“Peeta, how come I never know when you're having a nightmare?” I say.
“I don't know. I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to, paralyzed with terror,” he says.
“You should wake me,” I say, thinking about how I can interrupt his sleep two or three times on a bad night. About how long it can take to calm me down.
“It's not necessary. My nightmares are usually about losing you,” he says. “I'm okay once I realize you're here.”
Ugh. Peeta makes comments like this in such an offhand way, and it's like being hit in the gut. He's only answering my question honestly. He's not pressing me to reply in kind, to make any declaration of love. But I still feel awful, as if I've been using him in some terrible way. Have I? I don't know. I only know that for the first time, I feel immoral about him being here in my bed. Which is ironic since we're officially engaged now.
“Be worse when we're home and I'm sleeping alone again,” he says.
That's right, we're almost home.
The agenda for District 12 includes a dinner at Mayor Undersee's house tonight and a victory rally in the square during the Harvest Festival tomorrow. We always celebrate the Harvest Festival on the final day of the Victory Tour, but usually it means a meal at home or with a few friends if you can afford it. This year it will be a public affair, and since the Capitol will be throwing it, everyone in the whole district will have full bellies.
Most of our prepping will take place at the mayor's house, since we're back to being covered in furs for outdoor appearances. We're only at the train station briefly, to smile and wave as we pile into our car. We don't even get to see our families until the dinner tonight.
I'm glad it will be at the mayor's house instead of at the Justice Building, where the memorial for my father was held, where they took me after the reaping for those wrenching goodbyes to my family. The Justice Building is too full of sadness.
But I like Mayor Undersee's house, especially now that his daughter, Madge, and I are friends. We always were, in a way. It became official when she came to say good-bye to me before I left for the Games. When she gave me the mockingjay pin for luck. After I got home, we started spending time together. It turns out Madge has plenty of empty hours to fill, too. It was a little awkward at first because we didn't know what to do. Other girls our age, I've heard them talking about boys, or other girls, or clothes. Madge and I aren't gossipy and clothes bore me to tears. But after a few false starts, I realized she was dying to go into the woods, so I've taken her a couple of times and showed her how to shoot. She's trying to teach me the piano, but mostly I like to listen to her play. Sometimes we eat at each other's houses. Madge likes mine better. Her parents seem nice but I don't think she sees a whole lot of them. Her father has District 12 to run and her mother gets fierce headaches that force her to stay in bed for days.
“Maybe you should take her to the Capitol,” I said during one of them. We weren't playing the piano that day, because even two floors away the sound caused her mother pain. “They can fix her up, I bet.”
“Yes. But you don't go to the Capitol unless they invite you,” said Madge unhappily. Even the mayor's privileges are limited.
When we reach the mayor's house, I only have time to give Madge a quick hug before Effie hustles me off to the third floor to get ready. After I'm prepped and dressed in a full-length silver gown, I've still got an hour to kill before the dinner, so I slip off to find her.
Madge's bedroom is on the second floor along with several guest rooms and her father's study. I stick my head in the study to say hello to the mayor but it's empty. The television's droning on, and I stop to watch shots of Peeta and me at the Capitol party last night. Dancing, eating, kissing. This will be playing in every household in Panem right now. The audience must be sick to death of the star-crossed lovers from District 12. I know I am.
I'm leaving the room when a beeping noise catches my attention. I turn back to see the screen of the television go black. Then the words “UPDATE ON DISTRICT 8” start flashing. Instinctively I know this is not for my eyes but something intended only for the mayor. I should go. Quickly. Instead I find myself stepping closer to the television.
An announcer I've never seen before appears. It's a woman with graying hair and a hoarse, authoritative voice. She warns that conditions are worsening and a Level 3 alert has been called. Additional forces are being sent into District 8, and all textile production has ceased.
They cut away from the woman to the main square in District 8. I recognize it because I was there only last week. There are still banners with my face waving from the rooftops. Below them, there's a mob scene. The square's packed with screaming people, their faces hidden with rags and homemade masks, throwing bricks. Buildings burn. Peacekeepers shoot into the crowd, killing at random.
I've never seen anything like it, but I can only be witnessing one thing. This is what President Snow calls an uprising.
7
A leather bag filled with food and a flask of hot tea. A pair of fur-lined gloves that Cinna left behind. Three twigs, broken from the naked trees, lying in the snow, pointing in the direction I will travel. This is what I leave for Gale at our usual meeting place on the first Sunday after the Harvest Festival.
I have continued on through the cold, misty woods, breaking a path that will be unfamiliar to Gale but is simple for my feet to find. It leads to the lake. I no longer trust that our regular rendezvous spot offers privacy, and I'll need that and more to spill my guts to Gale today. But will he even come? If he doesn't, I'll have no choice but to risk going to his house in the dead of night. There are things he has to know… things I need him to help me figure out…
Once the implications of what I was seeing on Mayor Undersee's television hit me, I made for the door and started down the hall. Just in time, too, because the mayor came up the steps moments later. I gave him a wave.
“Looking for Madge?” he said in a friendly tone.
“Yes. I want to show her my dress,” I said.
“Well, you know where to find her.” Just then, another round of beeping came from his study. His face turned grave. “Excuse me,” he said. He went into his study and closed the door tightly.
I waited in the hall until I had composed myself. Reminded myself I must act naturally. Then I found Madge in her room, sitting at her dressing table, brushing out her wavy blond hair before a mirror. She was in the same pretty white dress she'd worn on reaping day. She saw my reflection behind her and smiled. “Look at you. Like you came right off the streets of the Capitol.”
I stepped in closer. My fingers touched the mockingjay. “Even my pin now. Mockingjays are all the rage in the Capitol, thanks to you. Are you sure you don't want it back?” I asked.
“Don't be silly, it was a gift,” said Madge. She tied back her hair in a festive gold ribbon.
“Where did you get it, anyway?” I asked.
“It was my aunt's,” she said. “But I think it's been in the family a long time.”
“It's a funny choice, a mockingjay,” I said. “I mean, because of what happened in the rebellion. With the jabber-jays backfiring on the Capitol and all.”
The jabberjays were muttations, genetically enhanced male birds created by the Capitol as weapons to spy on rebels in the districts. They could remember and repeat long passages of human speech, so they were sent into rebel areas to capture our words and return them to the Capitol. The rebels caught on and turned them against the Capitol by sending them home loaded with lies. When this was discovered, the jabberjays were left to die. In a few years, they became extinct in the wild, but not before they had mated with female mockingbirds, creating an entirely new species.
“But mockingjays were never a weapon,” said Madge. “They're just songbirds. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. But it's not true. A mockingbird is just a songbird. A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. They hadn't counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn't anticipated its will to live.
