Chapter 13

'Why does my mouth taste like I've been eating moldy bread?" My voice sounds cracked, the words croaked out. I'm spread out on something soft, maybe a cushioned seat, and even with my eyes closed I can feel the jostle of motion beneath me. I'm going somewhere and I don't remember leaving the place with the half-naked women. I decide not to open my eyes, just float along in the dark. Who knows what'll happen if I open my eyes?

"I can't believe you just said that." A voice drifted to me through the hazed, half-incredulous, half-laughing and a name came along with the voice. Jen. I crack open an eye and in the flashes of passing light, I see her sitting across from me and she's grinning.

"What?"

"You're going to start doing bread puns now, aren't you? Like they always make us do during those stupid games on press junkets."

I stretch my legs out on the long seat. "I think I'm still drunk because none of those words made any sense." How Haymitch lives drunk like this is a mystery. I feel worse than I did when Katniss drugged me with the syrup during the Games—and I was three-quarters dead then. The movement and flashing lights aren't helping much, either. "Where are we?"

"We're headed to the Atlanta airport," Jen says. "We're going to Connecticut, to talk to Suzanne Collins."

"The author?" I'd been asking for days to see this woman, figure out how she got a hold of our story and if she knew how I could get back home, but know there's a lump of anxiety in my stomach along with the burning slosh of alcohol.

Everyone here thinks she made me up, that I'm a figment of her imagination, that the world I came from and everything I know is fictional, not real. What if they're right?

The sound of music, bass heavy, thrummed through the dark compartment. It's coming from my back pocket, the sleek metal device I found in Josh's backpack, it's like a phone, but not connected to the wall like we have back home. I think they have something like this in the Capitol and maybe in District 3, but I'd never seen anything like it.

This morning, Jen had charged the thing with a white cord and demanded I always keep it on me so I stuck it there.

I sit up and pull it out. An image of a middle-aged woman covers the screen, her smiling face pleasant, her hair the same blonde as mine, but chopped at sharp angles. There's a green button that says accept and a red one that says decline. I touch the green button and hold the instrument up to my ear like I've seen other people do.

"Josh? Josh, is that you? Oh my God, I thought you were dead. Everyone's being calling. Your brother's been waiting hours for you to pick him up."

"What?"

"It's just not like you not to tell us when you're taking one of your breaks. You disappear off the map for a few days, that's fine. You're grown now and what you do with your time is your business, but when you promise your brother the two of you are going somewhere and then don't show up, well, Josh, the people who love you are going to worry."

"What?" I repeat dully. My eyes cut to Jen and her eyebrows are hiked up, but there's a mischievous grin on her face. On some level, she's enjoying this. She mouths the words "Josh's mother."

"And everyone's worried, fearing the worst, trying to decide what to do without alerting the media and the rest of the drones and then I get a call from your publicist saying that pictures of you and Jen are all over the internet."

"Internet?" Jen's smile falters when I say this word. I have no idea what it means, but it means something to her. She pulls out her own phone and starts tapping on the screen.

"You shouldn't blow off your brother when both of you are in the same city, even for Jen. Plus, you told me you and Jen weren't going to..."

Jen grabs the phone from me. "Hey, Michelle. Yeah, he's still with me."

There's a pause while she listens to whatever Josh's mother is saying.

"Josh lost his phone and we had to get another one and have everything re-installed. I think the dates got all messed up on his calendar. We'll call Conner and tell him sorry."

Another pause.

"Drunk, really drunk. Like that time in Saint Tropez," she says. "But I'm going to nurse him back to health."

A pause and Jen laughs.

"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind."

Josh's mother says something else and Jen wilts a little. Her face is so expressive and changeable, it's interesting watching the emotions cross her face. "No, unfortunately not. Everything's the same. I already got in touch with Liz, she's dealing with it. Really, it was just a teeny-tiny wrap party for Mockingjay epilogue. Most of the crew was there, Liam, too."

Another pause.

"I'll tell him. See you soon, bye."

Jen hands the phone back to me and she suddenly looks younger, like a little girl's that's just gotten away with the last cookie.

"Didn't know you were such a good liar," I say, closing my eyes and laying back crosswise on the seat. "That was a lot of fast talking." Nothing like Katniss who got flustered pretending I wasn't dying back in that cave.

"Excuse you, I get paid very well just for lying. And it isn't like you don't lie, Mr. If-it-wasn't-for-the-baby Mellark."

"What?"

"Never mind." With my eyes closed, I don't see it, but from her sigh I'm betting Jen's rolling her eyes at me. It must be something that hasn't happened to me yet.

"Anyway," she says. "I thought you were supposed to be the charming one. Kinda bombed there on the phone."

"Talk to me when my head stops throbbing...wait...did Katniss say I was charming? Was that in the book?"

Before she says anything else, the car comes to a halt and I sit up. The driver opens his door and pulls a small rolling suitcase out of the trunk.

"We'll use the VIP entrance, but we need to go separately. Draws less attention," Jen says. "I'll go in this way and Russel will drive you around to the other entrance. Wait ten minutes and then have the VIP person take you to the lounge next to our gate."

She pulls a little blue beanie out of the pocket of her jeans and slips it over her blonde hair. She waits until the area is almost deserted before slipping out of the car and heading into the building, walking with long, fast strides, almost a jog, like she wants to get it over.

The car pulls around the corner and parks in a line with a bunch of nearly identical polished black cars. I take the phone back out and watch until ten minutes have passed. The driver Russel points me to the right entrance and I get out into the humid night's air.

I've gotten all the way to the sidewalk when a voice behind me says. "It's really you, isn't it?"