowing how to feel about that, the dissonance between her seeming kindness and her role in the Games, but I decide for now to just accept it. “Just wanted to escape the intensity in there for a little while.”

She nods, and we both stare out at the view. “The sunset over the city looks beautiful,” she says.

I have to agree; the soft orange light makes even the absurd colors of the buildings here deeper and richer, so that they almost look normal, and the skyscrapers cast long, dramatic shadows. I’ve always thought everything looks more beautiful during sunset: people, buildings, mountains. It softens all of our edges. It’s nice to know this is true even in the Capitol. “I think it’s the most beautiful I’ve seen the Capitol look since I got here,” I agree. It’s really the only time I’ve thought the Capitol looks beautiful, but I don’t dare say that out loud here on the balcony, which is probably bugged.

In the dim light, Portia begins to point out different landmarks as the city lights flicker to life. Her apartment building. The university where she and Cinna studied fashion design together, where they first became friends. The central avenue where we rode our chariots and the City Circle with the presidential mansion. The area surrounding the mansion is one of the few green spots in the city. “The gardens in the grounds there are said to be magnificent, but I’ve never been myself. You can’t get in without an invitation from the president. And there, the building with the dome on top, that’s the Plinth Museum of Fine Art, right next to Heavensbee Library.”

“Museum of Fine Art?” I ask. “What’s that?”

Portia smiles. “I thought you’d be interested in that one. It’s got paintings, sculptures, all kinds of artwork. It even has some art created before the formation of Panem, although not much—most didn’t make it through all the wars and disasters. There are some really beautiful pieces, although I’d say the collection is somewhat lacking in vision. Of course, the government has to approve each piece, and it can be hard to find inspiration within such strict guidelines.”

I frown. “Why make them so strict?”

Portia pauses for a long moment, then says in a voice that suggests she’s choosing her words carefully, “Well, they just want to make sure every piece reflects the values of the Capitol. They wouldn’t want to promote art that could upset people.”

Translation: they wouldn’t want people to see artwork with an anti-Capitol message. I think about that for a long moment. Why would the Capitol have to censor artworks created by Capitol citizens? What messages are they creating that are deemed too radical to be displayed? I’ve never really thought about art this way before, as something that could be used as a weapon against the Capitol.

Effie pokes her head out of the sliding glass doors. “Time for dinner, you two! I’m going to go and check on Katniss, see if she’s willing to come out of her room now.”

We follow her back inside and join Cinna and Haymitch at the dining table while Effie goes to summon Katniss. They come in together a moment later, and Katniss slides into the chair across from me, her face red and puffy from crying. She stares down at her table setting, avoiding everyone's eyes.

I continue to watch her as the Avoxes serve the soup, ignoring the chatter of the others as they talk about the weather in falsely bright voices. When she finally lifts her eyes from her soup, mine are the first hers seek out. I raise my eyebrows, silently asking her, What happened in there? She just gives a small shake of her head, her bottom lip trembling. My heart aches for her. I wish I were sitting next to her; then I could get away with squeezing her hand under the table without drawing attention to her distress. I just wish I could do something, anything, to make her feel better.

Finally, as the main course is served, Haymitch can’t hold himself back any longer. “Okay, enough small talk, just how bad were you today?” he asks.

I speak up first so she doesn’t have to. “I don’t know that it mattered,” I say. “By the time I showed up, no one even bothered to look at me. They were singing some kind of drinking song, I think. So, I threw around some heavy objects until they told me I could go.” If the problem with Katniss’s session was the Gamemakers ignoring her, I want to make sure the others know it wasn’t her fault. And Katniss does look a little relieved, hearing this.

“And you, sweetheart?” Haymitch asks in a kind voice, very unlike his usual tone. I blink at him, surprised to see this softer, gentler side to our normally indifferent or belligerent mentor.

Katniss, however, seems to take offense at the nickname. Scowling at Haymitch, she spits out, “I shot an arrow at the Gamemakers.”

I freeze with my fork halfway to my mouth, staring at her. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that the others have done the same, staring at Katniss with expressions ranging from bewildered to terrified.

“You what?” Effie asks, her face filled with horror.

“I shot an arrow at them,” Katniss says, dropping her fork on her plate with a clatter and crossing her arms across her chest. “Not exactly at them. In their direction. It’s like Peeta said, I was shooting and they were ignoring me and I just . . . I just lost my head, so I shot an apple out of their stupid roast pig’s mouth!”

The entire table is quiet for a long moment. I wish I could think of something to say to break the tension, but for once I’m lost for words. She attacked the Gamemakers? Has a tribute ever done that during training before? I can’t even begin to imagine what the punishment for that might be. Why hadn’t they come to arrest her immediately?

Cinna is the one to finally break the silence. “And what did they say?” he asks.

“Nothing. Or I don’t know. I walked out after that,” Katniss answers.

“Without being dismissed?” gasps Effie, as if that was an offense nearly as bad as shooting at the Gamemakers.

“I dismissed myself,” she says with a shrug. But then the defiant expression slides off her face, and I see tears well up in her eyes again.

“Well, that’s that,” says Haymitch, grabbing a roll from his plate and slathering it with butter.

“Do you think they’ll arrest me?” Katniss asks in a small voice.

“Doubt it. Be a pain to replace you at this stage,” Haymitch responds.

“What about my family? Will they punish them?” Katniss asks, and I realize now why she was so upset. Of course she was thinking of her family. Now I’m concerned, too; would the Capitol take out their anger on her family, since Katniss is already being sent into the arena? How cruel it would be, how ironic, to take the sister Katniss sacrificed herself to save and execute her on the eve of the Games.

“Don’t think so,” Haymitch says. “Wouldn’t make much sense. See, they’d have to reveal what happened in the Training Center for it to have any worthwhile effect on the population. People would need to know what you did. But they can’t since it’s secret, so it’d be a waste of effort.” I wonder if Haymitch believes this, or if he’s just saying it to make Katniss feel better. Either way, he’s right to say it; it’s not as if Katniss can do anything at this point to stop the Capitol from punishing her family. Better to let her think they’re safe, to keep her mind focused on surviving the Games. “More likely they’ll make your life hell in the arena,” he says, taking a bite of his roll.

“Well, they’ve already promised to do that to us anyway,” I add, remembering our conversation on the rooftop last night.

“Very true,” Haymitch agrees.

I can see some of the fear drain out of Katniss’s face. She sits up a little straighter, finally looking at the plate of food in front of her.

Haymitch picks up a pork chop and dunks it in his wine, then rips off a hunk of it with his teeth. Effie frowns at him from across the table. He starts to chuckle. “What were their faces like?”

Katniss actually starts to smile a bit, her eyes twinkling. “Shocked. Terrified. Uh, ridiculous, some of them. One man tripped backward into a bowl of punch.”

Haymitch laughs loudly, and I can’t help but join in alongside Cinna and Portia. Maybe she actually has managed to get out of this ok. And if not—well, our chances of survival were never great to begin with. I should feel terrified for her, and a part of me is still worried about what consequences she might face, but I’m mostly just impressed by her. I love that she gave the Gamemakers a taste of their own medicine. She managed to do what I failed to do without even really thinking about it; she got through to the Gamemakers, broke them out of their comfortable, safe little bubble, refused to let them ignore her. I love it. Not so ‘snug in their club room’ now, are they?

“Well, it serves them right,” Effie says. She’s not laughing like the rest of us, although I notice her trying to repress a smile. ‘It’s their job to pay attention to you. And just because you come from District Twelve is no excuse to ignore you.” Her eyes dart around the room, suddenly fearful. “I’m sorry, but that’s what I think,” she says, addressing, I assume, the cameras that must be hidden in the room.

“I’ll get a very bad score,” Katniss says, but she’s still smiling a bit.

“Scores only matter if they’re very good, no one pays much attention to the bad or mediocre ones,” Portia says kindly. “For all they know, you could be hiding your talents to get a low score on purpose. People use that strategy.”

“I hope that’s how people interpret the four I’ll probably get,” I say with a sigh. “If that. Really, is anything less impressive than watching a person pick up a heavy ball and throw it a couple yards? One almost landed on my foot.”

I’m rewarded with a real, full smile from Katniss, and warmth spreads through my chest down to the tips of my toes. Her smile really is beautiful, even with her puffy eyes and red-tipped nose. I’m grateful that she becomes absorbed in her food after this; hopefully she doesn’t notice how pink my face has grown in response.

