Chapter Text
The sea speaks to me.
Jump. Let salt fill your lungs.
The water embraces you
A womb that delivers death.
In the arms of what I love,
I crave my own drowning.
But I cannot stop
Coming up for breath
—--------------------------------------
My mother used to say that misfortune comes in twos.
Blood drips from me, staining an unmarred white page.
Then my pen runs out of ink.
I scribble over the paper, hoping to coax out the last bit of liquid. Empty. I press the skin beneath the fresh fish hook prick on the tip of my thumb. Blood pools faster into a shiny circle. With the makeshift ink coating the dry pen, I finish the last word of the poem.
I never quite understood my mother’s saying; bad things happening in twos require a reprieve between the third and fourth.
“Why are you always writing in that?”
I snap the leather shut, smearing black and red.
There are only a few occasions when the District Four waterfront is lifeless like today: holidays, bad storms, or the Reapings. Not negating any overlap between the three. In the quiet, Annie Cresta still manages to float up behind me.
It is too late to reach for the fish hooks I made earlier to pretend that is all I am doing. I turn away from the sun breaking over the sea’s surface to look into her glinting eyes, framed by choppy, self-cut hair. Peering down at me with her hands planted on her hips, I can tell she is immensely pleased with herself. That won’t do. I lean against a sun-bleached wood post and ruffle my hair in a way I’ve noticed the girls in school like. Anything to distract from the embarrassment painted on my cheeks.
“Because the list of girls I’ve kissed requires constant updating. Let me know when you want me to add you,” I say. Annie, two days from thirteen, can be dissuaded from anything with the mere suggestion of touching a boy. She is convinced we’re all infested with sandflies.
While Annie mimes vomiting into the foamy water, I tuck the journal safely into my waistband.
“Who’d want to kiss you?”
A lot of our schoolmates. Her older sister. I spare her that information.
“What brings you out to the docks on this glorious day?”
Words fail her, the mischievous corners of her mouth drooping. The teasing in her posture disappears, and, with it, the peace of the morning.
“Dammit, Annie.” I scramble to my feet.
I hear her call for me as I take off sprinting, but I don’t want her to catch up to me. Serves her right for wasting valuable time.
Today, no fishers and fishmongers haggle over prices in the stalls that line the muddy roads. The warehouses where I unload my quota three times a week are silent–no loud cursing or sounds of boats bumping into the docks. In their emptiness, the stench of the ocean’s rotting carcass settles even thicker. The most dilapidated houses are closest to the water, composed of rickety bark and strategically placed seaweed. My home is a little past these, but not by much. Ignoring the acidic burn in my legs, I ascend the steep stairs that lead away from the Shore.
I do not stop running until I can see my front yard, covered in thick coils of the halyard given to me by Captain Bow. Although no longer dependable enough to hoist a mast, I convinced him I could weave the fraying rope into a decent net.
Mrs. Cresta is pacing between the piles of rope. She wears the same jagged haircut as Annie. It appears more eccentric hanging around her gaunt face and pale eyes, perpetually teary since Shipmaker's Sorrow claimed her husband’s life last year. Mrs. Cresta stops when she sees me.
“Finnick, we heard shouting. Annie said she knew where you might be–”
I push past her. The inside of the house sinks my shoulders like a barbed blanket. Shaking cries and a soothing voice waft from the bedroom through the thick air.
My father sits against the wall furthest from his bed, his head on his knees and his hands covering his ears. He rocks back and forth like a ship over violent waters. Nonsensical mutterings fall from his lips, but they are painted over by the whispers of the woman who kneels in front of him. I know my father does not understand what her words mean. The Capitol has long declared the language dead.
One Panem. One voice.
Uttering the language is as good as threatening rebellion. Most of us only dare speak it on the boats far out at sea. But my father does not hear rebellion. He hears the ghost of my mother.
“Tranquillo, mi niño, tranquillo,” Mags says. I place a tentative hand on her shoulder. The wrinkles on her face deepen with kindness upon seeing me. I set my notebook on my father’s nightstand, then kneel beside her. I swallow the fear that used to rise so easily when my father’s episodes began. “Has he taken his medicine?”
I shake my head. A toppled white bottle lies on the dusty floor an arm’s length away, where I had cast it last night in a fit of frustration. No matter what I tried, his wax-like lips refused help. Mags sees the pills, I am sure, but she does not deliver the scolding I deserve. My father’s body jolts.
