Sore ribs and all, I think about punching the question right off Plutarch’s face. Because the implication is clear: He isn’t just asking why we didn’t start a mini rebellion in the gym. He means back in District 12 as well. Why do we let the Capitol brutes rule us? Because we’re cowards?
Because we’re stupid?
“Why do you submit to it all?” he presses.
“Because you have the guns,” Ringina says flatly.
“Is it really about the weapons, though? I grant you, they’re an advantage. On the other hand, when you consider the sheer difference in numbers . . . district to Capitol . . .” Plutarch muses.
Yes, we far outnumber the Peacekeepers in 12. I think about the weapons we could lay our hands on. Pickaxes, knives, possibly some
explosives. But in the face of automatic rifles, aerial bombings, gases, and the Capitol’s menagerie of mutts?
“I don’t think we ‘submit,’” I say.
“It’s implied. You accept the Capitol’s conditions.”
“Because we don’t want to end up dead!” I snap. “Do you really not see that?”
“No, I do. I see the hangings and the shootings and the starvation and the Hunger Games. I do,” Plutarch says. “And yet, I still don’t think the fear they inspire justifies this arrangement we’ve all entered into. Do you?” We stare at him. He’s not taunting or mocking us, he’s genuinely asking. “Why do you agree to it? Why do I? For that matter, why have people always agreed to it?” When we don’t respond, he shrugs. “Well, it’s something to think about.”
“You’re up, Haymitch.” Hersilia offers me a knife. Which I could (a)
throw or (b) drive into a Peacekeeper’s heart, ensuring my immediate death. I’m a little wobbly but I still hit the target.
Plutarch waits for me at the end of the line. I try to ignore him, but he keeps yapping. “You put on quite a show last night.”
“Yeah, well, I bet you card-stacked it right into a compliment for the president.”
“No need to. The broadcast to the public ended when that firecracker went off. The Capitol News coverage is presenting the opening ceremony as flawless.”
“I doubt that people who take Capitol News seriously will spend much time questioning that,” I say. “They don’t care what happens to us tributes, dead or alive.” I wonder what they did with Louella’s body. I hope it’s been sent home to the McCoys. Their family plot’s right next door to ours, so Louella and I will be reunited soon enough.
I start to turn away, but Plutarch lays a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry about Louella, Haymitch. She was a person of substance. I could see that right off.”
Is he actually giving me condolences? “Why do you keep dogging me?” I snap at him. “There’s a gym full of people just aching for some exposure. Why don’t you spread yourself around a little?”
“I’m assigned to cover Twelve.” He raises his hands and backs away. “But I’ll try to give you some space.”
Aggravated by his probing, I pull Maysilee and Wyatt aside. “Listen, if we join Ampert’s alliance, these folks from Seven will be on our team.
Now I’m going to introduce you to Ringina over there.” I give Maysilee a hard stare. “You have to be nice. Don’t comment on her hair, don’t
comment on her nails, don’t comment on how she looks in brown, don’t ask to examine her pin because you’re an authority on jewelry.”
Maysilee sniffs. “I like her hair.”
“And, Wyatt, don’t be weird. Don’t start spouting out the odds on their deaths.”
“Can I do other people’s deaths?”
“No! Not yet. Maybe not ever. It’s creepy! If you have to do odds, do gifts or sponsors or something,” I say. “Forget about being loose cannons. We need to seem like people you’d want to be your allies. Like people you’d hope were beside you in a mine accident. Steady. Smart.
Trustworthy.”
Ampert, glowing in electric blue, runs up, swinging a loop of black cord over his head. “Hey, Haymitch! District Ten is in. They’re the ones in crimson. I met them in knot tying. One of the guys, Buck, made me this lariat. I’m thinking of turning it into some kind of token, since I didn’t bring one.” He wraps the cord in loose bands around his hand, pulls it over his head, and drops his voice. “Then I can unwind it and use it in the arena.”
Maysilee’s lips twitch. “Well, you can’t wear it like that. It’s not the least bit ornamental. You look like a weasel caught in chicken wire.”
“I do?” Ampert doesn’t seem offended but shoots me a curious look. “What did we just discuss?” I say to Maysilee.
She ignores me and, uninvited, uncoils the cord from Ampert’s neck. “This is Maysilee, from back home. Looking to ally up with you.”
Maysilee examines the cord, testing its flexibility and twisting it between her fingers. “You could do a braid necklace. That’s a one-strander.
It would look something like this.” She pulls out one of her necklaces, an elaborate black braided piece. A small, shiny medallion etched with a flower is embedded in it. “No flower, obviously.”