After the meal is over, we all return to the sitting room to watch the broadcast of the training scores. The Career tributes all predictably land scores between eight and ten. Most of the other tributes score in the low to medium-low range, except, unsurprisingly, for Thresh, who also scores a ten. His district partner, Rue, scores a seven, which is a surprise; I wonder briefly what she could have shown the distracted Gamemakers to pull that, but I’m too anxious about my own score to put much thought into it. I lean forward, my shoulders rigid. My apprehension both for myself and Katniss has grown with each passing score, the laughter and reassurances from earlier in the dining room fading away to white noise. Portia might have been right about a low score not being the end of the world, but no one can deny that at least initially, the highest scoring tributes are usually the contestants with the most sponsors.

When my face appears on screen, the number eight flashes beneath it, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Portia reaches over and gives my leg a squeeze. “Peeta, that’s wonderful!” she says, but the others stay silent and tense, waiting for Katniss’s score. I see her bite down hard on her lower lip, her eyes fixed on the screen.

When her face appears alongside the number eleven, the silent room breaks into cheers and congratulations. Haymitch pounds Katniss on the back, and Effie grabs her arm with a squeal. Katniss’s face is shocked, and she turns to gape at Haymitch. “There must be a mistake. How . . . how could that happen?” she asks.

“Guess they liked your temper,” he answers with a shrug and a grin. “They’ve got a show to put on. They need some players with some heat.”

“Katniss, the girl who was on fire!” Cinna crows, pulling Katniss into a hug. “Oh, wait until you see your interview dress.”

“More flames?” she asks dubiously.

“Of a sort,” he says with a mischievous smile.

“Congratulations, Katniss.” I smile at her, but it’s a bit strained. She murmurs her reply, congratulating me back, but awkwardly. I’ve done better than I thought I would, and I’m grateful for it, but here at last is objective proof of what I’ve been trying to tell her all week, what she’s been denying; she stands a far better chance than I do of making it through this arena. She’s the safer bet.

She doesn’t stick around to chat but excuses herself and escapes to her room. Cinna and Portia are still excitedly talking with Effie about how they’ll be dressing us for the interviews. Haymitch takes a long drink from the tumbler of amber liquid in his hand and leans back against the sofa with his eyes closed, looking relaxed and relieved. I’m sure we’ve both made his job of securing sponsors for us a little easier in the coming days. But I'm worried it still might not be enough.

“Haymitch,” I say quietly. His eyes pop open, peering at me. “What does this mean for our chances?” I ask. “Will the scores be enough to get us the sponsors we need?”

He considers this for a moment. “Well, an above-average score is always useful, especially for a certain kind of sponsor. You see, you have people who donate for different reasons. For some, the Games are an opportunity to make money; place a large bet on the tribute you think has the surest chance of winning, and then put a little money towards helping that tribute win when they're in a tough spot, and you can make back your investment and then some.”

“Katniss got the highest score tonight; that makes her the frontrunner, doesn't it?” I ask.

Haymitch tilts his head back and forth, equivocating. “It's complicated. Numbers-wise, the Gamemakers have marked her as the one to beat. But that's not always the desirable position it appears to be; they've also marked her as a primary target for all the other tributes. And she's not going to be part of the Career alliance, so the audience knows their first move will be to hunt her down. No matter how skilled they think she is, six-on-one is hard odds to beat.”

This sends a chill down my spine as I think of the large, well-fed, and well-trained Career tributes, joking together at lunch. I’m sure one or two of them were expecting to pull the highest score tonight, and the upset of Katniss beating them out can only serve to enrage a cocky or entitled tribute.

“Add to that the fact that Katniss is significantly smaller and weaker-looking than many of the other tributes,” Haymitch continues, “and you’ve got a recipe for potential donors doubting the Gamemakers’ assessment. Especially if she’s not able to display her skill with a bow early on in the Games. You actually might be a slightly easier sell—your score was decent enough, in the Career range even, and you look strong and capable. On a superficial level, you look more like a victor than Katniss does.”

I think about this for a long moment. It makes sense, even though I think it’s idiotic—people look for patterns, and they have a hard time conceiving of something they’ve never seen before. Like a scrawny girl from District 12 winning the Hunger Games, which hasn’t happened in living memory. “What about the other kinds of sponsors you mentioned?” I ask. “The people who donate for a different reason than to win their bet?”

“There are plenty of people in the Capitol who will donate money just because they take a liking to a tribute, find them interesting or attractive, or just decide they’re a person worth rooting for. These people generally don’t donate as much as the gamblers do, but there are far more of them out there, so it adds up. You two certainly made a splash at the Tribute Parade, but to capture the kind of money and attention we’ll need to make a difference in the Games, you’ll need to have an excellent showing in your interviews. You seem amiable enough, and a little funny. I'm sure you'll do fine, maybe even great if we can find the right strategy. I'm less sure about Katniss—she's about as friendly as a badger.”

“Her dress tomorrow—” Cinna begins, but Haymitch cuts him off.

“I'm sure it will be lovely, Cinna, and that will definitely help. You and Portia have proven your value as a part of this team. But if Katniss is awkward, or hostile, or sullen, as she has been most of this week, it won't be enough to pull the kind of money we need.”

We all sit with this in silence for a long moment. Thoughts are swirling through my brain, a plan beginning to solidify. This could work, I think to myself. I know it could. This plan would certainly get the Capitol’s attention. But can I find the courage to actually do it? Then again, if it’s the best chance at getting sponsors for Katniss, do I have a choice? “Katniss and I have the same mentor—that means any sponsor donations for either of us will go into a single pool, and you can use them all to send a gift to either one of us. Right?” I ask.

Haymitch stares at me, his brow furrowed. “Theoretically possible, yes,” he answers. “But the ethical thing to do would be to keep the donations separate and use the money for the tribute it was intended for.”

“But wouldn’t it make more strategic sense to pool all of the money and use it on whichever of us needs it more?” I insist.

Haymitch scowls at me. “Peeta, are you asking me to redirect Katniss’s sponsor donations to you?”

“Not at all,” I object, holding up my hands placatingly. “I'm just saying that, strategically speaking, it makes sense for me to try and make us both unforgettable in the interviews Monday night. Right?”

Haymitch's dark gray eyes appraise me thoughtfully. “Do you have something in mind?”

I feel the jittery sensation of adrenaline rushing through my veins, and I have to clasp my hands together to stop them from trembling. It’s not unlike the feeling I get right before an important wrestling match. I take a deep breath, willing my voice to betray no emotion. “I could tell Panem that I'm in love with her.”

I can hear my heart beating in my ears in the silence that follows, can feel the stares from Cinna, Portia, and Effie, but I keep my own eyes trained on Haymitch’s. He quirks an eyebrow up, something like amusement in the shape of his mouth. “And you think you could be convincing?”

I feel heat in my cheeks and tips of my ears, and I know I must be blushing. “Very convincing, considering I actually am in love with her,” I answer.

Effie gasps and drops her glass of wine, which spills and stains the white carpet burgundy. The red-haired Avox girl that Katniss recognized rushes over to clean the mess. Cinna and Portia exchange a look, but I notice that they don’t seem quite as surprised as Effie.

“But you all knew that already, didn’t you?” I ask, realization dawning. “That’s what our strategy has been all along—the matching outfits, the hand-holding, sticking together during training. You’ve been positioning us as a couple.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly subtle about it, were you?” Haymitch is chuckling now, shaking his head. “I’ve got to say, though, you’ve still managed to surprise me. Announcing it in front of the whole country—that’s bolder than I expected from you, boy.”

“I guessed,” Portia breaks in, looking apologetic. “After our very first conversation. I could tell by the way you spoke about Katniss that there was some level of admiration there, and I mentioned it to Cinna. He agreed after seeing the two of you interact at the parade. We thought it was mutual, actually.”

“What?” I stare at the two of them. “No. No, it’s definitely one-sided.”

“Oh, Peeta!” Effie sniffs, reaching over to give me a hug. “Oh, you sweet, poor boy. In all my years escorting tributes in the Hunger Games, I’ve never seen something like this! I can hardly believe it!”

I pat her on the back awkwardly as she begins to cry on my shoulder. I crane my neck to see over her wig, and Haymitch and I exchange a meaningful look. If Effie’s reaction is anything to go by, this is going to play very, very well with the Capitol audience.

“Well then,” Haymitch clears his throat and sits up straight. “We’ll start first thing in the morning, planning out the big reveal. I think it's best if the girl knows nothing about this going into the interview.”

My eyes widen in alarm. “You want me to spring this on her on live television? No, Haymitch, she’ll kill me—literally kill me, in the arena!”