“Did you see them fall from the sky? They put a radio in my head,” he says into his knees, hands pressing even tighter into his ears. His eyes are screwed shut. “In my dream they told me this Reaping would be my last.” His words freeze my blood, and for a moment I cannot move. It’s not real, I tell myself. When he’s like this, nothing he says is real. “They’re listening to everything. Get it out!” He pounds his temples with his palms, snapping me out of my daze. I want to grab him and intercept his blows, but I know better.
“It’s not real, Dad. It’s me, Dad, it’s Finnick. I’m real,” I say in a low, calming tone. “Think about what’s real. The saltiness of the water. The sound of the waves. The smell of Mama’s soap.”
I never know if anything I do or say actually works. Usually, I may as well be a fly buzzing around the room. But sometimes, like today, I’ll land on something that seems to call him away from wherever it is he goes. He reaches for me, and I move closer, allowing him to search my face with calloused fingers. His eyelids peel open.
I inherited most of myself from my mother: Her brown skin. Her sharpened cheekbones. Her dark hair that bronzes under the sun. I’m lucky for it; people speak of her beauty even though she is long gone.
I’ve been told that my eyes are my father’s. They may be the same sea green, but his are sunken with an emptiness. A sadness. An unknown, petrifying fear. And I don’t recognize myself in them.
“Finnick,” he says. I touch his wrist as his thumb smooths over my cheek. “They’re listening to us. Waiting for the words. They’re after me, Finnick, and they’re going to come after you, too.”
His pulse is racing under his skin. Although his words are senseless to me, they are frighteningly real to him.
“They won’t, Dad. I won’t let them. You’re safe with Mags and me.” We sit there for a long time, assuring him that he has our protection. I look up at the creak of a hinge and see Annie observing from the doorway. Now that my father’s breathing has slowed, I can forgive her for delaying down by the Shore. She isn’t the one who left him alone. “Mags, Annie, and me. We’ll all protect you.”
At a crawling pace, Mags and I get my father back into bed. I try once again to coax the pills into my father to no avail.
“Food might help,” I say to Mags. Annie bounds out of the bedroom, saying to leave it to her. Soon, I hear her and Mrs. Cresta bustling around the kitchen.
“We’re lucky you were passing by,” I say under my breath once my father begins to snore. The Victor’s Village perches on a cliffside nearly an hour’s walk away. But I know Mags walks the shoreline on the nights when sleep won’t take her.
“Not luck,” Mags says. In the Panem tongue, Mags speaks with the same lilt as my mother. “I worried the stress of the day might lead to a repeat of last year.” Last Reaping day, we needed to bandage my father’s hands after he punched through the television. He insisted there was someone in the empty screen.
“I think he’s getting worse,” I say, unable to let the words out in a calm, measured manner. Only a few years ago, my father could go months without an episode. Now, every outburst feels closer to the last.
I want Mags to tell me I’m wrong, that my father is the same as always and will remain so.
“From what I know, your grandfather’s condition progressed similarly,” she says. I wish she would lie to me. “There was a time when we could have treated this properly in Four.”
She has done what she can for my father, but as she won her games years ago, her influence in the Capitol is thin. The fact remains that the medicine my father needs is a Capitol luxury. She doesn’t need to say it. Mags rarely speaks of life before the Hunger Games. I have learned to recognize the bitterness in her voice. I have also learned not to repeat it. Even now, I glance nervously over my shoulder.
“Come, we should let him rest,” Mags says.
Mrs. Cresta stirs a pot while Annie opens our mostly bare cupboards, probably not being much help. The heat from the stove makes the kitchen stuffy and overcrowded. Mags and I each take an armchair, the only two pieces of furniture in the room aside from an unbroken television set.
“So,” I say. “Are you planning on asking what you came here to ask?”
“You’ve got cheek today. Alright, then. Since you already know the question, save me the trouble and give me the answer,” Mags says.
“Seven.”
Three for living to fourteen. Two for my father and I. Two for the tessarae I took out last year, after which Mags nearly bit my head off until I promised I would not do it again. She has always been generous with the gifts the Capitol still showers upon her years after her victory. So many others in Four require her help, more than we do. Circumstance makes liars of us all.
I can see the reprimand stirring beneath Mags’ gray brows.
