A dead mockingjay chick, eyes still bright, feathers blue-black in the sunlight, clawed feet empty, on a bed of moss. Lenore Dove stroked its
plumage with her fingertip. “Poor baby . . . poor little bird . . . who will sing your songs now?”
Louella looks so tiny, so still in the chaos around us. A fine job I did protecting her. Dead before we even made it to the arena. Who will sing your songs now, Louella?
I’m winded by the impact of the fall, bruised for sure, but nothing obviously broken. “Louella?” I say as I kneel over her. Knowing it’s useless, I attempt to rouse her, try to find her pulse, but she has flown her body. Her vacant eyes confirm this as I slide the lids closed. One of her
braids rests in the blood leaking from the back of her skull, which cracked
open when she hit the pavement. The penciled black eyebrows jump out from her drained face. I arrange her braids, lick my thumb, and wipe a drop of blood from her cheek.
The shaft that connected our cart to the team apparently snapped, and our horses are long gone, leaving a trail of wreckage. Wyatt and Maysilee, who managed to hang on to the railings, extricate themselves from the ruins of our chariot, beat-up but alive. Wyatt picks up Louella’s hat, which must have fallen off when we were thrown. As they join us, neither one has to ask if Louella’s dead.
Maysilee pulls off one of her necklaces, a heavy strand of beads woven into purple and yellow flowers. “I was going to give her this. For her token. So she’d have something from home.” She kneels down, and I lift Louella’s crushed skull while she places the beads around her neck. Fresh blood seeps into my hand.
“Thanks,” I say. “She likes flowers.” I can’t speak of her in the past, not while she’s warm and close.
“They’re coming to get her,” warns Wyatt.
I see four Peacekeepers making a beeline for us amidst the medics and handlers and dazed tributes. They want to take Louella away, to hide her tidily in a wooden box along with their crimes, and ship her home to District 12. They don’t want to feature this death on the Capitol’s watch,
unplanned and highlighting their incompetence. This is not the blood they want to paint their posters with.
I scoop Louella up in my arms and begin to back away. “It’s no use,” Wyatt says. “They’ll still take her.”
“She doesn’t belong to them,” snaps Maysilee. “Don’t just hand her over. Make them fight for her. Run!”
So I do. And I’m a fast runner. The only kid who can beat me in
footraces at school is Woodbine Chance. Well, he used to anyway. I run for Louella, but I run for Woodbine, too, because he’ll never run again. I have no idea where I’m going. I only know that I do not want to give Louella to the Capitol. Maysilee’s right. She doesn’t belong to them at all.
Dodging any white Peacekeeper uniform, I weave past red-streaked bodies, past the wrecked District 6 chariot. Apparently, their horses leaped the barricades and plowed into the crowd. Medics swarm around, shouting and carrying stretchers with Capitol people, leaving the injured District 6
tributes where they fell.
My escape path leads me farther down the avenue toward the president’s mansion. Several of the chariots are pulled over along the
parade route. It’s a clear shot to the mansion, but I’ll never make it. The Peacekeepers’ shouts get closer. Louella’s growing heavy. My toes blister in the tight boots. My chest aches and I haven’t drawn a full breath since I hit
the ground. What difference does it make, me handing her over now or later?
Some of the big screens over the crowd have gone to the waving flag, but a handful of others still display the parade route. I catch sight of myself on one. Louella looks peaceful, like she’s asleep in my arms. If this is still being recorded and possibly aired, at least in the Capitol, maybe it does
make a difference if I resist as best I can. Maybe this is where I paint my own poster.
Ahead I spot the District 1 chariot, a glimmering golden thing drawn by snow-white horses. The tributes have dismounted and stand off to the side, except Panache, who’s pulling on the bridles of the horses. “Come
on,” he yells at them. “Move it!” He no doubt wants to continue the parade, to be the only tribute who makes it to the president’s mansion by chariot. A grand entrance for a future victor. But the horses resist, stamping their feet and throwing back their heads. Silka removes one of her fancy stiletto heels and begins to beat the flank of the outside horse, drawing blood. The horse neighs in pain and kicks, throwing the team into confusion. Silka’s knocked to the ground and Panache has to dive sideways to avoid being trampled.