Haymitch shakes his head. “The girl’s a terrible actress—she’s not capable of pretending to be surprised. If we want an authentic reaction out of her, she can't know what's coming. Don't worry, you'll be fine—who could stay mad at those big blue eyes for long?”

My throat is dry, my heart hammering. I’m going to have to tell her. After eleven years, it’s all going to come out at last. How will she react? Will she be flattered? Embarrassed? Disdainful? Incredulous? Despite my protests, I find I'm a bit relieved I won’t have to tell her tomorrow; at least I get one more day’s reprieve before I have to face whatever her reaction is to the revelation of my feelings for her.

“We’ll break the news to her in the morning about the new training arrangements. Until then, let’s all try and get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day—for all of us,” Haymitch says, getting up from the sofa with a groan. The rest of us follow suit.

Portia surprises me by wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug, her cheek pressed against mine. “This is very brave of you, Peeta. I’m going to make sure your suit for the interview is just perfect.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to help as well,” Effie adds, dabbing at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “Oh, this is going to make such a splash!”

I excuse myself and make my way to my bedroom, where I strip off my clothes and climb into the shower, still feeling jittery with adrenaline. I’ve finally figured out the right button combination to produce a simple stream of hot water, and I stand under it until my skin is a bright pink color and my fingers are pruny. I think about what I’ve just revealed, for the first time in my life. What I’ve promised to do. For eleven years now, I’ve kept my feelings for Katniss carefully folded inside my heart, restricting myself to eavesdropping on her exchanges with my father at the back door of the bakery and stealing glances at her during school or in the market square. Every time I considered approaching her, I’d been crushed under what felt like insurmountable obstacles between us; the strict class divisions between the Seam folk and those from town, which bred suspicion and resentment. The harsh punishment inflicted on those who dared to cross that boundary. My uncertainty over what kind of future I could offer her. More than anything, it felt wrong to burden her with my feelings when I already knew I wasn’t worthy of her love. But now . . . the beauty of telling her now is that there’s no expectation of reciprocity attached to the revelation. There’s no possible future for us, whatever happens in the Games. Either she dies, or I die, or we both do. So my feelings can’t be a burden to her; they can’t hurt her. And she must know, when she hears them, that I don’t expect anything from her. In a way, it’s actually the perfect scenario for my confession.

I dry off and crawl into bed without a stitch of clothing on, listening to the sounds of the bustling city floating through the window. The hot water has sapped away my energy and helps to calm my agitated mind enough for me to slip into a restless sleep.

Katniss visits me in my dreams. She slips into the bed next to me, pressing her cool bare skin against my warm body. Her hair is down, and when it slides across my chest, it’s as smooth and soft as I’ve always imagined it would be. “Peeta . . .” she whispers, her breath tickling my ear. I can’t move a muscle, but instead simply lie there, completely immobilized, as she lifts herself over me. Her stormcloud eyes flash with lightning as she looks down at me, her lips curved into a soft smile. “Are you going to save me, Peeta?” Her words come out in a whisper, but they roll across me like thunder. Slowly, she lowers her head. I’m trapped in her embrace, and my heart hammers against my chest, sure she is going to kiss me. Instead, her face dips to my neck, and I feel her teeth sink into my throat.

Chapter Text

I wake with a gasp, a thin layer of sweat coating my body. The silky sheets stick to my skin. Outside my window, the sun is just rising over the candy-colored skyscrapers of the Capitol with a pale pink glow, and the air in the room is cold. I lie still for several moments, waiting for my heartbeat to slow down as the images and sensations of the dream slip away like morning mist in the sunlight. I let them go gladly; I don’t want to remember anything about Katniss that isn’t real.

I get up and move to the bathroom sink, bending low to gulp water directly from the faucet. Finished, I stare at myself in the mirror, wondering what is wrong with me. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed of Katniss Everdeen, but never before has she appeared like this. I reach my hand up and gently probe at the skin of my throat with my fingers. Am I . . . afraid of her? No, that can’t be true. Well . . . I certainly did go to bed afraid of her last night. But only of her reaction to my impending confession. I’m not actually afraid that she’ll kill me, am I?

An ‘over-active imagination’—that's what my mother used to call it. It was always a funny phrase to me, implying as it does that there's a certain correct level of activity for imagination. She hated when I’d disappear into my little daydreams, or describe strange things that I'd imagined or seen in a dream. “Get your head out of the clouds,” she'd say. “Isn't there something useful you could be doing?” Yet, I couldn't help it; even when my hands were busy, my mind would often be elsewhere. I'd get an idea in my head and fixate on it, unable to move on. Sometimes drawing the things I saw helped, or talking about them. But talk was dangerous. The worst were my ideas about the future. “Imagine,” I'd say, “a world without the Capitol. Without the Games. Imagine a district without a fence around it.” That was a sure way to get the belt; my mother would whip me raw and tell me that I wasn't to imagine any such things. Then, after, my father would find me and sit beside me, patting my back awkwardly. “She just doesn't want you to get hurt,” he'd say. I suppose hurting us was her prerogative. Eventually, I learned to keep my thoughts to myself.

Troubled by my dream, I slowly brush my teeth and dress for the day. Portia hasn’t laid out an outfit for me today, so I choose something comfortable from the electronic pad on the front of my closet and wait seconds for the outfit to be delivered.

I’m the first one to the dining room. Today, the sideboard includes a platter of glazed cinnamon rolls that smell delicious. They’re still warm from the oven. I add three of them to my plate alongside sausage rolls, fried eggs, and a truly delicious lamb stew ladled over a bed of fluffy wild rice. I close my eyes blissfully as I bite into one of the rolls when the doughy center melts in my mouth; we make cinnamon rolls in the bakery, but I rarely get to eat them myself, and never have I had one this fresh.

The elevator doors open with a ding, and Effie steps out, dressed today in a lavender pantsuit with matching lipstick so pale that it's nearly indistinguishable from the white powder coating the rest of her face. She is giddy with excitement when she spots me. “Oh, Peeta! Wonderful, you're up already. I've got marvelous news. Let me go and summon Haymitch first, then I can tell both of you at once. I'll wake Katniss as well—the girl takes ages to get out of bed, so we should still have plenty of time to chat.” She bustles off down the hall before I have the chance to swallow my food and respond.

The anticipation of seeing Katniss again soon has my stomach in knots, and it's a struggle to keep eating breakfast after Effie's reminder. Under the table, my leg fidgets, the heel of my left foot bouncing up and down nervously. I don’t think I’ll be able to meet her eyes today, knowing that in just under 48 hours, I'll be confessing my love to her in front of the entire country. I think about all of the times in the past I tried to psyche myself up to approach her, just to chicken out at the last minute. But there's no backing away from it this time. Not if I want to keep her alive.

Haymitch walks in at a brisk pace, followed closely by Effie. After they fill their plates and take seats close to me, Effie leans in and says in a low but excited voice, “You'll never guess who I was with last night.”

Haymitch raises an eyebrow. “Careful, Effie; there are children’s ears present.”

I stuff another cinnamon roll in my mouth to hide my grin as Effie scowls at Haymitch. She ignores his insinuation and continues, “Last night we escorts had a little post-broadcast soiree at L’hommage—one of the hottest cocktail bars in the Capitol this season, you know—when who should appear?” She waits expectantly, looking from me to Haymitch, but we just stare back at her blankly. “Only Caesar Flickerman himself!” she reveals with a smug smile.

Haymitch's eyebrows lower, and he leans forward across the table towards us. I straighten up; Caesar Flickerman is the official interviewer of the Hunger Games tributes and has been for as long as I can remember.

“Now, we aren't technically allowed to script his questions for our tributes or review the questions he’s come up with. But I managed to get him alone and—”

“Effie, I'm impressed,” Haymitch interrupts. “Seducing Caesar Flickerman just to help out Peeta here? What a team player. What's he got to be, sixty?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” she snarls at him.

He holds up both of his hands in a placating gesture, but he can’t keep the grin off his face. “Sorry, sorry . . . you know I can’t help teasing you, Effie. Not when you make it so easy.”

She sniffs, but can’t suppress her excitement for long. “As I was saying . . .” she continues in a low voice, glancing towards the hallway to make sure Katniss isn’t approaching, “I just hinted that Peeta had such an interesting romantic life back in District Twelve, and what a shame it would be if the people of Panem never got to hear his story.” She turns to look at me, eyes bright. “I'm sure he'll ask you about your romantic history tomorrow, Peeta! I thought it would create the perfect opportunity to bring up Katniss in a way that didn’t seem contrived.”

