I don’t cry much in general. Only when people die, and then I cry hard and fast and ugly, which is what I do now. Because Louella is dead and I was supposed to look out for her and I didn’t. And while Lenore Dove will forever be my true love, Louella is my one and only sweetheart.
Mags just holds me while sobs rack my body and tears and snot drip onto her shoulder. Wiress takes Maysilee and Wyatt farther into the apartment, giving us a moment. “I’m sorry,” I choke out. But Mags shakes her head and just keeps patting my back.
When I calm down some, she leads me through the apartment to a bathroom where a tub of steaming water awaits. She hands me a bag, saying, “Put your costume in here. Magno wants it back. Then bathe and join us.”
When Mags goes, closing the door behind her, I throw a towel over
the camera for some privacy, not caring at all if they punish me for it. Then I strip off the vile costume and shove it into the bag. Hot baths are a Sunday ritual in my house, cold water buckets doing for the rest of the week since it takes a lot of pumping and heating to fill our tin washtub. This deep porcelain version, nearly full to the brim, the creamy bar of soap, and the liquid shampoo are undreamed-of luxuries. I sink down into the tub, letting the heat envelop my body, as plumes of Louella’s blood tint the pristine water pink.
I shut my eyes and try to empty my mind, so there is only warmth, and the murmur of distant voices, and the smell of soup mingled with the light flowery scent of the soap. This is all the world is. Nothing more. I must lie like that for a long time, because the water’s cool and my fingertips wrinkly when I open my eyes again. I drain the tub and have a good scrub under the shower, cleansing myself of the insecticide, the road dirt, and the last traces of Louella’s life.
After drying myself with the big cushy towel, I pull on the underwear and the plain black shirt and pants left for me, and slide my feet into a new pair of boots. As I open the bathroom door, I try to decide if I should feel embarrassed about my outburst, and realize I don’t give a hang what anyone thinks anyway.
The apartment, which has a strange, impersonal quality, has been decorated by someone whose taste runs to fluffy things and burnt orange. The kitten and puppy knickknacks seem at odds with the bars on the windows. I follow my nose to the kitchen, where Mags, Wiress, and Wyatt sit around the table, eating.
“Join us,” Mags says. “Your friend’s in her bath now.” I’m too tired to correct her about the status of my relationship with Maysilee — classmate
seems more appropriate. She ladles out a giant bowl of what is, in fact, bean and ham hock soup.
“Mags ordered this specially from the kitchen,” says Wiress.
“I did. It’s comforting, I think.” Mags sets the bowl in front of me. “It is.” I snuff up the steam, thinking about my twin sisters, and Pa,
and Mamaw. And now Louella. I take a spoonful and let the taste of home course through me, strengthening me for what’s to come. “What is this
place anyway?” I ask.
“It’s an apartment designed for temporary rentals. They’ve reserved it to hold the tributes this year,” says Mags.
“We stayed in barracks last year, all twenty-four of us. This is more private,” adds Wiress.
“Wouldn’t call the bathroom private. I hung my towel over the camera.”
“Those were just installed for the tributes. It’s impossible to tell when they’re watching,” says Mags. “But it will all be recorded.”
Wyatt pushes back from the table. “Guess I’ll get my bath now.”
I want to say, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. About your pa taking bets on you. But I haven’t got the energy, so I let him go without a word.
My mentors let me eat in silence — soup, white bread and butter, and a big piece of peach pie to finish. I’m afraid they’re going to launch into a strategy session, but Mags only says, “Why don’t you go to bed now,
Haymitch? We can talk in the morning.”
She takes me to a room with two beds covered with fuzzy orange spreads, each with a pair of pajamas on it, and bids me good night. I change, slide in between the sheets thinking I’ll never fall asleep, and go out like a light.
Lenore Dove says my dreams are like windows into my mind, too clear to need interpretation. Which is a nice way to say really obvious.
Tonight, they center on fearful things that have happened — blown-up
heads and chariot crashes — and fearful things I dread will happen in the coming days. Since I don’t know exactly what I’ll encounter when the gong sounds to start the Games, my brain borrows from past arenas. Weapons.
