A/N: Thank you so much to everyone has reviewed this story so far. Your feedback is what keeps me going through chapters like this one. And on that ominous note...

25

We trade off carrying Heath all the way past the mines and through the Seam. He's heavy, and we stumble over stones and rough patches in the dark. I'm grateful Heath's not awake to feel himself being jostled.

Mrs. Seney meets us at the door of their shack. It's clear she just got back from the mines, and her face is black with coal. When she looks at me, I swear it darkens further. I decide that it's time for me to go.

In the confusion of getting Heath through the door and onto the table, I hand Elsabet's bottle over to Larkin. I sniffed it on the walk over, so I know exactly what it is.

"Sleep syrup," I mutter when Larkin raises his eyebrows at me. "The Honeycutt girl slipped it to me." His face flashes surprise and admiration.

It's past dark and I'm miles from my house. Without really thinking about it, I head toward my parents' place instead. Larvina's warnings aside, it will be a relief not to be alone tonight. I doubt Rook's going to notice or care if I spend one night in the Seam.

My family is gathered in the front room when I get in. They've finished dinner, but Mom gets a plate ready for me as I sit down at the table.

"You been with Heath Seney?" Dad asks from his seat by the fire. I nod.

"Will he pull through?" Mom asks, glancing at Vernie. He's bent over his homework, pretending not to listen.

I shrug. "Apothecary didn't say otherwise."

No one knows what else to say to me, so we sit in silence while I eat. Dad squeezes my shoulder before heading to bed, but Mom sits up with me until I turn in myself. She gives me a hug as I stand up from the table.

"Just take it one day at a time," she whispers in my ear. "That's all any of us can do."

I crawl into my old bed and Vernie shifts over to make room. He lays his head on my shoulder and falls asleep, but I stay awake for a long time, thinking of Marlys, thinking of Heath, thinking of Etter and his crazy ideas about what I did in the arena. I think about whether I really did mean to use the force field as a weapon. Regardless of whether I meant to start a fight, it seems the Capitol is intent on finishing one with all of us.

I finally fall asleep, fences and force fields twisting through my brain.

We all stick close to home the next day. A few people hurry past outside, but other than that, the streets around our house are empty. It's a beautiful day, but our neighbors all have their curtains drawn and their doors shut tight, like they can block out the darkness that's taken over the district.

I help Vernie with his homework while Mom mends one of Dad's shirts. It's Dad's day off from the mines and he paces through our three rooms like a caged animal, snapping at everyone. I finally leave to avoid picking a fight with him. I ruffle Vernie's hair on my way out. I don't kiss Mom on the cheek. I don't even say goodbye to Dad.

Town is just as quiet as the Seam. The shops all seem to be open, but no one's in them. Peacekeepers are stationed at the corners of the square, and I keep my head down as I hurry past them. There's a Seam woman hunched over in the stocks. I don't look any closer, afraid I'll recognize her.

I take five of my nerve pills when I get back to my house. When the walls start to bend, I wonder if I overdid it, but can't muster the energy to care. I lean against the wall to keep from falling over. My fingers brush against soft bristles of carpet and I realize I'm lying on the floor. Shadows slip and slide across the ceiling. I think I sleep for a while.

I am walking through the arena. Someone is chasing me, but I don't care, because I'm chasing Marlys. She's running toward the ledge and the force field, but she doesn't know it's been turned on and I have to tell her before she jumps. I try to run faster, but the nerve pills make my legs feel like lead and I can barely move, even though my muscles burn and my lungs whistle.

I struggle through the hedge just in time to see Marlys fall. I try to scream, but my voice is whipped away as I'm wrenched toward the ledge, like Marlys and I are tethered together. I fall and fall and fall and finally hit the ground.

I expect the jolt to wake me up, but instead I'm running through the arena again, chasing Marlys, being chased. But this time I realize that the Marlys I'm chasing was the one chasing me. And that behind me, there are a whole string of Marlyses and Haymitches, waiting to plunge off the cliff to their deaths.

I drag myself out of my nightmares sometime the next morning, but they cling to me like cobwebs. I eat some bread and throw it back up. I lean my cheek against the cold bathroom floor and remember what Mom said about destroying myself not being the right way to mourn Marlys. To be honest, destroying myself didn't seem like a choice I made. It's just what happened. But maybe I need to make the choice not to let it.

It takes me the rest of the morning to take a shower and change out of the bloody clothes I wore to carry Heath through the Seam. As I pull on a soft, clean shirt, I realize that I could pay for Heath's treatment. I could make sure he gets the bandages and medicine he needs. I can even make sure the Seneys don't starve. That's what I would have done if Marlys was still alive, and I'll be damned if I let her down a second time. I can help the Seneys. And Mrs. Seney might just be desperate enough to let me.