I stare at Effie with a new kind of respect. I’ve always considered her to be frivolous and vapid, but her words display a surprisingly intelligent and strategic mind. I glance between Haymitch, Effie, and the empty hallway, asking softly, “You really think it’ll work? Maybe he has his own plans for the interview.”

“Oh, he’ll take the bait,” Haymitch confirms, a slow smile spreading across his face. “All he cares about is ratings. The prospect of a tribute tangled up in some romantic drama? There’s no way he would pass on that. Nice one, Effie.”

Effie preens at his praise, looking extremely self-satisfied. “Well, maybe that’ll teach you not to antagonize me so much, Haymitch! Anyway, I hope this helps out with your interview prep today, Peeta. At least it provides a starting point to plan out the—”

She abruptly stops talking, her eyes widening in alarm at the clatter of a lid being set back on its serving dish. Katniss has entered the dining room unnoticed by all of us, despite our furtive looks at the hallway. How does she move so quietly? I wonder anxiously. I watch her closely, but there’s no sign that she overheard our conversation. She seems absorbed in selecting her breakfast and barely looks at us after she takes her seat next to Haymitch, shoveling spoonfuls of the lamb stew and rice into her mouth with loud, satisfied sounds. The rest of us look at each other awkwardly, not sure what to talk about now that she’s joined the table.

She finally seems to notice the tense, quiet atmosphere and looks up from her stew, taking a large gulp of orange juice and wiping her mouth with her sleeve. I notice Effie cringe next to me. “So, what’s going on?” she asks. “You’re coaching us on interviews today, right?”

“That’s right,” Haymitch answers easily.

She pauses for a moment, looking at each of us in turn, apparently waiting for one of us to say something. “You don’t have to wait until I’m done. I can listen and eat at the same time.”

“Well, there’s been a change of plans. About our current approach,” Haymitch says.

Katniss knits her eyebrows together, confused. “What’s that?”

Haymitch shrugs. “Peeta has been asked to be coached separately.”

She freezes, her hand suspended in the act of bringing another spoonful of stew to her mouth. Despite my determination to seem unaffected, I can’t stop my eyes from flicking up to her face. My heart plummets as I see the look of pain and anger on it. No, more than anger—betrayal. That’s what I see as her gray eyes meet mine for a fleeting second. I see in them a dozen unspoken questions. But, just as quickly as the look came, it’s broken. Her eyes drop to her food, and she finishes bringing the bite of stew to her mouth, chewing and swallowing. She attempts, as she did the day of the reaping, to empty her face of all emotion. It might fool someone else, but I’ve been masking my emotions my entire life, and I know the signs too well.

“Good. So what’s the schedule?” She strives for an indifferent, bored tone, but I can hear the note of hurt underneath it. I stare down at my own breakfast, unwilling to look at her again. I hadn’t expected her to be so bothered by this part of my plan; she couldn’t have made it clearer all week how much she hated being paired up with me in training. There was that single moment yesterday, right before my private session with the Gamemakers, where she seemed to wish me well. But despite that, I still thought Katniss hated Haymitch’s strategy of having us pretend to be friends. Shouldn’t she be happy now, to have some space from me?

Haymitch explains the schedule to us; we’ll each have four hours of interview content prep with him and four hours of presentation with Effie. I’ll be starting first with Haymitch while Katniss starts with Effie, then we’ll switch after lunch. After his explanation, the four of us finish breakfast in silence until Effie leads Katniss to her bedroom.

I follow Haymitch into the sitting room, where he sinks onto the purple couch with a groan. “Well, that could’ve gone worse,” he says.

“Yeah, and it could've been better,” I mumble, joining him on the sofa. I'm having trouble getting the expression on Katniss's face out of my mind. I can only imagine what kind of look I'll get when she hears what I have to say tomorrow.

Haymitch slaps his hands on his thighs. “So, the interview. This is your chance to craft your narrative for the games, give the audience a reason to root for you, and, crucially, to sponsor you. Now, the disadvantage for District Twelve boys like us has always been that our interview is the very last one of the night. You saw how the Gamemakers were during the private sessions. The audience will be restless, maybe even bored, depending on how the earlier interviews go. You'll need to do something to grab their attention up front, get them re-engaged with the program so they're paying attention when you make your big reveal.”

“Maybe I should just try to get them laughing,” I suggest.

“That would be ideal,” Haymitch agrees. “What have you got?”

I go through a series of ideas and jokes with him. Haymitch discards some with a shake of his head, but others get a laugh or a nod of satisfaction from him. Finally, we land on a few different options I can pull out in the interview, depending on the direction Caesar Flickerman takes it.

“That self-deprecating humor will work great on the Capitol audience,” Haymitch says. “It will make you seem relatable, approachable, like someone they would want to have a drink with. Just make sure you leave them with a good idea of who you are. Now, for the love confession. What kind of story were you thinking of using?”

I frown. “Can’t I just use the truth?”

“Only if it’s interesting,” Haymitch answers. “So what’s the story, then? I already know you helped her out with that bread. Is that when you started paying attention to her?”

I rub the back of my neck. I’ve never talked about this with anyone so candidly before. “No, it started . . . quite a bit earlier than that.”

Haymitch raises an eyebrow, waiting.

I clear my throat. “Well, I've had a crush on her pretty much since the first day I saw her.”

“Which was . . . ?”

“The first day of school . . . when we were five.”

Haymitch raises both eyebrows now. “Ok, childhood sweethearts. That could work for the audience. Who doesn’t have someone like that in their past? Alright, what else?”

“What do you mean, ‘what else’?” I ask.

“What are some of your other interactions with her?” he asks impatiently. “You know, longing looks, blushing conversations, sweaty hand holding. That kind of thing.”

I roll my eyes. “There’s nothing else. Our only real interaction was that time I gave her the bread. I never talked to her until after the reaping.”

Haymitch stares at me, his eyes narrowed. “You mean to tell me,” he says slowly, “that you’ve been infatuated with this girl for years and you’ve never even spoken to her?”

“Well, she traded with my father quite a bit,” I say, feeling defensive at his incredulous tone. “And, you know, sometimes I did catch her eye in school.”

Haymitch slowly shakes his head back and forth, and then his shoulders begin to shake. He makes a sound like a choking dog, until finally he throws back his head, guffawing loudly.

“What?” I ask testily.

He wipes tears from the corners of his eyes. “You’ve been pining after this girl for over a decade, and you have nothing to show for it but dead squirrels and the occasional look in the schoolyard. I’m just realizing now how pathetic you are.”

I bristle at that. “That's rich coming from you, the town lush. When’s the last time you talked to a woman, Haymitch? As far as I know, you don’t even have any friends.”

“That may be true, but at least I knew going into the arena that I wouldn’t die a virgin,” he shoots back.

I gape at him, thrown both by the bluntness of his words and what they imply. Haymitch—sloppy, drunk, belligerent, lonely Haymitch—had a lover? I can't picture him with a sweetheart, to be honest. He may be the richest man in the district, but he’s repulsive, and besides that, he seems to actively drive away human contact and affection. For the first time, I wonder who Haymitch was before his Games, before the Capitol made him into a mentor.

His laughter is so contagious that I can’t help but smile ruefully back at him. “I guess you’ve got me there. Can we work with pathetic?”

Haymitch nods, his laughter finally subsiding. “Oh, don’t worry, we can work with pathetic. We’ll just say she was so out of your league, you were too nervous to approach her. Your audience will relate to that. Lots of pathetic people here in the Capitol.”

“That’s close enough to the truth, anyways,” I say.

Haymitch looks at me disbelievingly. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Well, that and her older Seam boyfriend,” I say with a tight smile. “Although he’s only come into the picture in the last few years, so I can’t exactly blame all of my inaction on him.”

Haymitch frowns. “She has a boyfriend back home?”

I shrug. “I’ve never been able to actually confirm it, but they’re always together.”

He shakes his head. “Hard to believe the girl was able to catch one boy’s eye with that attitude of hers, let alone more. Well, I wouldn’t bring up her boyfriend in your interview, but be sure to mention how popular she is with the boys back home. There's nothing that makes a person so desirable as knowing other people are interested too.”

We run through the story a couple of times with Haymitch posing as Caesar, tweaking a word here and there. Finally, Haymitch is satisfied, and we return to the dining room for lunch in high spirits.

