Chapter Five
I'm the second person in the dining car for dinner - just Effie is in before me, as punctual as ever. She's sitting back, frowning at a clipboard. There's a map spread out on the table in front of her and I glance at it, curious - I've never actually seen a map of Panem; we are only given the broadest clues about where the Districts are in relation to each other and to the Capitol. But this isn't much of a geographical map - it's a rail map, and all I see are lines representing tracks and dots representing stations, and a bunch of arrows pointing every which way.
"It's not just the speed," Effie tells me, as if I've asked her the question. "It's the pace. Some distances between Districts are greater than others. We have to time everything - just - so. Should be fine until the District 4 to District 3 transfer."
"Is that why we're going so slow this time?"
She nods, not even looking up from her notes. "Yes, District 11 is less than three hours away, at top speeds."
Oh. Interesting. Capitol news reporters refer to District 11 as one of the outer eastern districts - like 12 itself - but all the pictures of it I've ever seen shows it to be considerably flatter and sunnier than District 12, so I've always vaguely thought of it as being quite far to the south. The rail map confirms it is south of us, but not how far. And since the top speed of the Capitol trains is about 250 miles an hour….
"What is it? What's so funny?" asks Effie, looking at me sharply as I chuckle.
"Nothing, just - nothing." I smile at her. It's really Katniss I wish was in here, now; she might appreciate the joke. Math - in District 12 - is almost entirely in the form of word problems involving the speed of trains going back and forth to the Capitol.
By the time Katniss joins us, Haymitch, Cinna, Portia and I have already started in on soup, and I'm laughing at a story Cinna and Portia are telling in tandem about the rush on their shop to get mockingjay-inspired fashions - the current rage in the Capitol. This is because Katniss wore a mockingjay pin into the arena last year. The mockingjay … now that I think about it, it's a strangely hopeful symbol. Its mother was the mockingbird. Its father was the jabberjay, a mutation of the mother bird, engineered by the Capitol to spy on the rebellion during the Dark Days. Their use ended, the jabberjays were released back into the wild, to go extinct. Yet, the bird was able to reconnect with its natural roots - to mate with the mockingbird, despite its engineering, and its offspring, the mockingjay, is a rather lovely combination of the two - a singer and a signal-caller of prodigious talent.
As the mutated form of myself, now, I'll take anything that promises something useful, purposeful - or at the least, beautiful - can somehow come out of my re-engineering.
Later, I sit in my room and ruminate over my paintings, wondering if this is it - the purpose, the use. They please me - they do. But they are not adequate. Not big enough to compensate. I keep picturing Katniss, who at the dinner table was, unlike the rest of us, quiet and reserved. In my months of self-absorbed, self-imposed exile, I haven't given enough thought to what she has been going through since the Games. She might have a better support system in place than I do, but - and I know this to be true - no matter how sympathetic her mother, her sister and even Gale may be, they can't possibly understand what she's been through the way that I can.
And I need her - for just this reason. Not to relieve the pain of unrequited calf love - that's my job to figure out, not hers. Not even to fulfill the promise of the friendship that started to spark to life in the Capitol. I know that she, alone among anyone else in District 12 - even Haymitch - would understand: not to ask me about the Games, not to fret over the loss of my leg, not to congratulate me on my fortune, not to envy my trip to the Capitol. She would know exactly what to say or to not say. I need that.
I wish I hadn't been such a fool. I didn't know what to say, and so I said the exact wrong thing - asked the exact wrong question. Perhaps I can make things right on this trip. After all, regardless of whatever happens in the future, we're going to be neighbors forever in Victors' Village, mentors together in the Games.
Sleep comes no easier on the train than it does at home. I stay up late with Portia and Cinna, and they teach me card games. Then I stay up even later, working on my speech for District 11. The Capitol sent Katniss and I some canned remarks for each district. Since there are two of us, they split our comments in half so that I'll start each speech and Katniss will finish. District 11 demands more than the Capitol remarks, though. Rue and Thresh were the tributes from 11, and Katniss and I owe them our lives. Katniss teamed up with Rue. Thresh, in gratitude for Katniss' alliance with Rue, spared her life at the Cornucopia when he had her at his mercy. I know she was devastated by Rue's death; I remember how upset even Thresh's made her, although he was a substantial barrier to us getting out of the arena alive.
So, something should be said - something special - about these two tributes who, like us, are from one of the poor, outlying districts.