“Okay,” says Ampert. “Can you make me one?”
“I guess I could, but I don’t have any tape, so you’ll need to hold it down while I work,” she says.
“I’ll hold it,” he answers.
“And there’s nothing to hook it, so we’d have to tie it off, which is never my first choice.”
Ampert digs in his pocket and holds up my safety pin from last night. “I’ve got this.”
She considers it. “All right. Just be careful if you take it off or the
whole thing could unravel. Come on.” She heads for the bleachers, not even checking if he’s following her.
“My father wants to meet you. He’s at the booth with the potato,” Ampert tells me, then scurries after her.
His father? A potato? Doubts crowd in again. What am I doing? Is Ampert just some deluded child who lives in a fantasy world? Before I commit myself, I need to know. So I introduce Wyatt to Ringina — keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll act half-normal — and head off in search of a man with a potato.
After making a lap around the crowded booths, sure enough, I find one. A small man with black hair, his back to me, leans against a counter that holds a lone potato, no takers for his skills. I fiddle with a strip of
bandage at the neighboring first-aid booth while I examine him. As he turns, I note the pair of steel-rimmed glasses. While he bears a strong
resemblance to Ampert, this is not why he looks familiar. It’s Beetee, a victor from District 3.
A cold dread washes over me as the puzzle pieces come together.
Ampert is neither a lunatic nor a liar. His father has accompanied him to the Capitol because he’s a victor. And therefore a mentor, assigned to coach his own child to his death in the Fiftieth Hunger Games.
Why Beetee’s been tapped to man a booth with a potato, I’ve no idea, because he’s supposed to be some kind of technological genius. The real question is: How did Ampert end up here with him? Two tributes reaped from one family . . . are they just the unluckiest family in Panem?
I give up on being covert and approach him. “You’re Ampert’s father?”
“I am. And no doubt you’re wondering why I’m here, Haymitch.”
Beetee removes his glasses and polishes them on his shirt. “It’s because I’m being punished for coming up with a plan to sabotage the Capitol’s communication system. I’m too valuable to kill, but my son is disposable.”
That pretty much answers my question. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.
He’s a great kid.”
“He is.” Beetee’s eyes find Ampert, sitting across from Maysilee on the bleachers, chattering away while she weaves the cord into patterns.
“And they made you be his mentor?” I ask.
“It’s part of the punishment. Watching what are almost certainly the last hours of my son’s life. They even gave me a booth in training, which mentors don’t traditionally attend, so I wouldn’t miss a minute. If I wasn’t here to witness it, there would be no point.”
I can’t think of anything to say to comfort him, but I try. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But it is. Entirely. I took a risk. I didn’t suspect that I’d been found out until the reaping. The timing was calculated. If I had known, I could
have killed myself, and Ampert would be safe at home. That is how Snow works.” He drops his head, resting his fingertips on the wooden counter to
steady himself. I wait for him to disintegrate, but he only says, “Would you like to learn how to turn a potato into a battery? Light can be important in
the arena.”
Not really, Beetee, I think. What I’d really like to do is run away from the raging pit of fire that is your life. But that seems cowardly. Like what
people back home are probably doing to Ma and Sid right now. So I say, “Okay. Will there be potatoes in the arena?”
“I don’t know. I suspect this assignment was meant to demean me, which it doesn’t. That may be its whole purpose. But if you can’t find a potato, other things — a lemon, for instance — could work as well. Just don’t eat anything after it’s been used as a battery.” He pulls out a small tray with little plastic packets. Each contains a couple of nails, a pair of copper coins, mini coils of wire, and two tiny light bulbs. “Two potatoes would
provide more power.”
“I guess if I can find one potato, I stand a good chance of finding
two.”
“If not, you might try cutting one in half.” He produces a second
potato and slides it in front of me, then offers me a thing that looks like a pencil with a small blade on the end. “For now we’ll use both. Follow
along.”
Beetee tears open a packet and dumps the contents on the counter. His eyes flick up for a second. A Peacekeeper hovers at my shoulder. The slender knife twitches in my hand. Here I am again. Armed and with access. “Well, it’s something to think about. ”
“Now, this battery is made up of copper, zinc, and the phosphoric acid in the potato juice, which is an electrically conductive solution. It makes it possible for ions to travel between the two metals. Our goal is to create a circuit and illuminate this bulb.”
He’s lost me already, but I nod like he’s making sense.
“First, we need a space for the coin.” Beetee cuts a coin-sized slot into the side of his potato and I copy him. “Then we wrap one of the copper
coins in wire and insert it, leaving the long tail out.”
