Chapter Twenty-Four
I am very aware of the clock. It feels like the day itself is a kind of timer, a countdown to an urgent moment - a moment that I will not be able to relive if it passes.
"Stop hogging the crayons," says the little girl next to me.
"You don't even like drawing," I reply, stubbornly. I look down from the clock on the wall to the piece of paper under my fingers and see that the swirl of bright lines and shapes is very amateurly done. I can do better than this….
"I'm bored," she says.
"Fine." I push all the crayons toward the girl with yellow curls and I squint at her for a moment - how precisely she looks like the girl in my memories.
I am also - but more vaguely - aware that I have lived this day already, that this sense of anxiety is a false layer on top of the true story - that I am seeing things through a bright and distorted lens.
The clock makes that subtle sound - the soft click - at the change of the hours. I look up again, biting my mouth in my anxiety. An irrational fear floods me - that it won't happen this time. That if it doesn't happen, everything will change. Everything will be different.
Delly is spastically drawing - almost mockingly, it feels like, making chaotic balls of angrily-colored lines. It's as if it doesn't matter - as if color and form and sense and art don't even matter to her and she's trying to make sure that I know this is how she feels. Then, I notice that I missed some announcement. Everyone except for me is standing up, moving to another part of the room. I crane my neck - looking toward the window. The sun is shining directly into it so the window itself is a glowing square. The light trembles as she climbs in front of it - perching on top of the stool like a little bird.
I feel again - but more intensely, I think - the curiosity and fascination. In these last moments before the spell, I eagerly wonder if she inherited the magical voice of her father. From my strange perspective - both there in the moment and somehow here in my sleeping head, years later - I can sense, almost see, the fragile lines that connect us. The voice that lured her mother to the Seam - and so I was born, of my father's second connection.
The clock is running out, I note fretfully. The school day is almost over and she is hesitating, silent. She's just a silhouette framed by a burst of sun.
"Roses love sunshine, violets love dew-"
And then I wake, abruptly, the bright pink sun in my eyes.
I start, surprised that I slept long enough to dream. Surprised that I'm still alive. Katniss is still sleeping, just next to me on the sand. Down the beach, Finnick is walking back and forth in the lake, ankle-deep in the water. Johanna is lying down with her hands behind her head. Beetee is uncoiling his wire and wrapping it loosely around his wrist.
I spent most of the night awake. When Johanna woke up, between us we managed to persuade Finnick to go back to sleep and I went up to sit next to Katniss. I was wary and wakeful almost the entire time - I remember spending the anxious hours rolling through every possible scenario given who is still alive and how they are armed, all the way until the sky under the dome started turning pale at the edges.
So, I haven't slept long, but I have slept. Very foolish. Yet - the alliance still stands.
I look down at the sleeping girl next to me and I just enjoy, for a moment, the peaceful lines of her face in sleep. This reminds me of our time in the cave. My death was imminent then, as well - yet, it didn't end up happening. What if -?
No. I shake off the temptation to go down that path. I came to many decisions last night, and one major realization. I will, in fact, have to kill Finnick. And Johanna. And even Beetee. It is important that Katniss make it to the end of the Game - but also, it is important to bolster her for what comes after. The Capitol wants to soil her hands with the deaths of some of their most popular Victors - including mine. She must have no more blood on her hands. For her - for the rebellion - I will have to strike those blows, as many as I can.
So, I don't go down immediately to join the others. I'm hesitant to leave Katniss' side. But, also, I can't join them, yet, until I have subsumed my horror of the Game and can keep it out of my face. It's twenty minutes or so before I get up, stretch, duck into the trees to pee, then walk down the beach to greet the others.
"Get some rest?" asks Finnick, not looking at me, but staring intently at the Cornucopia.
"Yes," I reply, shortly. He doesn't get any non-essential information from me. "What's Beetee up to?" I add.
Finnick shakes his head. "It's always hard to tell. He said something about setting a trap for the Careers."
