So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to leave you flowers.


Once a year or so, Madge's dad, Mayor Undersee would be called to the Capitol. His family would see him off at the station, smiling bravely and sweating through his best linen suit because from year to year, he never knew if he'd be allowed home back again. That was an open secret. In the end the Capitol did get him, just not in the way he'd expected - bombs, not the firing squad or the garrote.

But every year he returned home he'd bring presents for the kids. Used toys from second-hand bins that spoiled Capitol children would have looked down their surgically-altered noses at, but which were treasures beyond compare to us. Glossy flyers and catalogs tossed out for free from swanky shopping malls.

Madge and I spent hours browsing those catalogs, pressing our noses to the thick, gleaming white pages as though we could sniff out the elusive scent of the Capitol, breathe in its bounty. We didn't need the dolls and rocking ponies and miniature, remote-controlled hovercrafts they advertised - we could make up our own stories about what we'd do if we had them.

Gale lugs home our rations from the station, a sheaf of leaflets bundled under his arm. I've unearthed the phone from the bushes and am fiddling around with it when he comes back, trying to figure out which end goes where. I want to get it connected so I can talk to Dr. Aurelius again. One of the pages Gale's carrying falls to the floor and I pick it up curiously. Gale can figure out how to get the phone working. In a few minutes he'll be so frustrated with me tinkering around with it and getting nowhere that he'll just snatch it out of my hands anyway.

The leaflet is an advertisement for books. "The world keeps getting weirder and weirder," I remark. Imagine being so rich you could afford to spend your money on books. To read because you wanted to, not because you had to for school. Not that Gale and I ever really read the ones we were assigned to in school - Prim usually took over my homework for me even though she was so much littler and Gale just didn't care. I dreamwalked through school and he approached it with something akin to dog-eared defiance. "Who'd ever pay for books?"

"I started reading," Gale says almost shyly as though he expects me to spark up at him. "A little in Thirteen, a little while I was in One. Kids' books mostly." When I don't screech Traitor at him as he seems to expect, he continues bravely, "It was kind of fun. Kept my mind off things at least."

In Twelve, we weren't fancy enough to have books to keep our minds off things. We had liquor. But still I ask politely, "What did you read?"

"There was this one I really liked, it had animals in it. They staged this rebellion against the farmers-"

I burst out laughing.

"No seriously, its better than it sounds! So they set up their own government in the barnyard but the pigs, since they're the smartest-"

I'm holding my side now, laughing so hard I feel I'll tear up in two. Gale looks unusually pleased with himself and I wonder if he made the story up only to see me laugh. "Haymitch once said pigs reminded him too much of humans," I say, between bursts of laughter.

"Maybe he read it too then. It used to be banned, I only read it in Thirteen." Gale taps his forehead, trying to remember the name. "Animal Farm. I'll see if I can get us a copy."

"Gale." I make a face at him. "You don't seriously expect me to read a book with talking animals, do you?"

"You won't even give it a shot? The pigs wear waistcoats," he tells me temptingly.

"Alright. Maybe if you can find me a copy with pictures." I liked picture books when I was a little girl and my father would read the ones the school handed out to me. They're probably the only kind of books I like, I never had a chance to find out. "Have a look at this for me, will you?" I ask, tossing him the phone.

He sits down on the sofa and cradles it like a baby bird. "Poor little thing," he coos. "Mama'll have you right in a jiffy."

I stretch lazily, bending down to touch my toes and then up until I can feel the satisfying tug of skin stretched tight around my middle. I'm getting stronger. I can run a lap around the house now without stopping and it makes me proud.

"We never had a chance to find out what we liked," I tell him, scooping up the other flyers he's brought in. "Not like the kids in the Capitol... blue nail-polish or pink. Chocolate ice-cream or strawberry."

"We were too busy trying to survive. Does that make you feel bad?"

"No," I say quickly though it does rankle. A little. Just the unfairness of it. "But I wish she had it all. Pretty dresses, sparkly paint, all the books she could ever read."