Starvation. Mutts. The first two are ancient evils, but muttations, or mutts
for short, are genetic atrocities created in the lab to entertain the blood- hungry Capitol audience. Like the face-eating weasels or, in Wiress’s arena, the shiny silver beetles that swarmed the tributes, suffocating them. My brain fixates on the latter.
As the beetles suck the oxygen from my lungs, I wake up gasping.
Wyatt snores in the other bed. That alone makes me think I was right about him not being my ally. How’s he going to stay hidden in the arena if he’s sawing logs like that? Of course, he was fake-snoring on the train when he eavesdropped on me and Louella. I look at him hard, but he appears to be dead to the world for real.
I could get up but I stay under the covers, grateful for some time to collect my thoughts. Things have unfolded so fast. I still can’t completely wrap my head around the fact that Louella’s gone. And now I have an offer from Ampert, who I couldn’t help but like. I’m intrigued by his idea of a non-Career pack. I wonder if he’d take Wyatt and Maysilee as well. He doesn’t seem too particular. The tributes from Districts 7 and 8 are nothing special. He must be going for quantity over quality. Although 11 . . . that might be a game changer. . . .
Still, I don’t know about teaming up with them. Maybe I’ll ask Mags what she thinks. Funny to have someone from 4 — a Career — as a mentor. Although she must’ve been a tribute early on and maybe there weren’t
always Careers. As for Wiress . . . I shouldn’t judge her so harshly. If I could outsmart everybody the way she did without lifting a finger, of course I’d do it. But that seems more like something Ampert could pull off.
The smell of fried food gets me out of bed. I pull my clothes from last night back on and head to the kitchen. Mags and Wiress sit like they haven’t been to bed, but the food has turned over. Big covered dishes of eggs, bacon, and crusty disks of potatoes set my mouth watering.
“Good morning, Haymitch,” says Mags. “Please, help yourself.”
I pile my plate high and stack a second with buttered toast and jam, pour glasses of juice and milk, but pass on the coffee. Again, they let me eat in peace, which I appreciate. Food always picks me up, so after a couple of platefuls, I think I might be able to survive the day. It’s going to take a lot of energy to face the Careers, especially Panache. Pretty sure he thinks I owe him a chariot.
I’m sipping sugared hot tea when Maysilee comes in, dressed exactly like me, except for her necklaces. All in black, with her hair pulled from her face and her riding-crop marks, there’s something tough about her. Or
maybe she’s always been tough, but the ruffles and bows just made her seem snooty. She’d look out of place behind the candy counter, which she clearly loathed. What did she dream of doing instead?
“Good morning, Maysilee. How did you sleep?” asks Mags.
“Better than the night before.” Maysilee pours herself a cup of black coffee and wraps her hands around it.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” I ask. “I’m not a breakfast person.”
You can see why she drives people nuts. If there’s breakfast available in the Seam, everybody’s just pleased to see it. I spread jam on another
piece of toast. “That’s going to come in handy in the arena. Especially if you’re not a lunch or supper person either.”
“If you can manage to get a bit more down in the next few days, it would be a good thing,” says Mags.
Maysilee thinks about it, then serves herself a strip of bacon and takes a tiny bite. Not with her fingers, of course. I bet the Donners eat popcorn with a knife and fork.
Wyatt joins us, sheet creases in his face, also dressed in black.
“Nice outfit,” I say, trying to lighten things up between us a little. “It’s the same as yours,” he says defensively.
“Do we have to go around dressed like triplets?” asks Maysilee. “It was bad enough being a twin.”
The Donner girls have a wide selection of matching outfits. “Thought you liked that,” I say.
“My mother likes that,” she corrects me.
Huh. Maybe she loads up on the jewelry because it’s the only way she can be herself.
“The Capitol provided this clothing,” says Mags. “Everyone will be dressed the same in training and the arena. But Magno should provide your interview costumes. Last year, he sent your district’s tributes out in their training outfits. He’s on probation for that, so, hopefully, he’s finding you something worthwhile. You’re due in training soon. Shall we begin?”
I try to focus. This will likely be all the help we get.
“I’ve mentored several times over the years,” Mags continues. “In the early Games, I didn’t ask the tributes what they wanted because the answer seemed so obvious. You want to live. But then I realized, there are many
desires beyond that. Mine had to do with my district partner. Protecting him.”
