Chapter 6: Training, Day 2

The atmosphere is unusually still for a Capitol morning. The air around the breakfast table in the penthouse suite is quiet and subdued. Amidst the silence, Peeta and I cannot help but steal glances at each other, before inevitably blushing and glancing away.

Across from us, Jax is watching this entire display with barely concealed amusement. "So," he finally breaks the oblivion of sound, the single syllable cutting through the air like the shattering of glass. "How was your bed last night?"

Peeta and I tense up, indulge ourselves with another glance at each other, though this one is filled with far more terror at having been found out. Another beat and then...

He begins to laugh musically. So do I. Before long, Jax also joins in and the three of us are soon guffawing, even as I blush beet red from embarassment. My chortling only grows all the louder when I notice the expression on the Witch's face, which now rests somewhere between apoplectic and horror-struck. Under the table, I feel Peeta's fingers lace through mine, giving them a squeeze. Beaming at him, I squeeze back.

Pursing her lips, Effie appears deeply uncomfortable. Folding her napkin daintily on her lap, she quips, "Well, while I congratulate you on your happiness, Katniss and Peeta, please do be aware next time of your responsibilities."

As if on cue, our drunken mentor stumbles into the living quarters, swaying dangerously and with his head in his hands. He must be suffering from a terrific hangover. Just like that, the laughter fades from me, and my face goes white. If I was embarassed by the airing of my sexual life just moments ago, I am now downright mortified.

"We forgot Haymitch!" I squeak, turning to Peeta, who is also wincing guiltily. Haymitch rounds the table and collapses into the empty chair between me and Effie, slumping back.

Our escort nods tightly. "He was found on a couch in the Victors' Lounge unconscious and brought back here around 3 AM by a squad of Peackeepers." Peeta and I cringe sheepishly. Next to us, Haymitch says nothing - if he is angry with us for forgetting him, perhaps he is too drunk or tired to voice it. Still, I feel ashamed. Haymitch very well could have died from an alcohol overdose while I was busy getting shagged out my mind and losing my virginity.

Both still pink in the face, Peeta and I turn back to our tributes, while I try to ignore the withering stare of pure loathing coming from Paula. "OK. Second day of training. Continue practicing skills you might not know, particularly weaponry," Peeta instructs. "Jax, be sure to set aside enough time to talk up Domitia from 2. Flirt with her, as Haymitch said, get a feel for her... but don't appear too eager."

Jax nods, seeming to understand.

"Also," I cut in. "Spend today going to stations that don't specializie in weaponry or combat. Survival stations hold their own value, and you would do well to soak up as many pointers from these as you can. I'd suggest the Edible Plants station. There's no telling when you'll next find food, and foliage can be a good substitute source of protein... provided you can identify which ones aren't poisonous." Jax pales a little at this, but nods again. Paula is now refusing to look at me. "Paula," I prompt her directly. "While Jax is busy recruiting Domitia, you should try to at least practice some people skills by continuing to make nice with the allies you've already courted. Braid and District 11."

Paula raises her eyes to mine, her eyes black as coal. The sneer she flashes at me is ugly, and I will myself to not glance away from it, meeting her stare evenly. I can sense Peeta glancing warily between the pair of us - the two most important women in his life.

"9:30!" he calls out a little too loudly, making a show of checking his watch. "We'd better get you two down there!" He begins to clear the table.

"Oh, Peeta!" Effie pipes up. "That package that we talked about arrived in the mail. It was posted from the National Library this morning."

Peeta and I surreptiously look at each other, thinking the same thing: The Quell tapes.

"Thank you, Effie," Peeta beams at her graciously. "Although I do wish we would have had access to it earlier. I wonder what took it so long?"

"Apparently, the package needed to be put through a security clearance, requested by the President."

Peeta frowns hard. "That doesn't make any sense! The archives of the National Library are supposed to be open to all Capitol citizens, specifically Victors, correct?"

"So the government says," Haymitch rumbles almost sarcastically, briefly coming to life in his chair before his head lolls to one side. Peeta hisses, eyeing our mentor with concern.

