Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins [118]
I can't help catching her hand as she passes me. “Don't go in there. The birds—” I remember the birds must be gone, but I still don't want anyone in there. Not even her.
“They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love,” Johanna says, and frees her hand with an impatient shake. When she brings me back a shell of water, I take it with a silent nod of thanks, knowing how much she would despise the pity in my voice.
While Johanna collects water and my arrows, Beetee fiddles with his wire, and Finnick takes to the water. I need to clean up, too, but I stay in Peeta's arms, still too shaken to move.
“Who did they use against Finnick?” he asks.
“Somebody named Annie,” I say.
“Must be Annie Cresta,” he says.
“Who?” I ask.
“Annie Cresta. She was the girl Mags volunteered for. She won about five years ago,” says Peeta.
That would have been the summer after my father died, when I first began feeding my family, when my whole being was occupied with battling starvation. “I don't remember those Games much,” I say. “Was that the earthquake year?”
“Yeah. Annie's the one who went mad when her district partner got beheaded. Ran off by herself and hid. But an earthquake broke a dam and most of the arena got flooded. She won because she was the best swimmer,” says Peeta.
“Did she get better after?” I ask. “I mean, her mind?”
“I don't know. I don't remember ever seeing her at the Games again. But she didn't look too stable during the reaping this year,” says Peeta.
So that's who Finnick loves, I think. Not his string of fancy lovers in the Capitol. But a poor, mad girl back home.
A cannon blast brings us all together on the beach. A hovercraft appears in what we estimate to be the six-to-seven-o'clock zone. We watch as the claw dips down five different times to retrieve the pieces of one body, torn apart. It's impossible to tell who it was. Whatever happens at six o'clock, I never want to know.
Peeta draws a new map on a leaf, adding a JJ for jabberjays in the four-to-five-o'clock section and simply writing beast in the one where we saw the tribute collected in pieces. We now have a good idea of what seven of the hours will bring. And if there's any positive to the jabberjay attack, it's that it let us know where we are on the clock face again.
Finnick weaves yet another water basket and a net for fishing. I take a quick swim and put more ointment on my skin. Then I sit at the edge of the water, cleaning the fish Finnick catches and watching the sun drop below the horizon. The bright moon is already on the rise, filling the arena with that strange twilight. We're about to settle down to our meal of raw fish when the anthem begins. And then the faces ...
Cashmere. Gloss. Wiress. Mags. The woman from District 5. The morphling who gave her life for Peeta. Blight. The man from 10.
Eight dead. Plus eight from the first night. Two-thirds of us gone in a day and a half. That must be some kind of record.
“They're really burning through us,” says Johanna. “Who's left? Besides us five and District Two?” asks Finnick.
“Chaff,” says Peeta, without needing to think about it. Perhaps he's been keeping an eye out for him because of Haymitch.
A parachute comes down with a pile of bite-sized square-shaped rolls. “These are from your district, right, Beetee?” Peeta asks.
“Yes, from District Three,” he says. “How many are there?”
Finnick counts them, turning each one over in his hands before he sets it in a neat configuration. I don't know what it is with Finnick and bread, but he seems obsessed with handling it. “Twenty-four,” he says.
“An even two dozen, then?” says Beetee.
“Twenty-four on the nose,” says Finnick. “How should we divide them?”
“Let's each have three, and whoever is still alive at breakfast can take a vote on the rest,” says Johanna. I don't know why this makes me laugh a little. I guess because it's true. When I do, Johanna gives me a look that's almost approving. No, not approving. But maybe slightly pleased.
We wait