The after-party’s held in the ballroom of the presidential mansion. I’m displayed in a giant golden birdcage that dangles from the main chandelier at about eye level. It’s supposed to be a joke, I guess; the guests sure seem to get a kick out of it. But it isn’t. When I try the little handle at the door, it’s locked tight.
My Peacekeeper buddies stand nearby, giving courage to the partygoers. I roll with it, bantering with my sponsors and posing for pictures, painting the best poster I can to convince President Snow that I’m on his team now. His puppet. His plaything. Because my blood’s been ice water since his comment about my homecoming. What awaits me? And if I behave, can I alter it?
People bring me tidbits, feeding me by hand like you would a pet dog, and I smack my lips with appreciation, eating until my shrunken belly’s like to split open. I’m hoping they’re not showing this in District 12. People may forgive but they won’t forget such behavior, especially since I won’t get credit for all the trouble I’ve caused, which has landed me in this cage.
The shame of this is not the sort of thing a person can live down.
It’s all being recorded for posterity, though. Plutarch Heavensbee and his crew, still assigned to me, buzz around, taking footage. He refuses to let me catch his eye. I’m back to doubting if I can trust him — after all, he
appears unscathed by the fallout of the rebel plot — but I’ve got no shortage of questions I’d like to ask him.
I don’t see President Snow all night. Or much of my team either.
Proserpina and Vitus swing by to congratulate me, tipsy and pink-faced.
Drusilla and Magno, who success seems to have reconciled, kiss and coo and briefly pose for photos with me. Magno can’t even remember my name and insists on calling me Hamwich, which makes me sound like a ham sandwich. The only person who keeps an eye on me is Effie Trinket. She
mingles nearby, watchful, but careful not to take any credit for my success.
It’s not until the wee hours, as things are winding down, that Plutarch sidles up to my cage, seemingly focused on an uncooperative camera.
“What’s happening with my family? Lenore Dove?” I say under my breath.
“No word on your family. She’s still on the base,” he whispers.
“What? She said they were letting her go in the morning. Did they arrest her again?”
“No. They never released her.”
“What?”
He’s moved on, leaving me to dissect those horrible words. Never released. That was a lie, theirs or possibly hers. A gift she gave me so I wouldn’t worry about her, only myself. And it worked. But now I know that she has been absolutely helpless, completely at their mercy, this whole time while I sabotaged their arena. Confined. Starved. Tortured. Raped.
Murdered. I grip the golden bars, petrified, as the words I’ve been refusing to consider pound in my brain.
The woman with the cat ears appears, dangling a shrimp before me.
My mouth opens automatically and I chew the delicacy while her friend takes our picture. I cannot quit now. Lenore Dove’s life is at stake.
When dawn finally breaks, I’m allowed to relieve myself in a pink marble bathroom with curlicues and rose-scented soap. I’m hoping to be sent to the train station, but instead I’m returned to the apartment. Fresh
rolls and milk have been provided. Clean clothes. I’m not going home any time soon.
For the next ten days, I’m carted around the Capitol — to parties and interviews and fashion shoots — to publicly revel in my victory. No greater suck-up exists in the history of the Games. No humiliation is beneath me. I will bear anything to keep my loved ones alive.
Finally, after an all-night party at the Capitol zoo, the Peacekeepers transport me to the deserted train station, which is still hung with the
propaganda banners. NO PEACE, NO PROSPERITY! NO HUNGER GAMES, NO PEACE! And President’s Snow’s parting shot, PANEM’S #1 PEACEKEEPER.
A doctor, who waits at the door of the train, deftly removes my pump, leaving oozy spots where the teeth secured it to my chest. I can’t pretend I’m sad to see it go, although within minutes the drugs wear off and my scar starts to hurt.
No bunk bed with the stiff quilt for me. Back in chains, I’m locked in the room Plutarch once freed me from. He’s nowhere to be seen now. I
guess the show’s over for real. I wrap Great-Uncle Silius’s champagne
bubble jacket tightly around my body and sit in the corner, feeling the pain blossom across my gut.
The Capitol’s got every reason to get rid of me, but the train refuses to budge. I have to get home. I have to know what has happened.
After a couple of hours, a Peacekeeper comes in with a roll and a carton of milk. Still on the Snow diet.
“Why aren’t we moving?” I ask.
“Been waiting for your friends,” he replies, with a nod to the window, then goes.