We’ve just sat down at the table with our food when Katniss appears, her face dark as a thundercloud. She’s wearing a simple but beautiful strapless black dress long enough to brush the floor, but she’s hiked up the front of it so high that all of her calves and most of her thighs, smooth and hairless from the work of the prep team earlier this week, are exposed. I choke on the glass of water I’m drinking, and Haymitch, who’s sitting next to me, slaps me on the back and laughs loudly. Hearing it, Katniss scowls over at the two of us, then turns and fills her plate from the buffet table, slamming each serving dish lid down after she’s done with them.

Effie joins us in the dining room a moment later, a strained smile on her face. I raise an eyebrow at her, but she just gives a small shake of her head. I guess the presentation training didn’t go so well; I wonder with trepidation what the next four hours have in store for me.

But it turns out I didn’t need to be nervous. Effie dresses me in a simple suit and button down shirt, apparently similar to the outfit Portia is planning for my interview, and has me practice standing up and sitting down in it, instructing me when exactly to unbutton the suit coat as I prepare to sit and how to smoothly button the coat again as I stand up. She corrects my posture, both sitting and standing, but has a lot of praise for how straight I tend to stand naturally. “Not like some others . . .” she mutters under her breath. She adjusts the way my knees and feet fall while sitting, and we work on walking in some shiny black dress shoes, but they don’t feel too different from the shoes I usually wear. By the time Effie, with her compulsive punctuality, checks her watch and declares that it’s time for dinner, I’m actually feeling pretty confident about the interview.

When we return to the dining room, however, that good feeling vanishes. Haymitch is standing in the dining room, swaying and gripping the edge of the table for support, drunk as a skunk. The Avoxes eye him warily, giving him a wide berth as they set the table. Haymitch spots us and smiles. “Ah, there he is. Look at him! Look at our boy, trying so hard to save his girl. S’too bad it’s hopeless. Take it from me, boy: you can't save nothin’.”

I look sharply around the room, but Katniss is nowhere to be seen. I stride over to Haymitch and grab him by the collar, lifting his feet from the ground and pinning his back against the wall. He swings at me, but this time I’m expecting it, and I dodge his blow. I ignore the gasps of the Avoxes and Effie’s startled protests behind me. “What happened?” I demand. “You promised you would stay sober enough to help us!”

He struggles to free himself, but I keep a firm grip on his shirt. “I tried my best, but it’s no use! She’s got zero appeal. At this point, the audience will be more confused by your confession than anything.”

The elevator doors open at the end of the room, and Cinna and Portia step out. They spot the three of us and pause, their faces shocked. “Peeta?” Portia says with alarm. “What’s going on here?”

Before either of us can say anything, we hear a crash from down the hallway. All of us pause and look over towards the source of the noise. There’s another crash, and another, and then a scream of frustration, of desperation. Katniss.

My eyes meet those of the red-haired Avox girl, paused in the middle of setting the table, her eyes wide with concern. “Please,” I plead. “Help her?” She nods and hurries away down the hallway. There’s a pause, followed by more shouting, but then silence.

I lower Haymitch until his feet touch the ground, then drag him over to one of the dining chairs and shove him into it. “Talk,” I say. “Now.” Cinna, Portia, and Effie take seats around the table, all of them staring at Haymitch.

“It’s like I said,” he slurs, “she’s awful at interviewin’. I tried everything in the—hic—book. She refuses to open up, and she can’t act for shit. By the time we were done, that girl was madder than a wet hen and spittin’ like a snake. She’s completely unlikable.”

“I’m afraid her presentation training with me didn’t go much better,” Effie adds, frowning. “She’s not exactly friendly, is she? Even getting her to smile was like pulling teeth. And don’t get me started on the heels . . .”

I rub my fingers against my temples, thinking hard. This isn’t good. Without sponsors, Katniss’s chances of survival dwindle significantly. Her greatest strength is her ability to hunt and survive in the woods, but our arena may not have woods. It could be a desert, or an abandoned city, or some other bizarre, unnatural setting. Even if there is a forest, without sponsors, there’s still a high likelihood that Katniss will end up drawn back to the Cornucopia for the supplies left there by the Gamemakers, and that will mean risking an encounter with the other tributes. If she’s armed, that may not be such a bad thing, but if not . . .

There has to be a way to salvage this. I need to think of another way to help her, something I can do whether we have sponsors or not. No matter what I have to do, I will keep her alive. But how? I won’t be of any use to her as an ally—I’d just be a liability, and I don’t think she trusts me enough to team up with me anyway. I could be of some use in a fight, but not unless I’m in the right place at the right time, and it’s not like I can just follow her around, waiting for her to run into trouble—she’d notice me.

The idea comes to me like a lightning strike. That’s it! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. I look over at Cinna and Portia. “I have an idea, but I need this one,” I nudge Haymitch with my foot, “to make it work. Can you two get him sobered up?”

Portia nods and rushes to the kitchen, saying something about coffee, while Cinna asks one of the Avoxes to bring out all of the courses at once. He sits beside Haymitch, coaxing bites of food into him. Portia returns with a mug and a pot of coffee.

“You should eat too, while you wait,” Effie frets, guiding me to a chair. I sit and start eating, but I hardly taste the food. I watch the hallway for the red-headed Avox girl, but she never reappears. Hopefully that’s a good sign.

Finally, after several cups of coffee and many slices of ham, Haymitch pushes Portia and Cinna away from him. “Enough, enough!” he says, glaring over at me. “I’m listening, boy. What’s this idea of yours?”

I glare back at him. “I need you to go to the Careers’ mentors and tell them I want to join their alliance,” I say.

It’s clear from their faces that I’ve caught everyone off guard. “But Peeta,” Portia gasps, “they’ll probably be hunting Katniss. Why would you join them?”

“That’s exactly why I want to join them,” I say. “The Career pack will be Katniss’s biggest threat. Being part of the pack is the only way I can guarantee I’m on hand to help her when they eventually catch up to her.”

Haymitch’s eyes narrow. I can see his brain working, although slower than usual due to the alcohol. “How do I know this isn’t just a scheme to protect yourself from her?” he asks. “How do I know all of this isn’t just a lie, a clever way to get rid of the strongest competitor in the Games?”

The others in the room look on silently as Haymitch and I stare at each other. What could I possibly say to convince him? He's seen me lie, knows I'm good at it. And he has no reason to trust me; we barely know each other. He's right to be suspicious of me. “You don't know,” I finally say. “Not for certain. And I can't make you believe me if you don’t. But I think that you do believe me. Because you were right, earlier this week. About the bread. I didn't give it to her out of the kindness of my heart. I did it because I couldn't bear to watch her die. I couldn’t then, and I certainly won't do it now.”

I see a subtle shift in the depths of Haymitch’s bloodshot gray eyes. “So that’s it, then?” he asks. “You’ve decided to sacrifice your life for the girl?”

“That’s not what I said,” I say cagily. I’m reluctant to admit my true intentions to Haymitch, at least here in the dining room surrounded by the others. I don’t want the Capitol to have a heads-up about my plan. “I want to protect her, but I’m not trying to get myself killed off. Being in the pack is the best way to guarantee my own survival as well. I’m not like Katniss. I can’t survive on berries and rabbits, running through the woods. Sticking with the group that has control of the supplies is my only shot at not starving to death.”

Haymitch shakes his head. “There’s no way it’ll work. They’ll betray you in a minute.”

“I expect they will,” I counter, “but I’ll be able to see it coming and get out in time. I’m good at reading people.”

Haymitch stares at me for a long moment, his gray eyes squinted. Finally, he sighs and says, “Fine. I’ll go talk to the mentors. I doubt they’ll go for it, though, so you better start thinking of other ideas.” He stands, swaying slightly and gripping the table for support.

Effie hurries to his side, grabbing his arm to steady him. “Maybe I’d better go with him,” she says worriedly. She looks at me. “Peeta, you had better go ahead and get to bed. Who knows how long it might take to negotiate with the other mentors?”

Portia lays her hand on my arm. “I have to agree with Effie. There’s nothing more for you to do tonight, Peeta; I’ll bring Haymitch along with me tomorrow during your prep so he can update you on the alliance situation. Until then, getting your beauty sleep and giving your prep team the best possible canvas to work with tomorrow is the best thing you can do.”

I stand, nodding, although I can’t imagine falling asleep now.

Cinna stands as well and walks towards me to lay a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to Katniss tomorrow,” he says quietly. “Maybe it’s not as hopeless as these two think. We just need to find a way to help her show everyone who she is. Then they can’t help but love her too, right?”

