No one in their right mind would let me make the plans. Because I obviously can’t tell a friend from an enemy.
All I want to do is collapse on my metal plate.
On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.
Look what I shot.” Gale holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it, and I laugh.
Ashes billow up around me, and I pull the hem of my shirt up over my mouth. It’s not wondering what I breathe in, but who, that threatens to choke me.
Happy Hunger Games!” He plucks a few blackberries from the bushes around us. “And may the odds – ” He tosses a berry in a high arc toward me.
Funny, though, I don’t feel too bad.
It’s OK. It’s just her hormones from the baby.
Haymitch? Not able to face something? Wanted a day off, more likely,” I say. “I think his actual words were ‘I couldn’t face it without a bottle,’ ” says Plutarch.
Her eyes are gray, but not like those of people from the Seam. They’re very pale, as if almost all the color has been sucked out of them.
In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 12 was in a region known as Appalachia. Even hundreds of years ago, they mined coal here. Which is why our miners have to dig so deep.
So this is where stylists go when they’ve outlived their use. To sad theme underwear shops where they wait for death.
I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever.
If you had hope, maybe you could find a way to make things change,. Because if you thought about it, there were so many reasons to try.
What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.
And don’t you let your guard down for a second because you think anything’s inevitable.
But because two can play at this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.
Your only defense can be you were so madly in love you weren’t responsible for your actions.
Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.
They’re already taking my future! They can’t have the things that mattered to me in the past!