“I can only smuggle so much fish out of our daily catch before Captain Bow stops tolerating it. We need that tesserae,” I say, trying not to sound like a defensive child trying to avoid a lashing.
“If Bow Reyes gives you trouble, I’ll give it right back to him. No one I’ve seen in diapers scares me,” Mags says. She’s seen half the district in diapers. I doubt the other half would scare her much either.
“We need it, Mags,” I repeat. As if punctuating my point, Annie hands me a bowl of the warm, mushy grain.
Mags sighs in a particular fashion that only I seem to draw out of her.
“Thank you, Annie. Would you be a darling and help your mother clean up?” Mags says. She waits until Annie is back in the kitchen before leaning closer to me. “I know it’s been difficult since the strike.”
I cannot help the scoff that escapes my lips.
A few months ago, Adrian Harper and her crew refused to work another day until the payment for meeting quota was raised and a bigger portion of the daily catch was set aside for distribution in Four. I remember seeing them along the harbor, refusing to move a muscle in spite of their screaming captain’s threats. Their strike lasted a whole week before Peacekeepers brought their batons down on them. All things considered, they got off easy.
People have been killed for less.
But we all suffer for it. The same amount of fish earns half as much, and Captain Bow still receives a cut of anything I make while on his boat. Even Mrs. Cresta, working on a crabbing boat, can barely get enough for a day’s meal. With my father unable to reliably work on a crew these days, and me limited to three work days a week because of school, there is no way to make up for the losses.
“Harper should have kept her mouth shut,” I say. I bite my tongue, regretting the words. Despite the pain she has caused, I do not believe it. Out on the ocean away from prying ears, I do not know a single sailor who hasn’t hinted at a desire to fight back like Harper. To make the Capitol hurt a fraction of the amount we do. When it comes down to it, the rest of us are not brave enough.
“It is disappointing to hear such words from your mother’s son.” My eyes sting with the sudden invocation of my mother, and the sharp truth of Mags’s words. Unable to look at her, I nod.
“I should get this to Dad,” I say, pointing to the bowl in my lap. Mags rises with me.
“And I am needed for today’s preparations. I have to welcome Mr. Aulo Eclectus at the station,” Mags says, pulling a long face. Mags kisses my cheek. As always, everything harsh between us is forgiven. The next time we speak, she will be returning from the Capitol. I hold her a little tighter before she leaves.
I hand Mrs. Cresta some dried fish at the door and apologize for all the trouble.
“Don’t be silly, Finnick. Is there anything else we can do before going?”
“Can we walk with you to the Auditorium? It would be good for my father to be with someone in case –”
“That’ll be good for the girls, too,” Mrs. Cresta says when words fail me. Annie hangs behind her mother, looking deep in thought.
“Something wrong?” I ask. She shakes her head.
“Never mind. See you at the Reaping,” she says.
“Wear something pretty.” She sticks her tongue out at me and disappears into her own home across the street. I close the door behind her, blacking out the sun once again.
My father is sitting up in bed, whispering to himself while he plays with the braided bracelet around his wrist. In between bites of grain, I get him to swallow one, two pills. The pills do not do much, but they do help calm him. Once the bowl has been scraped clean, I replace the spoon in his hand with a small length of rope I save for when he’s teetering on the edge. His fingers begin moving, easy as breathing. There is comfort in the way his familiarity with the rope, pulling under, tugging over.
“Have I shown you the Midshipman’s Hitch?” my father asks after a few minutes of this. His voice shakes, but not harshly.
“No,” I say, even though I can do the knot in my sleep. I watch him, then replicate the intricate process.
“There you are, Finny.” He rustles my hair, and for a moment he doesn’t seem so clouded. I allow myself a smile.
I like hearing my father explain things. It brings me back to easier days, like when he first took me out spearfishing. In his calm, measured manner, he passed on his skill with the trident, just as his father had. Just like I might someday if I can learn the patience needed for teaching. So I sit with him, asking him to show me different knots until we can no longer ignore the responsibilities of the day.
I draw a bath for my father first. I lay out his least-worn slacks and a blue shirt that has lost some vibrancy over the years. Gingerly, I comb out the knots in his hair. Both of us are overdue for a haircut. Maybe I can enlist Annie’s help. I think of what my father and I might look like after she gets her scissors in our hair
“What’s funny?” my father asks.
“Just thinking about what you’d look like with half your head shaved,” I say, and grin when my father makes a face. “All right, you’re finished. My turn.”