I sink my wire-wrapped coin into my potato. “Does this mean it will be dark in the arena?”
“Oh, I have no actual knowledge of the arena. They say if you boil the potato, you can increase your output, so that’s something to keep in mind.”
“But if I could boil a potato, I’d already have successfully made a fire.
So ”
A smile plays on his lips. “So you’d have achieved an alternate light source, and this whole potato exercise would be a waste of your time.”
“I didn’t mean that. Sorry.”
“You needn’t apologize for being astute. I’m just glad you’re paying attention.”
I feel the Peacekeeper move on. “Wiress said there would be clues about the arena in training.”
“Well, I would listen to her. Having been her mentor, I know how clever she is.” He holds up a nail. “This is galvanized. Coated in zinc. Don’t let it touch the coin. These needn’t be a coin and a nail. What you need is copper and zinc. Strips of metal work just as well. You might be able to
forage some in the arena, if you get beneath the scenery.” He sticks the nail into the potato, a few inches from the coin. I follow suit.
“She also says every arena is just a machine.” “Yes, they’re all machines of a sort.”
I think back to our conversation in the kitchen, when I said I wanted to outsmart the machine and make the Capitol look stupid. Now that just seems like an empty gesture. Wiress spent a whole Games doing that, far better than I ever could, and what did it get us? Besides, whatever little thing I might manage, it’d be too easy to keep off camera. The real coup would be to . . . “So, if it’s a machine, it can be broken, right?”
Beetee eyes Ampert. “Yes, in theory. Practice is always a bit trickier. Now let’s connect our potatoes.” He attaches the wire from his coin to my nail and links a third wire to his nail.
Suddenly, I remember a clip of Beetee’s Games. He somehow scavenged parts from his arena and electrocuted all his remaining competitors. I realize if I’m serious about breaking the machine, I will need this man who once not only outsmarted, but hijacked his own arena.
Because even if I’m naturally smart enough, I’m still just a poorly educated boy from the hills, who had no idea you could turn a potato into a battery.
“How, Beetee? How can I break it?” I say under my breath. “I don’t know anything about machines.”
“I’m sure you do without realizing it. A screw is a simple machine. A wheel and axle. A lever. Are you familiar with a water pump?”
“Too familiar.”
“That’s a lever. It helps create a partial vacuum and water is drawn upward. Some machines take more know-how than others.”
“I know how a white liquor still works. Does that count?”
I catch a ghost of a smile. “I don’t see why not.” Beetee takes the wire from my coin and the one from his nail and attaches them each to one of the little wires poking out of the base of a tiny bulb. “And here we go.” It emits a faint glow.
Ma would love this. Think of the money we could save on candles.
But this will not destroy an arena.
“What would break it, Beetee?” I press.
Beetee leans over, lifts his glasses, and peers under them as he
scrutinizes the battery. “The circuit? Well, you’d only need to disconnect one piece — say, remove a wire — and the whole battery goes dead.” I
realize there’s another Peacekeeper behind me, and Beetee’s words are for her benefit. “Remember, we’re converting chemical energy into electrical energy to illuminate the bulb. You need to keep the circular path intact.”
The Peacekeeper moves in closer, her nose inches from the battery now, her interest attracting a quartet of tributes in peach outfits. District 8. My unofficial allies, if things work out.
“Can we try that?” one asks.
“Of course,” says Beetee. “Well, thank you for dropping by, Haymitch. Come back if you’d like to practice. And happy belated sixteenth birthday.” I guess Ampert told him. He holds out his hand for me to shake. “That’s funny. I was reaped the day you were born.”
As I grasp his hand, I feel something, palm it, and conceal it in my pocket. “Thanks, sir,” I say before walking away, my fingers probing the plastic packet, bumpy with coins and nails. A little birthday present from
Beetee. If I can find some way to smuggle it into the arena, convince people I scavenged the stuff — the coins might be tricky but I can maybe dig up
some other copper — and find a potato, I’ll be halfway to a really dim bulb.
I’m pretty sure my flint striker’s a faster route to light, but possibly those kids from 8 could use it.
Up on the bleachers, Maysilee puts the finishing touches on an expertly woven braided necklace. Truly, it could pass as anyone’s token from home. She holds it up for inspection.
Ampert strokes it in admiration. “It’s beautiful. And perfectly symmetrical. I wouldn’t believe it’s all one strand. You’re really clever!” “And you have good taste,” she says, slipping it over his head.
“I wish you were my sister,” he says simply.