"Effie, can you draw a bath for him? Katniss and I will get him cleaned up when we come back." He waves his mother and Jax to the elevators. "Training, now. You can't be late; Atala would have our hides!"

We rush our tributes down to the Training Center, Paula imparting me with one last glower as she exits the elevator. As soon as the doors ding shut to whoosh Peeta and I back up, I sag against the wall.

"She hates me. She absolutely despises me for having sex with you..."

"... and you're going to be her daughter-in-law, so she'd better damn well get used to it." Peeta's voice has a hard edge to it that I have never heard whenever he talks about his mother. Suddenly, his large hand seize me by my bum and he pulls me close, kissing me senseless so that his tongue gets shoved down my throat.

I stiffen in surprise but quickly respond, kissing him back as he audaciously gropes the tender flesh of my rear. Minutes later, the elevator doors announce us back onto the penthouse floor and Peeta and I snap apart, gasping.

"What was that for?" I blink, breathless.

"To tell you how much I love you," Peeta's grin is almost wicked. Then he leans in close to hiss along my earlobe, "And to tell you how amazing you were last night." I shiver in delight.

We find Haymitch still passed out in his breakfast chair; it takes the both of us to haul his large ass to the bathtub just off his room, which Effie drew in our absence. Dumping him in, we scrub and wash him, then roll him out again onto the bath mat, leaving him on his back. Peeta hangs an outfit on the door hook, and trusting Haymitch will eventually come to and dress himself, we head out to the living quarters.

We did enough cold calling yesterday to feel confident in working the phones again without Haymitch hovering over us. So Peeta and I continue to learn by doing, placing calls to sponsors. I still feel wildly insincere in trying to advocate for a tribute who clearly hates me, and who frankly I hate right back. Ever the consummate professional and gentleman, Peeta has a way with words that leaves many influencers practically eating out of his hand. So at midday, I decide we should delegate.

"You work the sponsors. I'll start placing calls to the mentors we want to ally with."

Peeta nods. "Be sure to leave Brutus off the list!" he warns. "At least until Jax can get 100% committment from Domitia."

I decide to place a call to District 8 first. From what Haymitch has told me, it appears that the mentor entourages for most of the districts (save Districts 1, 2 and 4) are quite small, with no more than three or four Victors, like us. Listening to the dial tone, I know that I will be entering discussions with either Cecelia Rheys or Cotton Rivers. I don't know if the mentoring by gender rule extends to alliance negotiations, so I may even be talking with Woof Barton at some point as well.

"Hello, District 8 headquarters." The tone of the voice sounds familiar.

"Oh, hi, Cecelia! This is Katniss Everdeen, District 12. How are you?"

A slight pause at the other end. "Oh, this isn't Cecelia. I'm Victoria, her agent."

Victors have agents? I frown. I've never heard of such a thing. Well, maybe that is just another word for escort. Although the voice I'm hearing certainly sounds like the Cecelia I met last night. "Oh," I get out lamely. "My apologies. Can you take a message then?"

"Of course."

"Can you tell Cecelia that I would love to continue discussions of an alliance with her girl, Braid, and my tributes."

"I'll be sure to pass it on."

Just then, in the background, I hear a deep baritone voice. "Cecelia? Baby? Who is it?"

"Nobody," the person I am speaking with squeaks, and I hear a click as the woman quickly hangs up.

I frown as I draw the receiver away from my ear and stare at it, deeply confused. Was I talking to Victoria or Cecelia? And if the latter, why would she pretend to be someone else and give another name?

Haymitch finally joins us, dressed and significantly more sober, around mid-afternoon. The sun sets fast over the Capitol horizon, and our tributes drag themselves back into the penthouse living quarters for dinner.

"Is your alliance still set?" I ask Paula and Jax.

"Yes," our male tribute nods. "At least Paula didn't scare them away."

"How's it coming with Domitia? What are you reading?" Peeta butters a roll.