My friends? I have no friends here. Does he mean my team? I look out the window of my cell. Three carts are being rolled down the platform. Each carries a plain wooden box. After a momentary confusion, I put it together. They are coffins. Louella, Maysilee, and Wyatt will be riding
home with me. I thought them long buried, peacefully resting in their family plots on the hill in District 12. Instead, we will finish this journey together.
I slide back down the wall, shaking uncontrollably. I think of the state their bodies must be in, violated by chariots and blades and birds. I imagine their families, weeping and waiting at the station, turning their backs on me or, worse, turning their faces to me for explanations. Does the Capitol
always send the fallen back with the victor? Or is this a parting gift for me in particular?
I can hear the muffled thuds as they load the coffins onto the train.
Quite close to me. The next car, I think. Doors slam shut. The train begins to roll. I curl up on the floor, my face against the wall, wishing I’d earned a coffin as well. But no, I have a homecoming to enjoy.
My thoughts turn to Lenore Dove. My Covey girl. What happened to Snow’s? The mysterious District 12 victor. She could be alive. He is. And yet she’s all but vanished from memory in District 12. Did President Snow have her killed? No, he would only have been a boy. Hardly older than me. He wouldn’t have been in power. Not like now. What plans does he have for my dove? I think of the Covey song, the one Maysilee’s mamaw used to
quote when she was scared. Nothing you can take from me was ever
worth keeping. The arrogance of those bold words. You can take several
things from me — my ma, my brother, my love — that are the only things worth keeping.
Another song surfaces unbidden. Also forbidden. Lenore Dove plays it for Burdock sometimes. . . .
Are you, are you Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three? Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
Are you, are you Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee? Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
Strange things indeed. A dead man calling out. His ghost. No, Lenore Dove said it was a bird. Birds. Jabberjays. The failed mutts let loose to die in District 12. But they defied the Capitol’s sentence of extinction by fathering a new species, mockingjays, before they vanished. Is that what
makes the song dangerous? Immortalizing those wayward mutts in a song?
Are you, are you Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we’d both be free? Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
Or is it the Capitol hanging someone who was likely a rebel? That’s who died in the hanging tree. I know this tree, it’s real, my pa pointed it out to me. We have metal gallows in District 12 now, courtesy of the Capitol, but back in the day, many a rebel died swinging from its branches.
Are you, are you Coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me. Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
Maybe Lenore Dove and I will hang together. Could be easier to find her then, in that next world of hers.
That’s as close to comfort as I can get.
We travel through the day, far into the night. Once in a while, there’s a stop somewhere to fuel up. Every few hours, rolls and milk are delivered, although I haven’t touched a mouthful. My gut aches and the hard floor digs into my unpadded bones. When I manage to doze, dead tributes pay calls.
They seem to want me to do something, but it’s unclear what that is. The strangest visit involves Louella and Lou Lou, dressed in identical outfits, sitting across the table from me while I peel and eat a bowl of hard-boiled
eggs. “Which of us is which?” they ask me. But the Capitol has won. I can’t tell them apart.
I jerk awake to find the train has pulled into the District 12 station. I am home. The Peacekeepers come in, remove my shackles, and lead me to the exit. The door opens.
“Get out,” says one.
Full of trepidation, I step out onto an empty platform, gritty with coal dust. No one waits for me. No one expects me. It’s still dark out and the station clock reads 5 a.m. The Peacekeepers carelessly shove the coffins out after me, damaging a few boards. The train pulls away, leaving me entirely alone except for my fellow tributes. I walk over to them, lay a hand on the nearest coffin. Screwed into the lid’s a metal nameplate, not unlike the ones at Plutarch’s house, the ones on the berms in the arena. I touch the inscription. Louella McCoy.
The smell of death rises through the cracked wood. I turn and propel my stiff body down the platform.
The station’s quiet as a tomb. Strange, even for the hour. Perhaps it’s early on a Sunday, the one day the mines shut down. With all the drugs, I
have no idea what the date is. Didn’t think to ask. We must be into August. I push through the heavy glass door, gulping in the night air, warm and moist
and laced with coal dust, and for the first time I allow myself to believe that I have really come home.
My heart skips a few beats and, fool that I am, tendrils of hope force their way up through the dirt of my despair. Could it be that within the hour, I might feel Ma’s arms around me, ruffle Sid’s hair, strip off Great-Uncle Silius’s dead man’s clothes, and pull on a pair of flour sack shorts? Could
Lenore Dove be freed? Are the sweet moments of my previous life, always taken for granted before the Games, once more in reach? Can there be
happiness again for a miserable wretch like myself?