Late the next morning, Effie finds me, still scratching notes on the Capitol's notecards. She's followed by my prep team, who touch me up for Portia. When that's done, I go out to the dining car for an expansive brunch, and I eat hungrily. Cinna and Portia greet me with smiles and we carry on with conversations we started last night. Haymitch looks predictably wan and picks at a muffin that he's not really eating. Katniss shows up late, dressed and made up, but sulky. No, more than that. She looks heavy-hearted.
Cinna asks her what she's been doing this winter, but she waves him off with a reply of 'nothing, really,' and sips her broth.
The train stops and Effie runs out of the dining car to check on what's happening. When she comes back, her face is almost as orange as her wig. "Well, there's been a malfunction, of all things. We're grounded until they fix it. We're losing at least an hour." From nowhere, she pulls out her clipboard and starts crossing things out and scribbling furiously and muttering to herself.
Katniss bursts out, "No one cares, Effie! Well – no one does," she adds defensively, as we all stare at her. Then she gets up and leaves.
Haymitch groans and starts to rise, but I stop him. "No, Haymitch - I'll talk to her," I say firmly.
Katniss is easy to track as, in unsurprising fashion, she has left the train entirely – the door is open to the outside and a small alarm is going off in her wake. I ignore it and jump down onto the firm ground.
Winter doesn't seem to be in this place, wherever we are, however far south we've come. It's warm and the sun is out. We're in flatter country than District 12, but it's not completely flat, and it's pleasantly green. I look down toward the end of the train and see Katniss, sitting next to the tracks. As I approach her, she doesn't look up, just glares at the ground. "I'm not in the mood for a lecture," she snaps.
"I'll try to keep it brief."
I sit down next to her in the grass and adjust my prosthetic leg, which in delicate movements never seems to want to move the same direction as the right leg. She watches me. "I thought you were Haymitch."
"No, he's still working on that muffin. Bad day, huh?"
"It's nothing."
I look at her and take a deep breath. This is the moment to repair the damage I've done over the last six months; it's just going to be altogether painful. "Look, Katniss, I've been wanting to talk to you about the way I acted on the train - the last one, I mean. I knew you had something with Gale." I swallow painfully, but press on. "I was jealous of him before I officially met you. Anyway - it wasn't fair to hold you to anything that happened in the Games. I'm sorry."
She looks at me in surprise. "I'm sorry, too," she says, which is touching, if enigmatic.
"You don't have anything to be sorry for," I reply, and as I say it I do, I actually do believe it - and something in me feels lighter. "You were just keeping us alive. But I don't want us to go on like this, ignoring each other in real life, and falling into the snow every time there's a camera around. So, I thought if I stopped being so - you know - wounded, we could take a shot at just being friends."
A worried smile just creases her face. "OK."
"So, what's wrong?"
She looks away from me, frowning again, and starts pulling up weeds. So - I guess it has something to do with me. Probably a lot to do with her resentment of the romance strategy I initiated, and the need for it to resurface again to disrupt her life.
But I'm determined to get something out of this conversation, some spark of - something. "Let's start with something more basic, then. Isn't it strange how I know you'd risk your life to save mine … but I don't know what your favorite color is?"
Her smile is more genuine this time, it quirks up, in spite of herself, as she looks up at me. "Green. What's yours?"
I ponder this for a second. I love all colors, some more than others at different times. But an image comes to me - the dusk of the arena that I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to capture in paint over the last couple of months - and the particularly elusive color, a translucent peach, tinted with hints of pink and yellow. Like fire, if fire was sifted soft as powdered sugar. "Orange."
"Orange? Like Effie's hair?"
"A bit more muted. More like … sunset."
She narrows her eyes, as if imagining it, and she gives a small nod, then glances at me, almost shyly. "You know, everyone's always raving about your paintings. I feel bad I haven't seen them."
"Well, I've got a whole train car full," I reply. I get up and hold out my hand. "Come on."
She takes it without hesitation, and her fingers in mine are warm and firm. Before we go to my car, she stops by to offer Effie an apology so effusive I think even Effie must see through it - but she apparently finds it perfectly appropriate.
I pull the paintings out from the box they are being transported in and lay them out, one by one, on my bed. Katniss frowns at them as she looks at them, and I'm a little nervous. Maybe she won't like that so many of the paintings I brought are actually of her. I wait anxiously for her assessment.
"What do you think?" I ask, finally.
She shakes her head, and smiles at me, but sadly. "I hate them," she says. "All I do is go around trying to forget the arena and you've brought it back to life. How do you remember these things so exactly?"
"I see them every night."