"I think she'd be willing to join forces. She hung around with me most of the day, following me to stations."

Haymitch oddly tenses at this. "Did you notice her acting strangely? Spying?"

"No, nothing like that," Jax blinks. "We just went through the surivival stations together. I think she'd make a good partner."

"Don't let your guard down," Haymitch warns. "But keep working her. Then, tomorrow at lunch... spring the proposition."

I nod. "Good work today. Why don't you both get some rest?" Paula and Jax accept my dismissal and disappear back to their rooms without another word.

Haymitch heaves himself out of his chair. "I'm gonna watch some TV coverage. Have a cold one."

"Just one bottle, right?" Peeta calls to his retreating back.

"You're not my mother, boy!"

Effie also retires early, but not before handing over to Peeta a small PPS box. Panem Postal Service. My partner immediately takes it over to the smaller TV in the guest room down the hall. Taking a seat next to him, I find myself wanting to be as close to this man as possible, so I quite flirtatiously swing myself into his lap, straddling him. Peeta smirks and snuggles me close.

"Hi."

I beam. "Hi."

We kiss lightly, but before we can get too carried away, I draw back, gesturing to the unopened box at our side. "Mmmmm... Are those the Quell tapes?"

"Yup. I thought we'd starting watching one tonight."

"Which would you like?"

Slicing the seal with a penknife, Peeta holds the box out to me with a grin. "You pick."

Eyeing the package for a moment, I frown. There are only two Quells in here: Haymitch's, and Cora Shutter's from District 8. Silently reciting Eenie-Meenie-Miny-Mo in my head, I plunge a hand in and select the first tape I close my fingers around.

The number of the Games, printed on the side of the videotape, is 50. The homeland of the Victor is District 12. And the name of the Victor is Haymitch Abernathy.

I eye the tape in my hand dubiously, my heart suddenly clenching as my conscience gets the better of me. Despite the mutual agreement we reached all those months ago, I still can't help but feel like this would be a huge invasion of Haymitch's privacy. I hardly notice Peeta gently take the tape from my hands to examine it. Casting my eyes away almost with shame, I busy myself by digging into the box. "Cora Shutter's Quell is in here, right?"

"I did put in a request for both," Peeta is passing Haymitch's tape from hand to hand, weighing it as though he's trying to ascertain its value. "Why? You don't want to watch Haymitch's first?"

I roll my eyes at him, though my conscience still tugs. "There's only two of them, Peeta. You wrote Effie to put in that order because we figured there might be something valuable in learning how Quells work. We agreed on this, even before the Reading of the Card." He and I both look down at Haymitch's tape between us, then back at each other. I bite my lip. "Haymitch did say we could watch it, so long as we don't go telling him."

Peeta shrugs. "OK. Second Quarter Quell it is." He pops the tape in, I rest my head on his shoulder, and I lose myself in the Fiftieth Annual Hunger Games.

