I felt awful for ever wishing Lola would "just go away." Lola was just going away now, and no matter how mad I had been at her, no one deserved the fate she was facing.

When I watched her being interviewed on TV by that buffoon with the purple hair, my heart broke for her. I could see the fear in her eyes as she tried to make light of her situation. I even thought of Roman and wondered what he must be feeling.

I had never really known any of our tributes personally, but realized that as I grew older, the chances would increase that I'd lose real friends. And, of course, I might die myself. I was so angry that we allowed these games to happen. It was barbaric and cruel, and I was powerless to do anything about it.

That year, when I watched the girl I'd once loved—the woman with whom I'd thought I'd be a parent and maybe even a husband—die with a hatchet buried into her back, a part of me broke. The seed of an unquenchable rage was planted, and I vowed I would do everything—anything I had to—to end the Games and the tyranny they represented.

I became an angry young man, and an unhappy one. Of course, I looked around me and saw very few people in my town that could be called happy.

I went to school, I took care of my family, and I did whatever I had to do to make sure we were all fed. The only time I felt remotely content was when I was hunting with Katniss. I clung to her sweet company, and she came to embody the innocence I'd once possessed and that I wished for all the children of our district—of the whole country.

Years passed. My life became as normal as any boy's. I survived the reapings in spite of signing up for tesserae. I hunted for my family and Katniss's. I kissed the girls in school.

After Lola, I was careful with the girls, having a better grasp of consequences to certain actions. I was still a hormonal teenager, but learned ways for everyone to have fun without worrying about more mouths to feed or having to say goodbye to a lover while she was murdered on TV. I was also careful not to get too close to anyone I couldn't stand to lose.

Katniss became my best friend, my confidant, my partner in the woods. I watched her go from a skinny young girl to a young woman, in awe of her delicate curves and her ignorance of their power over the opposite sex.

I'd occasionally catch myself covering her position while we hunted with a little more care—like a boy protecting a girl. But then I'd remind myself that she was as adept a hunter as I was and needed no chivalrous attentions. She was sixteen—still young, but very capable, and I had trouble defining her in my life as a young woman after seeing her for so many years as a child companion.

We were sitting at Greasy Sae's late one afternoon. The snow had made it impossible to hunt, so we gave up and went to get some hot food into our stomachs. Katniss was sitting cross-legged on the counter, and I noticed how long her legs were and how much I loved the way her boots looked on her when she tucked her pants into them.

Darius was teasing her, tickling her face with the end of her braid, and she looked so lovely laughing at him, the January cold pinking her cheeks.

Then I realized what he was teasing her about—that she should make a trade for one of his kisses, and I felt my smile fade. He would never be good enough to have a kiss from Katniss. He needed to let her braid go as well.

I almost reached over to knock his hand away when I realized that I was jealous.

She giggled and smacked at his hand and I looked at him and wanted to punch him in the face. And then, I wanted to grab her by the hand and run back into the woods with her. Into the quiet of the snow. Where we could be alone and I would fall into a snowbank and pull her to the ground with me and we'd laugh and hold each other and catch snowflakes on our tongues. And then I'd kiss her.

I wanted to kiss Katniss.

Almost immediately, I wanted to kiss no one else. The other girls seemed silly and a waste of time. No one was like Katniss.

Suddenly, hunting was different for me. We still watched each other's backs and enjoyed each other's company and traded in the Hob, and it seemed every day, I watched for the right moment to kiss her—to tell her how I felt.

I thought of how I'd felt about Lola. I was in love with her—or so I'd told myself. But this was nothing like that feeling. That was tangled with guilt and lust and confusion. This was as easy as breathing. There was still lust, but it felt right—normal and wonderful.

Spring came and went, and I still hadn't kissed her. I was so afraid of scaring her away. She seemed so unaware of her own sexuality—her own appeal to men, which was part of what made her so appealing. I wanted to be the one who opened her eyes to the physical pleasure between a boy and a girl. I wanted her to discover that she was a woman while in my arms.