He doesn't look up, but his voice creeps cautiously to me, a little vine of hope. "Someday our children will have it all."

My own is too chipper in response, too aggressively bright to let sentimentality flourish. "I'd better start unpacking all the stuff you've got. Tell me when you're done with the phone."

"Alright." If he's disappointed, the mildness in his voice doesn't let it show.

I want to take books over to Peeta's house today - ones with pictures in them, of course - but there's nowhere I can find any now. There are none I'm interested in, in the house - the only ones it came furnished with were for decoration - and the tiny lending-library Twelve once had is now a long-forgotten dream. We could send for some from the Capitol or Thirteen of course, but it would take them days to arrive.

"We should set up a library," Gale says hopefully. "Kids should read more."

I snort. "Did they tell you that in Thirteen?"

"Yes. Nothing wrong about it though."

I sigh - when it comes to Thirteen, sometimes he can be so hopelessly blind. We find Peeta's Avox sunning herself on the porch steps. She waves to us and mimes sleeping - Peeta must be taking a nap upstairs. "Hi," I say. "Could I um, borrow some of Peeta's stuff? Paper and crayons. He won't mind, I'll return them as soon as I'm done."

I'm not the best drawer in the world - I'm probably somewhere closer to the worst and the only good thing you can say about me is that at least I color inside the lines - but my fingers are feeling antsy today. I line the crayons up like the colors of the rainbow, pressing them in place so they don't roll off the rough wooden planks. I draw like a kid again, like I did in preschool when I didn't know that the only fate open to me was the body-swallowing blackness of the mines. Triangular green trees, sunflowers reaching for the sky, a rainbow dense with color.

"That's really ugly."

Of course I've heard him. Peeta couldn't creep up on me if his life depended on it. The Avox - I really should try to find out her name, I remind myself - has her arm around him and Gale is somewhere close by so I'm not worried about leaving myself open to him.

"I don't care. Its mine," I say childishly.

The Avox draws a heart shape in the air with her fingers. She likes it. She picks up a crayon and looks at me inquisitively. I nod. She can add to my picture if she wants. Peeta is allowed to as well, but he looks too disgusted to join.

She's much better at it than me. She picks up a few shades, blue, green and violet, and begins to color in parts of the lake that I haven't filled in. They blend beautifully. "You're really good," I say, impressed.

She smiles and points to Peeta as though to indicate that he's the one who she's picked this up from. "I'm sorry I haven't asked your name yet," I say, flushing in embarrassment. "Please, what is it?"

"Her name's Cora," Peeta says harshly. "Cora Cresta."

Cresta? I think, confused. Peeta's crazy - gone crazier, I think.

"Like Annie," he says, an almost reptilian smile curling on his face as though he finds my reaction funny. "She's her cousin."

"No," I breathe but even as the Avox gives me a tiny nod, I realize that he hasn't made this up. Its cutting too close to the truth. She has the same long copper-brown hair, the same delicate, heart-shaped face. Nonono. And because I don't want to believe it, because there are so many unanswered questions and they scare me because I don't want to be left in the dark like this, not again, I turn on Peeta. "You're enjoying this!"

"I am," he admits. He leans back against the wall of the house, his arms drawn around his knees, unbearably smug.

"You're so fucked up." I drop the crayons and get up. "Cora, I'm so sorry..." She gets up too and tries to make soothing sounds, no doubt to comfort me, but without a tongue they come out only as guttural rasps. Which are frankly terrifying. Her hands might be soft and gentle but I don't want them on me. I don't want anyone touching me or babying me again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

I bolt before she can touch me. I don't stop running until I'm upstairs in my own room, ripping the blankets off the bed and draping them all over me while I huddle on the floor. I'll make myself a tent and Sae can send my meals up to me...

