Chapter 3

My name bounces around the silent square, the words echoing in my head until I barely recognize them. The boys to my left and right are making way for me and giving me that look, the flitting look of pity before they studiously focus on their shoes, the ground or a shop in the distance. So, I didn't imagine it. I've been reaped.

The shock begins to wear off and the fear comes rushing forward like a fist to the face. I know that by now the cameras have found me in the crowd and your district expects you to accept your lot with dignity. I try to school my features, suck in a few more of those shaky breaths. Who would have guessed that breathing could be so hard? Surprisingly, my feet are able to move and I'm making my way to the stage.

It's all still surreal. Impossible even. What happened to the odds being in my favor? But, no, I can't wish this fate onto someone else, especially some Seam kid who'd had to bargain his life for food. I climb the few steps up to the makeshift stage and take my place to the left of Effie Trinket while she asks for volunteers.

My eyes find Hagan just in front of us in the eighteen-year-olds section. He's looking down, but from my vantage point I can see the emotions cross his face: the pain, the momentary indecision, and then guilt. I know he won't volunteer. I wouldn't want him to. It's not like Prim and Katniss. Less than two years separate us, he's no more likely to come home than me. I'll have to be sure to tell him all this before I go, so he knows he doesn't have to feel any guilt when I die.

When I die. The ease of this thought jolts me. The inevitability of it, the wheels that have been inexorably set in motion. There's no more questioning, no more worrying, it's just a matter of where and how.

As the mayor begins reading the tedious Treaty of Treason, I lean forward to look at Katniss Everdeen. She looks deep in thought, her eyes focused somewhere in the distance. I wonder if her thoughts are following a similar thread, planning her goodbyes to her family. She looks more irritated than accepting, though.

I notice her dress for the first time. It's a soft blue color, a little old fashioned maybe, but prettier, more richly made, than what most girls from the Seam are wearing. The color of her dress is almost the exact same as my shirt.

We match.

For one unbearable moment I think I'm going to start laughing, but then the mayor is motioning for me to shake Katniss' hand. I gently take her hand in my own, it's small and more delicate than I imagined. I look into her gray eyes, really for the first time, and give her hand what I hope is a reassuring squeeze. I hold onto her hand as we face the crowd while a recording of the anthem of Panem plays in the background.

Well, this means I won't have to say goodbye to Katniss Everdeen.

At least, not yet.

I wait in a lavish room in the Justice Building where a group of Peacekeepers deposited me after the reaping. I've been to the Justice Building a few times. Once, when my mother filed a complaint after someone broke into the bakery and a few times when my father needed to fill out paperwork. We've also provided desserts for a few dinners here. It's one of the only places in District 12 suitable for hosting Capitol guests. The opulent surroundings do nothing to calm me, they remind me of what must await me in the Capitol.

I wonder which tribute of these Games will be here in a few months on the Victory Tour the Capitol has each year. I pace the thickly piled carpet, trying to let go of the nervous energy that has infected me since leaving the stage. For the next hour, the time allotted to tributes to say goodbye, I want to appear calm, accepting. I have to do this both for myself and my family. I sit down on the couch to wait.

Moments later my two brothers open the door. Hagan pulls me into a fierce hug.

"Peeta, Oh Peeta, I'm so sorry. I wanted to volunteer. I did. I just…I couldn't believe…"

I pull back to look directly into his eyes. "Hagan, it's okay. I wouldn't have wanted you to. Our parents would still be losing a son. My name was called, so I'm the one that's going. It's that simple. Besides, I've always wanted to see the Capitol. You'd hate all those stuck-up people."

Rieska snorts and puts his arms around both of us. Suddenly, my hair feels wet. My brother, my eldest brother, who I used to copy in everything, who doesn't cry, is crying. I've never realized how much I love him until this moment. I'd spent too much of our childhood resenting him over how easily he won our mother's affection. Now I have to say goodbye.

"Peeta, I wish I'd been a better brother. I wish I hadn't teased you so much...I'm so sorry," he whispers.

"It's okay. I'll be sure to reveal something embarrassing about you on television, so we're even," I say.

That makes both of them laugh a little and the tears stop. I look at Hagan.

"There is something you can do for me, help Father with the bakery. We both know that you're horrible at baking, but you can haul in the flour and clean up. Oh, and could you deliver that cake to Ruthe Thornton? I told her I would, but…" I trail off.

"Yeah, Peeta, anything, of course," he says.