I nod, swallowing, grateful for Cinna and his optimism. Everything feels like it’s balancing on a knife’s edge at the moment.

I say my goodbyes and walk down the hallway towards my room. Maybe a shower will help me calm my racing thoughts. As I pass Katniss’s door, the Avox girl slips out and closes it gently behind her. I pause, and she looks up at me expectantly.

“Is she—how’s she doing?” I ask quietly.

The girl gives me a sad smile, then touches her index finger to my chest. I think I understand her meaning: Katniss is as can be expected under the circumstances she and I find ourselves in.

I nod, say a soft, “Thank you,” then continue to my bedroom, wishing there was more I could do to comfort her.

I’m awoken in the morning to my prep team bursting through the door, all giggles and chatter as they get to work on me. I’m not sure why we need to spend hours on prep today after everything I went through on the first day, but they find plenty of things to fix with my appearance. They manage to keep themselves busy up until the moment Portia enters my room late in the afternoon, a garment bag containing my interview suit draped over her arm. Haymitch trails behind her, dressed in a fine black suit that’s been tailored in such a way to make him look strong and solid instead of paunchy and a tie in a shimmering golden-orange fabric; either Portia’s or Effie’s doing, I’m guessing. He keeps tugging at his collar as if the tie is cutting off his air supply.

“Marvelous work, you three!” Portia praises the prep team as she inspects me. My hair has been curled and carefully coifed back this time, dusted in a shimmering gold powder that makes the blonde locks gleam in the light. They’ve used more makeup than they did at the tribute parade, but they haven’t overdone it, mostly adding light and dark patches to my face to emphasize certain features. They’ve left my bruise, by now a faded greenish color, visible, even though they could have covered it up. They complained about that loudly and often during the day. I guess Haymitch still thinks it’s worth reminding the crowd I’m a fighter, even though I’m not playing up that angle in my interview. “I’ll take it from here,” Portia says. “Why don’t you three go and wait for us by the elevator? Then we can do a grand reveal to everyone!”

The preps bustle out, and Portia unzips the garment bag to reveal my suit, a fine dark thing with elaborately embroidered flames on the cuffs, collar, and lapel stitched in iridescent threads of red, orange, and yellow and studded with gems that flash in the light. I reverently touch the embroidery with my fingers; I can tell it must have taken her hours of work, meticulously stitching it all by hand. “It’s beautiful, Portia,” I say. “Thank you.”

She smiles, looking pleased. “I’m glad you like it. Let’s see how it looks on you.”

I turn my attention to Haymitch as I undress. “Well? What news have you got for me?” I ask.

He sighs, shaking his head, and my stomach sinks. “Nothing good. The alliance is a no-go. The other mentors practically laughed in my face. They’ve never even considered teaming up with District Twelve before, so they wouldn’t entertain the idea now, even with your training scores and popularity with the crowd. I thought I had an in with District Four since I know their tributes’ mentors fairly well, but they don’t have much bargaining power in the alliance this year. It seems they’re not confident they have a pair of winners on their hands, and One and Two know that.”

I think of obnoxious Delmar and the District 4 girl—I think her name might be Marina? She didn’t leave much of an impression during training, although she managed to score an 8 from the Gamemakers. “How could they just write their tributes off like that?” I ask. I feel bad for them, a little—if they don’t even have their mentors convinced they can win, how will they convince anyone else?

Haymitch shrugs. “Every mentor has to do it at some point. You do this for enough years, and you figure out pretty quick when a tribute actually has a shot at winning this thing. It’s best not to get too invested in the kids that don’t. Like how I was before you and Katniss attacked me on the train.”

I pull on my suit pants with a frown, taking issue with his phrasing. After all, I’m the one who ended up with an injury from that fight. But I let it go.

“That big brute from District Two, Cato, seems to be the de facto leader of the alliance,” Haymitch continues. “His mentor is the one calling all of the shots, and she wasn’t convinced by you.”

“And you couldn’t think of anything to say to convince her?” I ask testily, sliding my arms into the sleeves of the suit coat Portia holds up for me.

Haymitch scowls at me. “I thought of several things, but there was only one thing she wanted, and I wasn’t willing to give it up.”

“What was it?” I ask.

“She wants to know the same thing everyone in the country wants to know: what on earth Katniss did to earn that eleven. But I told her, while you might choose to tell her tributes that once you’re in the arena, as Katniss’s mentor, I couldn’t possibly share that information. Unfortunately, all that did was convince them that I’ll be prioritizing Katniss in the arena at your expense, which didn’t help.”

I think about this as Portia fusses over my suit, smoothing out the creases in my pant legs and straightening my collar. “Maybe I can still convince them,” I say. “If my interview has the kind of effect we think it will, they might reconsider it, see me as a more valuable ally.”

“Maybe,” Haymitch says. “But I didn’t get the sense that the issue was your popularity—they seemed to think you didn’t have the right attitude. These tributes from One and Two prize aggression, and they thought you were a little too friendly during training, especially with Katniss. And our plan for your interview tonight won’t change their minds about that.”

“Then I’ll talk them into it once I’m in the arena—I can be pretty persuasive,” I insist. I’ve talked myself out of plenty of situations before—granted, none so life-threatening as the one I’m considering now, but still.

Haymitch frowns, considering this. “I don’t like it. It’s too dangerous, too unpredictable. How would you even make them stop swinging their swords long enough to listen to you?”

I rack my brain for an answer, but I can’t come up with anything. “So is that it, then?” I ask hollowly. This plan had seemed so perfect when it came to me, solving two problems at once. I hate to give it up, but if Haymitch can’t find a way to make it work, how can I?

“Peeta,” Portia breaks in tentatively as she smoothes out a wrinkle in my suit coat. “I’ve been wondering . . . why not just team up with Katniss? You two did well enough together at the parade and during training. You could help each other out—she can help you find food and water, and you could fend off attackers with your strength.”

I shake my head. “I know Katniss. Her best shot of making it out of the arena alive will be by disappearing up a tree and living off what she can trap or hunt. I won’t help her by tagging along; I can’t climb trees like she can, and she’d have to feed two people instead of one. I’ll only put her at greater risk of discovery. I won't risk her life just to save mine.”

Haymitch puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not over,” he says gruffly. “You’ve still got your strength, and you said you picked up on that camouflage stuff fairly quickly. Find water, hide yourself, fashion yourself a weapon out of what you find in the arena. A branch, a rock. If what Katniss said was true, there’s no reason to count yourself out of a fight with the other tributes, even if you’re unarmed.”

I nod, but his words don’t inspire much hope. I don’t want to pick a spot to disguise myself and camp out—I want to be actively helping Katniss survive. What’s the point of even trying to stay alive if I’m of no use to her at all? How would that look to the Capitol, to the people in District 12? I announce my love for Katniss on national television, then I run away and hide, leaving her to fend for herself?

Haymitch eyes me. “What are you thinking, boy?”

“Something cowardly.” He waits in silence until I continue. “If I have no chance of saving her life either way, do I really have to tell her how I feel?” I say with a weak smile.

Haymitch chuckles darkly. “That scared of her, are you?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Terrified,” I say. “I just can’t stop imagining what her reaction will be.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Haymitch scoffs. “It's not like she's going to actually believe it.”

I stare at Haymitch in surprise. “Why wouldn't she?” I ask.

“Because it doesn't make any sense,” he says, rolling his eyes. “What would a nice, respectable boy like you want from a Seam girl? And you conveniently wait to tell her until right before you go into the arena together? She’ll probably assume it’s just a strategy, either to get the crowd on your side or to get her to let her guard down around you so that you can kill her later.”

I stare at Haymitch. “She can’t still think I’d try to kill her, can she?”

He shrugs. “That’s what I would think if I were her. You don’t live the way she’s been living for so long without developing a healthy suspicion of anybody and everybody. Trust me; it’s going to take a lot of convincing to make her believe you actually care about her.”

“Alright, boys—that’s enough strategy talk. Time to admire my masterpiece!” Portia says, turning me around to face the mirror.

My eyebrows raise as I see my reflection in the mirror; I don’t think I’ve ever worn something so fine in my life. It’s not overly flashy or distracting like some of the clothes I’ve seen on people in the Capitol, but something about the cut of the suit suggests luxury. The embroidered flames shimmer in the light, the tiny embedded gemstones throwing sparks of light on the walls.

“Great work, Portia,” Haymitch says with a grin. “He looks like a real ladykiller.”