I scrub grime and saltwater off of me, clean my teeth, then brush my hair with a wooden comb whittled by my father, back when he had steadier hands. I pull on the same pair of trousers I wore at the last Reaping, but I’ve grown several inches since then. Nothing I do makes it look less ridiculous.
My father’s old Reaping shirt, however, I’ve grown into. The white linen shirt used to hang drably over my skinnier frame, but an extra year and more frequent fishing trips have broadened my chest and strengthened my arms. I regard myself in the mirror that distorts everything to look narrower.
Everything is going to be fine.
“Not bad for two fishermen,” my father says when I emerge from the bathroom. He offers a small smile, which I return. With his hair brushed and his clean clothes, the only sign of earlier duress are his fingers, knotting and unknotting a piece of twine. I start to turn the doorknob so we can join the Crestas. He stops me. “Finnick.”
His fingers move faster and faster. Even though the house is dark, I can see the lines of duress on his thin face.
“Dad? It’s okay,” I say, but I am nervous he cannot make it to the Auditorium. It will not be long before Peacekeepers start knocking on doors, looking for stragglers. My father is not near-dead enough to excuse his absence.
“It isn’t, Finnick,” he says, and the clarity in his voice ends any worry that he is headed for another episode. “I should be the one telling you everything is okay. Especially today.”
Try as I might, I cannot wave away his words. I have never been able to lie in a way that convinces him. I wish I could, for his benefit. His head hangs.
“I am sorry, Finnick. For taking so much of your childhood,” he says. The finality in his voice raises my hair on end. What was it they sung, when stormy waters rack the hull?
A sailor knows when the end approaches, above the waves and down below them.
I think of the dream my father had. Even surrounded in delirium, it terrified me. The fear of future Reapings to come is dwarfed by the thought that this could be my father’s last. I wrap my arms around him, feeling the sharp edges of his shoulders. The thought that his affliction might take him away permanently burns.
“You didn’t take my childhood,” I say. Because he hasn’t.
The Capitol has. I have not stopped thinking about what Mags said: that there exists a way to treat my father. If I have been denied a childhood, it is because of what the Capitol has taken from us, what they continue to withhold from my father. What could a few pills possibly cost them?
“I promise, you didn’t,” I repeat. “Just tell me it’ll be okay?”
“It will be okay,” he says, but he has never been very good at lying to me either.
The Crestas wait for us in front of their small home. Annie wears an emerald skirt that must be Penny’s because it threatens to fall unless Annie pinches it at the waist. Mrs. Cresta tries to fix a strand of Serra’s hair that is sticking straight up, but she darts behind Penny. Penny succeeds in licking her hand and getting Serra’s hair to lay flat.
“Looking sharp, Mr. Odair,” Penny says when she sees us. She turns to me. “That’s the best you could do?”
“Any better I might distract the cameras,” I say. She laughs, although I can hear the effort behind it. She’s eighteen. If she makes it through today, she’s free.
In the Town Center, people pour from the train stations, coming from all over District Four. Not even the enormity of the district can stop the strict enforcement of Reaping attendance. It is a wonder that so many of us can fit inside the Auditorium, now visible in the distance over the bobbing heads of the crowd. The Auditorium is a roofless structure carved from white stone. On any other day, it has a grayish tinge. Today, it gleams.
My hands begin to sweat as we approach. The imposing building brings to mind bad memories: a defiant chin, a shout cut short, a skirt swaying in the breeze.
There are at least a dozen entrances that lead to bleachers for those not of Reaping age, all with miserably long lines. For our convenience, each age group has an entrance that feeds directly into the Pit. We reach this entrance first. Mrs. Cresta points at a red banner declaring “Happy Hunger Games!” draped on the Auditorium wall.
“When this is over, we’ll meet you right under the ‘H,’” she says.
“In ‘Happy’ or in ‘Hunger’?” Penny says, earning a stern glare from her mother. She holds her hands up in surrender. “‘Happy’ it is.”
“See you soon, Finny,” my father says, holding me tight. I track Serra’s tiny waving hand over Mrs. Cresta’s shoulder for as long as I can.
