Catching Fire

that she would be ignored. Then she demonstrated a wicked ability to murder. She ruffles up her spiky hair and rolls her wide-set brown eyes. “Isn’t my costume awful? My stylist’s the biggest idiot in the Capitol. Our tributes have been trees for forty years under her. Wish I’d gotten Cinna. You look fantastic.”
    Girl talk. That thing I’ve always been so bad at. Opinions on clothes, hair, makeup. So I lie. “Yeah, he’s been helping me design my own clothing line. You should see what he can do with velvet.” Velvet. The only fabric I could think of off the top of my head.
    “I have. On your tour. That strapless number you wore in District Two? The deep blue one with the diamonds? So gorgeous I wanted to reach through the screen and tear it right off your back,” says Johanna.
    I bet you did, I think. With a few inches of my flesh.
    While we wait for the elevators, Johanna unzips the rest of her tree, letting it drop to the floor, and then kicks it away in disgust. Except for her forest green slippers, she doesn’t have on a stitch of clothing. “That’s better.”
    We end up on the same elevator with her, and she spends the whole ride to the seventh floor chatting to Peeta about his paintings while the light of his still-glowing costume reflects off her bare breasts. When she leaves, I ignore him, but I just know he’s grinning. I toss aside his hand as the doors close behind Chaff and Seeder, leaving us alone, and he breaks out laughing.
    “What?” I say, turning on him as we step out on our floor.
    “It’s you, Katniss. Can’t you see?” he says.
    “What’s me?” I say.
    “Why they’re all acting like this. Finnick with his sugar cubes and Chaff kissing you and that whole thing with Johanna stripping down.” He tries to take on a more serious tone, unsuccessfully. “They’re playing with you because you’re so . . . you know.”
    “No, I don’t know,” I say. And I really have no idea what he’s talking about.
    “It’s like when you wouldn’t look at me naked in the arena even though I was half dead. You’re so . . . pure,” he says finally.
    “I am not!” I say. “I’ve been practically ripping your clothes off every time there’s been a camera for the last year!”
    “Yeah, but . . . I mean, for the Capitol, you’re pure,” he says, clearly trying to mollify me. “For me, you’re perfect. They’re just teasing you.”
    “No, they’re laughing at me, and so are you!” I say.
    “No.” Peeta shakes his head, but he’s still suppressing a smile. I’m seriously rethinking the question of who should get out of these Games alive when the other elevator opens.
    Haymitch and Effie join us, looking pleased about something. Then Haymitch’s face grows hard.
    What did I do now? I almost say, but I see he’s staring behind me at the entrance to the dining room.
    Effie blinks in the same direction, then says brightly, “Looks like they’ve got you a matched set this year.”
    I turn around and find the redheaded Avox girl who tended to me last year until the Games began. I think how nice it is to have a friend here. I notice that the young man beside her, another Avox, also has red hair. That must be what Effie meant by a matched set.
    Then a chill runs through me. Because I know him, too. Not from the Capitol but from years of having easy conversations in the Hob, joking over Greasy Sae’s soup, and that last day watching him lie unconscious in the square while the life bled out of Gale.
    Our new Avox is Darius.

Haymitch grips my wrist as if anticipating my next move, but I am as speechless as the Capitol’s torturers have rendered Darius. Haymitch once told me they did something to Avoxes’ tongues so they could never talk again. In my head I hear Darius’s voice, playful and bright, ringing across the Hob to tease me. Not as my fellow victors make fun of me now, but because we genuinely liked each other. If Gale could see him . . .
    I know any move I would make toward Darius, any act of recognition, would only result in punishment for him. So we just stare into each other’s eyes. Darius, now a mute slave; me, now headed to death. What would we say, anyway? That we’re sorry for the other’s lot? That we ache for the other’s pain? That we’re glad we had the chance to know each other?
    No, Darius shouldn’t be glad he knew me. If I had been there to stop Thread, he wouldn’t have stepped forward to save Gale. Wouldn’t be an Avox. And more