V
Mother said I was old enough now, but I never watched Finnick's Games. I couldn't. I wouldn't have been able to watch Shad, if it had been him. All I knew, from Shad, was that he won.
That's all I needed to know.
That's all that mattered.
I wept.
Childishly, I hoped things would be the same. But I knew Finnick could never be the same again. All of District 4 was celebrating, so I inadvertently heard snippets here and there about his "feats" in the arena.
I cried at every new bit of utter horror that reached my unwilling ears. Now, I knew how frail I was. How could we live like this? How could these terrible things ever been allowed to happen? I asked these questions into my pillow those nights, waiting for Finnick to come back. I didn't have enough mettle to say them aloud.