For the first time in a long time, I started to feel completely attached to someone, and remembered how I'd felt when I watched Lola die. I became obsessed with losing Katniss in the same way. I only had one more reaping and then I'd be free and clear, but Katniss had three. Plus she had signed up for tesserae as often as I had.

I couldn't face the possibility of losing her, and so the morning of the reaping, I decided I'd ask her to run away with me. No, I hadn't told her how I felt yet, but surely she knew. It was just so obvious to me, and I couldn't imagine that the thought of us together hadn't crossed her mind.

But when I said it—that we could run away, I saw the look on her face. It was an impossibility. She thought I was crazy. I quickly covered it up by adding that we couldn't of course, because of our brothers and sisters.

Katniss suddenly announced that she never wanted to have kids and I wondered if it was her way of rejecting me. I felt the sting of it, but probed further, saying I wouldn't mind having kids if we lived somewhere else. I thought of how badly I hadn't want to have a baby with Lola, and felt the usual guilty stab of pain thinking that now Lola would never have the chance to have children.

I finally gave up and just told Katniss to forget the whole thing. Clearly, she wasn't open to the idea of running away with me. Maybe I'd been delusional thinking she might return my feelings. I was mad at myself for waiting so long to say something, and now today wasn't the right time to bring it up. Katniss wasn't ready. Why would she run away with someone who had never declared his true feelings to her?

And even if I had told her how I felt, forced a kiss on her, I wanted it to be her choice to be with me. I wanted her to love me not because I could take her away and make sure she was fed every day. I wanted her to want me. To want to kiss me and hold me and make love to me, and I wanted those things to be her idea too, not just things proposed to her by an older boy who had started slobbering all over her since she grew breasts.

Suddenly, nothing I could say or do felt adequate, and my mood soured quickly, making me grumpy company for the rest of the morning.

When I got home, I bathed and shaved and put on my only decent shirt that my mother had pressed for me. As I buttoned it, my eyes stung at the thought of her making sure all the wrinkles were out so her oldest boy would look his best if she had to say goodbye to him for the last time today.

My name was on 42 pieces of paper. There might have been some other poor eighteen-year-olds in the Seam who had that many chances of being chosen, but probably not many. Before we left, I hugged my mother and kissed her forehead, and she smiled up at me through her tears.

I sat through the usual banter on stage, but this time watched our victor fall off the stage because he was too drunk to see straight. I tried to tell myself that this was the last time I'd ever have to be here among the teenagers. But then my eyes found Katniss and I knew I'd always worry for her. And then next year, my brother would be old enough for his first reaping. And this horror would never end. As long as there were teenagers in the world that I loved, this helpless feeling would continue.

I vowed to run away after today—to not botch my proposal to Katniss again. This time, I would do it right and make a real plan—one that included taking our families with us and finding a place to live where people in a far away city couldn't make our children kill each other, and make the rest of us watch it.

I was staring intently at Katniss, waiting for the girl tribute's name to be called. Effie Trinket called out the name—Primrose Everdeen. I watched the shock register on Katniss's face, as if she'd been hit with an arrow to the chest.

She immediately started working her way to the aisle as Prim marched stoically towards the stage. I watched her call out, "I volunteer!" as she pushed Prim behind her and that's when I realized I was also on my way to the stage.

I nearly called out the same thing before catching myself. Boys couldn't volunteer to take the place of girls. We just had to watch dumbly as the girls we loved were taken from us to get hatchets buried into their backs on TV.

As I reached the base of the stage, I just plucked Prim from Katniss's back and held her, kicking and flailing and crying for her sister. I wanted to do the same, but instead, said "Up you go, Catnip," in a voice I didn't recognize as my own, suddenly aware of the eyes of the world on us as we tried not to fall apart.

I turned my back to Katniss and looked for her mother in the crowd, wishing I could run and wrap both her and Prim in my arms and weep while our girl bravely faced the world and her certain demise behind me.

I knew in that instant that my last hope of a happy future was dying—that my last mistake—of not telling Katniss how I felt, of not taking her away—would haunt me the rest of my miserable life. Katniss would surely die at only sixteen years old, and it was all my fault.