Chapter Text
“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!”
Effie Trinket’s ridiculous Capitol accent echoes across the square, where she is greeted with stony silence from the crowd. She looks around expectantly, as if she’s waiting for applause. After the quiet stretches on just long enough to be awkward, she makes her way over to the big glass ball on her right.
“Ladies first!”
I think of my twenty slips, all floating somewhere in that bowl. I feel like one of them; drowning in a sea of other terrified children, praying that no tiny breath of wind blows me into Effie Trinket’s fingertips. She claws around in the bowl for a moment, trying to get a good grip on one of the papers. I hold my breath, my entire body nearly vibrating in fear.
“Delly Cartwright.”
You can hear a few sighs from the crowd at Delly’s name being drawn. Delly is in my year at school, and she really is well-liked. She’s one of the few people who has ever even spoken to me unprompted, and she once told me she liked my dress although it was clearly little more than a few rags. It really is a shame to see Delly go to the Games, but my relief at my name not being called pales in comparison to any sadness I feel for her.
Effie asks Delly some questions, about her name and how old she is and such, but I barely register any of them. All I can think about is how I’ve done it, survived another year, how the woods are waiting for Gale and me after the reaping, how Prim and my mother won’t be left alone. I’m just beginning to come back to reality when Effie teeters over to the boys’ ball. I feel my hands clench again and I try to ignore the sweat that is starting to collect at my temples.
“Now for the boys,” she says brightly and reaches her talon-like fingernails into the bowl.
Slowly, too slowly, she unfolds the tiny slip of paper.
“Gale Hawthorne.”
Gale.
My first thought is that there must be some mistake, followed by the horrifying realization that there has been none at all. Gale’s name was in that bowl forty-two times. The odds were never in his favor.
Someone next to me is holding my arm, I think to keep me upright, which I should be grateful for considering that I might collapse otherwise.
Gale. It can’t be Gale. This was his last reaping, after today he was supposed to be free. Free to work in the mines for the rest of his life, but at least free from the Games. In a single moment, I see a whole future blink out of existence. My weekends in the woods with Gale. Meeting him after a shift in the mines. Keeping each other alive. How can I survive without him?
I struggle to maintain my composure. Any attention I draw to myself now will surely be thrown back in his face in the Games. I steel myself and try to wipe my face clean of any emotion, but when I look up at the stage, Gale’s eyes are locked on mine.
I want to say something to him, to cry out, even to run to him, but I find myself frozen in place. The mayor drones through the Treaty of Treason and the anthem plays, but not once do I break Gale’s gaze.
I start to move when the mayor says something about friends and family being allowed to the Justice Building to say goodbye for the next hour. Gale is whisked off the stage by a group of Peacekeepers, and the crowd begins to shuffle out of the square.
On any normal reaping day, I would be going with them, making my way back to the Seam, then escaping for the woods to forget the day’s events. But not today. I push against the crowd and towards the Justice Building where Gale is being held. Each step seems to take twice as much effort, as if I am wading through waist-deep mud.
As I walk, I try to imagine what I could possibly say to Gale. Advice? It’s not like anything I can say will help him in the arena. All I can do is reassure him that I will take care of his family. Hold up my end of our reaping pact, that we would be sure that the other’s family wouldn’t starve. See that they’re alright. I can give him that one small bit of peace.
A small crowd has started to gather at the steps of the Justice Building, and the Peacekeepers lead us inside into a small hallway with several heavy doors lining it.
One of the Peacekeepers turns to me, and asks in a gruff, clipped voice, “Boy or girl?” He means which tribute am I here to say goodbye to.
I croak out the first word I’ve spoken since the square. “Boy.”
“This way,” he nods me over to one of the doors.
The Peacekeepers shove me into the room. “Five minutes.”
I don’t know where to start, but luckily Gale says nothing. He wraps me in his arms, and I breathe in his scent, allowing myself this moment of defenselessness.
After a moment, I pull back. I grasp at something to say, but the only thing that comes out is, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry for what Katniss? We both knew it was going to happen someday,” he shakes his head. It’s horrible, but it’s true. I think of all of Gale’s slips in that bowl again. I think of the forty-two times he has filled out a tesserae slip, carefully printed his name, prepared himself for this very moment. He’s right. It was inevitable that he’d be chosen.
As I was walking over, I couldn’t think of anything close to advice, but looking at Gale now, it seems cruel to offer him nothing. I’m his hunting partner. “You can do it, you know. You can make yourself a bow. You can hunt. You just have to find food, and water, and—”
“And win it, Katniss? Just like that?” he says.
