Six

Annie and I are already on the train when Muscida and a Capitol attendant help Mags into the car. Annie is sitting on a chair by the window, her knees drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees. How a grown person can fold herself into such a small package, I don't know. She hasn't spoken since she answered a few of Caesar's questions in a hollow, detached voice during her interview. And now she just sits and stares out the window.

I think I'd rather hear her scream and see her fight instead of retreating into herself.

Mags can walk with the help of a cane. She's unsteady, to be sure, but it gives me hope that's she standing and slowly making her way toward me. She even waves me off when I stand to help her. Once she's settled in the chair beside me, she glances at Annie - still curled on the chair across from me. "How bad?" she says, even those two words broken and forced.

"I don't know, Mags, how bad off are you?" I ask because I don't want to talk about Annie quite like that when she's sitting close enough to hear, even though I don't think she can.

She nods once and winks at me, and I get the feeling I passed her test. "Been better," she tells me. "Been worse."

I can't help but be shocked by that. "You've been worse? When?"

She taps her chest with her right hand and speaks in a halting voice, missing some words. "Old, boy. Worse before your parents even born."

To my shock, her words make Annie laugh.

Mags puts her hand over mine and squeezes my fingers. "Be alright, boy," she sighs - and I know she means herself and Annie. At least I hope that's what she means. I'll believe her no matter what she says. I have to.

Once the train leaves the Capitol station, Muscida comes and tells us that the attendants have set dinner out in the dining car.

Mags pushes herself to her feet with me holding one elbow. She stops before we take a step and holds out her other arm to Annie. "Help an old woman, girl?"

I shouldn't be surprised that Annie reacts to her again, even unfolding herself and getting to her feet. She tentatively takes Mags' other arm and we walk slowly to the dining car while Muscida follows us with Mags' cane. I can't help but wonder if she'll be able to get Annie to eat - something I've failed spectacularly at since she was released to me for the interview and the Crowning Ceremony.

My mentor gives me a nudge into a chair on one side of the table and lets Annie take her to the other side. Annie ends up across from me and Muscida sits beside me. Mags seems to be struggling with her silverware and I move to help her but Muscida puts her hand on my arm. "No, wait," she whispers ever so softly in my ear. "I saw her in the hospital and she can do this. I think she's acting."

So I wait and watch. And I don't believe a thing I'm seeing.

Annie takes her own knife and fork and cuts up the fish on Mags' plate. When the old woman's hand shakes, and I think it's more faked than real, the newly crowned Hunger Games victor scoops up a bit of fish and holds it to Mags' mouth. "She won't choke, will she?" she murmurs in Muscida's general direction but not really to her.

"No, she won't," she replies, sounding as shocked as I am. "The physical therapists made sure of that. She just has trouble speaking and a little trouble with coordination but she can swallow food."

Her words don't get a verbal reaction. Annie simply goes back to feeding Mags the baked fish and Mags gives Muscida and I look we both know means we should eat our own dinners. So we do, and when I look up again, Mags is coaxing Annie to eat by refusing another bite until the younger girl takes one.

A part of me feels ridiculous relief that Annie's eating and Mags is here to take care of her. The other part of me feels ashamed that the old woman recovering from a stroke can, and maybe has to, take better care of the teenage girl than I can.

I force myself to eat the fish so Mags won't have to use the strength to yell at me but I refuse dessert. I feel almost as sick right now as I have after more sexual weeks in the Capitol.

After the plates are cleared by the attendants it's clear that Mags is fading so Muscida takes her to her room and leaves me with Annie, who wastes no time in returning to the chair by the window she'd claimed as soon as we got on the train. I close my eyes and walk, eyes still closed, after her while a random, probably alarming thought occurs to me - I wish there weren't force fields to prevent me from accidentally falling off the train as it speeds over a bridge.

"You don't have to follow me."

I jump when she speaks, luckily just before I walk into a table that's bolted to the floor.

"You don't have to follow me," she repeats in a dull voice. "I won't hurt myself. I think they locked up all the sharp things."

It's alarming that she's thought of that and I told her so. "You did enough damage with your fingernails in the hospital," I remind her before she can protest.

But she still protests, waving her fingers in my direction. "My manicure before the Crowning seemed to consider of leaving me with no fingernails to speak of."

I slump into the round back chair across from her and cross my arms over my chest. "Well, you did gouge the one girl's arm when she tried to put eye shadow on you so you probably can't really blame them."

She shrugs and pulls her knees to her chest again. "You still don't have to follow me."

"I'm not following you. I want to sit in this chair, so I'm going to sit here."

Seeming to accept that, she wraps her thin arms more tightly around her legs and rest her chin on her knees. And then she's silent again.

I don't know if she sleeps, but I do. I sleep a fitful sleep of half-finished dreams and an aching body.

Annie's still there, still in the same position, when Muscida squeezes my shoulder to wake me. "It's morning," she whispers, "why don't you go get some sleep before we get home? I'll watch her."

The offer is too good to refuse, so I don't.

And twenty minutes later I wake abruptly to the shrillest, most terrified screams I've heard in my life. It takes me a minute to realize it isn't a dream, someone on the train is screaming as if he or she is being tortured. And that someone is screaming my name.

I'm on my feet before I can think about it and I run into a Capitol attendant in the hallway, one who was clearly sent to get me. "It's Miss Cresta," she says breathlessly. "She's calling for you."

Calling for me might be a bit of an understatement. She's still screaming.

I push the Capitol girl to the other side of the hall and run in the direction of the screams.

Annie is cowering in the corner of the train car where I left her. Her face is deathly pale and streaked with tears. Her short fingernails aren't too short to have been unable to cause bleeding crescent shaped wounds in her arms as she hugs herself. And her voice is hoarse from screaming.

"The stylist brought her clothes," Muscida says, touching my arm gently. "That's all."

The stylist is still standing there, tacky and revealing dress in her arms.

"Out," I tell her. "Get out. I'll dress her to get off the train."

Muscida backs me up and leaves with the stylist.

When we're the only ones left in the car, it takes time but I manage to mostly calm her down. At least the screaming stops. The tears don't and she shakes like a leaf when I get her to her feet. She won't speak, but she seems to trust me well enough.

And when she steps off the train in District Four, she's wearing one of my shirts - an oversized white shirt I bought in District Four from a woman too blind to sew properly anymore but in need of the money - with the sleeves rolled up and Muscida's turquoise tasseled scarf tied around her waist to make it look like a very short dress.

But at least she can walk off on her own. I hope.