As I walk through the lonely streets toward the Seam, I pinch myself to rule out this being a dream. Silly, since I’ve no shortage of pain. It’s just that I was never supposed to return here, arena plot or no. The idea that I might have triumphed in a double Hunger Games strains belief. But those are my feet, clad in pointed patent leather shoes, kicking up the cinders on
the way to my house. My pace quickens. If it is a dream, I want to sustain it until I get to see my family one more time.
I take the glow up ahead for the sunrise, until I realize it’s too local, too bright. A whiff of smoke drifts through the heavy, humid air. Fire. But not coal fire. I break into the closest thing I can manage to a run. Withered muscles, screaming scars, swollen feet reduce my efforts to a wild hobble.
Maybe I am wrong. Any house can catch fire. What with rusted stoves and unwatched hobs. Maybe it’s not mine.
I know it’s mine.
Now I can hear the voices, shouting for water, a woman wailing. As I round the bend, it comes into view, fully ablaze against the still-dark sky.
“Ma?” I cry. “Sid?”
I bust through the bucket line, fed by three neighbors’ pumps in addition to our own, those slow spurts of water, those pathetic splashes against the inferno. People draw away, startled, frightened by my appearance. Unprepared for the wild-eyed scarecrow in Capitol evening wear.
“Ma! Sid!” I grab the nearest person, one of the Chance girls, no more than eight. “Where are they? Where’s my family?” Terrified, she points at
the burning house.
Ma and Sid are being burned alive.
My feet dance side to side for a few seconds, looking for a break in the wall of flame, before I charge straight into the inferno. “Ma!”
As I reach the doorway, a beam crashes down and I reflexively jump back in a shower of sparks. Temporarily blinded, I make for the house again, when I’m yanked backward. My patent leather shoes with their slick soles betray me as I’m dragged into the yard and pinned to the ground. With
one man on every limb and Burdock on my chest, all I can do is holler. “Let me up! Let me loose, you —”
Burdock’s hand clamps over my mouth. “It’s too late, Haymitch. We tried. It’s too late.”
I get some teeth into his palm and he jerks his hand back, but I’m only free enough to yell. “Ma! Sid! Maaaaa!”
Blair, kneeling on my right arm, leans in. Tears cut channels through his soot-blackened face. “We’re so sorry, Haymitch. We tried. You know we did. We just couldn’t save them.”
“No! Let me go!” I fight to free myself, but I’m so out-numbered, still so weak from the long days of recovery, that I’m overpowered. “Let me go with them. Please!” But they don’t, they hold on to me tight. I lie there, sobbing, begging, calling for Ma and Sid, until no more sounds come out.
“Can you help him?” I hear Burdock ask.
A cool hand rests on my forehead. The scent of chamomile flowers.
Asterid March’s face swims into view, pained but sur-prisingly calm. “Drink this, Haymitch.” She presses a small bottle to my lips. “Drink until I say when.” Despite my desperation, or perhaps because of it, I follow her orders. Sweetness fills my mouth, soothes my gullet. “One, two, three, four, five — okay, when.” She pulls away the bottle. Smooths back my hair. “That’s right. That’s good. Try to rest now.”
My eyelids become leaden. “What . . . ?” “Just some sleep syrup.”
“Ma . . . Sid . . .”
“I know. I know. We’ll do what can be done. You go to sleep now.
Sleep.”
Dead to the world, I am, for over a day. I awake, thick-tongued and groggy, at the McCoys’, where Louella’s ma stands over me with a tin mug of tea. She does not mince words as she recounts the fire, perhaps because she’s so deep in grief herself she knows the last thing I want is sugarcoating. “It was our boy Cayson who spotted it, coming home from
his ramblings. The house was already aflame. He shouted to raise the dead. We all started in with the water. But the pump’s slow and your cistern’s dry.”
I’m the reason that cistern’s dry. Running off the morning of reaping day, leaving the chores to Sid. “My fault,” I mumble.
“I expect you’ll think everything’s your fault for a long while. But that’s got to wait. Today we bury them. You know what your ma would want.”