Her expression shifts into instant sympathy. "Me, too," she whispers. "Does it help?"
I shrug. "I don't know, but I think I'm a little bit less afraid of going to sleep at night - or I tell myself I am. But they haven't gone anywhere."
"Maybe they won't," she says, matter-of-factly - though there is a haunted look in her eye. "Haymitch's haven't."
"No," I agree. "But for me, it's better to wake up with a paintbrush than a knife in my hand." I look at her carefully. "So, you really hate them?"
"Yes, but they're extraordinary - really," she says, and I blush in spite of myself. "Want to see my talent? Cinna did a great job on it."
I laugh. Katniss' clothing line - I heard all about that last night. "Later." All of a sudden, the train groans back to life and we're moving again. "Come on," I say, holding my hand out again. "We're almost to District 11. Let's go take a look at it."
We walk to the last car on the train, which is a sitting car whose side windows retract entirely - at least when the train is traveling at a reasonable speed - allowing the passengers to experience the open air and the winds of the train's passage. Seeing more of the flat plains - sunshine or not - makes me miss the hills of home. But after a few minutes, the view changes. The train slows down as it enters the borders of District 11 – from our vantage point, we see the great gates at the border close behind us with an ominous finality.
The fence is both higher and more frightening than the fence around District 12. It is intact, not saggy or with obvious gaps, and the coils of barbed wire at its top look well maintained. It is secured to the ground by a thick metal base.
The unbroken plain is suddenly replaced by crops. As far as the eye can see, it reminds me of Thresh's territory in the arena, squares of different plants, growing tall, green and yellow, some of them flowering. The fields are divided by rows of small shacks. People are bent double in the crops; picking, maybe, or weeding. Along the train tracks, every couple hundred yards, it seems like, are short towers, topped with guns and manned with Peacekeepers.
"That's something different," I say.
As we pass them, the crop-pickers straighten up to watch us pass, their expressions hidden under the wide brims of their straw hats. The rabid delight of the Capitol citizens, greeting us when we arrived as tributes, is nowhere to be seen. Mouths are grim.
We think that any minute we will stop at a train station, but the train keeps going on and on and on. At even the slow speed we are going now, we could have driven straight through District 12 three or four times before Effie finds us and tells us it's time to get dressed.
The train is still moving when we reconvene to get our last orders from Effie. I raise my eyebrows at Katniss, who is dressed in an orange frock with puffy sleeves and a pattern of leaves in gold thread. I know she doesn't have the ordering of her wardrobe, so the color - so soon after our conversation - can only be a coincidence.
"We'll be met at the train station and driven to the town square. You'll greet the crowd on the veranda; the mayor will introduce you and that is when you will read the response we sent you."
I glance at Katniss. "Do you want me to read the entire thing?" I ask her, remembering how she hates performing on stages.
She shakes her head. "I practiced my part," she says. "But … I know we should say something - about Rue and Thresh." She swallows. "I just - couldn't figure out what to write."
"I've got something that can work for both us," I tell her.
"Really?" She smiles in surprise.
"Sure - just have to switch out some pronouns," I say, smiling back.
Finally, finally the train stops. Cinna makes a quick adjustment to Katniss' hair and Portia brushes the back of my coat. Then we disembark and are met by Peacekeepers who escort us into an armored truck. Like everything else we've seen of District 11 so far, there's a whiff of oppression to the drive from the station. Effie frets that we are being treated like common criminals.
We disembark at the back of a Justice Center that seems to be roughly the same size as ours, but surprisingly is even more dilapidated. We're greeted by Capitol cameramen, who clip microphones to us. Katniss looks dazed and pale, so I grab her hand as we are ushered forcefully out to the veranda by Effie.
The mayor is concluding his introduction as we step out into the sun. I stare curiously out at the town center, which in many ways is similar to ours. It just looks less cared for. Paint is peeling, windows are broken on the shops that I assume are the equivalent of the merchant shops in 12. Cameras are on rooftops opposite us - but also, more guns and Peacekeepers. The citizens before us - a crowd vast, packed in, so much larger than anything District 12 could drum up on our best day - lift their faces to us and I notice two things at once. One is that there is so much more diversity to the population than there is in 12. The shades of the faces run the spectrum from ash white to dark brown. They are not divided - as we so often divide in 12, between merchant and seam - but mingle together in the dense crowd. And two, though their skin tone varies greatly, they are all stamped with the same grim, hungry expression that marks them as bound together tightly by forces so much more powerful than genetics.