A funny look crosses her face. Bet she’s never heard those words before. I wait for a cutting remark, but she only says, “I’ll be your sister.”
“Great. I’m going to show my father!” Ampert gives her a hug, which she stiffly returns, then runs off.
Her brow wrinkles. “His father?”
“It really is his pa,” I tell her. “Remember Beetee, the victor from District Three? Got out of line. They’re punishing him by making him mentor Ampert.”
“That’s a special kind of vicious. Would you want your family to be here?”
“I can’t think of anything worse.”
A Gamemaker announces lunch and we’re directed back to our assigned bleachers, where a Peacekeeper delivers four boxes. I’m still full of breakfast, my gut hurts from Panache’s attack, and the sight of Louella’s unclaimed lunch box kills my remaining appetite.
A parade of blue, brown, peach, and red uniforms makes its way to the foot of our bleachers. I sort out 3, 7, 8, 10.
“Can we join you?” asks Ampert.
“Sure,” I say. If they’re going to be our allies, be good if we can bond a little. They clamber up beside us and everybody shares their names, most of which I immediately forget. The kids from 10 are bruised and scabby from the chariot debacle but look like a sturdy enough bunch.
From the next section, District 11 pretends to ignore us, but as they’ve all gone quiet, I guess they’re eavesdropping. Trying to figure out what kind of allies we’d make.
“Ampert, this is your show,” I say. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve got in mind?”
I like how even though he’s only twelve, he jumps right in. “It’s like this. A disproportionate amount of the time, the Careers win. But they’re only one quarter of the tributes. We’ve got three times their numbers. So the idea is, we get the rest of us together and, for a change, we hunt them down instead of letting them hunt us.”
“Can we do that, do you think?” asks a girl from 10. “Why not, Lannie?” replies Ampert.
Why not? I think about how the districts outnumber the Capitol by far more than three to one.
“We don’t have to buy into their mind game, that somehow they will always defeat us,” Ampert declares. “Everyone acts like the odds aren’t in our favor, but I’m sure we can beat those odds!”
At the word odds, Wyatt seems to blink awake. “Well, we’d have to factor in their stature, training, temperament, and sponsor gifts. But even given that, if there are enough of us . . .” His eyes get a faraway look.
“Yeah, this is normal for him,” I tell the group. “He’s working out the odds of the twelve Careers against the rest of us.” Everyone waits respectfully.
“Yes, it can be done. We could do it. It’s still not a probability, but it’s a solid possibility,” reports Wyatt. “Especially if we can get all nine districts to agree.”
“If we kill all the Careers,” asks Ringina, “what do the rest of us do then?”
“Have another meeting,” says Maysilee. “At least this alliance gives us something to do besides freak out.”
“Right now, we don’t have nine districts, though,” Wyatt reminds us. “Just five.”
“I’ve asked the others, but not everybody wants to join,” says Ampert.
Our attention turns to the bleachers stretching across the gym. At the far end, the Careers mirror us, having assembled for lunch. Snot green mixed with the purple of 2 and 4’s deep-sea blue. Districts 11, 9, 6, and 5 remain unattached. We watch as a few members of the Careers toss their empty lunch boxes to the gym floor, then walk down to where District 6 sits and steal a couple of the kids’ lunches. Games or no Games, if you’ve got a decent bone in your body, you hate a bully.
District 6 is composed of four puny kids whose rickety limbs suggest they’ve never seen sunlight. Victims of last night’s chariot episode, they’re bandaged in enough gauze to choke a horse. One has a twisted foot, and I remember another collapsing on the shower floor, wheezing from the insecticide. I’m tempted to write them off entirely—what could they possibly bring to the alliance except neediness? But I snag on the shade of their outfits. Dove color. Seems like a sign.
“Six said no?” I ask Ampert.
“They said they want to remain neutral so the Careers don’t target them.”
“We can see how that’s working out,” I say.
A bone-thin little girl in Lenore Dove’s color collapses on the bleachers, sobbing. I grab my untouched lunch box, scoop up Louella’s, and make my way down the bleachers. The crying girl recoils as I approach, and I hold out Louella’s lunch. “Here. We had a couple extras.” She hesitates, then takes the box with a shaking hand. The wheezing boy accepts the other. “You all managing after the accident?”
The girl nods. “We’re sorry our chariot hurt your friend.”
Frail she is, but considerate. “Not your fault. Never thought for a minute it was.”
“Thanks for not blaming us,” she says.
“Blaming you? Seems like we’re all in this together,” I say. “You know, we’ve got a pretty good alliance in the works. I understand you’re
trying to stay neutral, but really that just makes you a target for everybody. Anyway, the invite’s still good.”