After the anthem, they show President Snow drawing the envelope for the second Quarter Quell. He looks younger but just as repellent. He reads from the square of paper in the same onerous voice he used for ours, informing Panem that in honor of the Quarter Quell, there will be twice
the number of tributes. The editors smash cut right into the reapings, where name after name after name is called. By the time we get to District 12, I'm completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids going to certain death. There's a woman, not Effie, calling the names in 12, but she still begins with "Ladies first!" She calls out the name of a girl who's from the Seam, you can tell by the look of her, and then I hear the name "Maysilee Donner." "Oh!" I say. "She was my mother's friend." The camera finds her in the crowd, clinging to two other girls. All blond. All definitely merchants' kids. "I think that's your mother hugging her," says Peeta quietly. And he's right. As Maysilee Donner bravely disengages herself and heads for the stage, I catch a glimpse of my mother at my age, and no one has exaggerated her beauty. Holding her hand and weeping is another girl who looks just like Maysilee. But a lot like someone else I know, too. "Madge," I say. "That's her mother. She and Maysilee were twins or something," Peeta says. "My dad mentioned it once." I think of Madge's mother. Mayor Undersee's wife. Who spends half her life in bed immobilized with terrible pain, shutting out the world. I think of how I never realized that she and my mother shared this connection. Of Madge showing up in that snowstorm to bring the painkiller for Gale. Of my mockingjay pin and how it means something completely different now that I know that its former owner was Madge's aunt, Maysilee Donner, a tribute who was murdered in the arena. Haymitch's name is called last of all. It's more of a shock to see him than my mother. Young. Strong. Hard to admit, but he was something of a looker. His hair dark and curly, those gray Seam eyes bright and, even then, dangerous. "Oh. Peeta, you don't think he killed Maysilee, do you?" I burst out. I don't know why, but I can't stand the thought. "With forty-eight players? I'd say the odds are against it," says Peeta. The chariot rides — in which the District 12 kids are dressed in awful coal miners' outfits — and the interviews flash by. There's little time to focus on anyone. But since Haymitch is going to be the victor, we get to see one full exchange between him and Caesar Flickerman, who looks exactly as he always does in his twinkling midnight blue suit. Only his dark green hair, eyelids, and lips are different. "So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred percent more competitors than usual?" asks Caesar. Haymitch shrugs. "I don't see that it makes much difference. They'll still be one hundred percent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same." The audience bursts out laughing and Haymitch gives them a half smile. Snarky. Arrogant. Indifferent. "He didn't have to reach far for that, did he?" I say. Now it's the morning the Games begin. We watch from the point of view of one of the tributes as she rises up through the tube from the Launch Room and into the arena. I can't help but give a slight gasp. Disbelief is reflected on the faces of the players. Even Haymitch's eyebrows lift in pleasure, although they almost immediately knit themselves back into a scowl. It's the most breathtaking place imaginable. The golden Cornucopia sits in the middle of a green meadow with patches of gorgeous flowers. The sky is azure blue with puffy white clouds. Bright songbirds flutter overhead. By the way some of the tributes are sniffing, it must smell fantastic. An aerial shot shows that the meadow stretches for miles. Far in the distance, in one direction, there seems to be a woods, in the other, a snowcapped mountain. The beauty disorients many of the players, because when the gong sounds, most of them seem like they're trying to wake from a dream. Not Haymitch, though. He's at the Cornucopia, armed with weapons and a backpack of choice supplies. He heads for the woods before most of the others have stepped off their plates. Eighteen tributes are killed in the bloodbath that first day. Others begin to die off and it becomes clear that almost everything in this pretty place — the luscious fruit dangling from the bushes, the water in the crystalline streams, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly — is deadly poisonous. Only the rainwater and the food provided at the Cornucopia are safe to consume. There's also a large, well-stocked Career pack of ten tributes scouring the mountain area for victims. Haymitch has his own troubles over in the woods, where the fluffy golden squirrels turn out to be carnivorous and attack in packs, and the butterfly stings bring agony if not death. But he persists in moving forward, always keeping the distant mountain at his back. Maysilee Donner turns out to be pretty resourceful herself, for a girl who leaves the Cornucopia with only a small backpack. Inside she finds a bowl, some dried beef, and a blowgun with two dozen darts. Making use of the readily available poisons, she soon turns the blowgun into a deadly weapon by dipping the darts in lethal substances and directing them into her opponents' flesh. Four days in, the picturesque mountain erupts in a volcano that wipes out another dozen players, including all but five of the Career pack. With the mountain spewing liquid fire, and