The thought gives me focus, and the focus helps me put myself together and leave the house. In town, I stop at the apothecary to pay Heath's bill and buy some bandages. Mrs. Honeycutt almost gets over her shock enough to smile at me.

I'm on the road to the Seam when I see the smoke. Black smoke, like a pillar reaching into the cloudless sky. There are no sirens, so it's not a mining accident. Wrong place for the mines anyway – the smoke is above the houses.

I start running, squeezing the bandages in my hand so hard my fingers hurt. It can't be. There's only so much bad luck one family can have. It can't be coming from my house.

But it is. I shove through the crowd of people to see a smoldering pile of rubble where my house should be. Bright flames still crackle in places, sending billows of black smoke into the air.

I run forward but someone yanks me back and shoves a bucket into my hands. I realize that the crowd of people is actually a bucket chain, dousing the flames with water from our neighborhood pump.

I throw myself into the work, passing bucket after bucket, watching the flames shrink and hiss like serpents, and finally die away. I look up and down the chain for my parents or Vernie, but I can't see them.

As the last of the flames fade into embers, I stumble out of line and look around, staring into the dark faces of my neighbors, trying to ignore the way they're all avoiding my eyes.

"Vernie!" I holler. "Vern?"

I spin around, searching. Hoping. Dreading.

"Mom?" My voice cracks. "Mom!"

A hand drops onto my shoulder and I whirl around. It's Mr. Tanglewood, one of the other mine captains. He's got a wet handkerchief over his nose and mouth. His eyes are red from the smoke.

He says something, but I can't hear it. He pulls off the kerchief and says it again. His voice is thick and garbled, and I only catch his last few words.

"…getting your dad from the pit."

I stare past him at the ruins of my house, trying not to understand. There were only three rooms. Even if the fire was fast, Mom should have been able to get herself and Vernie out. The houses on either side of ours haven't even been touched. Their wood walls are soaked with water, but still – everything is covered in coal dust in the Seam. The whole neighborhood should have gone up like kindling. Mom and Vernie can't be gone while everyone else is fine. It doesn't make any sense.

Unless it was on purpose.

Mr. Tanglewood squeezes my shoulder and hurries away. I notice the crowd scattering and turn to see a formation of Peacekeepers headed up the road from town. Coming to check on their handiwork.

I've only taken a few a few strides toward them when someone tackles me. I skid along the dirt on my face, already bucking to get whoever it is off of me. I roll over to see Etter pinning me, his face grim and sooty. I struggle and he punches me in the stomach, knocking the breath out of me. Before I can recover, his knuckles crack against the side of my head. Lights burst behind my eyes.

Etter is dragged off of me but I stay slumped on the ground, gasping, too dazed to sit up. I see one of the Peacekeepers punch Etter in the gut. He folds over and they haul him toward the Justice Building.

By the time I struggle to my feet, they're gone. So is everyone else. They've disappeared back into their houses, which aren't in flames. Hiding with their families, who are safe and whole. Thanking their lucky stars that any of their children who got reaped into the Hunger Games had the sense to die in the arena, like they were supposed to.

I stagger toward the sodden charcoal that used to be my home. I kick a few pieces of charred wood away, but it's too hot to touch, and I know that if I actually find what I'm looking for, I'll lose whatever is left of my mind.

I guess my knees give out, because I'm sitting on the ground.

They could have lived with me. They should have lived with me. If it wasn't for Rook's rules and Dad's pride, they would have lived with me. They wouldn't be… They can't be…

I didn't tell them I loved them. I didn't even kiss Mom goodbye.

By the time Dad gets there, I'm shaking so hard my teeth are chattering, and I'm choking on smoke or tears or both. Dad collapses into Mr. Tanglewood, and a few other men come out of their shacks to support him. I guess he's finally suffered enough to be one of them.

Dad notices me eventually. For a second, I'm not sure what he's going to do, but then he falls on his knees and puts his arms around me, sobbing.

I feel like something deadly is trapped inside my chest. I gasp and it makes a sound like a buzz saw.

Part of my brain tells me that it's weird – sick and weird – to be thinking about what my crying sounds like when I'm kneeling beside the bodies of my mom and my baby brother. The buzz saw gets louder.

It doesn't take long for us to wear ourselves out. The tears lodge between my ribs, waiting for me to have the energy to start crying them again.

I don't know how I make it through the next couple days. The nerve pills trap me in nightmares, so I don't take them.

It hardly matters. Asleep or awake, I'm haunted by the faces I'll never see again. I see Mom, telling me that I fed the district. Vernie eating his way through my pantry, his eyes glued to the TV. Marlys' dark eyebrows drawn together as she worries over her broken victor. Maysilee, staring and slicked with blood. Brocade wearing a bright red smile under his chin. Raize's hollow face shining with water.

