Catching Fire

mother, whose expression is solemn and distant, as if she’s remembering something. “It must be the reading of the card.”
    The anthem plays, and my throat tightens with revulsion as President Snow takes the stage. He’s followed by a young boy dressed in a white suit, holding a simple wooden box. The anthem ends, and President Snow begins to speak, to remind us all of the Dark Days from which the Hunger Games were born. When the laws for the Games were laid out, they dictated that every twenty-five years the anniversary would be marked by a Quarter Quell. It would call for a glorified version of the Games to make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts’ rebellion.
    These words could not be more pointed, since I suspect several districts are rebelling right now.
    President Snow goes on to tell us what happened in the previous Quarter Quells. “On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it.”
    I wonder how that would have felt. Picking the kids who had to go. It is worse, I think, to be turned over by your own neighbors than have your name drawn from the reaping ball.
    “On the fiftieth anniversary,” the president continues, “as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district was required to send twice as many tributes.”
    I imagine facing a field of forty-seven instead of twenty-three. Worse odds, less hope, and ultimately more dead kids. That was the year Haymitch won. . . .
    “I had a friend who went that year,” says my mother quietly. “Maysilee Donner. Her parents owned the sweetshop. They gave me her songbird after. A canary.”
    Prim and I exchange a look. It’s the first we’ve ever heard of Maysilee Donner. Maybe because my mother knew we would want to know how she died.
    “And now we honor our third Quarter Quell,” says the president. The little boy in white steps forward, holding out the box as he opens the lid. We can see the tidy, upright rows of yellowed envelopes. Whoever devised the Quarter Quell system had prepared for centuries of Hunger Games. The president removes an envelope clearly marked with a 75. He runs his finger under the flap and pulls out a small square of paper. Without hesitation, he reads, “On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.”
    My mother gives a faint shriek and Prim buries her face in her hands, but I feel more like the people I see in the crowd on television. Slightly baffled. What does it mean? Existing pool of victors?
    Then I get it, what it means. At least, for me. District 12 only has three existing victors to choose from. Two male. One female . . .
    I am going back into the arena.

My body reacts before my mind does and I’m running out the door, across the lawns of the Victor’s Village, into the dark beyond. Moisture from the sodden ground soaks my socks and I’m aware of the sharp bite of the wind, but I don’t stop. Where? Where to go? The woods, of course. I’m at the fence before the hum makes me remember how very trapped I am. I back away, panting, turn on my heel, and take off again.
    The next thing I know I’m on my hands and knees in the cellar of one of the empty houses in the Victor’s Village. Faint shafts of moonlight come in through the window wells above my head. I’m cold and wet and winded, but my escape attempt has done nothing to subdue the hysteria rising up inside me. It will drown me unless it’s released. I ball up the front of my shirt, stuff it into my mouth, and begin to scream. How long this continues, I don’t know. But when I stop, my voice is almost gone.
    I curl up on my side and stare at the patches of moonlight on the cement floor. Back in the arena. Back in the place of nightmares. That’s where I am going. I have to admit I didn’t see it coming. I saw a multitude of other things. Being publicly humiliated, tortured, and executed. Fleeing through the wilderness, pursued by Peacekeepers and hovercraft. Marriage to Peeta with our children forced into the arena. But never that I myself would have to be a player in the Games again. Why? Because there’s no precedent for it. Victors are out of the reaping for