Peacekeepers on my tail, my arms giving out, I seize the moment and spring into the chariot just as the horses’ distress overcomes their training. Panache had a great idea, and now I’m stealing it right out from under him.
I want to be the tribute who arrives by chariot, and I want Louella to be with me, for all to see.
As the team jumps forward, I get tossed into the railing, letting it bear some of Louella’s weight. I hear Panache’s howl of rage behind me but
ignore him. The horses resume their normal pace and I manage to straighten up. I lost my cheesy imitation coal miner hat in the accident and, rid of the headgear, our outfits become merely neutral, black and forgettable. Our
tokens catch the eye — Louella’s bright beaded necklace, my exquisite flint striker. For the first time, in the gorgeous rig, with our fine ornaments, we look like tributes of consequence. Not long shots. Or at least long shots you might consider sponsoring. A shame one of us is dead.
The horses come to a stop directly under the balcony. I look up and freeze, too intimidated to breathe. President Snow. Not on a screen, but in the flesh. The most powerful and, therefore, the most brutal person in Panem. He stands calm and erect, surveying the calamity of the opening ceremony. His head dips slightly and a lacquered silvery blond curl falls onto his forehead. Our eyes meet, and a smile plays on his lips. No anger, no outrage, and certainly no fear. I have not impressed him with my performance. The reckless mountain boy with the dead girl in his arms
seems foolish, a trifle amusing, and nothing more.
Something steels inside me, and I think, You are on a high horse,
mister. And someday someone will knock you off it straight into your grave. I dismount the chariot and lay Louella down, taking a step back so Snow can’t pretend he doesn’t see her broken little bird body. Then I gesture to him and begin to applaud, giving credit where credit is due.
Spin this, Plutarch, I think.
Suddenly, the president’s expression changes. He turns his attention to the screen to my right, which features a shot of me from the waist up, clapping. His fingers move to the signature white rose in his lapel, straightening it as he looks down again. The blue eyes narrow, but he’s not focused on my face. Is he looking at the flint striker?
I’m grabbed from behind and dragged away. Medics descend on Louella, but I know there’s no bringing her back. I hate leaving her behind, but what would I do with her, even if I held on to her? Did her family get to see her send-off? Did mine? But they wouldn’t have shown this in 12. They probably cut out when our horses bolted.
I struggle for a bit, then feel I’m working too hard. Going limp, I
make the Peacekeepers tow me down the long road back to the stable. They catch on and flip me around, cuff me, and make me walk myself. That’s when I become aware of the crowd, still in the stands, and hear the voices shouting.
“Hey, you, where are you from?”
“Over here, boy! What’s your name?” “Twelve, right? Are you from Twelve, kid?”
That catches my attention. Me? Are they talking to me? My head twists from side to side.
“Speak up, boy! Can’t sponsor you if we don’t know who you are!”
These people want to sponsor me? Send me food and supplies in the arena? Then bet on me like a starved dog in a fight? Maybe I should be grateful, or at least smart, but it’s impossible with Louella’s blood coating my hands. I hawk and send spit directly at a man’s face, which is bloated and twinkling with tiny embedded mirrors. It lands on his cheek, and the crowd roars with laughter.
“You tell him!”
“I like your style!”
“Haymitch or Wyatt? Which are you?”
That last from some woman who wears a bird’s nest on her head. She waves her Hunger Games program, which has a shiny gold 50 against a background of the flag of Panem on the cover. I’m working up another
loogie when one of my guards warns, “Enough of that.” I spit anyway. He elbows me hard in the side and the crowd cheers, I’m not even sure for who.
Fed up, the Peacekeepers toss me into a chariot filled with the District 4 tributes, and I get to ride to the stable holding on to some guy’s fake trident so I don’t get tossed out again. He’s not supportive of this, and we barely make it back before he shoves the butt of it into my solar plexus and I’m on the ground again.
“Nice one, Urchin,” laughs a girl from 4, flipping her fishtail at me as they walk away.
