"Katniss," my mother peeked into my bedroom, opening the door that I had closed hours before and sworn I'd locked. "You wanna come and see the victor's arrival with me?" Her eyes were ringed with red and puffy from crying while she had slept, if she had even slept at all. I knew she was just doing something, anything, to keep herself from going back to the place she went to when my father died.

I turn my face to the coal-smudged window pane. "No," I whispered to the glass, to the dandelions and chain-link fence beyond. "I'll stay here."

I waited till she left, watched her walk all the way down the path, into town, with all the other people, and she soon became just a head bobbing in the crowd. Tears were slowly making tracks on my face, tiny rivers in the soot I had been too lazy to wash away when I came home three days ago to find the news.

Prim, my heartbeat said her name. Prim, my breath whooshed it in and out. Prim, my blood pounded in my skull, my throat, my wrists.

How could I have let her go? How could I have let her slip through my fingers?

An hour later, my mother returned, silently slipping in the door, but I heard her dashing to her room and the springs squealing under her as she muffled a sob. The sun was beginning to go down' but the celebrations were just starting in town, where I could hear music starting up and feet bouncing along to the beat of a tambourine. Gale was probably down there, being dragged around by his siblings.

Prim, Prim, Prim.

I had let her die.