"What the hell are you up to now?" Gale sounds more annoyed than anxious. No glasses of water or soothing pats to the knee now. "I was just getting started on the turnips-"

"She's Annie's cousin," I wail. I feel like clawing off my damp, slippery skin - it almost seems to throb from sheer terror. He lied. Or they lied. Someone lied. She can't be a Cresta, the Avox... nobody told me. "Cora. The Avox. Why is she here? Why isn't she in District Four with all the other Crestas? There must be other Crestas, right? Or did they kill them all? Why is she with Peeta?"

"Did Peeta tell you she was Annie Cresta's cousin?"

"Yes, but he can't be lying, she looks exactly like her-"

"I fixed the phone."

"I don't care about the stupid phone-"

His voice rises above mine, measured but commanding. "So now I'm going to call Dr. Aurelius and clear this up," he says with a note of finality. "And if Peeta's lying you can march up there and kick his sorry ass. High time he gets that whooping."

I stay crouched uncomfortably on the floor, steaming under my blankets (but feeling quite safe) while he goes down. When he's finally back again, eons later, I'm so cramped and hot from not moving that I'm not even scared anymore.

He sits down heavily on the bed, not even offering me a hand up. He knows my moods too well by now. "Its true. No, Katniss don't cover up your ears - its not going to make it any better." He steeples his fingers together, as though thinking hard. Finally he says, "I called up Dr. Aurelius and he gave me a number to call in at District Four. Cora - she used to go by Corrie - and Annie, they grew up together. Cora was a little older but they might as well have been sisters. After Annie's Games, when she refused to co-operate, Snow thought that she might benefit from a little... persuasion."

"They took Cora." I swallow down black bile, yellow vomit.

"Yeah. Not that it changed Annie - she was too broken." He shifts. "Well, long story short they couldn't send a kid they'd interviewed during the Victor's Games back like that and since Snow was-"

"Economical," I say. "Snow was always economical so he had her turned into an Avox."

"Well economical wasn't the word I was going to use." He massages his forehead. If he has a headache coming on, I can brew him feverfew tea but this isn't a headache I think. This is the sledgehammer of exhaustion. We swept their ashes into the sea, but their ghosts can still hurt us. "They dragged Cora out again when Annie was interrogated during the Purge, thinking they might as well get some more use out of her."

"It didn't work the first time they tried. Why did they think it'd work the second?"

"Maybe they just didn't care. Maybe they just wanted an excuse because they were sadistic little shits." His hand hardens into a fist. "Anyway, Annie and Peeta were tortured in the same room at times... Peeta started to get to know Cora and when he was in the hospital afterwards, she looked after him for a bit since she was used to him."

"Why didn't they send her back to Four?"

"She didn't want to go. She asked to be assigned to Peeta."

"But she must have family back there?"

He gives me a look. "So do you."

He's trying to drag my mother into this again. What am I supposed to do? Feel sorry for leaving her? Guilty? When hell freezes over. "That's not the same."

"Maybe its exactly the same, Catnip."


"Miss Everdeen! How delightful of you to join our sessions once more."

"Is the phone tapped?"

"I beg your pardon?"

I sigh in frustration. "Tapped. Bugged. Uh, wormed? Is anyone listening in on us?"

"My sessions are confidential, Miss Everdeen. I take the utmost care to preserve yours in particular, considering the extenuating circumstances of your condition... however, discretion may always be advised. As far as possible."

What? "Um, right."

"You may speak freely. Within the limits of discretion."

He probably means politics by that. "First off, Cora Cresta," I say. I bite down the most acidic words and try to speak calmly, rationally. I'm not crazy, not like Peeta. "They all lied to me. Why did you let them?"

"No one lied to you, Katniss... may I call you Katniss, Miss Everdeen?"

"Sure." I tap my bare feet on the floor, my legs and soles tingling warm with restlessness. "Nobody told me who she was. That's like lying to me." I'm sick of being lied to.

"Miss Cresta's presence in your immediate environment was not considered hazardous to your health... but it was considered extremely beneficial to Mr Mellark's."

"He's known her for just a few months!"