Whether it’s shock or a sleep syrup hangover, I can’t seem to make sense of anything, so I do what I’m told. Louella’s big sister, Ima, has cleaned Great-Uncle Silius’s suit and polished his shoes. I’ve nothing else
to wear, my own clothes being ash. It’s sweltering out, but I pull the champagne bubble jacket over the shirt to conceal the drug pump bloodstains, faded with washing, but still visible.
“Lenore Dove,” I tell Ima. “I got to go to her.”
“Cayson knows a Peacekeeper who said she’s got a hearing with the base commander today. You showing up won’t help her any, Hay. Besides, we’re about to head over to the graveyard.”
Outside, a plain pine box awaits. “They had hold of each other,” Mr.
McCoy says. “Thought we’d let them stay that way.” Ma and Sid clinging to each other for eternity.
Burdock, Blair, and a couple of Ma’s customers carry the coffin. The McCoys bring Louella’s from behind the house and the two groups move forward, side by side. I limp along behind them. The mourners grow as we proceed. Everybody should be at work, but they’ll claim they were sick. By the time we reach the graveyard, a couple hundred people have assembled. Seems like a lot compared to Mamaw’s burial, but then I realize we’re not grieving alone.
Five fresh graves await. One for Ma and Sid. Louella. Maysilee.
Wyatt.
“Who’s the fifth for?” I hear Burdock ask.
“Jethro Callow,” a woman answers, not bothering to lower her voice. “Hung himself yesterday when his boy returned. Couldn’t bear the shame.”
A Booker Boy’s death.
The mayor’s come to speak over our loved ones. The words make no more sense than the chirping of birds in the surrounding trees. Sweat soaks through my shirt into my jacket. I want to kneel down and press my face against the cool Abernathy headstone, but I try to stand with dignity, as Ma would want.
There’s a bad moment when I look up and see my ally, wearing her District 12 black, and start for her. “Maysilee!” Her face crumples into tears, hides in a handkerchief. Not Maysilee. Merrilee. Like as two peas in a pod. Mr. Donner sobs beside her. I’m led back to my place. Obviously deranged.
Coffins are lowered into the graves. Many shovels work to bury the departed. Dirt’s patted down. Some kind soul lays a wreath of wildflowers on each mound. People weep and wail. It’s so awful, I want to run away.
Then Burdock begins to sing, in that clear, sweet voice of his:
You’re headed for heaven, The sweet old hereafter,
And I’ve got one foot in the door. But before I can fly up,
I’ve loose ends to tie up, Right here in
The old therebefore.
The mockingjays, who nest in the surrounding trees, fall silent as he continues:
I’ll be along
When I’ve finished my song, When I’ve shut down the band, When I’ve played out my hand, When I’ve paid all my debts, When I have no regrets,
Right here in
The old therebefore, When nothing
Is left anymore.
The mourners have quieted.
When I’m pure like a dove, When I’ve learned how to love, Right here in
The old therebefore, When nothing
Is left anymore.
The song, suggesting our separation is only temporary, consoles the heart. Lenore Dove would approve, I think. The mockingjays do, because they pick up the melody and make it their own.
As my eyes sweep the crowd, I see person after person press the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and then extend it to their dead. Our way of saying good-bye to those we cherished. I follow suit, raising my hand high, because I have so many to honor.
Then it’s over. I’m being led away. Even in my confusion, I notice that Cayson, his hands and face bandaged, spits on Jethro Callow’s grave. No one reprimands him.
I want to break away, to try to see Lenore Dove on the base, but I’m argued down again. Do I really think my appearance will help her? The best thing is to wait for word. Let her uncles plead her case. With so many kids lost in the Quarter Quell, the districts are in a state of unrest. The base commander won’t be looking to throw gasoline on the fire in 12. Lenore
Dove may be let go with a stern lecture and time served.
The McCoys take the mourners back to their place, where bowls of bean and ham hock soup are ladled out. I can’t stay at the McCoys’, though.
Their eyes are full of questions about Louella, and I know I owe them answers. I just can’t give them yet, not without losing my head again. As soon as I can, I excuse myself.
I go home before I remember I have no home. Just a pile of blackened beams and a pump. I’m standing before the ashes when the clouds in my brain clear enough for me to ask, “What happened?”
Fires are common enough in District 12, where the ever-present coal dust and aging wooden structures invite ignition. From the time I could toddle, Ma had put the fear of stray sparks and sleeping embers in me. No one took more care banking a fire at night. Which is how I know that this was no accident. This was arson, carried out in such a way that my family could not even make it to a window to escape. Ordered by Snow. For my homecoming.
