The Hunger Games Part 1: The Tribute
Chapter 2
One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to
wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back. It was
as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there
struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.
That’s how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak,
totally stunned as the name bounces around the inside of my skull. Someone is
gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he
caught me.
There must have been some mistake. This can’t be hap pening. Prim was one
slip of paper in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote that I’d not
even both ered to worry about her. Hadn’t I done everything? Taken the tesserae,
refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had
been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.
Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they
always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair.
And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her
sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see
the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It’s this
detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.
“Prim!” The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to
move again. “Prim!” I don’t need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make
way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she
is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.
“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!”
There’s some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn’t had a volunteer in
decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name
decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name
has been pulled from the ball, another eligible boy, if a boy’s name has been read,
or girl, if a girl’s name has been read, can step forward to take his or her place. In
some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are
eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where
the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are
all but extinct.
“Lovely!” says Effie Trinket. “But I believe there’s a small matter of introducing
the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then
we, um . . .” she trails off, unsure herself.
“What does it matter?” says the mayor. He’s looking at me with a pained
expression on his face. He doesn’t know me really, but there’s a faint recognition
there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have
spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother
and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for
her father, vaporized in the mines. Does he remember that? “What does it
matter?” he repeats gruffly. “Let her come forward.”
Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She’s wrapped her skinny arms
around me like a vice. “No, Katniss! No! You can’t go!”
“Prim, let go,” I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don’t want to
cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make
note of my tears, and I’ll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no
one that satisfaction. “Let go!”
I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see Gale has lifted
Prim off the ground and she’s thrashing in his arms. “Up you go, Catnip,” he says,
in a voice he’s fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my
mother. I steel myself and climb the steps.
“Well, bravo!” gushes Effie Trinket. “That’s the spirit of the Games!” She’s
pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. “What’s your
name?”
I swallow hard. “Katniss Everdeen,” I say.
“I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don’t want her to steal all the glory, do
we? Come on, everybody! Let’s give a big round of applause to our newest
tribute!” trills Effie Trinket.
To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not
even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring.
Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have
encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging
applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of
dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not
condone. All of this is wrong.
Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don’t expect it because I don’t
think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I
stepped up to take Prim’s place, and now it seems I have become some one
precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd
touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to
me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at
funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you
love.
Now I am truly in danger of crying, but fortunately Haymitch chooses this time
to come staggering across the stage to congratulate me. “Look at her. Look at this
one!” he hollers, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He’s surprisingly strong
for such a wreck. “I like her!” His breath reeks of liquor and it’s been a long time
since he’s bathed. “Lots of . . . “ He can’t think of the word for a while. “Spunk!”
he says triumphantly. “More than you!” he releases me and starts for the front of
the stage. “More than you!” he shouts, pointing directly into a camera.
Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting
the Capitol? I’ll never know because just as he’s opening his mouth to continue,
Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.
He’s disgusting, but I’m grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on him, I
have just enough time to release the small, choked sound in my throat and
compose myself. I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance.
I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Gale. For a moment, I yearn for
something . . . the idea of us leaving the district . . . making our way in the woods .
. . but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have
volunteered for Prim?
Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Effie Trinket is trying to get the
ball rolling again. “What an exciting day!” she warbles as she attempts to
straighten her wig, which has listed severely to the right. “But more excite ment to
come! It’s time to choose our boy tribute!” Clearly hoping to contain her tenuous
hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that
con tains the boys’ names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to
the podium, and I don’t even have time to wish for Gale’s safety when she’s
reading the name. “Peeta Mellark.”
Peeta Mellark!
Oh, no, I think. Not him. Because I recognize this name, although I have never
spoken directly to its owner. Peeta Mellark.
No, the odds are not in my favor today. I watch him as he makes his way
toward the stage. Medium height, stocky build, ashy blond hair that falls in waves
overhis forehead. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, you can see
his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm I’ve seen so
often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place.
Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older
brothers, I know, I’ve seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to
volunteer and the other won’t. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far
for most people on reaping day. What I did was the radical thing.
The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every
year at this point — it’s required — but I’m not listening to a word.