Wiress offers, “I remember I didn’t want to die at night. I didn’t want to die in darkness. The thought terrified me.”
“So we’ll ask you now, what do you want?” says Mags.
We sit in silence, each trying to formulate an answer. Yesterday, mine had to do with protecting Louella. Now I mainly think about the people I love, making my death as easy as possible for them.
I say, “I don’t want my girl and my family to watch me die some long, horrible death. Like, I keep thinking about those weasel mutts a few years
ago. They’d never get over that.”
“Yeah, if I’m going, I want to go fast,” says Wyatt. “I don’t want people who bet on my death being drawn out to make money on it.”
It’s a shocking thought. “Would your family take bets on that?” I ask.
Wyatt shrugs. “Somebody would. I’m sure somebody already has. On yours, too. That’s how it works.”
“I don’t want to beg,” says Maysilee. “Or plead for my life. I want to go out with my head up.”
After a pause, Mags asks, “All right. Anything else?”
There is something else gnawing at the back of my brain. Something to do with Sarshee and Pa, with Lenore Dove’s rising sun, with Maysilee’s welts, and holding Louella up to the president. What was it Ampert said about Louella last night? “She’s the one you made President Snow own?”
“I want all that, too. What you just said. But if I could, I’d also like to ” I glance at the camera in the corner. How do I say it when the
Capitol might be watching? That I want to make the Capitol own what
they’re doing to us? “I want to remind people I’m here because the Capitol won the war and thinks that, fifty years later, this is a fair way to punish the districts. But I’d like them to consider that fifty years is enough.”
That sounded sufficiently diplomatic. I wait for them to laugh or roll their eyes, but no one does.
“So you want to make them end the Hunger Games for good. How?” asks Maysilee.
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “I guess, for starters, by reminding the audience that we’re human beings. The way they talk about us . . .
piglets . . . beasts. They called my fingernails claws. You saw how those kids outside the gym looked at us. Like they think of us as animals. And
they think of themselves as superior. So it’s okay to kill us. But the people in the Capitol aren’t better than us. Or smarter.”
“If anything, they’re stupider,” says Maysilee, who clearly doesn’t give two hoots about the cameras. “Look at the mess they made with our reaping. The chariot parade. Or Wiress’s Games last year. They couldn’t even get her gifts to her. Show them something like that.”
“Yeah, force them to admit we’re people, too,” says Wyatt. “And they’re the beasts for killing us.”
“Right. But I’m not as clever as Wiress. I can’t outthink the arena,” I
say.
“Maybe you can,” Wiress encourages me. “The arena’s just a machine
really. A killing machine. It’s possible to outsmart it.”
Wyatt rolls his coin over his knuckles. “The trick would be getting them to show it on camera.”
“If it involves killing someone else, they’d show that,” says Maysilee.
“Or killing yourself,” adds Wyatt.
“It’s something to think over carefully. You could easily put yourself or your allies at risk,” warns Mags, nodding at Wyatt and Maysilee.
“Oh, Haymitch doesn’t want us for allies,” says Wyatt.
Really? That’s where he’s going? “Nice, Wyatt. So I’m the jerk? Not the meanest girl in town or the guy who sets the odds so scum can make
bets on dead kids?”
Mags gives me a worried look. “It’s a good thing to have allies. You may find yourselves gravitating toward one another anyway when you go into training.”
Maysilee addresses Wyatt. “I could be your ally. If you’re not too choosy.”
“Okay,” he says.
Even though everything I said was true, I regret saying it. It’s not like I’m perfect. They both get under my skin, but I’m blaming them for too much. They didn’t kill Louella or pick me in the reaping or create the Hunger Games. I need to back off. Besides, if I’m going to paint a decent poster in the arena, I’ll need time, which allies could buy me.
“Okay, look,” I tell them. “There’s this kid from Three, Ampert, who wants me to join his alliance. He’s got Seven and Eight. Eleven might be in.
I don’t know if I’m doing it, but I can ask if they want you guys. I can tell him you’re both smart.”
Maysilee gives a little shrug and Wyatt nods, saying, “Pack members have better odds. At least in the beginning. Someone to watch their backs.”
I wish he’d shut up about odds. “I’ll keep that in mind. So, what’s training like?”
