Author's Note:

Celebration First: Yayyy! Topped 200 reviews! (Special Thanks to GrossGirl18 for doing the honors). Okay, so I know it's not really all that exciting, but I LIVE for reviews and it completely made my day :) Thank you a million times to all my readers; I can't articulate how happy it makes me that you are all following along, and how thrilled I am that people are recommending me!

Request Second (as usual): Please let me know what you think. A shorter but still very important chapter.

I am still reeling from my conversation with my mother when I walk home from school. Actually, it's more like trudge home, because it's beginning to feel like the now-everpresent feeling of exhaustion is finally starting to pull me under. On the bright side, if there is such a thing (I've been doubting lately), it kept me in enough of a haze at school that I didn't actually see anyone glaring hatefully at me even though I'm certain lots of people were doing it. Still, this lack of sleep is getting old. To be expected, I suppose, when your world has been flipped upside down so many times you can hardly tell which way is up. You asked for this, I remind myself as I stumble through the door. I guess I just didn't know how many worms could be in one can.

Get over it, Madge, I think when I turn on the television, at least you get to lose sleep in a real bed, with a real blanket, after you've eaten a real dinner. I drop onto the couch and try to keep my eyes open as I hope for news about Katniss and Peeta. Nothing was happening today at lunchtime while I watched the screens in the cafeteria blankly, as my mother's words echoed through my mind. But something is going to happen soon, I know it. Peeta was still struggling to care for his wounded leg, but Katniss had stationed herself near the Career Pack camp to spy.

I replay last night's exchange again, trying to make it real, getting a little closer, not quite understanding why it's so difficult. Once the shock brought on by Gale's words had faded, a strange sense of fortune replaced it; his understanding – approval, even – seemed a sign that the stars had aligned. A sign that if the least understanding person I knew could be understanding about my interview, then my mother could be understanding about the fact that I gave away her sister's gold mockingjay pin.

I know, she had said after I rushed inside and confessed before my courage withered, and it was perfect. After an initial flash of irritation at my father for telling her before I did, I had smiled at this, relieved and amazed that I had escaped these two near-disasters unscathed. A sudden urge had overtaken me to run back outside and down the street, to catch Gale and throw my arms around him before my luck ran out. But I only had a second, maybe two, to debate the risk of pressing that luck any further. Her next words had pulled me back into the room with her. And it's long past the time I should tell you why.

I watch the television screen carefully for a moment as the thin red-haired girl dances a practiced, complex path to the Career's supplies, wondering what Katniss will do with the information. She has been doing it for days now, each rare time the cache was left unsupervised (it would seem that Gale was at least partly right about the mines), but this is the first time Katniss will have witnessed it. When she does not immediately take action, I let my eyes close and sink back into memories.

All the little details fill themselves in with absurd precision. The sharp, sudden line of the tear that tore down her cheek as my mother looked down at her lap. The way the fingernails of her right hand dug deep into the palm of her left as if to obscure some other less-concrete kind of pain. Her frail reflection in the dark window beside her unnaturally still rocking chair. The yellow spark of lamplight on the rounded edge of the morphling vial on the nightstand…. On and on, the room constructs itself as if I am sitting in it now, as if I'll never be able to leave it. It belongs to a volunteer, she said, who volunteers for all the wrong reasons.

I didn't understand what she meant at first. Then I thought of the Career Tributes, who were almost always volunteers. And who did it for the dangling carrot of money and fame, for the greater glory of the Capitol that favors their districts. That is why the Capitol wants a Tribute to volunteer – for them, taking your sister's place simply to save her life is the wrong reason to offer to go to the Games. She saw what I saw in Katniss. I'd smiled and said she's a mockingjay.

So was the girl it came from, she told me as a shaking hand covered her eyes and tears came faster from under her fingers.

My eyes snap open at the sound of a deafening explosion from the television, but I barely hear it over the memory of my mother's broken whisper.

I am Maysilee.

….

"Holy shit," I say as I start to laugh. My mother cuffs me lightly in the back of my head, because I'm not supposed to be swearing in front of Vick and Posy, but it's obvious she doesn't really mean it. I have a pretty good excuse for once. Katniss just made her tracker-jacker stunt look like child's play. And, as an added bonus, I love being right. I wish Madge was here….

Posy interrupts my uncomfortable dear-God-did-I-really-just-think-that moment, and I'm glad because that means I won't actually have to deal with it. "Huh?" she says. "What's that mean?"

Vick starts to giggle because he knows perfectly well what it means, while Mom tells my sister to ignore me. Remarkably, Posy does this without much argument, which is surprising because usually once she gets it in her head that she wants something she's pretty relentless. I file away a mental note to pay closer attention the next time Hazelle Hawthorne gets this result from her daughter; it's a trick I need to learn.

"Why'd she do that?" Prim asks, voice twinged with panic, after a few seconds of shocked, pin-drop silence. "She – I thought she was going to steal some of their stuff – she needed to - "

I smile. "No she didn't." I pause long enough to make sure that Katniss is in fact unharmed from the force of the explosion. "She knows how to get everything she needs from the woods," I tell her, "but they don't. She just leveled the field. Maybe tipped the odds in her favor."

"They'll kill her when they find her – "

"They won't find her, Prim. They'll think she's dead when they see the damage. She'll get a head start. And she's smarter than they are." I leave it at that. I don't need to remind her that they were going to kill her anyway. Now they might just drag it out a little longer. But I don't want to think about it, so I change the subject. She will not die. "Besides, I'll bet she's got the sponsors' attention now."

"I hope so."

So do I. She needs Capitol donors. As Katniss scrambles woozily back into the undergrowth in the little copse of trees where she had been hiding, I think about the collection taken up at the Hob; as much as everyone there wants to help her, no one has much to spare. I've chipped in myself some, as much as I can afford despite how much I hate it. It makes me angry to donate hard-earned coins to the Hunger Games, coins that ought to be feeding my family and Katniss'. But I still choke down the ire and pony up the money. It makes me think of Madge again and her calculated interview, how the pieces fell into place about what she'd said the day we sat on her back porch, that I can't deny that I knew a little bit how she felt. At least I don't have to make my contribution by taking the Capitol's side on national television and pairing up Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark like two posable, hollow-headed dolls from a toy store. Somebody had to do it for the money, I guess, and I'm glad I wasn't backed into that corner by some Capitol reporter.

We all cheer as we watch a replay of the exploding mountain of supplies, and somehow I know exactly what Madge would be doing if she were here with us again – she'd cheer, too, golden curls of hair would fall loose from her ponytail, and her fiery blue eyes would pounce on me as she'd say I told you so. We'd scrap it out over whether the District Three kid double-crossed the career pack or was just an idiot, and probably end in a stalemate because (let's be honest) neither of us is the surrendering type, but this time we wouldn't really be arguing. We aren't really that far apart. She'd give me that look, the one with the narrowed, glittering eyes and the faint smile that says she knows I'm being difficult on purpose, she doesn't mind, she admires the fight in me, but she's still not about to let me win….

And then it hits me. Hard. I miss her. Hell's teeth, when did that happen?