Chapter Eight
If you don't love me
Love whom you please
But throw your arms round me
Give my heart ease
Give my heart ease, dear
Give my heart ease
Throw your arms round me
Give my heart ease
I blink awake and the sun is in my eyes. The train is moving steadily, making a rhythm that actually fits the song from my dream, which is still rattling around in my head. I find myself with my head practically in Katniss' lap. She's sitting up, and I'm basically using her leg as a pillow. I should apologize and remove myself from this situation and I find I can't. Anyway, Katniss is looking at me with a half smile - she doesn't seem put out.
"It's late," I say, closing my eyes again.
"Yes, it is."
"You should have got me up," I add, without enthusiasm.
"They don't need us yet, and anyway - you were smiling in your sleep."
"No, I wasn't" I argue, smiling into her leg. "That's impossible."
"Oh, yes you were. How would you know, anyway? If you were smiling or not?"
"I can feel it when I smile in my sleep. Can't you?"
She laughs and I stretch and reluctantly sit up. I wonder if I should tell her - I was dreaming about her. But I don't want to kill the mood, which is so warm and comfortable. The mood will be killed soon enough.
"Katniss," I ask her, "do you still sing?"
"'Still sing?' What do you mean?"
"Like - when we were kids. You always - seemed to know all the songs, so I guess I thought of you as always - kind of - singing."
"Oh," she glances down at her lap. "No - not really. I sang with my dad."
Shit - is there no conversation that doesn't terminate in a sad destination? "Oh," I echo her, lamely. There's not much else to say.
But she smiles, slightly. "What about you? Do you sing?"
"I can't sing."
"Everyone can sing."
"Well, OK - I mean, maybe not everyone should? Last time I even tried it - I think it's been years since I even really sang the anthem at school, just mouthed it the last couple of years ... my voice ends up cracking a few notes in."
"That's just lack of practice, not lack of voice," she says, laughing. "Your voice comes from your muscles. Those have to be maintained."
"Which muscles?" I ask her curiously.
She points to her midriff. "Here, mostly. You can feel it - when you sing."
"No kidding?"
"No kidding."
"Well," I say, doubtfully, "maybe I'll give it a try. It would be helpful to have another hobby to fill up the days."
More than anything, though, I wish I could think of a way to get her to sing again. I didn't know her father, but I feel pretty sure that he wouldn't have wanted her to stop singing on his account.
But for now, I just sigh. "I should go to my own car," I say. It's less awkward, for the both of us, for Effie to not hear that we were found together in the morning. But I don't move.
"Yeah, you should," says Katniss with a stern look - but she breaks out in giggles. She's in a rare mood this morning.
"I wonder how late it is? And why they haven't come to separate us, yet?"
"I think I heard something last night about how the festivities in 4 would start later, since it's a long distance from 5. Or maybe we need less prep." She looks closely at my face, her mouth twitching. "I see no stray eyebrow hairs."
I put my hand to my forehead. "Hey. That hurts, by the way. Nothing to joke about."
She pfffts. "You're telling me this? Why do they bother, anyway?" She adds, removing my hand and staring again at my eyebrows. "They're so fair, who would even see? How can eyebrows even be that light?"
I laugh. "They used to be even lighter."
"Invisible."
"Invisible, even," I agree. OK, now I really do need to leave. She's too close and I'm too comfortable. "Well, I'll see you back at beauty base zero."
I creep back down to my private car - the bed I haven't slept in in days. I go into the bathroom and start running the shower, and wonder if there is something to my brother's jokes about cold ones.
When we finally get to District 4, it turns out that we are on the edge of the world - or, at least, the edge of Panem. This District is dedicated to the fishing industry and - Effie tells us - it is enormous, stretching from a large lake in the mountains, down a two-forked river and its many streams, through hills and valleys to the coast. A series of settlements and villages make up the District, but there is also a very large city overlooking a huge bay. This is where the justice building is for the first of the Career districts.
The air smells of salt and fish and it tingles with the energy of the crowd. I can tell - just by Haymitch's wary eyeballing of us before we go out to greet the audience - that there is something different, and a little dangerous, about this place. A Career district, yes, but there is anger here - I see the resentment on the faces. I remember - vaguely, something Haymitch said rather hastily about how District 4 was different from the other Career Districts - a little less close to the Capitol than 1 and 2 - a little more independent. They let their kids train for the Games, but they aren't always to be found in the Career alliances.
I'm anxious for other reasons. Katniss is on edge, and I think this probably has a lot to do with the fact that - of the actually quite few numbers of tributes who count as her "kills," the girl from District 4 - Bet - is one of the first. She didn't target Bet, specifically (I was as much a target as any of the Careers, that night) - and it was more a defensive move than anything else … but, I know the feeling. We were just in District 5 yesterday, where I tried to forget how we lightheartedly called the red-haired girl "Foxface" all the way up until the day she stole poison berries from me and died eating them.
After the speeches, we are taken down to the bay and walk down to a beach to view the ocean. I've seen the ocean in textbooks and on TV, but there was no scale or scope to these pictures. Also, no way to imagine the tang of the air, the loud - but somehow reassuring - roar of the water. The way the water takes up the entire horizon, just like the sky. Something - exhilarating about this, escapable, I think - not really sure what I mean. Bet spoke of deep sea fishing expeditions. No Peacekeepers. No cameras. Nothing but fisherfolk together on a small boat, on the roiling waves. She spoke of it - as much as possible in the context a few whispered conversations we had in the arena - with a hint of the possibilities - the freedom of it. And now I can actually visualize it.