“He just needs one more thing,” Portia says, handing me a small box covered in black velvet. “Here, Peeta—a gift for you.”

I smile at her, touched, but also confused about why she would give me a gift the night before I head into the arena. It’s not like I’ll get to keep it long. I open the velvet box, revealing two small, identical pieces of jewelry: round white gemstones of some kind in an oddly shaped gold setting. I lift one from the box, tilting it back and forth in my hand. The stone isn’t pure white, after all, but transparent, and it seems to flash from within with every color of the rainbow. “They’re beautiful,” I say. “Er—what are they, exactly?”

She smiles. “They’re cuff links, silly. Look, I’ll show you.” She takes my arm and slides one of the pieces into the buttonhole of my cuff, fastening it in place with a twist. She does the same on the other side, straightening my sleeves. “There—now you look just perfect. Do you like them?” she asks. “I designed them myself. I thought opals would be fitting, because of the fire.”

“They’re beautiful,” I tell her sincerely. “Thank you—for all of this. The suit, the parade, everything. Without you and Cinna, I don’t know where we’d be.”

“Oh, hush,” she says, brushing a hand under her eye, then checking on her smoky black makeup in the mirror. “You’re giving us too much credit, Peeta. You and Katniss have a natural light and energy about you that draws people in. All we’ve done is help that shine through. Speaking of Katniss,” she says, looking up at me with a coy smile, “you better prepare yourself. I saw Cinna’s dress yesterday; it’s going to stop your heart.”

The three of us walk to the elevator, where Portia makes a big show of presenting me to the six prep team members, who all clap and gush with admiration. Effie is there as well in a full-length evening gown and the largest wig I’ve seen her wear yet.

“You look very handsome, Peeta! Wonderful work, team!” Effie says, but she seems anxious and a bit distracted, checking her watch and looking towards the hallway behind me. Just as she opens her mouth to say something, I hear footsteps behind me, and turn to see Katniss and Cinna walking in.

Portia was right; I really do think I feel my heart stop when I see her. Everything about her shines: her dress, covered in reflective gemstones, flashes and burns with every movement. Her skin glows as if lit by candlelight, a stenciled flame pattern twisting up her arms to her bare shoulders. Even her eyes seem to throw sparks every time she blinks from little gemstones embedded in her thick, dark eyelashes. Red ribbons are intricately woven through the long, dark braid spilling down her right shoulder, and her lips are painted red to match. Her eyes have been emphasized with dark makeup, but not in the smoky, smudged way that Portia does; instead, they look sharp and angled, like a cat’s.

She accepts the admiration and compliments of the prep teams and Effie, but I notice that she pointedly ignores Haymitch. I expect her to do the same to me, but instead, I see her look me up and down once before catching my eye and looking away in a hurry. I want to say something to her, to tell her how beautiful she looks, but my tongue all of a sudden feels like it weighs a ton, and my throat is too dry to get any words out at all. Effie hurries us all into the elevator. Inside, I manage to tear my eyes away from her long enough to meet Cinna’s. I mouth a silent thank you, and he smiles at me. He might have just become the most valuable member of our team: it won’t matter what Katniss says in her interview—no one who hears my confession tonight will fail to understand why I feel the way I do about her.

When the elevator doors open, we’re only a few yards away from the stage; it’s been constructed just in front of the Tribute Center for this occasion, like the stage the Capitol puts up in front of the Justice Building for the reaping. The other tributes are already being lined up to walk on stage, and Effie frantically ushers Katniss and me into our places at the very end of the line.

Just as we’re about to take the stage, Haymitch walks up behind us and growls, “Remember, you’re still a happy pair. So act like it.”

Katniss whips her head around, giving Haymitch a confused look, but he’s already turned his back on us, moving to find a seat with the other mentors. She turns her eyes on me, but I drop mine to avoid her gaze, and then we’re ushered on stage before we have the chance to say a word to each other. I wonder what Haymitch meant to accomplish by saying this now. Maybe he wants us to hold hands or something like we did during the parade, but I don’t feel brave enough to reach out for her hand now. Most likely, he just wanted to make sure Katniss doesn’t say anything on stage that could contradict our supposed relationship.

The noise of the crowd, mixed with the pounding, pulsating music blasting from the speakers surrounding the square, is deafening as we take the stage. The sun has already set, but the stage is flooded with light. Thousands of people are crammed into the City Circle and the avenues that feed into it, and the balconies of the surrounding buildings are filled with camera crews. Katniss and I find our seats at the very end of the arc of tributes seated at the back of the stage, and Caesar Flickerman himself bounds out to the loudest applause yet. I’ve seen him on television countless times before, since before I could walk. He’s always been a little unsettling, with his face coated in a layer of white makeup, his blindingly white teeth, and his determined cheerfulness and humour as he sends the tributes off to their deaths. He warms the crowd up with a few jokes but gets down to business quickly.

The first tribute up is the girl from District 1. Her see-through golden dress leaves very little to the imagination. She spends much of her three minutes flirting shamelessly with Caesar, which is a little disturbing. He’s been hosting the Hunger Games for over forty years, so he’s ancient, although he doesn’t exactly look it. His skin has been surgically stretched tight across his face, his lips and cheeks injected with some kind of substance that makes them large and puffy. When the buzzer sounds, signalling the end of the interview, Caesar says, “Well, Glimmer, I know our audience certainly hopes to see more of you on our screens!” with a lascivious wink, and she tosses her blonde hair back to laugh coquettishly. I can see Katniss scowl and roll her eyes next to me, and have to bite down on my lip to suppress a laugh.

I try to listen in spite of my mounting anxiety as the rest of the interviews fly by, each buzzer reminding me I’m three minutes closer to my own moment in the spotlight. Everyone has an angle they’re playing up, some more successfully than others. Marvel, the boy from District 1, goes off about what an honor it is to be here. The tributes from District 2 are ruthless and vicious. The boy from District 4, Delmar, inexplicably decides to use his interview time to complain to a visibly uncomfortable Caesar Flickerman about how the victor of last year’s Hunger Games, a boy from District 2 named Decimus, cheated when he killed the runner-up, a tribute from his own district—a bizarre claim, since the Games have pretty much no rules. The girl from District 8 talks shyly about how much she loves to sew. Colton, the boy from District 10 with the lame foot, is very quiet, answering Caesar’s questions in a soft, trembling voice. Little Rue from District 11 seems to float onto the stage in her soft, gossamer gown complete with wings. The crowd sighs at the sight. She claims to be very difficult to catch; I hope that's true. Her district mate, Thresh, hardly says anything at all, answering each of Caesar’s questions with a simple yes or no, but he still manages to be intimidating.

Before I know it, Katniss’s name is called, and she stands and walks past my seat to the stage, her hands shaking as she tries to wipe them on her jewel-encrusted dress. My mouth goes dry, and for a moment, I'm not worried about my interview, but only about hers.

Caesar takes her by the hand and asks her a question, a softball—“What’s impressed you most since you arrived here?”—but Katniss doesn’t respond, staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights.

Come on, Katniss, I urge her silently. Finally, after a longer pause, Katniss looks out at the audience and manages to get out an answer: “The lamb stew.”

The audience laughs, and I smile in relief. Of course she’d talk about the food. Caesar jokes about eating stew by the bucketful and asks the crowd if it shows, which gets another laugh. I see Katniss’s shoulders relax just a bit. “Now, Katniss,” Caesar says, “When you came out in the opening ceremonies, my heart actually stopped. What did you think of that costume?”

“You mean after I got over my fear of being burned alive?” she asks with a small smile. The audience laughs again, and I join in, thinking of the laugh we shared in our chariot before the parade.

“Yes. Start then,” Caesar encourages her.

“I thought Cinna was brilliant and it was the most gorgeous costume I’d ever seen and I couldn’t believe I was wearing it. I can’t believe I’m wearing this, either,” she says, lifting the skirt of her dress in her hands and fanning it out. The bright lights reflect off the gemstones, flickering like flames. Then she takes it a step further, moving away from Caesar a step and spinning in a circle. For a second, she’s engulfed in fire from head to toe, and the crowd reacts with gasps and applause. Caesar urges her to twirl again. This time, she raises her arms above her head and spins in circles over and over again. The skirt of her dress flares out around her and she’s set aflame; no, it’s more like she is the flame, her skin seeming to glow from within and sparkling in the thousands of lights thrown from her dress. I think I forget to breathe, watching her. She’s so beautiful, so radiant. So unreachable.

After several rotations, she stops spinning and nearly falls over onto Caesar, clutching at his arm.