Doesn’t seem to be any particular reason to get up, so I just lie there, not caring if I get trampled or not. The memory of Louella’s lifeless body under Snow’s balcony has burned itself onto the back of my eyelids. Seems like that’s all I’ll ever see again.
Things settle down as the place begins to empty out. No one’s in any rush to move an unruly District 12 tribute, though. After a while, Maysilee appears above me, her fountain of curls drooping to one side of her head. “Well, you got the last word tonight, Mr. Abernathy.”
“Did I? What exactly did I say again, Miss Donner?” “Don’t mess with District Twelve.”
Half my mouth manages a smile. “Scared them pretty good, you reckon?”
“I don’t. But at least now they know we’re here.” She helps me to my feet. “I’d rather be despised than ignored.”
Wyatt walks up. “Nice work with the crowd. Should bring you a few sponsors. Our odds have improved slightly with the crash. All of District Six is injured. Ten’s beat up, too.”
I resist the impulse to hit him. “And Louella’s dead.”
“Yes, but it’s unlikely Louella would have killed any of us. And as an undersized thirteen-year-old from Twelve, she barely factored into the
rankings anyway,” says Wyatt.
I stare at him, amazed by his coldness. “Just what odds do you think your pa’s giving on you winning, Wyatt?”
Shame creeps across his face. But he only says, “About forty to one.” “So, if you’re the victor, and I’d bet a dollar on you, I’d get forty
dollars back?”
“Forty-one, minus the Booker Boy fee.”
“Guess you are a long shot, for your pa to hold you so cheap,” I say. “Never pretended otherwise.” Wyatt turns and walks over to our van,
one of the few still left in the stable.
“Boy, that was mean, even by my standards,” Maysilee says to me. “You can’t choose your parents.”
“You could reject their business,” I point out.
“I couldn’t,” says Maysilee. “I was going to spend the rest of my life behind that candy counter, no matter how much I hated it. And I’m guessing
you’d have been wearing miner’s overalls to your grave. We never, none of us, had any choices.”
She follows Wyatt to the van, leaving me to ponder the possibility that I’ve out-meaned Maysilee. Not something to be proud of. But neither is factoring Louella’s death into our odds. Her body’s not even cold, and he’s reduced her to a number. But she was not a number, she was a little girl I met on the day she was born when Mr. McCoy, his face alight with joy, held her up at the window for all us kids to see. A terrible, dark grief begins to well up inside me, threatening to drown me, but I force it back down.
Swallow the sadness, clamp a lid on it, dam it up. They will not use my tears for their entertainment.
The effort leaves me dizzy, so I sit against a pillar and watch the birds flitting around the rafters. Horses and chariots disappear into the depths of the stable. Tributes straggle in from the avenue and join up with their districts. A couple of Peacekeepers stroll around, cuffing the strays. They
give me the eye but leave me be.
I find myself staring up at an electronic board that lists all the tributes.
We don’t seem to rate last names.
SECOND QUARTER QUELL TRIBUTE ROSTER
DISTRICT 1
Boy Panache
Girl Silka
Boy Loupe
Girl Carat
DISTRICT 2
Boy Alpheus
Girl Camilla
Boy Janus
Girl Nona
DISTRICT 3
Boy Ampert
Girl Dio
Boy Lect
Girl Coil
DISTRICT 4
Boy Urchin
Girl Barba
Boy Angler
Girl Maritte
DISTRICT 5
Boy Hychel
Girl Anion
Boy Fisser
Girl Potena
DISTRICT 6
Boy Miles
Girl Wellie Boy Atread
Girl Velo
DISTRICT 7
Boy Bircher
Girl Autumn
Boy Heartwood
Girl Ringina
DISTRICT 8
Boy Wefton Girl Notion
Boy Ripman
Girl Alawna
DISTRICT 9
Boy Ryan
Girl Kerna
Boy Clayton
Girl Midge
DISTRICT 10
Boy Buck
Girl Lannie
Boy Stamp
Girl Peeler
DISTRICT 11
Boy Hull
Girl Chicory
Boy Tile
Girl Blossom
DISTRICT 12
Boy Wyatt Girl Maysilee
Boy Haymitch
Girl Louella
Forty-eight kids. Minus one. I will never remember all of their names.
