第103章

  “who? did what?” peeta asks.
  “haymitch. how do you think he won the games?” i say.
  peeta considers this quite a while before he answers. hay-
  mitch is sturdily built, but no physical wonder like cato or
  thresh. he’s not particularly handsome. not in the way that
  causes sponsors to rain gifts on you. and he’s so surly, it’s
  hard to imagine anyone teaming up with him. there’s only
  one way haymitch could have won, and peeta says it just as
  i’m reaching this conclusion myself.
  “he outsmarted the others,” says peeta.
  i nod, then let the conversation drop. but secretly i’m won-
  dering if haymitch sobered up long enough to help peeta and
  me because he thought we just might have the wits to survive.
  maybe he wasn’t always a drunk. maybe, in the beginning, he
  tried to help the tributes. but then it got unbearable. it must
  be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. year after
  year after year. i realize that if i get out of here, that will be-
  come my job. to mentor the girl from district 12. the idea is
  so repellent, i thrust it from my mind.
  about half an hour has passed before i decide i have to eat
  again. peeta’s too hungry himself to put up an argument.
  while i’m dishing up two more small servings of lamb stew
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  and rice, we hear the anthem begin to play. peeta presses his
  eyes against a crack in the rocks to watch the sky.
  “there won’t be anything to see tonight,” i say, far more in-
  terested in the stew than the sky. “nothing’s happened or we
  would’ve heard a cannon.”
  “katniss,” peeta says quietly.
  “what? should we split another roll, too?” i ask.
  “katniss,” he repeats, but i find myself wanting to ignore
  him.
  “i’m going to split one. but i’ll save the cheese for tomor-
  row,” i say. i see peeta staring at me. “what?”
  “thresh is dead,” says peeta.
  “he can’t be,” i say.
  “they must have fired the cannon during the thunder and
  we missed it,” says peeta.
  “are you sure? i mean, it’s pouring buckets out there. i
  don’t know how you can see anything,” i say. i push him away
  from the rocks and squint out into the dark, rainy sky. for
  about ten seconds, i catch a distorted glimpse of thresh’s pic-
  ture and then he’s gone. just like that.
  i slump down against the rocks, momentarily forgetting
  about the task at hand. thresh dead. i should be happy, right?
  one less tribute to face. and a powerful one, too. but i’m not
  happy. all i can think about is thresh letting me go, letting me
  run because of rue, who died with that spear in her stomach. .
  ..
  “you all right?” asks peeta.
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  i give a noncommittal shrug and cup my elbows in my
  hands, hugging them close to my body. i have to bury the real
  pain because who’s going to bet on a tribute who keeps snive-
  ling over the deaths of her opponents. rue was one thing. we
  were allies. she was so young. but no one will understand my
  sorrow at thresh’s murder. the word pulls me up short. mur-
  der! thankfully, i didn’t say it aloud. that’s not going to win
  me any points in the arena. what i do say is, “it’s just . . . if we
  didn’t win . . . i wanted thresh to. because he let me go. and
  because of rue.”
  “yeah, i know,” says peeta. “but this means we’re one step
  closer to district twelve.” he nudges a plate of foot into my
  hands. “eat. it’s still warm.”
  i take a bite of the stew to show i don’t really care, but it’s
  like glue in my mouth and takes a lot of effort to swallow. “it
  also means cato will be back hunting us.”
  “and he’s got supplies again,” says peeta.
  “he’ll be wounded, i bet,” i say.
  “what makes you say that?”