Why him? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn’t matter. Peeta Mellark
and I are not friends. Not even neighbors. We don’t speak. Our only real
interaction happened years ago. He’s probably forgotten it. But I haven’t and I
know I never will. . . .
It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in the mine accident
three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The
numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere,
dou bling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in
my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.
The district had given us a small amount of money as compensation for his
death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time my mother would be
expected to get a job. Only she didn’t. She didn’t do anything but sit propped up in
a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes fixed on some
point in the distance. Once in a while, she’d stir, get up as if moved by some
urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. No amount of pleading
from Prim seemed to affect her.
I was terrified. I suppose now that my mother was locked in some dark world of
sadness, but at the time, all I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a
mother as well. At eleven years old, with Prim just seven, I took over as head of
the family. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market and cooked it as
best I could and tried to keep Prim and myself looking presentable. Because if it
had become known that my mother could no longer care for us, the district would
have taken us away from her and placed us in the community home. I’d grown up
seeing those home kids at school. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their
faces, the hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward. I could never let that
happen to Prim. Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the
reason, who brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who
still polished my father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the layer
of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would
crush her like a bug. So I kept our predicament a secret.
But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to death. There’s no other
way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I
would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious
grain and oil to feed us. Only there were still several weeks to go. We could well
be dead by then.
Starvation’s not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn’t seen the victims?
Older people who can’t work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those
injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon
them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, you hear the wails
from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the body. Starvation
is never the cause of death officially. It’s always the flu, or exposure, or
pneumonia. But that fools no one.
On the afternoon of my encounter with Peeta Mellark, the rain was falling in
relentless icy sheets. I had been in town, trying to trade some threadbare old baby
clothes of Prim’s in the public market, but there were no takers. Although I had
been to the Hob on several occasions with my father, I was too frightened to
venture into that rough, gritty place alone. The rain had soaked through my
father’s hunting jacket, leaving me chilled to the bone. For three days, we’d had
nothing but boiled water with some old dried mint leaves I’d found in the back of a
cupboard. By the time the market closed, I was shaking so hard I dropped my
bundle of baby clothes in a mud puddle. I didn’t pick it up for fear I would keel over
and be unable to regain my feet. Besides, no one wanted those clothes.
I couldn’t go home. Because at home was my mother with her dead eyes and
my little sister, with her hollow cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn’t walk into that
room with the smoky fire from the damp branches I had scavenged at the edge of
the woods after the coal had run out, my bands empty of any hope.
I found myself stumbling along a muddy lane behind the shops that serve the
wealthiest townspeople. The merchants live above their businesses, so I was
essentially in their backyards. I remember the outlines of garden beds not yet
planted for the spring, a goat or two in a pen, one sodden dog tied to a post,
hunched defeated in the muck.
All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. But it
crossed my mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were
fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher’s or rotted vegetables at the grocer’s,
something no one but my family was desperate enough to eat. Unfortunately, the
bins had just been emptied.
When I passed the baker’s, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt
dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen
door. I stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain
interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life. I lifted the
lid to the baker’s trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.
Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker’s wife,
telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick
she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash. The words
were ugly and I had no defense. As I carefully replaced the lid and backed away, I
noticed him, a boy with blond hair peering out from behind his mother’s back. I’d
seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn’t know his name. He stuck with
the town kids, so how would I? His mother went back into the bakery, grumbling,
but he must have been watching me as I made my way behind the pen that held
their pig and leaned against the far side of an old apple tree. The realization that
I’d have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid
down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and
tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community
home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.
There was a clatter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again and
the sound of a blow, and I vaguely wondered what was going on. Feet sloshed
toward me through the mud and I thought, It’s her. She’s coming to drive me away
with a stick. But it wasn’t her. It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large
loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were
scorched black.
His mother was yelling, “Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No
one decent will buy burned bread!”
He began to tear off chunks from the burned parts and toss them into the
trough, and the front bakery bell rung and the mother disappeared to help a
customer.
The boy never even glanced my way, but I was watching him. Because of the
bread, because of the red weal that stood out on his cheekbone. What had she hit
him with?