"That should probably be the next move," I agree vaguely. But it also worries me. Something about time … running out of time. When the Careers are gone, the countdown to the end will begin. The break - the sudden change. Allies transformed in the blink of an eye into enemies. The mutation. The moment … the moment.
I shake my head and put some paces between me and Finnick before bending down to wash my hands in the salty water.
I look up as something flashes in the corner of my eye - my heart automatically racing. But it's just another parachute. We are popular. There's no arguing the fact that to be in this alliance has had its perks.
"One more time?" Finnick asks me with a wry look.
Well, why not, I suppose. I go to pick up the parachute, and under the silver canvas folds I find another tin of rolls from District 3. I wonder in amusement if the District 3 bakery is experiencing some kind of overstock of ingredients. Although, that's silly, I remind myself, as Finnick and I walk back up towards Johanna and Beetee. Gifts in the arena are extremely expensive - it would be cheaper to ….
I see that Katniss is up and stretching and I smile at her. I hand Beetee the tin and he counts out the biscuits again as he places them, one by one, in one of Finnick's baskets. We have again been sent two dozen of the things. Which is … fine. Some variety might be nice, I think, ungratefully.
Katniss sits down next to me to eat, and the touch of her hip against mine forces the memories from last night to the forefront of my mind. I glance down at her and she catches my eye, then blushes and looks away. After we eat, though, she takes my hand and pulls me toward the lake.
"Come on. I'll teach you how to swim."
I raise my eyebrows, but follow her. "First thing," she says, matter-of-factly, "you have to understand that you float, and to not be afraid of sinking."
"Well, I have the flotation belt, yes," I say, pointing to the plastic purple belt that is wrapped around my waist, but she's not really paying attention. She's alert to everything else.
"Second, you have to remember to breathe." She glances toward the beach. "So, you are going to float on your stomach first. But I'll support you."
She puts her hands on my belly as I lay down face forward and reluctantly kick my feet out from under me. She demonstrates the stroke, then tells me to practice coordinating my hands and feet. I don't know if it's the prosthetic, or if I'm just clumsy, but I find this coordination nearly impossible, and more often than not, after flailing about, I end up letting the purple belt hold me up while I dip my face in the water and kick around a bit. But it doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing. Every time I look over at Katniss, she's either scrubbing her arms or glancing back at the beach.
"Hey," she says. "Come here a sec. I think the scabs are coming off."
I obediently paddle back over to her and see that she's right. She's scrubbed both her arms with sand and the skin underneath is smooth and new. I follow her lead. As we're doing this, she edges up to me and says, in a soft voice, "Look, the pool is down to eight. I think it's time we took off."
I nod, trying to keep my face blank. I understand this impulse. I walked down that path dozens of times last night - looking for the way that abandoning this allegiance now would be beneficial to us. If we weren't specifically targeted - not just by the Careers, but the Gamemakers themselves … but there is no getting around the fact that we are. "Tell you what. Let's stick around until Brutus and Enobaria are dead. I think Beetee's trying to put together some kind of trap for them now. Then, I promise, we'll go."
At which point, I will have to attack and she will have to run.
She purses her mouth thoughtfully and I watch an inner conflict take place behind her eyes. "All right," she says. "We'll stay until the Careers are dead. But that's the end of it." She turns toward the beach and calls Finnick over to tell him how to scrub off his scabs.
Once we've finished scrubbing ourselves clean, we go back up to the beach and Katniss makes us apply more ointment, as it seems to be good protection from the glaring sun. "Where'd you learn how to swim, Katniss?" I ask her.
She parts her lips and hesitates - thinking about the cameras, no doubt - but eventually says, "There's a lake. It's some distance east of … the Meadow. My father used to take me there, and he taught me."
"Oh."
She looks at me thoughtfully. I try not to wonder if she used to go there with Gale. She's about to say something else, but Beetee calls us over to him. He's sitting in the shade at the ridge of the trees, clutching his cylinder of fine wire.
"I have a plan. I think we all agree our next job is to kill Brutus and Enobaria," he says, and I wince at the pragmatism of his words. "I doubt they'll attack us openly again, now that they're so outnumbered. We could track them down, I suppose, but it's dangerous, exhausting work."