The shards of my heart shift and drive into my lungs, making breathing an agony. “My fault,” I say for the second time this morning.
Burdock and Blair catch me as I start to fall and carry me around the bend before they set me on a stump to recover. They try to coax me to their homes, but the thought of their families, when I have none, is unbearable.
“Well,” says Burdock grimly, “there’s your new house, then.”
Only now do I remember the Victor’s Village. Desperate to be alone, I let them take me there, to this strange Capitol cage, which I instantly hate.
In the bedroom, they lay me down in the artificially chilled air, and I stare at the wall.
“I’m going to find Asterid,” I hear Burdock whisper. “See about more syrup.”
“I’ll watch him,” says Blair, leaving the door slightly ajar. “Dig up some clothes, too, can you?”
Hand-me-downs are found. Sleep syrup administered, but not as much, because I wake with a start in the dead of night, mind racing, with one thought only: I must get to Lenore Dove. I must take her away from here. District 12 means death. Through the crack in the door, I make out Burdock and Blair, asleep on the couches in the living room. I climb out a window in the bedroom and flee into the night.
The Covey’s house lies dark. The uncles gave Lenore Dove the loft for her own. I climb up the drainpipe, trying to figure if she’s made it home, but the whole place seems empty. Were they at the base all night? Have Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine been arrested as well? I doubt they’re out giving a show, things being what they are. I don’t want to be hanging around the house if they return. If Clerk Carmine didn’t approve of me
before the Hunger Games, imagine how the rascal’s murderous run will
have played for him. I head down to the Meadow, concealing myself behind some bushes. If Lenore Dove gets freed, I know one of the first things she’ll
do is graze her geese. Unless she goes looking for me at the Victor’s Village — in which case, she’ll cut across the Meadow on the way.
Sitting on a fallen log, barefooted and in the worn miner’s clothes, I feel safer than I have in weeks. I like being hidden here in the dark, where no one can find me. Out of the view of the Capitol, but also away from the pitying eyes of District 12. I try to figure out a plan for me and Lenore Dove. We can’t stay here. But where is there to run? Only Snow’s “ghastly wilderness.” I love it, but I don’t live in it. I’m no Burdock, with his trusty bow and knowledge of plants. I’m not even a bona fide bootlegger yet. I’m nothing. And while Lenore Dove’s at home in the woods, she’s no more
capable of surviving out there than I am. Maybe I’m just being selfish, wanting her to run with me when the truth is she’d be fine here without me. Snow would have no cause to target her if I was dead or gone. The right thing to do is take off on my own and leave her to lead her life.
She won’t want to let me go and I sure don’t want to let her go. But what is the alternative? I’ll wait and see her one more time, go back to the Victor’s Village, and ask Burdock for a bow and some fishing line. If I die out there, so be it. Lenore Dove will be safe.
The sky takes on the soft glow that precedes the sun’s arrival. The first birds begin to sing in the day. They’re joined by a chorus of honking,
then angry voices. I lift my head to see the rare and radiant Lenore Dove herding her gaggle into the Meadow.
“You’re not to go running off!” Clerk Carmine says from the edge of the Meadow. He’s agitated, shaking a finger at her.
Tam Amber stands with him, a little more stooped than I remember. “He’s right, Lenore Dove. This is stretching house arrest to its limits already.” The base commander must have given a hard-line directive. Tam Amber’s the easy parent, the one she goes to with a questionable request, so if he’s worried . . .
“I know! I heard you the first ten times!” she hollers back in exasperation. “I just want five minutes to myself. Is that possible around here? Or am I still in prison?”
“Fine. Five minutes. Then I want you back in the house for breakfast, you hear me?” says Clerk Carmine.
She gives him a Peacekeeper’s salute. “Yes, sir. Understood, sir. You can count on me, sir.”
Clerk Carmine takes a step forward, but Tam Amber lays a hand on
his arm, and he just resigns himself to a parting shot. “Don’t make us come down to fetch you, young lady.” The uncles head back to the house.
Suddenly, I feel a burst of affection for Clerk Carmine. We both really want the same thing: for Lenore Dove to be safe and happy. And he was
right. About his concerns over me, I mean. A boy from a rebel family who brews white liquor and disappears for hours with his niece in the woods
does not spell security. Plus, I’m not even musical. I think I would have won him over eventually, if I’d had the chance. But now, it consoles me
some that when I run away, he will be here guarding her. I guess I’ll never have a chance to tell him so, but it’s true.