They both hug me again and we stay like that until the Peacekeepers ask them to leave.

My mother and father come next. My father hugs me for a long time, like he did when I was a little boy. My feet lift off the ground momentarily. He lets me go, but keeps firm hold of my hands. I look at the burn scars on the back of his hands. I have some as well, the evidence of our quiet mornings baking together.

I try to memorize everything I can about him. It's a memory I want with me when my time comes.

"You were always such a good boy, Peeta. I'm going to miss you so much. You're the son that I'd hoped…my boy…" he says. My family isn't good at talking about love. This is the closest my father has ever come.

All the words I want to say are stuck in my throat. I know that if I say them I will lose my hard won calm demeanor. I am able to say that I will miss him too, before I have to stop.

My mother stands uncertainly near the door, our relationship still broken, even now. I go to stand next to her. No matter what, she is my mother. I can't leave without saying goodbye. My father walks to the window to give us space. I give her a hug.

"I'm sorry if I was a disappointment to you," I say.

She looks sharply at me, "I never said that you were a disappointment."

I cannot count the number of times those exact words have come out of her mouth but through it all I've always loved my mother, wanted her love in return. I just never knew how to get it. I could have forgiven everything else.

"It doesn't matter. I want you to know I'll miss you and.…" I can't think of anything else to say. I want so badly to feel something more than regret at this parting. But this wound cannot be healed. At least, not by me.

My mother looks around the room, at the furniture, the pictures on the wall, anything but me.

"Maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner this year," she offers.

I look at her, stunned. No one, not my brothers, not my father has suggested that I might actually win. Of course, there's no chance that I will become victor, but her saying it is a kindness I couldn't have suspected.

"You think so?" I ask.

"Yes, she's a survivor, that one," she says.

It takes me a moment to realize she is talking about Katniss, that the odds of my survival don't even merit consideration, that I am already dead to her. At this point, I didn't think there was anything left she could say that would hurt me, but this is it. I swallow the pain where it sits in my stomach like broken glass.

"You might have a point," I manage to get out.

"Peeta…I was hard on you for just this reason…" she starts, then shakes her head. "You'd understand if you had children."

I will never have children now, but I feel certain I would never have given them black eyes for burning bread. I don't tell her that, instead I tell her what I hope will leave her with kinder memories of me.

"I know, you did what you had to do to make us strong. It's something I'm grateful for now," I say.

She looks relieved and gives me another hug.

"We'll be watching," she says as though this thought is comforting.

Before they leave, my father reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small bag of the shortbread cookies he made earlier this morning. They're my favorite. He must have gone back to the bakery to get them. A final, hopelessly impractical gift from my father. A treat can't comfort me now, but that doesn't stop me from clutching them to my chest as they close the door. I go to sit on the couch to wait out the remainder of my time, my arms and legs numb.

I'm not expecting any of my friends from school to visit me. I'm popular, but it's because my family owns the bakery and friendship with me might mean an occasional free cookie or pastry. They're the kind of relationships that could never withstand this sort of strain.

So, I'm surprised when my door opens again. Primrose Everdeen walks alone into my room and climbs into one of the overstuffed chairs. She looks at me with her wide blue eyes, her feet not even touching the ground. I'm struck by the fact that she looks more like she could be my little sister than Katniss Everdeen's. We sit in silence for a few moments.

"I just…I just wanted to thank you for the bread…from when I was little and my father died. Katniss never said, but I know it was you," she says in a rush. "It really saved us. We…I don't think we would have made it much longer without that bread."

That was five years ago, in early spring. I'm always aware of Katniss Everdeen, even when I try not to be, so after her father died in a mining accident and the already small girl lost ten, maybe fifteen pounds, I noticed.

At first, I thought it was from grief. I'd been at the ceremony honoring those who died in the mining accident that winter. It was one of those times my father provided the food at the Justice Building. I'd seen her while I set up the cakes. She'd looked so sad and dazed, her hands clinging to the medal of valor the mayor had given her. A medal in place of a father. I thought of my father then, what life would be like without him. I could understand that kind of grief destroying an appetite.

It wasn't until later I realized that it wasn't just grief that stole her appetite, her family didn't have any food. It hadn't occurred to me that without her father to provide for them, her family could starve. People in town don't starve. They may not be able to afford the expensive sweets and cakes displayed in the windows, but they have enough to survive. I would watch her during school wasting away and I couldn't think of a way to reach out to her. She stuck to herself and the other kids didn't seem to notice or care that she was slowly starving.

