She's pacing the stage, just hours before her first reaping as an official Capitol escort, wearing 6-inch pink pumps and a matching balloony dress. This is your job, she tells herself, just your profession. You're not the one who chose them to die.
He stumbles through the Justice Building lobby, drunk, his hair and short beard scruffy and unkempt. His hand grasps her forearm and she gasps a little bit, gazing into his eyes. They are a Seam grey, little flecks of green-yellow around his pupils. He stands up straight, composing himself. "Miss Effie," he says, his words slurred together into a vague pair of syllables.
He leaves a little peck on her lips, smearing her lipstick. "That's disgusting," she whispers to herself in her little Capitol accent. She calls on her assistant to reapply but she can't help thinking how beautiful those eyes were. "No, no," she tells herself. He's a man from the Seam, a victor, older than her, and a drunkard.
She steps out onto the stage, confident, gazing down into a crowd of thousands of District Twelve citizens.
He hand plunges into the girls' glass bowl, and she reads the name. She barely sees the momentous event occur, but she reacts quickly. The crowd stirs a little bit, excited about this volunteer. A twelve-year-old girl with braids and a nice dress cries in the front, gazing up at her brave older sister.
When her hand reaches into the boys' bowl, she swears she sees the name Haymitch flash across that paper. But, coming to her senses, she announces "Peeta Mellark!" into the microphone, and when the tall, well-built boy walks slowly up to the stage, she sees Abernathy all over his face.
When the teenagers are crying with their families in the Justice Building, she's sitting in the fancy Capitol car telling Haymitch that she can't stop thinking about him.