As I wait to be sure the coast is clear, I soak up the loveliness of
Lenore Dove. She spins around, head back, arms lifted to the sky. It must have been hell for her being locked up. She can’t stand for anything to be confined. Especially wild things, which, of course, she is. The geese run around, chewing her out for being gone. She just sweet-talks them and
strokes their necks. She’s about to roost on her favorite rock when she gives an exclamation of surprise and scoops something up.
It’s my bag of gumdrops. The ones I had Sid deliver to her after the reaping. I guess she left them here before she went to perform that night.
She presses the candy to her heart and twirls around, grinning, then breaks into the little white bag. I can’t wait another second. As I take off across the Meadow, she catches sight of me, cries out my name, and runs to meet me. I sweep her into my arms and spin her around and we’re both laughing and kissing like crazy.
“Oh, Lenore Dove. Oh, my love,” I say.
“You came back,” she says, tears streaming, but happy tears. “You came back to me. In this world!”
“And you managed not to get hung!” I crow back.
We hold each other so tight it’s like we’re one person. Which we are, for real.
Her hands run over my face. “Are you okay? Are you really all right?’ “As right as rain,” I promise her. I don’t care, I can’t leave her. She’ll
want to run away with me, and I’ll let her. We’ll figure out a way to live. Because I don’t think either of us can live without the other.
We sink into the Meadow grass, hands clasped. She reaches for the bag of gumdrops that she dropped in our reunion. “Thanks for the candy. Gosh, look how hard I’m shaking!”
“Here,” I say, taking the bag, not that I’m any steadier. I pluck a sweet from the bag and pop it in her mouth.
She laughs. “Now you’re home, I guess I can eat the others.” “What others?” I feed her another gumdrop.
“The ones Sid brought me. I put them under my pillow.”
“But . . .” I look down at the bag. It’s a normal bag, with the Donners’ label. Then I notice the gumdrops. Not a variety of colors. Not a rainbow.
They’re all a deep bloodred. I remember Snow’s rose, his final words to me, and the pieces fall into place.
“Spit it out!” I order her, cupping my hand before her mouth. “Spit it out now!”
Her face registers shock as she spits a half-chewed gumdrop into my palm. “What? It’s fine.”
“Where’s the other? Where’s the first one?” I give her a shake. “I swallowed it, I guess. Why?”
“Throw it up! Get it out of your stomach!”
She’s panicking now. “What’s going on, Haymitch?”
I think of the arena. “Do you all have any charcoal tablets at the house?”
“Charcoal tablets? No, I don’t think so. Why would —” I see her put it together. She leans over, sticks a finger down her throat, and tries to gag the thing up. “I can’t do it. I’ve barely eaten in days. There’s nothing to
throw up!”
“Come on,” I pull her to her feet. “Come on.” I begin to call for help. “Clerk Carmine! Clerk Carmine!”
“Haymitch, I —” A perplexed look crosses her face and she presses a hand to her chest. Her knees give way. “I can’t stand up.”
I pull her back to her feet. “You’ve got to! Just get to the house.” I throw back my head and scream, “Clerk Carmine! Help! Help us!” She
collapses into my arms. I kneel back on the ground, her body across mine.
“Lenore Dove . . .” I plead. “Don’t. Don’t.” A blood-flecked foam bubbles up over her lips. “Oh, no . . . no . . .”
Her eyes fixate on something in the distance. “See that?” she says hoarsely.
I turn my head and see the sun, just peeking over the horizon. “What?
The sun?”
“Don’t you . . . let it . . . rise . . .” she gets out.
Tears choke me. “I can’t stop it. You know I can’t stop it.”
Her head jerks a bit to the side. “. . . on the reaping,” she whispers. Oh, no. Don’t leave me with that. Don’t leave me at all. “Lenore
Dove? Please try and hold on, darling. Lenore Dove?” “Promise.” Her eyelids flutter shut.
“Okay, okay, I promise. But you can’t go. You can’t leave me.
Because I love you like all-fire.”
“You, too.” I think that’s what her lips said.
“Lenore Dove?” I press mine against hers. Willing her to stay with me. Refusing to say good-bye.
But when I pull back, I taste the poison and know she is gone.