“Don’t stop!” he begs her.

“I have to, I’m dizzy!” she says with a giggle.

Caesar wraps on arm around her waist to steady her. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. Can’t have you following in your mentor’s footsteps.”

The cameras briefly pan to Haymitch as the crowd breaks into laughter, remembering his dive off the stage at the reaping. He waves them off with a grin, gesturing to get the attention back on Katniss.

The cameras return to the pair onstage as Caesar is asking about her score. “Give us a hint what happened in there,” he begs. I see some of the other tributes lean forward in their seats eagerly.

Katniss bites down on her lip as she does when she’s nervous, glancing up at the Gamemakers in their elevated balcony. “Um . . . all I can say is, I think it was a first.”

Caesar presses her for details, but she resists, entreating the Gamemakers on the balcony for help. One of them calls out to confirm that she’s not allowed to talk about it. “Sorry, she says with a coy smile. “My lips are sealed.” Who can’t be charming, Haymitch? I think to myself with a grin.

“Let’s go back, then, to the moment they called your sister's name at the reaping,” Caesar says, seamlessly switching from his jovial teasing to a more somber mood. “And you volunteered. Can you tell us about her?”

Katniss’s mood shifts as well, and for a moment she goes stony-faced, and I’m afraid she’s about to shut down or get angry at Caesar. But then I see her look out at the crowd and take a deep breath. “Her name’s Prim,” she says in a voice that trembles slightly. “She’s just twelve. And I love her more than anything.”

A hush falls over the crowd. I can sense thousands of people, here in the City Circle and surrounding television screens all around Panem, physically lean in towards Katniss. I feel it myself, a tug somewhere behind my navel that makes me want to go to her, to hold her in my arms. This is her effect. Something about her draws people in, makes them want to help her, to follow her. Her determination, bravery, and goodness, mixed with the vulnerability that seems at first so at odds with her tough, no-nonsense persona, give one the feeling that she has the will to accomplish whatever she sets her mind to, and whichever course she decides on will always be the right one.

“What did she say to you? After the reaping?” Caesar asks.

Katniss swallows. “She asked me to try really hard to win.”

“And what did you say?” Caesar prompts her in a gentle voice.

Something changes in her demeanor: her body seems to go still, and beneath the stenciled patterns on her arms, I see the hard outline of muscles as they tense. When she speaks again, her voice is low, dangerous, and somehow more threatening than both District 2’s open brutality and Thresh’s silent power. “I swore I would.”

“I bet you did, Caesar says as the buzzer sounds. “Sorry, we’re out of time. Best of luck, Katniss Everdeen, tribute from District Twelve.”

The crowd is wild with applause as she returns to her seat. I’ve gotten so caught up watching her that I’ve momentarily forgotten that I’m up next. I get up automatically, refusing to look at Katniss as I pass her on my way to the stage. I take a deep breath and adopt a winning smile as I reach a hand out to shake Caesar’s. It’s show time.

“And now it’s time for our last interview of the night!” he calls out to the crowd. “And we’ve saved one of the best for last, with Peeta Mellark of District Twelve! So, Peeta, tell us about yourself—do you come from a coal mining family?”

I shake my head. “No, actually, my family owns and runs a bakery. Mellark’s Bakery!” I say to the crowd in a booming voice. “The finest bakery in District Twelve! Also, the only bakery in District Twelve. Make sure to drop in if you ever come to town!” The audience laughs moderately in response.

“A baker’s son!” Caesar smiles. “How quaint!”

“And I’ll tell you what, Caesar,” I say conspiratorially. “I think my training as a baker is going to be a real asset in the Games.” Another laugh from the audience, louder this time.

Caesar plays along, leaning into me. “How so?”

“Well, you can tell a lot about a person by what kind of bread they eat, you know.”

“Is that so?”

I nod gravely. “It’s true. My family's bakery helps cater the victory tour feasts, and we always try to make sure the victor has a taste of home, so I know all about breads from the different districts. For example, District Two favors these dense rye loaves sprinkled with almonds. So I know these District Two tributes will be tough and liable to break my teeth—best to stay far away!”

The audience is really laughing now, and the camera pans to Cato and Clove, who look a little disarmed at being mentioned, but not displeased. Clove even gives the camera a threatening leer, playing into the joke.

“Now, the bread from District Four is this fish-shaped loaf incorporating seaweed. So it’s fairly predictable and pretty salty, sort of like Delmar.” The audience roars with laughter as the camera pans to Delmar, who crosses his arms and scowls. This only causes the audience to laugh even louder.

“On the other hand, the favorite pastry of District Ten is this flaky hand pie with ground beef hidden in the middle. So I think Gillie and Colton might have a surprise or two up their sleeves.” As the camera pans to the District 10 tributes, they simply look shocked to be receiving more attention. “And then District Eleven specializes in these wonderful croissants sprinkled with seeds and whole grains. It’s a very wholesome and sweet bread, like our friend Rue here.” The audience sighs as the cameras pan to Rue again in her gossamer gown, who ducks her head shyly. “So you see,” I continue, “I already have lots of insight into who my competitors are.” I tap my head and wink at the crowd.

“And what about you?” Caesar asks with a smile. “What does the bread of District Twelve tell us about Peeta Mellark?”

I smile. “Our district bread is nothing special. We make these simple, ugly drop biscuits, but they do the job well enough. Take from that what you will.”

The audience laughs again. Caesar asks, “And your parents, the bakers—how do they feel about their son going into the Games? Do you think they’re proud of you?”

This is not a subject I want to touch, so I decide to pivot the conversation away from my family. “I think I'm lucky to be making it into the arena at all, Caesar,” I say. “I nearly died on my first night in the Capitol!”

A hush falls over the audience. Caesar's eyes dart to the bruise on my cheek before he asks, “Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, you see . . .” I pause, and I can see the audience physically lean in to hear me. “. . . it's these Capitol showers!”

The audience roars with laughter. “The showers?” Caesar asks, chuckling.

I nod gravely. “The showers. They're dangerous, I swear! I thought I knew what to expect with a shower, but I got in and the next thing I know, there's a fountain of rose oil spraying into my eyes and nose! I was choking on the stuff.”

The audience is hysterical, several people doubled over in fits of laughter. The energy of it pulses through me, filling me up with a thrumming sense of power. It's like the energy I feel from the crowd at a wrestling match, times 100, times 1,000. This audience is mine.

“I never did figure out how to rinse myself off,” I say as Caesar wipes tears from the corners of his eyes. “I haven't had a proper shower all week, I just keep covering myself in more rose oil. Tell me, do I still smell like roses?” I grin and lean towards him, opening up my suit coat in invitation.

Caesar covers his nose in horror. “I don't know if I dare!”

“Come on now, Caesar, don’t be shy—take a whiff!” The audience screams with laughter, and I even see a hint of a smile on Caesar’s face before he gets back in character.

He leans into me, taking a tentative sniff. His eyes fly open theatrically. “But my boy, you smell marvelous!”

I grin. “I guess you all are onto something in the Capitol, then. Say, I want to see if you smell as good as I do. Do you mind?”

Caesar hesitates for just a second, then beckons me forward. I lean in and take a deep sniff, closing my eyes in concentration.

“Is that lilac and . . . freesia?”

The sound of the crowd's laughter is overwhelming as Caesar claps a hand over his mouth, nodding vigorously. We wait for a moment for the noise to die down, and I feel it building, know what his question will be before he asks it. My palms begin to sweat.

“So, Peeta, I’m sure the audience wants to know—is there a girlfriend waiting for you back home?”

This is it. I have to play this just right. I hesitate, a slight smile on my face, then shake my head a bit.

He takes the bait. “Handsome lad like you. There must be some special girl. Come on, what’s her name?” Caesar insists.

I let out a deep sigh. “Well, there is this one girl. I’ve had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t know I was alive until the reaping.”

There are sighs from the audience, sounds of sympathy. I have them right where I want them.

“She have another fellow?” Caesar asks sympathetically.

“I don’t know, but a lot of boys like her,” I answer forlornly.

Caesar leans in and claps his hands together. “So, here’s what you do. You win, you go home. She can’t turn you down then, eh?”

My heart hammers in my ears. “I don’t think it’s going to work out. Winning . . . won’t help in my case.”

“Why ever not?” Caesar asks, confused.

I don’t have to fake my nervousness or embarrassment as blood rushes to my cheeks. I look down at the floor, and my tongue feels like it weighs at least a hundred pounds as I stammer out, “Because . . . because . . . she came here with me.”