Sunrise on the Reaping

“Because the reaping’s going to happen no matter what I believe. Sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.”

Lenore Dove frowns. “Well, there’s no proof that will happen. You can’t count on things happening tomorrow just because they happened in the past. It’s faulty logic.”

“Is it?” I say. “Because it’s kind of how people plan out their lives.”

“And that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.”

“Oh, just shoot that girl, would you?” says Drusilla. A nearby Peacekeeper trains his rifle on Lenore Dove, and Drusilla snorts in exasperation. “Not here! We’ve got enough blood to clean up. Find a discreet location, can’t you?”

As the soldier takes a step toward Lenore Dove, a guy in a violet jumpsuit appears, laying a hand on his elbow. “Hold it. If I could, Drusilla, I’d love to keep her for the tearful good-bye. The audience eats that stuff up and, as you always remind us, it’s a challenge to get them to even notice Twelve.”

“Fine, Plutarch. Whatever. Just get the rest of them up. Up! On your feet, you district pigs!”

I’m entirely the Capitol’s plaything. They will use me for their entertainment and then kill me, and the truth will have no say in it. Plutarch acts friendly, but his indulgences—my family’s good-byes, his fancy sandwiches—are just a method to manage me, because happy playthings are easier to handle than raging ones. To get his footage, he’ll indulge me right into the arena.

Clearly, Plutarch wants to capture my delight so he can broadcast it all over Panem. Look how well the Capitol treats its tributes. How forgiving they are to their enemies. How superior they are to those district piglets in their stinkholes.

I’ve seen similar clips before of the tributes being treated like pampered pets. Being brushed and fed and flattered, lapping it up. Playing into the Capitol propaganda. Maybe it gets them more sponsors, but if they do win, it’s not going to get them a parade back home.

“Don’t let them use you, Sarshee. Don’t let them paint their posters with your blood. Not if you can help it.”

That’s it. That’s what Pa told Sarshee in the Justice Building. That’s what Ma wanted me to remember.

“Look at me,” I say. “In every way, you are a thousand times better than anybody in the Capitol. You are loved better, raised better, and a whole lot better company. You are the best ally I could ever hope for. Okay, sweetheart?”

She nods and straightens up. “You and me to the end. Right, Hay?”

“You and me to the end,” I promise.

Something steels inside me, and I think, You are on a high horse, mister. And someday someone will knock you off it straight into your grave. I dismount the chariot and lay Louella down, taking a step back so Snow can’t pretend he doesn’t see her broken little bird body. Then I gesture to him and begin to applaud, giving credit where credit is due.

Spin this, Plutarch, I think.

“I want to remind people I’m here because the Capitol won the war and thinks that, fifty years later, this is a fair way to punish the districts. But I’d like them to consider that fifty years is enough.”

[…]

“So you want to make them end the Hunger Games for good. How?” asks Maysilee.

“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “I guess, for starters, by reminding the audience that we’re human beings. The way they talk about us…piglets…beasts. They called my fingernails claws. You saw how those kids outside the gym looked at us. Like they think of us as animals. And they think of themselves as superior. So it’s okay to kill us. But the people in the Capitol aren’t better than us.”

“I don’t think we ‘submit,’” I say.

“It’s implied. You accept the Capitol’s conditions.”

“Because we don’t want to end up dead!” I snap. “Do you really not see that?”

“No, I do. I see the hangings and the shootings and the starvation and the Hunger Games. I do,” Plutarch says. “And yet, I still don’t think the fear they inspire justifies the arrangement we’ve all entered into. Do you?” We stare at him. He’s not taunting or mocking us, he’s genuinely asking. “Why do you agree to it? Why do I? For that matter, why have people always agreed to it?”

“And I will orchestrate your death based on your behavior from here on out. You decide what you want Lenore Dove and your mother and that dear little brother of yours to see. You can die clean and fair, or we can open the Games with the slowest, most agonizing death ever to befall a tribute. And yes, you should be thanking me for giving you the option.”

In her sleep, Lou Lou’s rolled over onto her side. She holds on to my hand for dear life, her pulse beating fast like a baby bird’s heart.

I remember Louella’s hand taking mine on the train, and resist the impulse to pull away. “It’s okay, Lou Lou,” I whisper, sort of patting her side. “No one here will hurt you.”

I could try a lullaby to soothe her, but I don’t want to wake the others. Not much of a singer anyway, and I’m supposed to be practicing keeping watch for the arena. I think how Lenore Dove sings to me sometimes. Lonely for her, I close my eyes for a moment and let her voice find me….

Meanwhile, I have my own mission, which does not involve protecting this flock.

[…]

But I will not be able to look after them in the arena—I will have to devote my abilities to blowing up the tank or die trying. “Listen, I’m going to be a real jerk in my interview. It’s something my team worked up, but I will never hurt you, okay? Or any of the Newcomers. That’s a promise.”

“We know that,” says Wellie, eyes full of trust.

Too much trust. I need to distance myself from them for the good of everybody.

“Oh Lenore Dove…are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

“No. Just hauled me in. Less about what I played, more about how it drew people. Everybody’s real upset this year, so many kids. They needed a place to be together, to raise their voices. Sometimes the hurt’s too bad to bear alone.”

So it wasn’t just her, playing her heart out in front of the Justice Building. A crowd had gathered. Sung the forbidden songs.