“Don’t give up on yourself,” I say. “You can set traps. No one can rig a snare like you can. You can sit up in a tree, wait for everything to wander into them, and it’ll be over before you know it. You could do it, Gale, you could.”
As I’m saying it, I find myself believing it. Gale could win. He’s strong, he can hunt, and he’s attractive enough to get a few sponsors. He has a better chance than most of our tributes.
Gale sighs. “That’s true. What you said about the snares. I mean… it’s just hunting, isn’t it? How different could it be, really?”
I think there would be a great deal of difference between snaring a rabbit for dinner and killing an armed, thinking, living human being. But this doesn’t seem like a very helpful thought to share right now.
Instead, I bite my tongue. “Right.”
He considers it for a moment, then nods.
I continue, “I won’t let them starve, Gale. I’ll check in on Hazelle and the kids, I’ll keep dividing up what I can get from the woods. I’ll be there for them.”
Gale nods. He knows I mean it.
“Katniss,” he begins, but the Peacekeepers are already coming back in, taking me away. Gale’s eyes widen. “Katniss. I’ll be back for you. For us.”
I throw my arms around his neck one last time, burying my face in his shoulder, but the Peacekeepers grab me by the waist and throw me out the door, slamming it behind me.
*
I’m so preoccupied with the last five minutes that I don’t even realize I’ve started walking away until I collide with the person coming out of Delly’s room. “Sorry,” I mutter, keeping my head down and trying to find the stairs which brought me up here.
“It’s alright,” says the voice of the figure I’ve just collided with, and I realize with a start who it is: Peeta Mellark.
Peeta Mellark! What is he doing here? As if today isn’t already the worst day of my life, now I’ve crashed headfirst into the one person in the entire district I find myself incapable of speaking to.
I don’t have a problem with Peeta Mellark. It’s not like he’s a bad person, and I don’t dislike him or anything. It’s only that I can’t look at him without thinking of that horrible day in the rain. The bread that saved my life, what I owe to him because of it, and my inability to repay that debt. In school, I try to avoid him to avoid my own discomfort. Only now I am here, feeling like the world is collapsing around me while he stands there, oblivious to the war waging in my mind.
He holds my arm to steady me and studies my face for a moment. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything?”
I try to tell him I’m fine, and instead, I let out something between a squeak and a grunt. Then I rip my arm out of his hand, turn on my heel, and run down the stairs.
It’s only when I’m outside, blinking in the sunlight, that it dawns on me why Peeta was there. I know he and Delly are good friends, I’ve seen them together at school. He’s probably horrified that his friend has been reaped, and he’d just finished saying goodbye to her as I had to Gale. But still, he tried to help me. And I responded by slamming myself into him and running away.
No matter how hard I try, it seems I will never stop owing something to Peeta Mellark.
*
The next few days pass in a daze. The days grow steadily warmer, and I can never seem to fully wash away the sheen of sweat that covers my body at all times. Most of the time I spend trying to imagine where Gale is, what he might be doing, how he might be feeling. Once or twice, I find myself imagining the questions I want to ask him about the Capitol, then I catch myself. What good is there in hoping that he will return? Better to just accept that he isn’t.
Normally, I only follow the Hunger Games somewhat vaguely. I stick to watching what is absolutely required of me and spend the rest of the time trying to put the whole horrible thing as far from my mind as possible. But with Gale gone, I am glued to the television whenever I have a moment of free time, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, or at least something to calm me down.
Nothing ever does. The only outcome of my obsession is that I become intimately aware of the schedule of the Games. First, the tributes have to take the long journey from their districts to the Capitol, so on the day after the reapings, Caesar Flickerman spends hours replaying the various tapes and debating the various strengths and weaknesses of each tribute, so that early gamblers can get a jump on gambling on the winner. Gale is given fair odds, buoyed by his age, height, and what Caesar describes as his “intimidating aura,” but they are lowered because of his being from Twelve, our useless mentor Haymitch, and our long-standing inability to produce a winner. The way they debate so casually about Gale’s looming death disturbs me. But then, everything about the Capitol is disturbing.
The only thing that comforts me is the video they keep replaying from the reaping. Gale’s eyes never once meet the camera—because I know they are looking directly at me.