My parents never hit us. I couldn’t even imagine it. The boy took one look back
to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on
the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in my direction. The second quickly followed, and
he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.
I stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for the
burned areas. Did he mean for me to have them? He must have. Because there
they were at my feet. Before anyone could witness what had happened I shoved
the loaves up under my shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about me, and
walked swiftly away. The heat of the bread burned into my skin, but I clutched it
tighter, clinging to life.
By the time I reached home, the loaves had cooled some what, but the insides
were still warm. When I dropped them on the table, Prim’s hands reached to tear
off a chunk, but I made her sit, forced my mother to join us at the table, and
poured warm tea. I scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. We ate an
entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.
I put my clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a dreamless
sleep. It didn’t occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned
the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it
meant being punished, and then delivered them to me. But I dismissed this. It must
have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn’t even know me. Still,
just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely
resulted in a beating if discovered. 1 couldn’t explain his actions.
We ate slices of bread for breakfast and headed to school. It was as if spring
had come overnight. Warm sweet air. Fluffy clouds. At school, I passed the boy in
the hall, his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his
friends and didn’t acknowledge me in any way. But as I collected Prim and started
for home that afternoon, I found him staring at me from across the school yard.
Our eyes met for only a second, then he turned his head away. I dropped my gaze,
embarrassed, and that’s when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year. A bell went
off in my head. I thought of the hours spent in the woods with my father and I knew
how we were going to survive.
To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark,
and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was
not doomed. And more than once, I have turned in the school hallway and caught
his eyes trained on me, only to quickly flit away. I feel like I owe him something,
and I hate owing people. Maybe if I had thanked him at some point, I’d be feeling
less conflicted now. I thought about it a couple of times, but the opportunity never
seemed to present itself. And now it never will. Because we’re going to be thrown
into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thankyou
in there? Somehow it just won’t seem sincere if I’m trying to slit his throat.
The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Peeta and me
to shake hands. His are as solid and warm as those loaves of bread. Peeta looks
me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring
squeeze. Maybe it’s just a nervous spasm.
We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays.
Oh, well, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill
him before I do.
Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.
Chapter 2
One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to
wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back. It was
as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there
struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.
That’s how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak,
totally stunned as the name bounces around the inside of my skull. Someone is
gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he
caught me.
There must have been some mistake. This can’t be hap pening. Prim was one
slip of paper in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote that I’d not
even both ered to worry about her. Hadn’t I done everything? Taken the tesserae,
refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had
been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.
Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they
always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair.
And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her
sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see
the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It’s this
detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.
“Prim!” The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to
move again. “Prim!” I don’t need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make
way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she
is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.
“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!”
There’s some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn’t had a volunteer in
decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name
decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name
has been pulled from the ball, another eligible boy, if a boy’s name has been read,
or girl, if a girl’s name has been read, can step forward to take his or her place. In
some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are
eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where
the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are
all but extinct.
“Lovely!” says Effie Trinket. “But I believe there’s a small matter of introducing
the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then
we, um . . .” she trails off, unsure herself.
“What does it matter?” says the mayor. He’s looking at me with a pained
expression on his face. He doesn’t know me really, but there’s a faint recognition
there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have
spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother
and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for
her father, vaporized in the mines. Does he remember that? “What does it
matter?” he repeats gruffly. “Let her come forward.”
Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She’s wrapped her skinny arms
around me like a vice. “No, Katniss! No! You can’t go!”
“Prim, let go,” I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don’t want to
cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make
note of my tears, and I’ll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no
one that satisfaction. “Let go!”
I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see Gale has lifted
Prim off the ground and she’s thrashing in his arms. “Up you go, Catnip,” he says,
in a voice he’s fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my
mother. I steel myself and climb the steps.
“Well, bravo!” gushes Effie Trinket. “That’s the spirit of the Games!” She’s
pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. “What’s your
name?”
I swallow hard. “Katniss Everdeen,” I say.
“I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don’t want her to steal all the glory, do
we? Come on, everybody! Let’s give a big round of applause to our newest
tribute!” trills Effie Trinket.
To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not
even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring.
Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have
encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging
applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of
dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not
condone. All of this is wrong.
Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don’t expect it because I don’t
think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I
stepped up to take Prim’s place, and now it seems I have become some one
precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd
touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to
me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at
funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you
love.
Now I am truly in danger of crying, but fortunately Haymitch chooses this time
to come staggering across the stage to congratulate me. “Look at her. Look at this
one!” he hollers, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He’s surprisingly strong
for such a wreck. “I like her!” His breath reeks of liquor and it’s been a long time
since he’s bathed. “Lots of . . . “ He can’t think of the word for a while. “Spunk!”
he says triumphantly. “More than you!” he releases me and starts for the front of
the stage. “More than you!” he shouts, pointing directly into a camera.
Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting
the Capitol? I’ll never know because just as he’s opening his mouth to continue,
Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.
He’s disgusting, but I’m grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on him, I
have just enough time to release the small, choked sound in my throat and
compose myself. I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance.
I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Gale. For a moment, I yearn for
something . . . the idea of us leaving the district . . . making our way in the woods .
. . but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have
volunteered for Prim?
Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Effie Trinket is trying to get the
ball rolling again. “What an exciting day!” she warbles as she attempts to
straighten her wig, which has listed severely to the right. “But more excite ment to
come! It’s time to choose our boy tribute!” Clearly hoping to contain her tenuous
hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that
con tains the boys’ names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to
the podium, and I don’t even have time to wish for Gale’s safety when she’s
reading the name. “Peeta Mellark.”
Peeta Mellark!
Oh, no, I think. Not him. Because I recognize this name, although I have never
spoken directly to its owner. Peeta Mellark.
No, the odds are not in my favor today. I watch him as he makes his way
toward the stage. Medium height, stocky build, ashy blond hair that falls in waves
overhis forehead. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, you can see
his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm I’ve seen so
often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place.
Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older
brothers, I know, I’ve seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to
volunteer and the other won’t. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far
for most people on reaping day. What I did was the radical thing.
The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every
year at this point — it’s required — but I’m not listening to a word.
Why him? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn’t matter. Peeta Mellark
and I are not friends. Not even neighbors. We don’t speak. Our only real
interaction happened years ago. He’s probably forgotten it. But I haven’t and I
know I never will. . . .
It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in the mine accident
three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The
numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere,
dou bling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in
my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.
The district had given us a small amount of money as compensation for his
death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time my mother would be
expected to get a job. Only she didn’t. She didn’t do anything but sit propped up in
a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes fixed on some
point in the distance. Once in a while, she’d stir, get up as if moved by some
urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. No amount of pleading
from Prim seemed to affect her.
I was terrified. I suppose now that my mother was locked in some dark world of
sadness, but at the time, all I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a
mother as well. At eleven years old, with Prim just seven, I took over as head of
the family. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market and cooked it as
best I could and tried to keep Prim and myself looking presentable. Because if it
had become known that my mother could no longer care for us, the district would
have taken us away from her and placed us in the community home. I’d grown up
seeing those home kids at school. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their
faces, the hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward. I could never let that
happen to Prim. Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the
reason, who brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who
still polished my father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the layer
of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would
crush her like a bug. So I kept our predicament a secret.
But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to death. There’s no other
way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I
would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious
grain and oil to feed us. Only there were still several weeks to go. We could well
be dead by then.
Starvation’s not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn’t seen the victims?
Older people who can’t work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those
injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon
them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, you hear the wails
from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the body. Starvation
is never the cause of death officially. It’s always the flu, or exposure, or
pneumonia. But that fools no one.
On the afternoon of my encounter with Peeta Mellark, the rain was falling in
relentless icy sheets. I had been in town, trying to trade some threadbare old baby
clothes of Prim’s in the public market, but there were no takers. Although I had
been to the Hob on several occasions with my father, I was too frightened to
venture into that rough, gritty place alone. The rain had soaked through my
father’s hunting jacket, leaving me chilled to the bone. For three days, we’d had
nothing but boiled water with some old dried mint leaves I’d found in the back of a
cupboard. By the time the market closed, I was shaking so hard I dropped my
bundle of baby clothes in a mud puddle. I didn’t pick it up for fear I would keel over
and be unable to regain my feet. Besides, no one wanted those clothes.