"Do you think they've figured out about the clock?" asks Katniss.
"If they haven't, they'll figure it out soon enough. Perhaps not as specifically as we have. But they must know that at least some of the zones are wired for attacks and that they're reoccurring in a circular fashion. Also, the fact that our last fight was cut off by Gamemaker intervention will not have gone unnoticed by them. We know it was an attempt to disorient us, but they must be asking themselves why it was done, and this, too, may lead them to the realization that the arena's a clock. So I think our best bet will be setting our own trap."
"Wait, let me get Johanna up," says Finnick. "She'll be rabid if she thinks she missed something this important."
"Or not," Katniss mutters, under her breath, and I smile.
When Finnick and Johanna rejoin us, Beetee makes us sit a little back while he draws in the sand: a circle, divided into twelve sections. "If you were Brutus and Enobaria," he says, "knowing what you know about the jungle, where would you feel safest?"
"Where we are now," I reply. "On the beach. It's the safest place."
"So, why aren't they on the beach?"
"Because we're here," says Johanna shortly.
"Exactly. We're here, claiming the beach. Now where would you go?"
"I'd hide just at the edge of the jungle," says Katniss. "So I could escape if an attack came. And so I could spy on us."
"Also to eat," adds Finnick. "The jungle's full of strange creatures and plants. But by watching us, I'd know the seafood's safe."
Beetee smiles. "Yes, good. You do see. Now here's what I propose: a twelve o'clock strike. What happens exactly at noon and at midnight?"
"The lightning bolt hits the tree," says Katniss.
"Yes. So what I'm suggesting is that after the bolt hits at noon, but before it hits at midnight, we run my wire from that tree all the way down into the saltwater, which is, of course, highly conductive. When the bolt strikes, the electricity will travel down the wire and into not only the water but also the surrounding beach, which will still be damp from the ten o'clock wave. Anyone in contact with those surfaces at that moment will be electrocuted."
In the silence that follows, you can almost hear the four of us trying to grasp Beetee's plan. My knowledge of how electricity works is rudimentary, at best. "Will that wire really be able to conduct that much power, Beetee?" I ask him. "It looks so fragile, like it would just burn up."
Beetee strokes the strands of ultrafine gold wire. "Oh, it will. But not until the current has passed through it. It will act something like a fuse, in fact. Except the electricity will travel along it." He looks at Katniss and I as if we will understand this, but it still doesn't really make sense to me.
"How do you know?" asks Johanna, skeptically.
"Because I invented it," says Beetee. "It's not actually wire in the usual sense. Nor is the lightning natural lightning, nor the tree a real tree. You know trees better than any of us, Johanna. It would be destroyed by now, wouldn't it?"
"Yes."
"Don't worry about the wire - it will do just what I say," says Beetee confidently.
Weird that the wire ended up in the Cornucopia, I think, alarm bells starting to jingle in my head. Although - so did bows and tridents. Still, this is something slightly more specialized.
"And where will we be when this happens?" asks Finnick.
"Far enough up in the jungle to be safe."
"The Careers will be safe, too, then, unless they're in the vicinity of the water," says Katniss.
"That's right."
"But all the seafood will be cooked," I say.
"Probably more than cooked. We will most likely be eliminating that as a food source for good. But you found other edible things in the jungle, right, Katniss?"
"Yes. Nuts and rats. And we have sponsors."
"Well, then, I don't see that as a problem. But as we are allies and this will require all our efforts, the decision of whether or not to attempt it is up to you four."
So - we hopefully electrocute the Careers (and Chaff), but really probably not, unless they decide to go to the beach when they see us leave it. Which they might not if they also observe us laying wire and suspect a trap. And we possibly eliminate the seafood, which means returning to the jungle to eat. It seems like a long shot for a plan with such a marginal chance of success.
"Why not?" Katniss says. "If it fails, there's no harm done. If it works, there's a decent chance we'll kill them. And even if we don't and just kill the seafood, Brutus and Enobaria lose it as a food source, too."