I follow Katniss' eyes down to the area below us, at the foot of the stairs, where Thresh and Rue's families sit in places of honor, under banners painted with their pictures. Thresh's family includes a young woman - tall, broad and imposing, like Thresh - and a very old woman. Rue's includes both of her young parents and four young children, impossibly small like Rue was. At twelve, Rue was young enough, but with her wispy stature she looked even younger. With a pang, I remember her, shadowing Katniss and I at the training center. And then - dead, with a spear stuck in her middle. The very example of the Capitol's disregard for innocence, for basic human decency. It was another child - Marvel, one of the District 1 tributes - who actually killed her. But who put him there in the first place?
Last night I was on the verge of a decision - of offering more than mere words for the comfort of Rue's and Thresh's families - and the faces below me push me over the edge. I'm only vaguely aware of receiving a bouquet of flowers from a little girl before I start the Capitol's address, praising District 11 for sending its capable tributes to the Games. Katniss murmurs the concluding remarks. Then she looks at me, expectantly. I close my eyes and count to three.
"Katniss and I wanted to add something more about Thresh and Rue, because, of course, we owe them more than we do most of the other tributes who went into the arena with us. They had very different strengths, but they were both incredible survivors. They did honor to you all by making it to the Final Eight - and not through violence, but because they were both smart and skilled enough to survive. Both Thresh and Rue helped keep Katniss alive - which kept me alive, as well, and we can never repay that debt." I pause, take a breath. "But - and it can in no way replace your losses - but, as a token of our thanks, we'd like for each of the tributes' families from District 11 to receive one month of our winnings, every year for the duration of our lives."
The crowd gives a collective gasp, and for a moment their faces are animated with something - confusion mainly. I glance over at Katniss and see that she is looking up at me as if she has never seen me before. Her eyes are wet as she stands on her tiptoes to kiss me right on the lips.
I suppose Effie - maybe even Haymitch - will yell at me when we get inside. I also suppose there's no real mechanism to do what I promised. But I'm determined, if possible, to make sure it is done.
The mayor steps forward - perhaps a little belatedly - to hand us each a heavy plaque. He's gesturing us back toward the doors of the Justice Building when Katniss suddenly cries, "Wait!" and lurches forward. "Please, wait!"
The crowd, which had been beginning to stir, obeys her by freezing immediately, so that her voice echoes over their heads. "I want to give my thanks to the tributes of District 11," she chokes. Then she clears her throat and continues more confidently. "I only spoke to Thresh one time, but it was long enough for him to spare my life. I didn't know him, but I always respected him - for his power. For his refusal to play the Game on anyone's terms but his. The Careers wanted him to team up with them from the beginning, but he wouldn't do it. I respected him for that."
There is a hush in the air, a strange sense of waiting. "But I feel as if I did know Rue," she continues. "And she'll always be with me. Everything beautiful brings her to mind. I see her in the yellow flowers that grow in the Meadow by my house. I see her in the mockingjays that sing in the trees. But most of all, I see her in my sister, Prim. Thank you for your children," she says softly. Then she lifts her chin, as if reenacting a moment in the arena. "And thank you all for the bread."
From the silent crowd comes a whistle - four notes, the notes Katniss sang at the end of the Game, which she told me was Rue's song. The man – a man so old that his brown skin is fading into the color of parchment - stands dead center near the front of the crowd, not far behind where Rue's and Thresh's families are seated. Then, the crowd suddenly, as if as one, presses their three middle fingers to their lips and raises them in a salute.
My brain can't make sense of this. This is a District 12 salute - strictly District 12, or so I have always thought. It is a sign of both goodbye and respect, usually used at funerals. When Katniss volunteered to replace her sister at the reaping last year, we gave her this same salute. Even then - it kind of spread through the crowd. This tribute happens all at once, as if it was planned. As if Katniss' mention of bread was some sort of signal. But - how? Why?
The display then dissolves into a more normal gesture, as the crowd applauds. Katniss turns around with a stricken face. She is not just stunned, but frightened. I feel a sudden urgent need to get inside, and I put a hand on her back to hurry her forward. But she pauses outside the doors and sways on her feet.
"Are you all right?"
"Just dizzy," she replies. "The sun was so bright. Oh, I forgot my flowers," she says, glancing at my bouquet.
"I'll get them."
"I can."
We both turn around toward the crowd at the same time. At that moment, a frightened noise rises from the people. A pair of Peacekeepers have dragged the old man who whistled up to the top of the steps, where we just gave our speeches. He is forced to his knees. And shot through the head.