Their faces blur before my eyes and waver behind my eyelids, melting into each other until I can't tell if it was Mom who drowned in blood, or Marlys whose throat I cut, or Vernie who died by a poisoned stream.

I hide in my house, curled up in front of the TV. Ghosts whisper from the shadows, disappearing when I look for them. With the TV so loud it rattles the windows, I almost can't hear them.

Larvina comes by to sit with me and maybe make sure I'm not dead. She's the one who tells me when the funeral will be, because Dad doesn't visit once.

More people are at the funeral than have any right to be there. The other mine captains and their families come, of course, along with Dad's whole crew. The Seneys come. The Donners too, along with Elsabet Honeycutt and Donel Mellark. Mr. Mellark from school. Dr. Akensen. Even the mayor's family. They look like phonies, mourning the woman who washed their linens until they fired her for being too controversial.

Elsabet and Myralynn lean into Donel, their pale faces sad, like they ever gave a goat's turd about me or my family. Etter keeps trying to catch my eye, but I ignore him. His face is still bruised from his run-in with the Peacekeepers. I know he did it to protect me, and part of me hates him for it. I want them all to leave, but I don't have the energy to make them go.

We bury two cardboard boxes under the windows of my father's new house. It's another captain's shack, which I guess answers the question of whether he'll be living with me. I spend the funeral trying not to picture what's in those boxes. Dad spends it crying. I wonder if that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

When the funeral ends, I leave before anyone can try to talk to me.

I feel brittle, like I'm made out of eggshell. Like one sudden move and I'll crack in a way that can't ever be fixed. Mom used to say a rhyme about that, but I can't remember it, and it hurts to try. Instead, I focus on pretending that I'm made of eggshell and I can't let myself break. It's easier than thinking about how I murdered my family.

There's no doubt in my mind about that. No one has this much bad luck. This torture was set in motion from the moment I started shooting my mouth off in the Capitol. My family's deaths have the same kind of perverted irony as Maysilee being killed by birds after she said she liked them. I escaped the volcano in the arena, so they burned my mom and brother. The force field saved my life, so they used our fence to kill Marlys.

I remember Larvina asking me who I loved in Twelve. I might as well have written their names on an execution list.

I switch on the TV as soon as I get back to my house, then start prowling from room to room. This has been my schedule for the past week, and I've kept it pretty well: wander through my empty house, stare at the TV, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, fall asleep in odd places and at odd times, wake up screaming and do it all again. It feels like this has always been my life, and always will be. If the people who made up your past are all dead, did the past really happen? Are the memories real if you're the only one left to remember them?

I'm on my second lap through the kitchen when I notice it: a tall, clear bottle that I'm sure wasn't there when I went to the funeral. There's a card tied to the neck and I tear it off. It just says, Condolences.

It doesn't look like Larvina's handwriting, but it must be, because she's the only one who's ever given me a drink. This isn't the same brown stuff as before – it's clear and smells like paint stripper. I pour myself a glass and down it.

The liquid scorches its way to my stomach. I manage one ragged gasp before collapsing into a volley of coughs that sound like gunshots. I half expect my eggshell body to shatter. Instead, heat spreads through my chest, warming me from the inside out. It's such a relief to feel anything that I pour myself another glass and drink that too.

I bring the bottle and glass with me as I wander through the house. After a few more drinks, the glass seems like a pointless hassle. I leave it somewhere and start taking pulls straight from the bottle.

The misery sloughs off me like heavy layers of dead skin until I'm light enough to float to the ceiling. I trip on the stairs and bounce off the railing. It doesn't hurt at all, and I laugh at myself. It feels so good to laugh that I do it again and don't bother stopping.

Reality is worlds away. Somewhere there is a place where I'll never be whole again, but that place isn't this place, and right here and now, I feel just fine.

I stagger into my bathroom as the floor starts to tilt. I slam into the sink and catch myself with both hands.

A face swims out of the air in front of me. It's the face of a boy who killed his family. I take a swing at him, but the floor slopes again and my head hits the tiles with a crack.

Muffled voices float out of the darkness. I'm rolling down a hill. Hands are grabbing at me, trying to hold me in place. I twist to shake them off.

Something is thrust into my mouth and I gag as it hits the back of my throat, then gag again as vomit burns up from my stomach and explodes between my lips.

"Elsie," someone whimpers.

"Go help Donel, then," another voice says.

Once I start throwing up, I can't seem to stop. The sound of my puking drowns out whatever the voices say next.

By the time I run out of material, my stomach aches and my insides feel like they've been tied into one big knot. I try to curl up and end up smearing my face in my own puke. I retch again.

"Help me get him up," a girl's voice says.

I open my eyes to see a pale face surrounded by blonde hair.

"Maysilee?" I ask. It comes out like a moan.

This girl is too pretty to be Maysilee, anyway. Also, too alive.