"Ah but what months those were." So now he's snarking me too.

"Did you think it was a good idea for her to come here?"

A delicate pause. It tells me everything I need to know. "In consultation with my colleagues and fellow specialists, I was persuaded that it might be salutary."

"Why do you always have to use such fancy words?"

"It is my manner of speaking, Katniss. If you wish, I will attempt to shall we say, tone it down? You might also wish to peruse books to improve your vocabulary, now that you are at some liberty. Light novels, perhaps."

I bet he's been talking to Gale. "I've never been much of a reader, sorry."

"I am aware and I think that a great pity. Everyone ought to be presented with an opportunity to allow their minds to flourish. I shall handpick a few for you and Mr Mellark and Soldier Hawthorne. I hope you will enjoy them."

Does he mean he's giving me clues snuck into books? Or does he really want me to read more because he thinks I'm an ignorant cretin? "Thanks."

"My pleasure, Katniss, as always. Is there anything else on your mind that you might wish to take up?"

"Not now."

"Very well then. I am at your service at any time of day and night... and now that I see you are better restored to good humor, I shall delicately broach the subject of our therapy sessions."

Drat. Of course he would - I just hadn't thought about it when I dialed him up. "Fine," I say resignedly. "Wednesday afternoons."

"On a parting note may I suggest inviting some old friends now that you are in a position to play hostess? I find that there is nothing like camaraderie, the bonhomie of music and firelight and fine wine, to restore the spirits."

"I don't have any old friends." Or fine wine.

"I think you will find that you do. Miss Delilah Cartwright, for a start, Miss Euphemia Trinket. You have so many more friends than you remember, Katniss. I believe they would be hurt at your negligence."

Yeah right. "I'll think about it."

"I sincerely hope that you do. Enjoy your evening, Katniss." He cuts the call and I drop the phone with a clang in its cradle.

"What did he say?" Gale asks, poking his head out from the kitchen.

"Yada yada," I yawn, "and he wanted me to have a party, ugh. Call up Delly and Effie and all my other friends... like I have any left." Or had too many to begin with.

Instead of laughing with me, Gale actually sounds thoughtful. "That's a good idea."

"It would be if I had fine wine and friends."

"Not all of us are trolls like you, Catnip. I have friends."

"Yeah well its not your house," I say rudely.

"I'm the one that does the cooking and the hunting."

I stuff my feet back into my shoes. "I'm going for a run." The house is snug and cozy, it smells deliciously of soup stirring on the hob but I want to feel the burn in my calves, the thump of my heart beating too fast.

"Are you going over to Peeta's?"

I go over every night to drop off some food at Peeta's. But of course I can't go tonight. "God no."

Gale leaves the kitchen and stands in the doorway of the living room, just before I start my stretches. "I think you should," he says seriously. "You just bolted without saying a thing this afternoon."

"Well what was there to say?" I ask hotly.

"It looked rude."

"Honestly, that was the last thing I'd care about."

"Oh c'mon, Katniss," he wheedles, rubbing my shoulder. "What would Cora think?"

"I don't give a-"

"She's not contaminated, you know."

But she is. She terrifies me because if she can be hiding here in plain sight, what else is around me that I don't know, that'll bring back the memories? "What, do you have a crush on her now?"

He rolls his eyes. "I don't have to have a crush on anyone to know how to act like a decent human being. You're acting like a kid."

"First time I've ever been allowed to."

He propels me towards the door. "Go run. And I'll be waiting here when you're back and together we're going to go over there and apologize to Cora."

"I'll just sneak into the house." There's a tree whose branches just brush my windowsill. "Or I won't come in at all." I can hide out at Haymitch's, build myself a fort of empty beer bottles.

"Aww, you're cute."

In the end, I do come back home. I jog along the perimeter of the Victor's Village, run in spurts when I can which isn't for too long. I'm not back to my old self yet. Gale is waiting for me on the porch steps, swatting mosquitoes lazily and looking up at the stars.