“One last thing. From the Capitol’s perspective, the Games are the best propaganda we have. You tributes, you’re our stars. You carry it out. But only if we control the narrative. Don’t let us.” Plutarch grasps my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “No more implicit submission for you, Haymitch Abernathy. Blow that water tank sky high. The entire country needs you to.”

I can’t help but think of Pa’s directive to Sarshee Whitcomb. Seems like a lot to lay on my doorstep. Fix this mess for us, or else.

I wonder how Wyatt died and immediately feel certain he was protecting Lou Lou, the way no one had ever protected him. Including me. I ran off and left all the Newcomers to fend for one another. I know I had to if I was going to carry out Beetee’s plan, but it sure doesn’t feel good.

A fury rises up in me at the thought of Wyatt’s sacrifice and how the Capitol has pitted us tributes against one another in this poisonous beauty of an arena. The Games must end. Here. Now. Every death reinforces the importance of the arena plot succeeding.

The cannon fires to confirm [Lou Lou’s] death as her body goes limp. Whoever Lou Lou was, she’s moved on. Her slight, starved frame lies quiet, finally beyond the Capitol’s reach. I lean down and whisper into her bad ear. A personal message to the Gamemakers. “You did this to her. This is who you are.” And then for Lou Lou, I say the thing she no longer can. “Murderers.”

This is my poster. Right here. I give a wild victory cry and spin around shouting, “Did you all want a party? I’ll give you a party!”

Lightning flashes, a clap of thunder booms. I dance around the berm, bellowing the first thing that comes to mind for all of Panem to hear. A song too dangerous to sing—

They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

“One of us has to be the worst victor in history. Tear up their scripts, tear down their celebrations, set fire to the Victor’s Village. Refuse to play their game.”

Reminds me of Pa. “Make sure they don’t use our blood to paint their posters?”

“Exactly. We’ll paint our own posters. And I know just where we can get the paint.” In a gesture I remember from the schoolyard long ago, she extends her pinkie. “Swear it.”

I encircle it with my own and our pinkies lock tight. They will never let me be a victor, not after my attempt to break the arena, but I can swear to try to keep her alive. “One of us paints the posters.”

“Thought I’d kick off the day with a poster,” [Maysilee] says.

I think about it. Her emphasis on manners, her pretty picnics. And I remember her words that first day on the train. “Listen, Louella, if you let them treat you like an animal, they will. So don’t let them.” This morning’s poster says, We’re civilized. We appreciate beautiful things. We’re as good as you. It’s an extension of her whole campaign to show the Capitol our value.

The fate I have been trying to defy ever since I saw that perverse birthday cake on the train has come home to roost like the raven in the poem, forever perched above my chamber door. I am completely in Snow’s power and his to manipulate. His puppet. His pawn. His plaything. It is his poster I am painting. His propaganda. I am trapped into doing his bidding in the Hunger Games, the best propaganda the Capitol has.

I don’t dare think about my loved ones back home. Everything I did, every choice I made, was based on the knowledge that my death protected them from harm. Snow had guaranteed that in the library. “With you out of the picture, Lenore Dove and your family should be free to enjoy long and happy lives.”

[…]

This I know: I have been publicly challenging Snow and his Quarter Quell since I landed in the Capitol. Even after the private meeting in the library, I flaunted my defiance of him. If he served up poisoned oysters to Incitatus Loomy, the parade master, what feast must he have in store for me and mine?

Maysilee and Maritte appeared in the sky together. Does no one remember? Do they just not care? Or during the Games, did they show the audience a different sky? Or none at all? And did they intentionally save Maritte’s death to increase tension at the end? The Gamemakers must have been scrambling like crazy to control the narrative by this point. Whatever the cause, the audience here in the auditorium has embraced this version, cheering and jeering on cue. Their lack of discernment transforms the recap, validating it as truth. I hope those in the districts can still see it as the piece of propaganda it is, but no telling what they’ve been fed.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Strange things indeed. A dead man calling out. His ghost. No, Lenore Dove said it was a bird. Birds. Jabberjays. The failed mutts let loose to die in District 12. But they defied the Capitol’s sentence of extinction by fathering a new species, mockingjays, before they vanished. Is that what makes the song dangerous? Immortalizing those wayward mutts in a song?

[Lenore Dove’s] eyes fixate on something in the distance. “See that?” she says hoarsely.

I turn my head and see the sun, just peeking over the horizon. “What? The sun?”

“Don’t you…let it…rise…” she gets out.

Tears choke me. “I can’t stop it. You know I can’t stop it.”

Her head jerks a bit to the side. “…on the reaping,” she whispers.

The raven. The unforgiving songbird. Repeatedly reminding me of President Snow’s crystal-clear message to me on my homecoming. That I will never get to love anyone ever again. Nevermore. Because he will make sure they end up dying a horrible death.

And so, I drive away anyone and everyone who could ever have been considered dear to me.

“But we can’t any of us do it alone. You demonstrated a lot of nerve and intelligence in the arena. We need your help.”

“Me?” I say in disbelief. “I am living proof that the Capitol always wins. I tried to keep that sun from rising on another reaping day, I tried to change things, and now everybody’s dead. You don’t want me.” […]

“We do want you. You shook up the Capitol, both figuratively and literally, with that earthquake. You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”