第69章
i say.
“yes, and everyone knew he was no danger. martin wasn’t
right in the head. i mean, he still acted like a three-year-old.
he just wanted the glasses to play with,” says rue.
hearing this makes me feel like district 12 is some sort of
safe haven. of course, people keel over from starvation all the
time, but i can’t imagine the peacekeepers murdering a sim-
pleminded child. there’s a little girl, one of greasy sae’s
grandkids, who wanders around the hob. she’s not quite right,
but she’s treated as a sort of pet. people toss her scraps and
things.
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“so what do these do?” i ask rue, taking the glasses.
“they let you see in complete darkness,” says rue. “try
them tonight when the sun goes down.”
i give rue some matches and she makes sure i have plenty
of leaves in case my stings flare up again. we extinguish our
fire and head upstream until it’s almost nightfall.
“where do you sleep?” i ask her. “in the trees?” she nods.
“in just your jacket?”
rue holds up her extra pair of socks. “i have these for my
hands.”
i think of how cold the nights have been. “you can share my
sleeping bag if you want. we’ll both easily fit.” her face lights
up. i can tell this is more than she dared hope for.
we pick a fork high in a tree and settle in for the night just
as the anthem begins to play. there were no deaths today.
“rue, i only woke up today. how many nights did i miss?”
the anthem should block out our words, but still i whisper. i
even take the precaution of covering my lips with my hand. i
don’t want the audience to know what i’m planning to tell her
about peeta. taking a cue from me, she does the same.
“two,” she says. “the girls from districts one and four are
dead. there’s ten of us left.”
“something strange happened. at least, i think it did. it
might have been the tracker jacker venom making me imagine
things,” i say. “you know the boy from my district? peeta? i
think he saved my life. but he was with the careers.”
“he’s not with them now,” she says. “i’ve spied on their
base camp by the lake. they made it back before they col-
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lapsed from the stingers. but he’s not there. maybe he did save
you and had to run.”
i don’t answer. if, in fact, peeta did save me, i’m in his debt
again. and this can’t be paid back. “if he did, it was all proba-
bly just part of his act. you know, to make people think he’s in
love with me.”
“oh,” says rue thoughtfully. “i didn’t think that was an act.”
“course it is,” i say. “he worked it out with our mentor.”
the anthem ends and the sky goes dark. “let’s try out these
glasses.” i pull out the glasses and slip them on. rue wasn’t
kidding. i can see everything from the leaves on the trees to a
skunk strolling through the bushes a good fifty feet away. i
could kill it from here if i had a mind to. i could kill anyone.
“i wonder who else got a pair of these,” i say.
“the careers have two pairs. but they’ve got everything
down by the lake,” rue says. “and they’re so strong.”
“we’re strong, too,” i say. “just in a different way.”
“you are. you can shoot,” she says. “what can i do?”
“you can feed yourself. can they?” i ask.
“they don’t need to. they have all those supplies,” rue
says.
“say they didn’t. say the supplies were gone. how long
would they last?” i say. “i mean, it’s the hunger games, right?”
“but, katniss, they’re not hungry,” says rue.
“no, they’re not. that’s the problem,” i agree. and for the
first time, i have a plan. a plan that isn’t motivated by the
need for flight and evasion. an offensive plan. “i think we’re
going to have to fix that, rue.”
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rue has decided to trust me wholeheartedly. i know this
because as soon as the anthem finishes she snuggles up
against me and falls asleep. nor do i have any misgivings
about her, as i take no particular precautions. if she’d wanted
me dead, all she would have had to do was disappear from
that tree without pointing out the tracker jacker nest. needl-
ing me, at the very back of my mind, is the obvious. both of us
can’t win these games. but since the odds are still against ei-
ther of us surviving, i manage to ignore the thought.
besides, i’m distracted by my latest idea about the careers
and their supplies. somehow rue and i must find a way to de-
stroy their food. i’m pretty sure feeding themselves will be a
tremendous struggle. traditionally, the career tributes’ strat-
egy is to get hold of all the food early on and work from there.
the years when they have not protected it well — one year a
pack of hideous reptiles destroyed it, another a gamemakers’
flood washed it away — those are usually the years that tri-
butes from other districts have won. that the careers have
been better red growing up is actually to their disadvantage,
because they don’t know how to be hungry. not the way rue
and i do.
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but i’m too exhausted to begin any detailed plan tonight.
my wounds recovering, my mind still a bit foggy from the ve-
nom, and the warmth of rue at my side, her head cradled on
my shoulder, have given me a sense of security. i realize, for
the first time, how very lonely i’ve been in the arena. how
comforting the presence of another human being can be. i give
in to my drowsiness, resolving that tomorrow the tables will
turn. tomorrow, it’s the careers who will have to watch their
backs.
the boom of the cannon jolts me awake. the sky’s streaked
with light, the birds already chattering. rue perches in a
branch across from me, her hands cupping something. we
wait, listening for more shots, but there aren’t any.
“who do you think that was?”