By the time I make it back to my gang, four broken doves are on my tail. They perch on the seats, whisper their names — Wellie, the crying girl; Miles, the asthmatic boy; Atread and Velo, the remaining boy and girl. Then they dig in to their lunches.
“Six makes six,” says Wyatt.
“We need a name,” says Ringina. “If they’re the Careers, who are
we?”
People toss out ideas for names. Now that we’re allies, District 12 offers Loose Cannons, 10 comes up with Dark Horses, and 7 volunteers Invaders.
“No,” says Wellie, intensely. “Those all sound like we’re trying to be tough. But we’re not tough compared to the Careers. What we are is inexperienced, not trained from birth to win the Games.”
“Is that a good selling point?” asks Lannie.
“In a way,” says Ampert. “For one thing, it means we haven’t spent our whole lives buying into the Games as something we aspire to.”
“We’re not collaborators,” says Ringina.
“Right. But we’ll fight if we have to,” says Ampert. “We need a good name for people who are just starting something hard. A district name.”
“Like Neddie Newcomer,” I say without hesitation. The others laugh. “No, it’s a real thing. In the mines, if you’ve just started, they call you
Neddie Newcomer. My pa used to call me that whenever he’d teach me something new. Like, ‘Come on, Neddie Newcomer, let’s learn to tie those boots.’”
“I like it,” says Wellie, a smile transforming her tear-stained face. “We’re the Newcomers.”
Ringina thinks it over, then grins. “And proud of it.”
Everything feels better after lunch. It’s less that I don’t have to fear half the tributes than that I don’t have to think about killing them. The latter is much worse. Now I can join my allies at the booths and know they’ve got my back as we learn to make snares, throw axes, and set a broken leg.
The four tributes from 6 stick to me like glue. My own little dove- colored flock. I hope they don’t all think I can protect them when we hit the arena, because I can’t.
Wyatt seems to have found his people. Ampert’s co-tributes from 3 have a fascination with his odds system, and he seems happy to share it with them. Number freaks find one another, I guess.
It’s Maysilee who surprises me. Back home, she isn’t popular, she’s known. She’s not respected, she’s feared. Not deferred to, but avoided.
Here, following Ampert’s lead, kids bring her their district trinkets and ask her to make them special, and she agrees. The girl must know fifty ways to braid, twist, and loop a cord into a piece of finery. She sets off their humble offerings from home with her fancy patterns. District pride runs deep. From 6, which covers transportation, Wellie has an old bicycle bell, Miles a tin train whistle. Livestock-loving District 10 brought horseshoes; the
lumberjacks of 7, carved wooden trinkets. The girls from District 8 have
little dolls in beautifully sewn outfits. A kid from 3 has a doorknob, but I’m not sure how that reflects technology. Whatever they present her with,
Maysilee gives dignity to their tokens, and even though she still offers a fair amount of unsolicited fashion advice — two girls change their hairstyles and a boy promises to stop biting his nails — our allies adore her.
By the end of the training session, District 11 hasn’t said yes, but they haven’t said no either. If they’re in, I wish they’d say so. We could use more brawn. I saw Hull, the guy who kicked Panache in the shower, fling a pitchfork and decapitate a dummy. Why pretend that’s not what we’re here for?
All of us Newcomers stand a little bit straighter by the time we head back to our vans. Even locked in the dark, Maysilee, Wyatt, and I continue to make plans, sharing information about our allies and working on a strategy. In no time at all, the van pulls to a stop.
“That was quick,” says Maysilee.
The door swings open, and a Peacekeeper gestures for me to get out.
Wyatt makes to follow, but the Peacekeeper holds up a hand. “No, just Abernathy.”
This isn’t good. I slide out of the van in front of a white marble building, far more imposing than our tribute apartment. It stretches the length of the block, a single structure accessed by a huge pair of wooden doors inlaid with a pattern of golden stars. I catch a glimpse of Wyatt’s
furrowed brow as the door slams shut and the van speeds away. What’s going on? Where am I?
Two men in violet uniforms stand in silent attendance at the entrance. As if responding to some unheard signal, they haul open the doors to reveal Plutarch Heavensbee. He approaches me, his face unreadable.
“Hello, Haymitch. I’m afraid there’s been a last-minute schedule change.”
“Just for me?”
“Just for you. It seems the president had second thoughts about your . . . performance.”
Louella under the balcony. Snow up above. While I applauded for all the Capitol to see.
Plutarch doesn’t need to explain further. This is where I pay for painting my poster.