"I can't go," I tell him, standing with my hands on my hips. "Gale, you don't know what its like."

"I know you like running. Running away from stuff."

"Its not that," I insist. "Its just the lies. She's a lie."

"For the last time, nobody lied to you!" His voice rises in frustration but I can out-scream him if I want and I do now.

"They didn't tell me the truth either which is just as bad!" But its not just the lies, I realize. There's something about Cora Cresta that's spooked me, that I couldn't put my finger on till now - she's just like me. A girl they used, who was only in the wrong place at the wrong time. A girl who left her family. A girl with unreadable grey eyes. "Gale, I'd rather slurp up my own vomit with a straw then go see her now."

He reaches out to take my shoulder but my reflexes have always been just a little quicker than anyone else's. I lash out with my fists and send him stumbling. "Don't you ever touch me like that again. I'll break your fucking face." I move past him, take the stairs to my room three in a go and lock myself in. He taps at my door, his muffled apologies floating in but I can out-wait, I can out-fury anyone.

You're like an animal, I think. They've always called me cold, dry but I know better. That's always been a front for my own protection and my family's. My blood has always boiled too close to the surface.

I barely sleep at all, forcing myself to keep my eyes open as along as I can. This is not a night I want the nightmares to visit me again. The very act of having this control over my body brings me comfort. When the sky begins to lighten, I rip out a page from the useless phone directory on my bedside table and scrawl Sorry for running away on it. I push open the door carefully so that it doesn't creak and check in the hallway for a sleeping Gale. He's not there, thank goodness. At least he had the sense not to camp outside my room.

I tear up a few flowers indiscriminately from the hedges and muddied stems and note of peace-offering in my hand I go to Peeta's house. I leave them on the rocking chair on the porch, assured that no one will be awake at this hour.

My father never raised me to be rude.


"So you're never going back to Peeta's?"

"Nuh-uh. Not until she leaves."

"Too bad."

I'm looking over the books Dr. Aurelius sent us. Well, the covers at least. Some of them are very pretty. The doorbell rings and Gale goes to get it. Probably Haymitch, hibernation over and looking for something to eat.

"Hello Cora."

I put my head up just as Gale ushers her in. She has her hair wound in a nautilus bun again, as she had the first time I saw her. She gives me a tiny wave and I stare at her blankly. What in the name of what.

"Dr. Aurelius posted some books for Peeta and Cora as well," Gale tells me, speaking slowly as though to a toddler. "I thought she might like to see them and if there's any of ours she wants to borrow."

There's a window behind me. I could jump out of it if I wanted. But its been days since I found out about her, the panic and the uncontrollable reaction have abated. I force myself to put on a front again, to be polite. "Hi Cora."

If she finds my behavior odd, she's too well-trained to show it. Because that's what Avoxes are. Well-trained. She picks up a little book bound in night-blue felt and smiles as she rifles through it. Opens it to show me a beautiful sketch of a woman with long wavy hair and the body of a fish from the waist down.

"What's that?" I ask even though I'd made up my mind to interact as little as possible. I'm really curious because though the picture is just bizarre, its beautiful in its own way as well.

Gale squints and reads the label under it. ""If men aren't drowned," the little mermaid asked, "do they live on forever? Don't they die, as we do down here in the sea?""

Cora presses her nail under the word mermaid. She looks desperate to say something so Gale hands her a piece of paper and a pencil we have lying around. My mother used to tell me this story when I was little. She looks at us curiously but Gale shakes his head.

"When we were kids we learnt about the Cinderella, the little Coal-shuttle girl," he says.

Cora makes a face and presses the book earnestly in Gale's hand. She really wants us to read it. "We will," Gale promises, smiling. "Right, Katniss?"

I give a tiny nod. "It has pictures," I say, finally relenting. And as though she's been waiting for me to give away a little, her face breaks out into the brightest smile. I suppose its meant to be reassuring. It might be, to a normal person. She just doesn't know how far back in crazyland I am.