I glance at her. There's no way to know if she is going along with it for show, or if she actually believes in the plan. She's always set a lot of store by Beetee. But, since I think it is best, anyway, to be in the jungle when the alliance breaks, and not on the wide open beach, I immediately back her up. "I say we try it. Katniss is right."
Finnick looks at Johanna, raising his eyebrows. She squints at him. "All right, it's better than hunting them down in the jungle, anyway. And," she adds, a touch of irony in her voice, "I doubt they'll figure out our plan, since we can barely understand it ourselves."
"I want to inspect the lightning tree before we rig it," says Beetee.
"We need to move, anyway," answers Katniss, stirring. "It's a little after nine, I think. We need to get off this beach."
We collect everything we want to take with us and walk two sectors over to the twelve o'clock beach. Then we head back into the jungle. Johanna leads, Finnick and I follow, taking turns carrying Beetee up the slope, and Katniss is in the rear, covering us with her arrows. Once the tall tree near the crest of the hill appears, Finnick stops. "Katniss should take the lead here. She can hear the force field."
"Hear it?" asks Beetee, who is perched on Finnick's back.
"Only with the ear the Capitol reconstructed," she mutters.
"Then by all means, let Katniss go first," says Beete, after a pause. "Force fields are nothing to play around with."
As we reach the tree and stop, though, Katniss makes us pause where we are while she collects some nuts and throws them toward the force field so she can figure out exactly where it is. "Just stay below the tree," she tells us.
I pause a minute to wipe the sweat from my face. I can feel the damp streak down my back and under my arms. For a minute, I think how I would give absolutely anything to be back in the blizzard of last March, stuck in my house while the snows howled outside my window.
Beetee starts examining the tree. Katniss eyes the rest of us standing around and says, "Finnick, you guard Beetee. Peeta, you can gather nuts, Johanna can take the spile and collect some water. I'll hunt."
While at my task, I surreptitiously watch Beetee as he uses the wire to measure the circumference of the tree, and occasionally stops to pick up fallen fronds or branches. When Katniss comes back with three rats, I join her just below the force field - we sit behind a line she draws in the dirt - and I roast nuts while she skins the rats, then she and I cook them.
Beetee comes over to where we sit, holding a piece of bark, which he tosses into the force field. When it bounces back, it is glowing blue-white, but otherwise undamaged. After a few minutes, it returns to normal and he picks it up thoughtfully. "Well, that explains a lot," he says.
Katniss looks over at me with an amused expression. At that moment, a clicking sound comes from the adjacent section - the eleven o'clock section - of the jungle. It's that insect-like pincer sound again, only much louder than last night. We decide it's time to clear out of here, anyway, with noon less than an hour away. We move over to the next section, where there is a tall tree at the crest of the hill, identical to the lightning tree. We eat the nuts and the tree-rat, and wait until the clicking sound starts fading away.
"Katniss," says Beetee, "can you climb this tree and watch the lightning strike? I want to know if there's anything we should know about the strike."
She shrugs and clambers up the tree. We wait in breathless silence for the strike; I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as the electricity crackles around us. Then the boom and flash - lighting up the jungle. Then Katniss rejoins us.
"It's a single bolt of lightning," she tells Beetee, with a shrug. "Very bright - even in the sunlight. It makes the whole tree glow - like that piece of bark."
Beetee nods.
We feel nervous about re-entering the lightning sector during the hour, so we go back down to the beach and walk along it all the way around and back to the ten o'clock beach. I suppose there are some nerves, some anxiety about what is planned for tonight, what is going to happen for the rest of this game - but Katniss slips her hand in mine and we walk together along the firm sand, and I actually relax and allow myself to feel the happiness. What happens when your life compresses down - down - from years, to days, to hours, to minutes - is that each small moment starts to become dense with the current emotion. I live a lifetime with her by my side in the arena, in just the time it takes to walk around the clock.
Time - something about time ….
When we return to the ten o'clock beach, Katniss sits down next to me while I nap. When I wake up, late in the afternoon, Johanna and Beetee are both sleeping, and Finnick is standing knee-deep in the lake, staring out over the water as if trying to see the world on the other side of the arena. When he sees I'm awake, he calls us over.
