Mockingjay

what they really want, in the short term, is to stop the Airtime Assaults and keep me off the televisions of Panem.
    We receive next to no information about what is happening. Our screens never come on, and we get only brief audio updates from Coin about the nature of the bombs. Certainly, the war is still being waged, but as to its status, we’re in the dark.
    Inside the bunker, cooperation is the order of the day. We adhere to a strict schedule for meals and bathing, exercise and sleep. Small periods of socialization are granted to alleviate the tedium. Our space becomes very popular because both children and adults have a fascination with Buttercup. He attains celebrity status with his evening game of Crazy Cat. I created this by accident a few years ago, during a winter blackout. You simply wiggle a flashlight beam around on the floor, and Buttercup tries to catch it. I’m petty enough to enjoy it because I think it makes him look stupid. Inexplicably, everyone here thinks he’s clever and delightful. I’m even issued a special set of batteries — an enormous waste — to be used for this purpose. The citizens of 13 are truly starved for entertainment.
    It’s on the third night, during our game, that I answer the question eating away at me. Crazy Cat becomes a metaphor for my situation. I am Buttercup. Peeta, the thing I want so badly to secure, is the light. As long as Buttercup feels he has the chance of catching the elusive light under his paws, he’s bristling with aggression. (That’s how I’ve been since I left the arena, with Peeta alive.) When the light goes out completely, Buttercup’s temporarily distraught and confused, but he recovers and moves on to other things. (That’s what would happen if Peeta died.) But the one thing that sends Buttercup into a tailspin is when I leave the light on but put it hopelessly out of his reach, high on the wall, beyond even his jumping skills. He paces below the wall, wails, and can’t be comforted or distracted. He’s useless until I shut the light off. (That’s what Snow is trying to do to me now, only I don’t know what form his game takes.)
    Maybe this realization on my part is all Snow needs. Thinking that Peeta was in his possession and being tortured for rebel information was bad. But thinking that he’s being tortured specifically to incapacitate me is unendurable. And it’s under the weight of this revelation that I truly begin to break.
    After Crazy Cat, we’re directed to bed. The power’s been coming and going; sometimes the lamps burn at full brightness, other times we squint at one another in the brownouts. At bedtime they turn the lamps to near darkness and activate safety lights in each space. Prim, who’s decided the walls will hold up, snuggles with Buttercup on the lower bunk. My mother’s on the upper. I offer to take a bunk, but they make me keep to the floor mattress since I flail around so much when I’m sleeping.
    I’m not flailing now, as my muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together. The pain over my heart returns, and from it I imagine tiny fissures spreading out into my body. Through my torso, down my arms and legs, over my face, leaving it crisscrossed with cracks. One good jolt of a bunker missile and I could shatter into strange, razor-sharp shards.
    When the restless, wiggling majority has settled into sleep, I carefully extricate myself from my blanket and tiptoe through the cavern until I find Finnick, feeling for some unspecified reason that he will understand. He sits under the safety light in his space, knotting his rope, not even pretending to rest. As I whisper my discovery of Snow’s plan to break me, it dawns on me. This strategy is very old news to Finnick. It’s what broke him.
    “This is what they’re doing to you with Annie, isn’t it?” I ask.
    “Well, they didn’t arrest her because they thought she’d be a wealth of rebel information,” he says. “They know I’d never have risked telling her anything like that. For her own protection.”
    “Oh, Finnick. I’m so sorry,” I say.
    “No, I’m sorry. That I didn’t warn you somehow,” he tells me.
    Suddenly, a memory surfaces. I’m strapped to my bed, mad with rage and grief after the rescue. Finnick is trying to console me about Peeta. “They’ll figure out he doesn’t know anything pretty fast. And they won’t kill him if they think they can use him against you.”
    “You did warn me, though. On the