Someone hoists me up and my head rolls forward, sending darts of pain through my temples. I try to stand, but my knees feel like gobs of cooking fat. Someone is unbuttoning my shirt.

"I can do this part," a boy says, sounding embarrassed. His voice rumbles against my back.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before," not-Maysilee answers. She tugs my shirt out of my pants and starts unbuckling my belt. "At my father's clinic," she adds.

"Right," the boy says, sounding more embarrassed than ever.

Between the two of them, they manage to strip me naked. I try to protest, but I'm too weak to fight them off and anything I try to say just comes out slurred and senseless. I settle for pretending to be unconscious.

I think I might actually be unconscious at some point, because the next thing I know, I'm in the shower getting sprayed down with hot water.

I force my eyes open. The floor is pitching like a boat in a storm, but Donel Mellark looks sturdy as ever as he crouches in front of me, avoiding my eyes and hosing me off with the showerhead. I slump against the cold wall and see Elsabet Honeycutt wiping the floor with a towel. My eyes drift closed again.

The water is off and someone is tapping my face. I wrench my eyes open to find Elsabet kneeling in front of me. I try to cover myself and discover that someone has thoughtfully draped a towel across my lap. I'm still sprawled naked in the bottom of my shower, the stink of my stomach poisoning the room, so I'd say the towel isn't doing much to preserve my dignity.

"Eat this, it'll help," she says, putting something against my lips. I pull away, but she doesn't let up and I find myself gnawing a piece of burned toast. Really burned. This seems strangely lousy of them, considering that Donel is the baker's son, but I'm in no position to demand better treatment.

I try to reject a second bite, but Elsabet is having none of that.

"The carbon in the burned part will absorb the poisons in your stomach," she explains. "Please try to eat as much as you can, Haymitch."

The total weirdness of Elsabet Honeycutt acting like we're friends distracts me from my surliness long enough to take another bite. I chew it slowly, looking back and forth between them.

"We came to check on you after the funeral," Donel says, reading the question in my eyes. "Your dad got held up talking to people." He says it like an apology, like Dad not wanting to see me is something he needs to excuse. I'm about to tell him not to waste his breath, but my stomach heaves and I jerk my head away, sucking in air and trying to convince myself not to throw up.

"It's okay," Elsabet says. Her hand is cradling the back of my neck. "You should throw up if you need to."

I do, but not as much as before. Donel looks away. Elsabet doesn't.

"That's good," she praises. "Better to get it out of your system."

Donel fills a glass with water and passes it to Elsabet. She holds it to my lips so I can rinse out my mouth.

We go on like that for what feels like hours. I keep expecting them to leave, and they keep not leaving. Donel gets a pot from the kitchen so I can throw up in that instead of on myself, and then finishes cleaning the bathroom floor. Elsabet feeds me burned toast and water and holds my head while I puke.

When I haven't thrown up for a while, Elsabet leaves with the puke pot so Donel can help me clean myself up. I'm shaky and weak, and I need his help to get out of the shower. He or Elsabet brought in clean clothes, and he helps me put them on.

"What are you doing here?" My throat feels like it's been scraped out, and the question that was meant to sound aggressive comes out as a croak.

Donel frowns.

"Would you believe me if I said we kind of like you?"

"No."

"Then let's just say we did it for Maysilee."

I nod. That makes sense. Although I'm pretty sure Maysilee wouldn't have been such a terrible victor.

Once I'm dressed, Donel supports me into my bedroom. It's been cleaned and the bed has been made. I'm about to snarl that I don't need them to play housekeeper as well as nursemaid, but then I see Myralynn hovering by the window and I shut up.

Donel gets me to the bed, promises to come back later, and leaves me alone with Maysilee's twin.

I try to sit up, but I'm too exhausted and I end up slumped against my pillows. I thought it wasn't possible to be more ashamed than I was in the bathroom, but facing Myralynn is worse. I try not to think how disgusted she must be, looking at the useless, stinking wreck that got to live instead of her sister.

"I'm glad you were allies," she says after a while, like we're in the middle of a conversation I don't remember starting. "I'm glad you were with her… when."

I wish I could say something, but there's nothing to say. I'm not glad about any of it.

"She trusted you, you know." She rubs the space between her eyebrows like she has a headache. "Even after you lied about the hedge. I could tell."

She and Maysilee might look the same, but everything else about them is so different that it seems weird that I could have mistaken Myralynn for Maysilee last week in the square. They stand differently, they dress differently – they even sound different. This is not the girl who fought her way out of the arena with me. Suddenly I miss Maysilee almost as much as I miss my mom.

"I wish she won instead," I rasp.

Myralynn gives me a sharp look, and for a moment her face is so entirely Maysilee that I have to look away.

"I don't," she says. Her voice is hollow. "I would never wish what's happening to you on my sister."

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