"Would you guys like to help catch dinner?" he asks. Then he sets Katniss to dive for oysters and me to look for the bubbles in the sand that indicate buried shellfish. He wades in deeper and starts thrusting the trident into the water.
When we are finished, having caught basketfuls of oysters, mussels, crab and some larger fish from deep in the lake, we find Johanna and Beetee up and waiting for us. Johanna keeps watch while we clean and shell the fish. I've just pried open my fifth or sixth oyster when I see it. At first I think it's a bad oyster - and then it almost rolls right out of my hands. It's a small pearl, smooth and dark - silvery-gray, almost the exact color of her eyes. I gasp, then give a laugh. "Hey, look at this!" I hold up my palm. "You know," I say to Finnick, "if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls."
"No it doesn't," says Finnick, but Katniss bursts into laughter. She remembers every bit as clearly as I do the earnest words of Effie Trinket, who used them to try to sell us to sponsors, when we were sparkling new tributes from District 12.
I pour some water on it and rub it against my tee-shirt. This will be the perfect gift to leave Katniss - its association with Effie diminishing any potential unwelcome weight to the gift. It can serve as a light memento of our times together in the Games. And anyway, it's just something pretty to give to her. I hold it out to her. "For you," I say, holding on to my amused grin.
She opens her hand up automatically to receive it, and for a while she lets it roll around on her palm, as she regards it with an unsure expression. Then she closes her hand around it and looks directly into my eyes. "Thanks," she says.
She holds my eyes and - as it went the day of the tribute parade - I suddenly feel abashed by my levity and aware just by her gaze that she is steeling herself for the sacrifice she plans to make for me. That she hesitates to accept the pearl not because it might be a burden to her, a token of my love that has always been a little more than she ever expected or asked for - but because she does not plan to be alive to keep it. Perhaps I hoped that maybe her kisses last night were an acceptance of my upcoming death, that they were a gift she was finally able to give me because I would not be alive to complicate her future. Perhaps I managed to fool myself again. Now I understand she meant them as her goodbye. A cold feeling clutches me.
"The locket didn't work, did it?" In the silence, I feel Finnick stop whatever he's doing and stare at us. "Katniss?"
She touches the place under her tee-shirt where the locket is now. Her mockingjay pin flashes in the sunlight as her hand moves over it. "It worked," she says.
"But not the way I wanted it to." I bite my lip and look away, back to my pile of oysters.
I automatically return to cleaning and shelling the fish, but my mind is somewhere else. It's now clear that Katniss and I can't get to the end of this together, as there will be an impasse - or worse, a race to suicide between us. I'm not going to win any races against Katniss. The question is when. If Beetee is successful in killing the Careers, that means that she and I are going to run, anyway. But the arena is so small. How many enemies should I leave her before I let myself go? One. Preferably Beetee. But would she take the win over Beetee? She likes him. Johanna? A less sure outcome, but …
I shy away from these unpleasant scenarios - again - and glance up at the sky just as a parachute comes floating down. I sigh and walk over to pick it up - it is, once again, twenty-four rolls of District 3 bread. But also a small pot of red sauce.
"It's for the fish," says Finnick, smacking his lips.
Now, this is more like it. We divide the rolls up again and throw the fish into the pot, taking turns scooping it out with our fingers. Between the rolls and the fish, we are all stuffed well before the food is done. So we toss it all into the lake, rather than leave it behind for the Careers.
While I'm washing my hands and face, I glance down the beach at Katniss, who is doing the same. I watch her untie the vine from her belt and unfold the parachute that is on the other end of it. The spile and the skin ointment are in there. After rubbing it between her fingers for a moment, she adds the pearl to her items and closes the parachute and re-ties it to her belt. I take a deep breath and go over to her, and sit down. She settles in next to me, leans her head against my arm and takes my hand. I just sit and wonder if my final moment will come at my own hand or someone else's. If I will have time to say goodbye to her before I die.