The next night, I catch my first glimpse of Gale since I said goodbye to him in the Justice Building, when the tribute parade takes place. Gale and Delly come out last, dressed in black jumpsuits that seem to be intended to represent lumps of coal in their most literal form. I watch Gale, his jaw set, unmoving in his chariot, until they complete their lap around the Capitol’s City Circle, and the black costumes melt into the night as the sun sets behind President Snow’s mansion. A few of the tributes are still visible—the tributes from District 3, electronics, are dressed in some sort of blanket of lights that blink long into the twilight. But Gale has disappeared completely. The chariot that holds him might as well not be there at all.
The next few days are supposed to be for tribute training, which we aren’t allowed to watch for some reason, so instead, they keep replaying the clips from the reaping and the tribute parade and repeating the same things about each person’s odds. The only interesting development comes on the last night of training, when the Gamemakers reveal their scores, another thing for the Capitol viewers to factor into their death bets. Gale pulls a ten, which Caesar notes is a surprisingly high score for someone from District Twelve. I think I am meant to feel happy for him, but all I can think is that he now has an even bigger target on his back than before.
All my watching of the pre-Games coverage has twisted my mind into knots, and I find myself trapped in dreams where the little girl who was reaped in Eleven flies around on butterfly wings above Gale, shooting him with his own arrows. When she speaks, she speaks in Prim’s voice, saying “it’s only a dream, Katniss, it’s only a dream,” until I wake up with a lump in my throat, wishing Gale’s absence was nothing but a dream and instead knowing that it will continue to be a waking nightmare.
*
The final night before the Games consists of tribute interviews. The girl tributes go first, then the boys, which means I will have to sit through twenty-three interviews with people who want to kill my best friend just to hear him speak for three short minutes.
The interviews do little to calm my nerves. The boy and girl from Two have clearly been raised from birth specifically to win the Games. The boy from Four looks like he could snap me in half with one arm. Even the girl from Eleven, the one who haunts my dreams, speaks with a kind of quiet confidence that unsettles me.
Delly is charming, of course, giggling her way through her interview and complimenting Caesar on his choice of suit. They do a whole bit where they debate whether or not his blue suit is baby blue or powder blue, which delights the Capitol audience and bores me to pieces. The only moment which stands out is when she talks about home, saying District Twelve is filled with the kindest and hardest-working people in all of Panem. If I wasn’t so scared for Gale, I would laugh. Only Delly could look at our pathetic, struggling district and decide it was filled with the nation’s best people.
Gale’s interview is a disaster. From the start, you can tell he hates Caesar, at first refusing to answer a single question, then when Caesar asks him how he felt when his name got drawn, he launches into a whole thing about the tesserae and how he wasn’t even surprised, because, for people like him, it’s basically a guarantee that their names will be drawn. Caesar tries to change the subject to District Twelve, which almost works because Gale stops ranting and says that there are people waiting for him back home, and he knows he can make it back to them. Caesar awkwardly pats him on the back as the buzzer goes off, signaling the end of his interview.
“Well, good luck Mr. Hawthorne, and may the odds be ever in your favor,” he booms, and Gale’s expression takes on such a degree of loathing that even the biggest fool in the Capitol couldn’t miss it. Gale slinks back to his seat as the anthem blares. I hold on to my conviction that he can win on strength alone, but hearing his words, which I had only ever heard in the privacy of the woods, repeated on national television grips me with a sinking feeling that he has just ensured that the Gamemakers, too, will make his life a living hell in the arena.
*
The next morning, I find Prim waiting for me in front of the television. She has been making herself scarce during this last week, but now she holds out her arms to me as we watch the countdown to the 74th Hunger Games begin. First, a long speech from Caesar about how these are sure to be the best yet. Then, another extended replay of all the reapings, complete with tribute scores and personal facts from their interviews. Then the arena finally fades in on the screen, and the tributes emerge from the ground.
We watch, clutching each other, as Gale stands, blinking, for what seems like the longest sixty seconds ever. He looks around him, drinking in the sight of the trees, the shape of the arena, the distance to the Cornucopia. Then the cannon goes off, and he is running, running, with the same concentration in his eyes I’ve seen from him in the woods when he is stalking something he knows is a sure kill.
He outpaces all the other tributes, and the camera, which has been holding tight on his face, finally pans over to what he is running towards: an exquisite silver bow, perched on top of the piles of food, supplies, and weapons. I know he can do it, that he can reach the bow first. If Gale can get his hands on that bow, he’s sure to win.
A silver sheath of arrows lies next to it, which Gale scoops up and swings over his shoulder.
His hands are just closing around the bow when the knife finds its target in his back.