Doubt they will remember mine. There are just too many of us.
A boy in electric-blue coveralls, about Sid’s size, comes up to me, his handcuffs jingling a little. Another lamb for the slaughter. “Hi, I’m Ampert. I’m from Three.”
I look behind him, but he’s unchaperoned. Probably a bigger long shot than I am. I can’t imagine what he wants but I hope someone would be friendly to my brother under these circumstances, so I say, “Hi, Ampert. I’m Haymitch. How old are you?”
“Twelve. You?”
“I turned sixteen yesterday.”
“That stinks.” He squats down beside me and fiddles with his cuffs. “I could open these in a jiffy if I had a hairpin.”
I smile at his bragging. “Or a key.”
“You sound like my father. He’ll laugh when I tell him that.”
I could point out that Ampert will never see his father again, but I’ve already exceeded my meanness quota for the day. It’s kinder to humor him. I take a safety pin from my overalls and hold it out. “Try that, buddy.”
His face lights up like he just got a new toy. He pops open the pin and begins to wiggle the point in a cuff lock. “They don’t really teach us this in school. They focus on the technology we use in the factories. But my mother taught me. She’s the mechanical one. I know lots of things that should be useful in an arena. If you’d like to be my ally.”
So that’s it. His fellow district tributes have rejected him, and he’s on the hunt for someone more pathetic than he is. A District 12 coal miner
seems a likely candidate.
I tell him, “I had an ally, and she’s already dead.”
“I’m sorry. I thought she was just knocked out. Louella McCoy, right?
She’s the one you made President Snow own?”
Well, I’ll say this for Ampert — he doesn’t miss a beat. “The thing is, Ampert, I don’t know that I’m really ally material. I think you can do better. Why don’t you go back and ask your district tributes to team up with you?”
“Oh, they already have. But I’m trying to build an alliance to counter the Careers. I’ve got all of Seven and Eight on board, and Eleven’s thinking it over.” He gives a final twist and the left cuff falls off his wrist. He holds up the pin in triumph. “Told you!”
“Whoa!” I exclaim. “How’d you do that?”
“I’d teach you if we had more time.” Ampert pops the cuff back on before anyone else notices and pockets the safety pin. “If you change your
mind, I’ll be around.” He scampers off, and I can see him reporting back to the other District 3 tributes, who crane their necks to check me out.
I don’t know what that kid needs me for. Not my brain. Maybe, like Hattie, he thinks I’d make a good mule. But my ally days began and ended with Louella.
When I’m the last tribute left, a Peacekeeper orders me inside the van.
She chains up me, Maysilee, and Wyatt, then looks around and frowns. “Where’s your escort and your stylist? Your mentors?”
None of us answer. We don’t know, and why should we?
Another Peacekeeper speaks up. “Drusilla took a powder after the crash. Magno Stift never showed.” She consults a clipboard. “And I don’t even see a mentor listed for Twelve.”
“What are we supposed to do with them?” asks the first. “I’m off-duty in ten. There’s an after-party for my squad, and I’m the only one who can
make a good rum punch.”
“Can’t leave them here. Take them to their quarters, I guess. Let them figure it out.”
The door closes and the engine rumbles to life. In the pitch black of the van, I lean my head back against the wall. All the miseries of the last two days can no longer be denied: the throbbing headache from the rifle
butt at the reaping, the terror of the tasing, the heartbreak of my loved ones’ good-byes, the toxic shower, the humiliating parade before Panem, the chariot crash, and worst of all, the horror of being soaked in Louella’s blood. Everything hurts, inside and out.
We’re unloaded on a street lined with candy-colored apartment buildings. The disgruntled Peacekeeper leads us past armed guards into a lobby with fake wood paneling and onto an elevator that smells like old
socks and cheap perfume. She turns a key in the slot marked 12 and uncuffs us on the ride up. “We’ve been told your mentors are waiting for you here. They said no cuffs, but there are Peacekeepers a buzzer away and there are cameras everywhere.” She nods to one in the corner of the elevator. No attempt has been made to conceal it. They want you to know they’re watching. Or think they’re watching, even if no one is.
