A/N: Please read the important Author's Note at the end!
Disclaimer: I do NOT own The Hunger Games!
Chapter 16
"You told him what?" Prim yells at me when I return from hunting. Gale was called immediately to Command for some unknown reason.
As soon as I entered our compartment, I told Prim exactly what I told Gale.
I sigh.
"So you basically told him that you didn't love him!" she exclaims.
"Pretty much," I mutter.
"Ahhh! Come on Katniss, last night you said-"
"Girls!" my mother exclaims from behind us. We turn to find our mother and Hazelle. "What's going on?"
I sigh again and shake my head.
"Katniss is being stupid, is what's going on!" Prim answers.
"Primrose!" my mother scolds. "Do not talk of your sister that way!"
Prim grumbles then walks away.
"What's going on with her?" I ask worriedly. "She's hardly ever yelled at anyone before."
I sit on one of the beds, Hazelle sits next to me, and mother mother brings a chair in from the makeshift living room that we have in the compartment.
"She has become a woman," my mother states.
"Isn't it a little late?" I ask.
"Well," Hazelle begins. "Our eating patterns aren't exactly correct, so our bodies don't function as normally as they are supposed to."
I nod understandingly.
"And you have to remember Katniss, you didn't start until you were fourteen," my mother continues. "And I know she is fifteen but I also know she will be just fine. Her body is just trying separate all of the hormones that are rushing through her body all at once. She'll get used to it and learn to control it."
"What I'm concerned about, though," Hazelle says with a start. "Is what set her off like that in the first place?" she gives me a look. "Him? Who exactly is "him"? And what exactly did you say to him that set Prim off?"
I groan and fall backwards on the bed with my head in my hands. I sigh. "Gale."
"What about him?" one of them asks, I don't know who because my ears are slightly muffled from the blankets that surround my head.
I lean back up and sigh once again. "I don't know. I'm just confused." I start to stand from the bed. "Look I really don't want to talk about this so-"
"Sit!" Hazelle says and pushes me back to the bed. I huff.
"Do you want some advice?" she asks.
"Well that's what I went to Prim for. Then I realized that she's a hardly fifteen year old girl who is just now figuring out what the opposite sex is," I answer.
"And when did you first realize that your best friend was of the opposite sex?" my mother asks.
"I don't know," I sigh. "I guess it was the night that we left. He told me to take you guys to the woods and if he hadn't met up with us in a certain amount of time to leave him. Then- then he kissed me and told me that he was in love with me. We've hardly spoken to each other since."
We are silent for a few moments.
"And Paige is really not helping." I add. "Why does it hurt so bad?" I ask to no one in particular.
"Because you're in love with him, too," Hazelle states gently.
"No!" I deny but my voice cracks and they know I'm lying.
"You told me last night that you thought you were falling in love with him," Prim says, appearing at the doorway.
And that's when the tears begin to roll down my face.
One week later.
"And now!" Effie Trinket said into the microphone. She looked just as made up on the television as she did in real life.
"It is time to choose one male and female for the honor of representing District Twelve in the 77th annual Hunger Games. Ladies first!"
Even on the television you could hear her six-inched high heel shoe hit the ground. It was nerve wracking. Like I was there. And I had an idea of who's name would be called. I held my breath.
"Delaney Cartwright!" Effie exclaimed and all of the air left my lungs. I heard fists hit the table and instantly know that they are Gale's. Gale and Delly dated for a long time. If I'm thinking correctly, they broke up around the time that Gale said that he fell in love with me. They had been together for over a year.
President Snow knew that this would get to both me and Gale. He knows we are alive.
The announcement of Thom Garret sent Gale into a full tail spin. Thom was his best friend. He had known him since year one in school and then went to work in the mines with him as well.
"Fuck!" he shouted.
"Gale!" I retorted as he stood from the table.
"No, Katniss. Don't you "Gale" me. That's my best friend going in there."
"You think I don't know that?" I reply gently.
"We have a plan," the president interrupts.
We turn to her, remembering that we have an audience. "Plan?" Gale asks.
"We believe that breaking some of the tributes from the arena will set the beginning of the war that we are trying to create," Plutarch answers.
"We have been working on this plan for months," Coin continues. "Long before you all showed up and long before you were even entered into the Games, Katniss."
"How will breaking the tributes from the arena start a war?" John asks.
"Again, we believe that breaking into the Capitol's system will enrage the Capitol and Snow," Coin says.
"And how exactly are you going to break into the system?" Gale presses.
"Beetee Latier," she says as if that name is supposed to answer everything. And turns out it does.
Beetee Latier was an inventor that lived in District Three. He won the Games at the age of seventeen. He is supposedly one of the smartest people in all of Panem. To win his Games he created a wire and electrocuted the rest of the tributes. Coin believed that Beetee could hack into the Capitol's system and distract them while someone went into the arena and captured as many tributes as possible.
Coin said that the Capitol would know that it was District Thirteen. She said that they knew that we existed but had never done anything about it. The Capitol believed that we were weak; that we had no weapons to fight against them. Oh, how they were wrong.
Beetee showed up in District Thirteen three days later and he immediately began his work. He had been planning the break-in from his home in District Three but he finally got to put it to the test when he arrived. We broke into a Capitol commercial for about three seconds and then let them have control back. If we had kept control for any longer than that the Capitol would know that something was going to happen.
When we broke in we just showed a black screen. Hopefully, the Capitol would just think of it as a glitch. And they did! They continued their programming as if nothing had happened.
Beetee believed that he could hold the control over the Capitol for at least fifteen minutes but that it would be very difficult. We would wait until the tributes entered the arena before doing another attempt on breaking in.
Haymitch gave Gale and me hope when he told us that one of our spies, that was in the Capitol, was going to be the mentor for Delly and Thom. That meant that their mentor was on our side and that Delly and Thom were more likely to survive the arena until we rescued them. We hoped that the spy, Commander Reed, could convince Thom and Delly to stay away from the Cornucopia in the beginning and to stay together. It would be easier to rescue them both if they were together and the outcome if we did not rescue them both was unimaginable.
*Important!*
I am hoping to finish this story up in just a few more chapters. I really do not want an abrupt ending so I am trying not to do that but if it does have one I am very sorry. I promise I will finish this story but it will probably be in three or four more chapters, maybe more depending on what all I want to put in it. Honestly, I'm getting kind of bored with this plot and am again starting to run out of ideas. I will finish this story soon!
GUESS WHAT!
I have an idea for a new story. This idea will be completely UNRELATED to this story. It will have a completely different plot. I will be posting the first chapter soon but that is all I will be posting until I finish this story so you can just get a little taste of what is to come.
Thanks! Review and tell me what you think about this last chapter and what you think of the first chapter of the new story.