“They’ll be holding it at the gym where they groomed you,” Mags tells us. “There will be stations set up to allow you to prepare for what you’ll face in the arena. Don’t be distracted by what others are choosing; prioritize what you will need to survive.”
“Some way to defend myself,” I say. “Or a good way to hide,” says Maysilee. “What’s most important?” asks Wyatt.
Wiress breaks into a strange little song:
First avoid the slaughter,
Get weapons, look for water. Find food and where to sleep, Fire and friends can keep.
“I made that up for myself. Most important to least. So I would have a plan in the arena. I knew I couldn’t fight in the bloodbath, which meant I
had to get away from the Cornucopia quickly. I didn’t end up needing a weapon except my brain. But you likely will. The Cornucopia might be your chance to grab one. If not, make something, even if it’s just a pointed stick. Then find water. Water before food. You’ll die of thirst much more quickly than you will of hunger. But then food. Fire can be good for light and cooking and heat if it’s cold. But you might not need it at all and it could be dangerous if it reveals your position. Friends, for me, would have been very risky.”
“But were at the top of my list,” says Mags. “You must decide for yourselves.”
“What about building a shelter?” asks Wyatt.
“There’s a good chance you’ll be on the move,” Mags answers. “Your sleeping spot might change nightly. In my experience, allies to keep watch are far more important than a roof.”
“You snore,” I tell Wyatt.
“No, I don’t. I was fake-snoring on the train.” “Bad news. You also real-snore.”
“Like a bear,” Maysilee confirms. “I could hear you through the wall.”
“Try to find someplace loud to sleep,” advises Mags. “Next to rushing water. Or muffle the sound in a cave.”
“I’ll put a blanket or something over your head,” says Maysilee. “Or wake you if you’re really loud.”
“I forgot you’d be there,” says Wyatt. “I guess friends top my list, too.
What else happens in training?”
“Experts will be there to teach you how to use the weapons, show you how to make a fire,” says Mags. “Look for clues to your arena. The
Gamemakers sometimes hide little hints about the nature of the arena in their design. Not in the beginning. My Games were so long ago. Training, if you could call it that, was minimal back then. We didn’t get any clues, in or out of the arena.”
“Last year some of the survival stations had reflective items. Foil blankets. Metal bowls. And at the fire-building station, a little round mirror. I think that was a clue, but I didn’t understand it until I saw the arena,” says Wiress. “Inside, when I understood the nature of the place, my instinct was to walk toward danger, because, in fact, it was only a reflection of danger, not the thing itself. Trust your instincts.”
“That is good advice in general,” Mags says.
The intercom crackles to life and a voice announces that it’s time to leave for training. Mags pins fabric squares with the number 12 on our backs. We’re met by Peacekeepers at the elevator, loaded into the van, and transported to the gym.
As we step out into the sunlight, Maysilee gives Wyatt the once-over. “You need more attitude, Wyatt.” He tries to look tougher. “No, that’s
worse,” she says. “Push your jaw out. Stand up tall. Now stick out your chest.” She musses his hair and pushes up his sleeves. “You’ve got some muscle from the mines. Show it off.”
“Yeah, that’s better,” I admit. “The black clothes don’t hurt.”
“We’re from District Twelve. The crummiest stinkhole in Panem,”
says Maysilee. “We’re wild like our chariot horses. I slugged our escort and Haymitch called out President Snow. Nobody pushes us around.”
“We’re unpredictable,” says Wyatt. “Just a bunch of loose cannons,” I agree.
The Peacekeepers open the doors and we head in, sending out our best loose-cannon vibe.
The place has been transformed. The makeover stations have been replaced with survival skills booths — fire building, knots, skinning animals, camouflage — overseen by trainers in fitted white jumpsuits. The far end of the gym has been reserved for various types of weapon instruction. The other tributes swarm around the booths, dressed in the same outfits but in an assortment of colors. I’m glad we got black because everybody looks sickly in snot green — sucks for you, District 1 — and the
buttery yellow on District 9 makes them about as threatening as a hatful of baby chicks.
Nylon ropes divide the bleachers to our right into twelve sections marked with the district numbers. Ours sits closest to the door. The tribute bleachers are empty except for the kids from 11, who are gathered in a tight clump of dark green, heatedly discussing something.