"I could live here," says Katniss, abruptly, moving close to me and taking my hand. "If I lived here - I think the waves would drown out - other things."
Yes. She doesn't have to explain. And perhaps nobody else but me could possibly understand.
"I wish we were going to be here at sunset," I say, regretfully. "Wouldn't you love to see the sun set over the water?"
But at sunset, we're sitting together on a loveseat inside the justice building, watching a performance of some operatic-style singing. Not quite as enchanting. I'm grateful when we get up to go for dinner - grateful that the day is almost over. But something is wrong - Katniss sees it before I do. Haymitch and Effie are in a doorway with the district mayor and some Peacekeepers, Effie gesticulating wildly. She's still speaking with energy - and some obvious anger - when Haymitch separates from the group and makes a beeline to us.
"To the train," he says between clenched teeth, heading off our questions.
Outside the justice building, we're hustled into a car and Haymitch murmurs complaints under his breath while we wait for Effie to join us. And in the distance we can hear - some chanting sound, or something. Like a large group of people calling out a single phrase, over and over. Katniss' eyes are wide, listening to it. And I feel like mine are, too.
"Don't worry," Effie says, breathlessly, when at last she joins us. "You'll get dinner on the train."
This is what Effie thinks we care about. Katniss opens her mouth, but Haymitch silences her with a quick glance.
Katniss falls asleep pretty quickly that night, but it takes me somewhat longer. So - what happens if we can't contain the districts, if we can't suppress uprisings? As grueling as this tour is, I'm starting to dread coming to the end and finding out what happens on the other side.
The distance between Districts 4 and 3 is quite long, so the train speeds up in the night and we are going at full pace when we wake up in the morning. Effie is still outraged at our abrupt departure the night before. It's almost to the point where I'm a little worried about her mental state. She seems fixated in an unhealthy way. It's either that or she's trying to distract us from what's really going on. Either way - she puts me on edge today.
When the train slows - then stops - as we are in the middle of lunch, Effie is again livid, because apparently we are way ahead of time. I look out the window and see - nothing. We are on the wide, flat empty plain that makes up so much of the uninhabited midsection of Panem. Haymitch gets up abruptly and calls for me and Katniss to follow him out of the dining car, and we pass one of the Capitol attendants, who tells Effie that "protestors are being removed from the tracks" before Haymitch can quite get us out of the room.
We sit in silence with Haymitch in the lounge car, throwing each other the occasional anxious glance, but following his lead by not talking about it - or anything. Then, eventually, he sighs and slouches in his seat, as if exhausted by the effort of caring. "At least we won't have this kind of trouble in 1 or 2," he says, at last.
That night, Katniss says: "We have to get out of it."
I'm helpless to think of an adequate response. The Career Districts of 1 and 2. These are the districts with the closest relationships to the Capitol - and between them provide the majority of the winners to the Games. I try to imagine facing the outraged families of the tributes whose group I joined only to betray … three out of the four of them were killed by Katniss herself. There is no way to avoid these confrontations … we can only count our blessings that participation in the Victory Tour can only happen once.
"Just two more days," I murmur, "and we're done. Just three more days and we'll be on the way home."
She wiggles around in my arms and I watch her squirm in misery. Home. And the end of this - the good of it and the bad. (And even the bad is not bad - just difficult.) What Effie and the rest of the people from the Capitol think, I know Katniss doesn't care. It won't be like that at home. And I - who have only been loved in these fictional places: on stage, in the arena, on the train - will go back to my real self, alone and … well, alone. Perhaps something has happened between us here that cannot be undone - certainly, we will not go back to silence and avoidance. So, then - what?
Both appearances in 2 and 1 are unbearable. No, there is no sign of a simmering populace, no scent of a rebellion. Instead, there is stony-faced resentment and barely-disguised contempt. Almost as the citizens of the Capitol do, the well-fed people of these districts clearly think of District 12 as crude and backward; our win rigged by the Capitol to appeal to bettors; our love story silly and a little grotesque.
Both districts are mountain districts, and they are said to be near the Capitol, so I consider that we might be within the same mountain range. In fact, the trip from 1 to the Capitol takes just a few hours, and we alight from the train in the dark of night, with just a few devoted fans to greet us as we transfer from the train to a car that drives us back to the Training Center.
Without even discussing it, we continue our routine and I follow her into her bedroom. Finally, leaning her head on my arm and sighing, she expresses the thought that has been on both of our minds since District 4:
"Do you think - we possibly did what President Snow asked? How can we tell?"
I bite my lip on comfort, and go for honesty. "What - quell a rebellion with our teenage romance melodrama? Depends on what started it in the first place, doesn't it?"
And it depends, I realize later, as I try hard to sleep - my wakefulness a heady cocktail of anxiety, anticipation and lust - it depends on whether or not Snow will tell her the truth or what he thinks he needs to tell her, in order to control her. So - what she knows and how and when she knows it will be entirely a matter of interpretation.
It's on this gloomy thought that I go into breakfast the next morning. My appetite has not returned, and anyway, the food has no more allure for me - I'm too used to it. I get coffee and take it out to the balcony, and watch the sun rise over the Capitol, which is sleepy in the early morning. After a while, there's a stir behind me, and Katniss is there.
"Peeta, I've been thinking …."
She pauses and bites her lip. I look at her expectantly, hollowly.
"I think we should get married."