Annie, Penny, and I are swept up in the march of other children. Annie reaches for my arm. Her face flushes, like the sunburns she always gets on the tip of her nose because she refuses to wear a hat on the boats. She tears her hand away. I almost tease her, but this is the first time she has followed Penny and me to these archways. I place her hand in mine and give her a reassuring squeeze. She only lets go when we reach the twelve-year-old’s line. Penny embraces her sister, whispering something in Annie’s ear that seems to slow her shivering.
“This isn’t right,” Penny says, watching Annie’s small frame disappear into a group of other kids. I glance around, but there are no Peacekeepers nearby to hear.
A sculpture of a man holding a trident guards the fourteen-year-old’s line. It’s something of a rite of passage in Four to pass through the trident-bearing man’s archway, fittingly dubbed “Naked Man’s Way.” It is difficult to see the humor in it now.
“See you after,” Penny says.
“No encouraging words for me?” I say, but I do not sound like I am joking.
“May the odds be in your favor,” she says dryly.
“Yours, too.”
I shuffle into the registration line, glimpsing a few familiar faces but refusing to acknowledge anyone. Two men, graying beards and stiff backs indicating they have long aged out of the Reaping, seem to be eyeing the children that walk by them. I am confused by their presence until I see the books in their hands.
Urchins. Scrawled in those books are numbers next to names. The names are answers to questions: whether there will be a volunteer, how old the tribute will be, what name will be drawn. I catch a piece of their conversation as I pass by them.
“–surest bet I ever made. Not a question whose name is coming out of that glass ball–” I am shoved forward and out of earshot.
Once in the Pit, I spot Lorn Donoghue, visible thanks to his bright red hair. He waves me over to a group of our classmates.
“I’d volunteer at eighteen,” I hear Simon say once I push my way next to Lorn. Simon’s comment is met with groans and a scoff from Lorn, but he persists. “Come off it, like you all haven’t thought it? Mansion on a hill, no more time on the ships, maybe even a Capitol girl?”
I roll my eyes but join my schoolmate’s laughter. Simon’s nonchalance is almost comforting, even if it is disguised idiocy.
“Don’t kid yourself, we’ve all seen you spearfishing,” Lorn says, shoving Simon lightly. "You’d make a fool of yourself in the arena. Finnick here could catch more than you hog-tied; I'd put money on that."
“Don’t forget blindfolded,” I add, earning a chorus of laughter and a slap on the back. Simon flushes red, but I have never known him to take deep offense to anything.
“Yeah, yeah, all right. How about you then, Odair? You’d ever volunteer?” Simon asks, and the question reminds me that I am not in a schoolyard waiting for the dismissal bell to ring.
I am saved from responding by piercing microphone feedback that causes my hands to shoot up and cover my ears. A hush falls over the crowd as people file onto the stage.
Mayor Lin, a stout woman with jet-black hair and a sharp face, leads the group. The past victors take their seats on the stage: Mags, as the oldest, sits first, then Delphi and Sola. Sola clings to Delphi just to walk straight.
Aulo Eclectus, the District 4 escort, trails behind them like an over-excited seagull. Aulo believes his assignment to Four means that he must look the part. This year, his hair is dyed bright blue. Something inhuman protrudes from his neck. Gills. His body is covered in silver sequins that mimic the way actual fish scales catch the sunlight. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so grotesque.
Giggles rise through the crowd at the sight of him, loudest from the younger sections behind us. The Peacekeepers in the aisles stifle the disturbance by shifting their guns from one shoulder to the other.
Mayor Lin takes the podium. In a bored, robotic tone, she relays the story we already know: the miraculous birth of Panem from the ashes of a war-torn world, the benevolence of the Capitol viciously betrayed by an ugly rebellion.
Rebellion. The first Reaping I remember hearing the word, I pictured a faceless, shapeless monster that left the Hunger Games in its wake. Rebellion. It lurked in the dark, it haunted my nightmares. It snatched children like me from the warmth of their beds. Only later did I realize that the monster was made up of people – that it was not really the monster after all. And I started to wonder where all that courage had gone.
I wonder that now, as Mayor Lin’s voice fills the air around me. I think of Adrian Harper and her strike. Maybe not all gone. Like most things, there simply isn’t enough to go around.
