The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins [8]
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 excitement 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 contains 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 over his 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, doubling 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