the meadow offering no means of concealment, the remaining thirteen tributes — including Haymitch and Maysilee — have no choice but to confine themselves to the woods. Haymitch seems bent on continuing in the same direction, away from the now volcanic mountain, but a maze of tightly woven hedges forces him to circle back into the center of the woods, where he encounters three of the Careers and pulls his knife. They may be much bigger and stronger, but Haymitch has remarkable speed and has killed two when the third disarms him. That Career is about to slit his throat when a dart drops him to the ground. Maysilee Donner steps out of the woods. "We'd live longer with two of us." "Guess you just proved that," says Haymitch, rubbing his neck. "Allies?" Maysilee nods. And there they are, instantly drawn into one of those pacts you'd be hard-pressed to break if you ever expect to go home and face your district. Just like Peeta and me, they do better together. Get more rest, work out a system to salvage more rainwater, fight as a team, and share the food from the dead tributes' packs. But Haymitch is still determined to keep moving on. "Why?" Maysilee keeps asking, and he ignores her until she refuses to move any farther without an answer. "Because it has to end somewhere, right?" says Haymitch. "The arena can't go on forever." "What do you expect to find?" Maysilee asks. "I don't know. But maybe there's something we can use," he says. When they finally do make it through that impossible hedge, using a blowtorch from one of the dead Careers' packs, they find themselves on flat, dry earth that leads to a cliff. Far below, you can see jagged rocks. "That's all there is, Haymitch. Let's go back," says Maysilee. "No, I'm staying here," he says. "All right. There's only five of us left. May as well say good-bye now, anyway," she says. "I don't want it to come down to you and me." "Okay," he agrees. That's all. He doesn't offer to shake her hand or even look at her. And she walks away. Haymitch skirts along the edge of the cliff as if trying to figure something out. His foot dislodges a pebble and it falls into the abyss,
apparently gone forever. But a minute later, as he sits to rest, the pebble shoots back up beside him. Haymitch stares at it, puzzled, and then his face takes on a strange intensity. He lobs a rock the size of his fist over the cliff and waits. When it flies back out and right into his hand, he starts laughing. That's when we hear Maysilee begin to scream. The alliance is over and she broke it off, so no one could blame him for ignoring her. But Haymitch runs for her, anyway. He arrives only in time to watch the last of a flock of candy pink birds, equipped with long, thin beaks, skewer her through the neck. He holds her hand while she dies, and all I can think of is Rue and how I was too late to save her, too. Later that day, another tribute is killed in combat and a third gets eaten by a pack of those fluffy squirrels, leaving Haymitch and a girl from District 1 to vie for the crown. She's bigger than he is and just as fast, and when the inevitable fight comes, it's bloody and awful and both have received what could well be fatal wounds, when Haymitch is finally disarmed. He staggers through the beautiful woods, holding his intestines in, while she stumbles after him, carrying the ax that should deliver his deathblow. Haymitch makes a beeline for his cliff and has just reached the edge when she throws the ax. He collapses on the ground and it flies into the abyss. Now weaponless as well, the girl just stands there, trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket. She's thinking perhaps that she can outlast Haymitch, who's starting to convulse on the ground. But what she doesn't know, and what he does, is that the ax will return. And when it flies back over the ledge, it buries itself in her head. The cannon sounds, her body is removed, and the trumpets blow to announce Haymitch's victory. Peeta clicks off the tape and we sit there in silence for a while. Finally Peeta says, "That force field at the bottom of the cliff, it was like the one on the roof of the Training Center. The one that throws you back if you try to jump off and commit suicide. Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon." "Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too," I say. "You know they didn't expect that to happen. It wasn't meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon. It made them look stupid that he figured it out. I bet they had a good time trying to spin that one. Bet that's why I don't remember seeing it on television. It's almost as bad as us and the berries!" I can't help laughing, really laughing, for the first time in months. Peeta just shakes his head like I've lost my mind — and maybe I have, a little.

"Almost, but not quite," says Haymitch from behind us. I whip around, afraid he's going to be angry over us watching his tape, but he just smirks and takes a swig from a bottle of wine. So much for sobriety. I guess I should be upset he's drinking again, but another feeling instead preoccupies me.

Non-Careers have won these Quells for a reason. And that reason is grit. The determination to win against even worse odds because worse odds are all we outsider districts have ever known. Such are the cards that come in the hand of a hardscrabble life. And no one knows more of a hardscrabble life than a person from District 12.

This makes me think that our tributes just might have what it takes to defend Haymitch's title.