I hold my head in my hands. I live in one of the biggest houses in District 2, but right now it feels too small. I throw my bedroom door open and run down the stairs. My hand is on the doorknob when a voice stops me.
"Cato."
His voice freezes me in my tracks. My face, formerly uptight, rearranges itself into expressionlessness. Don't let him see. Never let him see. The mantra of my daily existence.
"You ready, son?" I turn to face him.
"Of course, sir." I'm not, but the words slide out of my mouth as though they'd been rehearsed. Dad has a way of doing that to me.
He coughs awkwardly. "This is for you," he says gruffly. "It was your mother's. Flint wore it. Maybe it'll bring you luck."
He places a ring in my hand. Gold, with a black stone in the center. I can't identify the stone, but I'm sure someone from District 1 could.
I stare at the ring. "Mom wore this? Did she have it in the arena? And Flint?"
"It was the District token for both of them. Now it'll be yours." I slip the ring on my finger. Lucky, huh?
Mom and Flint are both dead.
Dad straightens, and I see the return of the man he usually is.
"Your mother always wanted to give you boys the world. You'll need to do that for yourself now," Dad says. His usual sternness is back.
"I know. I'll win," I say.
"Our family's honor is on your shoulders."
"I'll make you proud, Dad." Our entire relationship rests on my shows of bravado. False bravado, I know, but I can't let him down. I'm all he has.
Our conversation dies there, and Dad glances at his watch. "Shouldn't you be getting to work?"
"I'm taking the day off." District 2 is rumored to be the only District that gets vacations. It makes sense, because we're the Capitol's favorite District.
"Good idea. Getting some extra training in?"
I nod. What he doesn't know won't hurt him.
Calling my goodbyes, I run out the door. I actually am going to the back part of the school building we call the Training Center, but not for the reason he thinks.
She's there already with a belt of knives on her waist. She looks almost mechanical when she throws, hitting dead center each time. Her long black hair is in a high ponytail, like it always is when she trains. I can't see her face from here, but I know who it is by her lightning reflexes, her speed, and her ease with the knives. She makes it look like a dance.
I wrap my right arm around her waist and pin her hand to her stomach. She kicks backward reflexively but I block her leg with mine, catch it with my foot so she's left balancing on one leg. She jerks away and I release both her leg and her arm.
In one smooth motion she turns 180 degrees to face me, jumps in the air, and raises a knife. Instinctively I run through all of the motions I could take to end her–backhand to the stomach, punch to the face, grab her arm and twist it–but instead I fall backward onto the wrestling mat beneath us. As she lands on top of me, she lets go of the knife and instead places her hands on the back of my neck.
"Cato," she says softly, in that voice she only ever uses for me. "You came."
"Of course, babe," I say, reaching up to kiss her on the cheek. "You asked me to."
"I love you, Cato."
"I love you too, Clove."
We kiss, until my cheek starts to feel cold. Tears? But Clove doesn't cry.
I gently push her off me and open my eyes. She's crying. It scares me.
"Clove, baby, no," I say, drawing her to me and kissing the top of her head. "We have a plan, remember? I'll go in, win, then next year you'll win yours. I'll come home, I swear."
"Cato, the mayor came to me yesterday."
I stop moving. Strange how it only takes a few words to turn my entire world upside down.
The mayor comes to exceptional fighters and basically orders them to volunteer. I'm not sure how they choose the final tribute, but Dad assured me that because of my parentage–both of my parents were victors–I would be a tribute in the seventy-fourth Hunger Games.
Clove can't be.
"What did he say?" My voice is strained. Clove's tears come faster as she sobs out:
"He wants me in this year's Games."
Of course. Of course he does! I roll away from Clove and grab the first heavy thing I can find, a wooden club. I swing it against the wall until it breaks, then toss the pieces across the room, knocking over two knife racks.
"Cato." Clove's voice shocks me out of my rage. When I look back she's wiping her eyes and returning to her normal look, confident and self-reliant. This is our life. The faces we put on for the people around us, and the reality only we share.
"Pull yourself together. If this…" she takes a deep breath. "IF this is our last day in the District together, don't you want to spend it making memories?
"We could leave." I grab her by the wrists. It's perfect. "We can leave today, grab some supplies and–"
"And what? We live on a mountain. Nothing grows here. Besides, we wouldn't know good food if it slapped us in the face."
"We'll steal supplies from–"
"A delivery train heavily guarded by Peacekeepers?"
"What is wrong with you?" I yell in frustration. "Don't you want to get out? Don't you want to be free? Free with me?"
"It won't work. You know that." I do, as well as Clove does, but that won't stop me from trying. Clove is analytical, and that's one of the things I love about her, but it also means she sees problems I don't want to think about and the impossibilities in every scenario. If she says it won't work, she's usually right.