I couldn’t go home. Because at home was my mother with her dead eyes and
my little sister, with her hollow cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn’t walk into that
room with the smoky fire from the damp branches I had scavenged at the edge of
the woods after the coal had run out, my bands empty of any hope.
I found myself stumbling along a muddy lane behind the shops that serve the
wealthiest townspeople. The merchants live above their businesses, so I was
essentially in their backyards. I remember the outlines of garden beds not yet
planted for the spring, a goat or two in a pen, one sodden dog tied to a post,
hunched defeated in the muck.
All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. But it
crossed my mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were
fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher’s or rotted vegetables at the grocer’s,
something no one but my family was desperate enough to eat. Unfortunately, the
bins had just been emptied.
When I passed the baker’s, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt
dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen
door. I stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain
interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life. I lifted the
lid to the baker’s trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.
Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker’s wife,
telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick
she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash. The words
were ugly and I had no defense. As I carefully replaced the lid and backed away, I
noticed him, a boy with blond hair peering out from behind his mother’s back. I’d
seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn’t know his name. He stuck with
the town kids, so how would I? His mother went back into the bakery, grumbling,
but he must have been watching me as I made my way behind the pen that held
their pig and leaned against the far side of an old apple tree. The realization that
I’d have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid
down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and
tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community
home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.
There was a clatter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again and
the sound of a blow, and I vaguely wondered what was going on. Feet sloshed
toward me through the mud and I thought, It’s her. She’s coming to drive me away
with a stick. But it wasn’t her. It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large
loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were
scorched black.
His mother was yelling, “Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No
one decent will buy burned bread!”
He began to tear off chunks from the burned parts and toss them into the
trough, and the front bakery bell rung and the mother disappeared to help a
customer.
The boy never even glanced my way, but I was watching him. Because of the
bread, because of the red weal that stood out on his cheekbone. What had she hit
him with?
My parents never hit us. I couldn’t even imagine it. The boy took one look back
to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on
the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in my direction. The second quickly followed, and
he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.
I stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for the
burned areas. Did he mean for me to have them? He must have. Because there
they were at my feet. Before anyone could witness what had happened I shoved
the loaves up under my shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about me, and
walked swiftly away. The heat of the bread burned into my skin, but I clutched it
tighter, clinging to life.
By the time I reached home, the loaves had cooled some what, but the insides
were still warm. When I dropped them on the table, Prim’s hands reached to tear
off a chunk, but I made her sit, forced my mother to join us at the table, and
poured warm tea. I scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. We ate an
entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.
I put my clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a dreamless
sleep. It didn’t occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned
the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it
meant being punished, and then delivered them to me. But I dismissed this. It must
have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn’t even know me. Still,
just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely
resulted in a beating if discovered. 1 couldn’t explain his actions.
We ate slices of bread for breakfast and headed to school. It was as if spring
had come overnight. Warm sweet air. Fluffy clouds. At school, I passed the boy in
the hall, his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his
friends and didn’t acknowledge me in any way. But as I collected Prim and started
for home that afternoon, I found him staring at me from across the school yard.
Our eyes met for only a second, then he turned his head away. I dropped my gaze,
embarrassed, and that’s when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year. A bell went
off in my head. I thought of the hours spent in the woods with my father and I knew
how we were going to survive.
To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark,
and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was
not doomed. And more than once, I have turned in the school hallway and caught
his eyes trained on me, only to quickly flit away. I feel like I owe him something,
and I hate owing people. Maybe if I had thanked him at some point, I’d be feeling
less conflicted now. I thought about it a couple of times, but the opportunity never
seemed to present itself. And now it never will. Because we’re going to be thrown
into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thankyou
in there? Somehow it just won’t seem sincere if I’m trying to slit his throat.
The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Peeta and me
to shake hands. His are as solid and warm as those loaves of bread. Peeta looks
me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring
squeeze. Maybe it’s just a nervous spasm.
We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays.
Oh, well, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill
him before I do.
Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.
0 comments:
Post a Comment