“Are we always the last ones to arrive at everything?” complains Maysilee.
“Keep ’em waiting,” I say. But we are consistently an afterthought.
And no one has been waiting for us.
“Loose cannons,” Wyatt reminds us. We straighten up and stride into the thick of it.
Mags is right. Here at the gym, we do stick to one another. We’re the only ones we know. And at the Games, we’re the least likely to kill one another.
“We should throw knives,” decides Maysilee.
It’s not a bad idea. Despite what I promised Ma, I’m not a complete stranger to knife games, although a fondness for my toes keeps me away from mumblety-peg. A target on an old shed or a tree — well, that’s fair game. Blair’s really good and I’m not too shabby myself. I think of my
brand-new birthday pocketknife that I didn’t get to throw even once, and hope Sid gets some joy from it.
As we weave our way to the knife range, I notice a few camera crews covering training and a smattering of Peacekeepers patrolling the gymnasium. To our left, the top section of the bleachers is full of
Gamemakers draped in snowy gowns. They mosey around, drinking coffee and making notes on the tributes below. In a few days, we will each receive a score, one to twelve, which ranks our likelihood of winning the Games.
People will use it as a guide on whether or not to sponsor us.
We join a group with the tributes from 7, clad in russet brown.
Everybody sizes one another up while a Capitol woman, Hersilia, instructs us in knife throwing. Ampert said 7 had already agreed to join his alliance, and they make a favorable impression. They seem confident, but not full of themselves. One of them — a slim girl with a lot of glossy black braids and a small carved pin of a tree on her shirt — tells me her name, Ringina, so I tell her mine.
Once we all grasp the basics — how to hold the blade, the straight arm motion, no flicking the wrist — we line up to throw. On a stand, there’s a basket of about a dozen different knives, but only one tribute can have their hands on a weapon at a time. You throw, then a guy in white collects
the knife and returns it. Hersilia selects the model for the next tribute. A lot
of knives bounce off the target, although Maysilee hits more than she misses, and, not to brag, I stick it every time. The throwing unwinds me a bit, since all my associations are good ones, hanging out with my friends in the woods and messing around. When Ringina hits the bulls-eye, I forget
where I am and give her a “Nice shot.”
As Ringina accepts the compliment with a quick grin, the energy shifts. I know I’m never going to kill this girl any more than I’m going to kill Maysilee or Wyatt. So I might as well be 7’s ally and join Ampert’s team for real.
I open the negotiation with “So, Ampert says you all are —” when there’s a blur of snot green to my left, the clatter of knives as the basket’s upset, and the sensation of a sledgehammer hitting my ribs.
If you’ve ever been sucker punched, you know there’s the double
outrage of the pain and the unfairness of the attack. As I lie gasping on the mat, watching Panache close in, my fingers grip a knife handle. Before I can rise, a Peacekeeper tases him and three more drag him off. Wyatt offers me a hand up as the other tributes gather the knives.
There’s this moment, just as I get to my feet, where I look around, and I’m armed, and they’re armed. A half dozen of us hold sleek, deadly knives. And I see that there aren’t many Peacekeepers here today. Not really. We outnumber them four to one. And if we moved quickly, we could probably
free up some of those tridents and spears and swords at the other stations and have ourselves a real nice arsenal. I meet Ringina’s eyes, and I’d swear she’s thinking the same thing. When Hersilia holds out the basket, it takes Ringina some effort to drop her knife in.
The two of us resume our places at the end of the line, hanging back a little, just out of earshot, as the training continues.
“Raise your arms,” Ringina says.
I gingerly reach up, and she feels my rib cage where Panache’s blow landed. “Not broken, I think.” She steps back, her lips pressed tight in consternation. “We could’ve taken them.”
The more I think it over, the more my dismay grows. Every year we let them herd us into their killing machine. Every year they pay no price for the slaughter. They just throw a big party and box up our bodies like
presents for our families to open back home.
“We could’ve at least done some damage,” I tell Ringina.
“At least a little. Possibly a considerable amount,” someone says behind me. I turn to see Plutarch. He waves his camera crew over to record the knife training, but his attention stays on me. “The question is, why didn’t you?”