“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,” Mayor Lin says. “In remembrance of past games, I will now read the names of District 4’s previous victors: Jason Riagan.” As the winner of the third Hunger Games, Riagan always gets little acknowledgment since he has been long dead. “Mags Flanagan.” Mags meets the applause with a dignified nod. “Trite Romeron.” Trite is another dead Victor, not fondly remembered due in part to his drunken rages, I’ve heard. “Delphi Aubrien. Sola Botero.” With a wild flourish of her arm, Sola nearly whacks Delphi in the face. “These Victors exemplify the utmost bravery and duty to the Capitol. They are what we all strive to be: exemplary citizens of Panem. Please now welcome your District 4 escort, Mister Aulo Eclectus.”
Aulo accepts the microphone. The way his costume reflects the light makes him nearly impossible to look at, and I squint so the Peacekeepers do not think I am ignoring the proceedings.
“Happy, happy Hunger Games, District 4! And may the odds be ever, ever in your favor,” he chirps. His lips are so close to the microphone that I can hear the sound of the gloss on his lips sticking and unsticking. He smiles, but the top half of his face doesn’t move like it has been frozen smooth. “It is so wonderful to be back here!” He thanks us for our presence – where else could any of us be? – and prattles about his love for steamed lobster.
Finally, he says, “Shall we find out who the lucky girl is today?”
The audience is quiet as his hand plummets into the enormous bowl of slips, but blood pumps in my head so loudly that everyone might as well be screaming. Aulo’s arm emerges triumphantly in the air, a paper pinched between two ocean-blue nails. He opens the paper, gives a cheery chuckle, and calls:
“Nowa Lin!”
I am so relieved that it is neither of the Crestas that I do not immediately register the significance of the name he has just called. I see movement closer to the stage in the sixteen-year-old’s section. The entire Auditorium murmurs as a girl with silken black hair pushes into the center aisle and walks toward the stage. Cameras projecting onto screens throughout the Auditorium follow Nowa on her trek. Her expression is entirely unreadable.
Nowa Lin barely even looks at her mother as she takes her place to the right of Aulo. Mags grips the shoulders of Mayor Lin. Nowa will have that to thank Mags for later; having a mother cry over you on stage could make a two-hundred-pound wrestler look weak.
“Congratulations, Nowa! Now, any volunteers?”
Our volunteers tend to be eighteen-year-olds toughened by life on a boat, willing to step up for a weaker contestant in the hopes that they may bring home money, food, that mansion on a hill–
Few would die for a rich girl who has never been in want of anything.
I feel sorry for her. But Nowa Lin doesn’t look sorry for herself. She stands with her back straight, chin tilted defiantly, almost like she is daring someone to volunteer for her. The call for female volunteers ends, and Aulo congratulates Nowa once again.
“Now, for the lucky, lucky boy!”
Aulo is quicker with his selection, scooping a slip up from the surface. He unfolds the paper. Clears his throat. Into the microphone, he says:
“Ramon Harper.”
It is an odd sound, the silence of a stadium full of people. The stillness lasts a long time until the screens around the Auditorium all focus on a small boy ducking under the arm of a Peacekeeper. Ramon Harper looks so frail I hardly believe he’s twelve, let alone the son of tough-as-nails Adrian Harper. His dark eyes are wide, framed by tight ringlets of hair.
He takes his place beside Aulo, barely taller than the pedestals holding the bowl from where his name has been produced. Tears begin to fall from his eyes, and like that, he has signed away his life. Then again, the twelve-year-olds are never meant to live. They are the ones the Capitol fawns over, the ones whose deaths are made a touch sadder by their youth. Just a touch.
When Aulo calls for volunteers, I gather what the older, would-be volunteers must have realized already. And I know that somewhere in the Auditorium, two urchins have just made a fortune.
Ramon Harper has been doomed by his mother, who dared defy.
This is a punishment.
No one, not even the most honorable, not even the most blood-thirsty, will volunteer for the scared little boy being made a message of.
Doing so would mean interfering in Capitol justice.
Justice. Justice that has a child answer for his mother’s crime. Justice that keeps us dying in a war we do not remember. Justice that holds the medicine my father needs out of reach in the Capitol.
When I look up at the stage, instead of seeing Ramon Harper’s tear-streaked face, I see my mother’s broken body swinging from the end of the noose. Fire scorches my insides, boiling up from my stomach into my throat.
I am angrier than I have ever been at the injustice of it all.
Your mother’s son.
“I volunteer!” I brush past a stunned Lorn and stumble into the center aisle.
“I volunteer as tribute,” I repeat, this time, my voice steady. And, because I know the games have already started, I ruffle my hair, and I smile for the cameras.