I began contemplating a trip to the Seam, a place I'd never gone, when she showed up on my doorstep, even thinner than the last time I saw her.

Not my doorstep exactly, but shifting, hungrily, desperately through our trash bins. Icy rain poured down, but my mother felt it was her duty to run the girl away. The trash bins were empty anyway. I'd taken them to the dump not an hour earlier. With my mother there, I knew I wouldn't have any chance to help Katniss, but I still followed her out into the rain. When I walked up behind them, my mother was hurling threat after threat at her for looking in our trash bins. How tired she was of brats from the Seam going through her trash. How she was going to call the Peacekeepers if Katniss didn't get out of there. I couldn't do anything but watch. I was used to my mother's berating tone, but I could tell the words stung.

Couldn't my mother see how weak and near collapsing Katniss was?

But Katniss did as my mother said, replacing the lid on top of the empty trash bin and with bruised dignity carefully started to move away from the house. After my mother returned to the bakery, I saw Katniss crumble against our old apple tree, disregarding the rain that came down in sheets.

I returned to the bakery with new determination. I headed over to the ovens where some of our raisin walnut bread was baking. Because of the spices and nuts, it's an expensive bread. My father only gets walnuts once a year in the fall from foragers who know all the black walnut trees in the district. Since it was April, those were the last loaves of the season.

And they were finished, their crusts a perfect golden brown, the aroma nutty and sweet. I took the wooden peel and moved the loaves in the front of the oven to the tall metal resting rack where they would cool. Then I pulled out the second row and put them with the first. On the third row, I tilted the peel back toward the fire and let the outer crusts of the bread blacken only enough to make them impossible to sell. I slammed the loaves of burned bread down onto the counter to get my mother's attention and her eyes were immediately on me.

"The last row of bread burned. The back of the oven must have been too hot, again," I said in a guilty voice. She'd warned me about burning bread before.

She grabbed the first thing her hand landed on, a rolling pin. I expected it and turned my head so that only the edge of the rolling pin made contact with my face.

I held my hands up to ward off another blow. "We can still use it."

She hesitated. "I knew you were foolish, I didn't know you were blind. It's burned! No one will buy burned bread!"

"We can use it to feed the pigs. That's using it," I said.

We raise pigs for their lard. It's used in most of our cake icings and for pie crusts. We also sell the meat to the butcher.

She forced the still blisteringly hot loaves into my bare hands. As I walked away I heard her yell from the doorway, "Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature. Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!"

I waded over to the pig pen in the still pouring rain. Katniss was hard to make out in the downpour, but I saw her soggy outline still stooped against the tree. I broke off the tiniest bits of the burned crust and threw them into the pen where our pig, Louie, sniffed the burned bread disinterestedly before trotting back to where he had been lying. I continued to feign throwing the bread to the pig and after a few minutes, my mother left the doorway to help a customer, but she kept the door open, casting me hard looks as she wrapped up his orders.

I could feel Katniss' eyes on me, too.

The customer asked my mother a question and in a flash I tossed the bread to where Katniss was sitting. I walked back into the bakery and collapsed against the other side of the door, listening as her steps sloshed away from our yard.

My bruised face throbbed in time with my racing heart, but it was worth it. More than worth it, I'd thought at the time, because she could stop being this daydream in my mind. Maybe now, we could become friends. We had a connection.

But it didn't turn out that way. The next day at school, I'd meant to find her, talk to her, but my eye had turned black and swollen shut. I didn't want to talk about my mother hitting me. I was too ashamed. I also didn't know how to explain why I did what I did. How do you tell a girl you've liked her since you were 5 years old? Any skill I have with words disappears around Katniss Everdeen. I couldn't even figure out how to say one word to her. So, when our eyes met for one long second in the courtyard after school, instead of talking to her, I only watched as she picked a dandelion.

I look over at Prim. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying. Her sister's going to the Hunger Games to fight to the death and she's here thanking me for a small kindness I did five years ago.

"It was nothing," I say.

"It was everything to us," she replies.

Prim struggles up from the plush chair and walks over to me. She wraps her thin arms around my waist. She doesn't say anything and neither do I. I awkwardly pat her back, wondering how this moment would be different if I was going into the Games with her instead of Katniss. After a long moment, she lets go and walks out the door.

After being chosen to go to my death for my district and saying goodbye to everyone I've ever loved, it is a little girl's hug that undoes all my resolve not to cry.