"I love you, baby, I do," she says, kissing me on the lips. "But we've got orders. You know what'll happen if we don't deliver. Remember what happened to Manis?"
I do. Manis's father bragged to everyone at the workplace about how his son would be volunteering. So it came as a surprise when, on Reaping Day, Manis stayed silent. The mayor made an example of him. Peacekeepers were sent to his house and he was dragged out for public execution.
"He deserved it. He proved without a shadow of a doubt he was a coward. Threw away his only chance at something greater," Clove says.
"We're not Manis! That won't happen to us!"
"If we get caught trying to escape, we'll be worse off than him. Manis disobeyed a command from the mayor and was killed for it. The Capitol says we can't leave our Districts. We'll be dead if we're caught."
"What about a life with me? Isn't that enough for you? Or do you need something greater?"
She looks at me incredulously, as though I'm the one who's not making sense. "Are you nuts? We've got a chance to win the Hunger Games. We could be famous, Cato, we could–"
"Die alone?" She looks confused. "We won't be alone, one of us will be in the Victor's Village."
"No, you don't get it. If one of us wins, that person will come home alone. Move into a house in the Victor's Village and adopt a hobby all alone. Then after the Victory Tour, you just stay there and die. All alone. Is that really what you want? To be alone forever?"
"But you die with honor," she says softly. "You're loved, adored, looked up to…"
I just stare at her. That sentence came straight from a speech we heard in class, given by the Victor of 62. I remember how eager Clove looked at that assembly, how she'd nod at everything the Victor said and brush me off when I tried to whisper something in her ear.
All our lives we've done nothing, really, but train for the Games. Officially our job is masonry but everyone knows where we get our name. We're winners. There's no value in being able to create a perfect brick if you don't know the thirteenth chokehold position.
We've been told since birth that nothing matters but winning. I think of how Dad acted when Flint died on only the third day in the Arena. He didn't mourn or grieve; he was angry. Angry that Flint had hurt his pride and lost our family honor. After that he tried to beat it into my head that there was no second place, and if I didn't come out on top, I failed him. I was forced to pretend I was on the same page. I acted as though winning meant everything to me. But deep down, the only thing I really valued was her.
Clove believes what we've all been told. All the Hunger Games maxims and slogans–Winning is everything, Honor is superior to happiness, Bringing pride to our District–she's taken them to heart.
"Is this what you want, Clove?" I ask her. "You want to be a Victor above everything else?"
"Baby, Cato, I love you," she says, leaning up to kiss me. "But I can't give up what I've known my whole life."
I turn away from her and lean my forehead against the wall. Not hitting. Not breaking. For once, I have complete control.
In that moment, I accept that a future with Clove is impossible. And if I can't have the future that I want, at least I can let her live out hers. It will mean failing my father. Our family's honor will suffer for it. But if it's what she wants, it's what I want. I'll send her back to the life she's always dreamed of. To the life that is her motivation.
"I love you."
Her voice cracks on the second word and the third is almost inaudible. Still, I know what she's saying. We've said it to each other countless times over the last few years. I've heard those three words in no voice but hers.
"I love you, too."
And suddenly we're kissing, in each other's arms with tears trailing down our faces and onto our lips. I don't know how long we stay there, only that it's not enough. In the Arena, we won't be able to kiss. It'll mark us as an easy target. That's why I want to love her all I can right now.
When my mother died, they kept her house in the Victor's Village empty and hung a wreath on the door in her memory. Flint sometimes went there to tidy it up after she was gone because he said she'd always kept it neat. If it got messy it just wouldn't be her house. He also sprayed her perfume on everything because he said it helped him keep her memory alive. That's all I really have to hold on to of hers, I guess. Some old photos, stories the neighbors used to tell, and her smell. Her ring.
Nobody ever blamed me for my mother's death. Why would they? They blamed the incompetent doctor who performed her C-section. And at first, so did I.
It wasn't until I was eight years old that Flint told me something that would change the way I saw myself forever. "There's no way you can lose the Games," he said. "You're talented. You've been a killer since you came out of the womb."
He wasn't talking about Mom. But it didn't matter, because that was all I heard. My own mother's blood is on my hands. I am, in effect, a killer.
Flint didn't realize that the look on my face had nothing to do with anxiety about the Games. Instead, he continued, "Dad always told me to think about it this way. Take them out one at a time. One kill, one kill, one more. Not so bad, right?"
"Right." And now, nine years later, I'm finally at that point. One more kill.
One more kill.
It's the only thing I know how to do. Bringing pride to my District.
Not that it matters.