“No Peacekeepers, no peace,” I mutter.
The Peacekeeper gives a sharp nod. “Exactly.”
When the doors open, she pushes us out into an entryway. A framed painting of a white poodle in a tuxedo hangs over a small table holding a
bowl of wax oranges. “They’re all yours!” she shouts, and the elevator doors close.
We stand abandoned, under the poodle’s critical eye, waiting for the next round of abuse. In the quiet, I become aware of a familiar scent. It’s
the bean and ham hock soup my ma makes when someone dies. It can’t be, of course. But still, with Louella’s loss so new, something begins to unravel inside me. The tears I’ve been saving up since the reaping fill my eyes. This infuriates me, and I blink hard to hold them back.
Soft footfalls approach and a small young woman appears. I recognize her immediately. The black-haired girl from District 3 who won last year’s Hunger Games. “Hello, I’m Wiress. One of your mentors.”
It was an arena full of shiny surfaces. Lakes that reflected the sky, clouds that returned the favor, and everywhere, boulders and caves and cliffs overlaid with mirrors. When the tributes were lifted into the arena, they couldn’t get their bearings. Every which way they turned, tributes in shimmering tunics stared back at them.
Watching back in 12, Sid had whispered, “I can’t hardly look at this.
Makes my eyes cross.”
If it was disorienting to view from the outside, it was
incomprehensible within. A giant silver Cornucopia held a bounty of supplies, but even navigating a path to it proved treacherous. A tribute
would reach for a weapon and get a handful of air, leap into a clearing and smack into a wall, or dodge an attacker only to run straight onto their sword.
Most of the tributes went nuts, but not Wiress. She took it all in, then carefully maneuvered away from the Cornucopia, somehow finding packs of supplies where none appeared to be. Eventually, a clumsy bloodbath ensued, but she was long gone at that point, exploring the arena bit by bit, until she settled on a rock jutting out over a lake, in full view of her competitors. Except . . . they never were able to see her. She’d found a blind spot, and although they’d come raging within a few feet of her, she avoided detection. She just sat there, quiet as a mouse, eating, drinking from the lake, and sleeping curled up in a ball.
The funny thing, if anything can be called funny in a Hunger Games, was watching the Gamemakers attempting to deliver her sponsor gifts, which they repeatedly failed to do. They were as blind to her spot as the tributes. And while they joked about it, you could see they were embarrassed to have a girl from District 3 understand their arena better than they did.
When the field cleared, it was down to Wiress and a boy from District
6. Wiress finally stood up, revealing herself, and the boy leaped for what he thought was her, cracked his head, and drowned in the lake. The victor’s
hovercraft flew around for about an hour trying to locate her before she walked back to the Cornucopia for a ride. Later, when asked how she’d figured out her strategy, she replied, “I followed the light beams.” More than that, she could not, or would not, say. You wanted to cheer for her, given that she’d outsmarted the Gamemakers, but she was just too unnerving.
So, of course, they gave her to us. We always get the leftovers. Filthy costumes, broken-down nags, and now her. I try to roll with it, but it pisses me off. I don’t want Wiress for a mentor. She’s just another bizarre person to deal with when I’m already scraped raw. How can a girl who follows light beams help me anyway? How can a girl who left the arena without a scratch teach me how to protect myself? How can a girl who has fought no one, killed no one, mentored no one, mentor me? She can’t, that’s all.
I’m fixing to say as much when a second woman arrives. It takes a moment to place her. She’s older, probably near Hattie’s age. Then I remember a Games from when I was little, and a hysterical boy dressed in a suit made of seashells, who’d just been crowned in front of the entire nation of Panem. The hysteria had triggered when they’d played the recap of the Games, showing all twenty-three of his competitors’ deaths. And this woman had held the boy and done her best as his mentor to shield him from the cameras, which were devouring every awful bit of it.
It’s Mags, a victor from District 4. She looks at me sadly, knowingly, and then opens up her arms and says, “I’m so sorry about Louella,
Haymitch.”
For a moment, I teeter between anger and grief. But the dam finally breaks. I step into her embrace, drop my head on her shoulder, and begin to cry.
