Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“I do?” Ampert doesn’t seem offended but shoots me a curious look.
“What did we just discuss?” I say to Maysilee.
She ignores me and, uninvited, uncoils the cord from Ampert’s neck.
“This is Maysilee, from back home. Looking to ally up with you.”
Maysilee examines the cord, testing its flexibility and twisting it between her fingers. “You could do a braid necklace. That’s a one-strander. It would look something like this.” She pulls out one of her necklaces, an elaborate black braided piece. A small, shiny medallion etched with a flower is embedded in it. “No flower, obviously.”
“Okay,” says Ampert. “Can you make me one?”
“I guess I could, but I don’t have any tape, so you’ll need to hold it down while I work,” she says.
“I’ll hold it,” he answers.
“And there’s nothing to hook it, so we’d have to tie it off, which is never my first choice.”
Ampert digs in his pocket and holds up my safety pin from last night. “I’ve got this.”
She considers it. “All right. Just be careful if you take it off or the whole thing could unravel. Come on.” She heads for the bleachers, not even checking if he’s following her.
“My father wants to meet you. He’s at the booth with the potato,” Ampert tells me, then scurries after her.
His father? A potato? Doubts crowd in again. What am I doing? Is Ampert just some deluded child who lives in a fantasy world? Before I commit myself, I need to know. So I introduce Wyatt to Ringina – keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll act half-normal – and head off in search of a man with a potato.
After making a lap around the crowded booths, sure enough, I find one. A small man with black hair, his back to me, leans against a counter that holds a lone potato, no takers for his skills. I fiddle with a strip of bandage at the neighboring first-aid booth while I examine him. As he turns, I note the pair of steel-rimmed glasses. While he bears a strong resemblance to Ampert, this is not why he looks familiar. It’s Beetee, a victor from District 3.
A cold dread washes over me as the puzzle pieces come together. Ampert is neither a lunatic nor a liar. His father has accompanied him to the Capitol because he’s a victor. And therefore a mentor, assigned to coach his own child to his death in the Fiftieth Hunger Games.
Why Beetee’s been tapped to man a booth with a potato, I’ve no idea, because he’s supposed to be some kind of technological genius. The real question is: How did Ampert end up here with him? Two tributes reaped from one family . . . are they just the unluckiest family in Panem?
I give up on being covert and approach him. “You’re Ampert’s father?”
“I am. And no doubt you’re wondering why I’m here, Haymitch.” Beetee removes his glasses and polishes them on his shirt. “It’s because I’m being punished for coming up with a plan to sabotage the Capitol’s communication system. I’m too valuable to kill, but my son is disposable.”
That pretty much answers my question. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry. He’s a great kid.”
“He is.” Beetee’s eyes find Ampert, sitting across from Maysilee on the bleachers, chattering away while she weaves the cord into patterns.
“And they made you be his mentor?” I ask.
“It’s part of the punishment. Watching what are almost certainly the last hours of my son’s life. They even gave me a booth in training, which mentors don’t traditionally attend, so I wouldn’t miss a minute. If I wasn’t here to witness it, there would be no point.”
I can’t think of anything to say to comfort him, but I try. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But it is. Entirely. I took a risk. I didn’t suspect that I’d been found out until the reaping. The timing was calculated. If I had known, I could have killed myself, and Ampert would be safe at home. That is how Snow works.” He drops his head, resting his fingertips on the wooden counter to steady himself. I wait for him to disintegrate, but he only says, “Would you like to learn how to turn a potato into a battery? Light can be important in the arena.”
Not really, Beetee, I think.
What I’d really like to do is run away from the raging pit of fire that is your life. But that seems cowardly. Like what people back home are probably doing to Ma and Sid right now. So I say, “Okay. Will there be potatoes in the arena?”
“I don’t know. I suspect this assignment was meant to demean me, which it doesn’t. That may be its whole purpose. But if you can’t find a potato, other things – a lemon, for instance – could work as well. Just don’t eat anything after it’s been used as a battery.” He pulls out a small tray with little plastic packets. Each contains a couple of nails, a pair of copper coins, mini coils of wire, and two tiny light bulbs. “Two potatoes would provide more power.”
“I guess if I can find one potato, I stand a good chance of finding two.”
“If not, you might try cutting one in half.” He produces a second potato and slides it in front of me, then offers me a thing that looks like a pencil with a small blade on the end. “For now we’ll use both. Follow along.”
Beetee tears open a packet and dumps the contents on the counter. His eyes flick up for a second. A Peacekeeper hovers at my shoulder. The slender knife twitches in my hand. Here I am again. Armed and with access. “Well, it’s something to think about. . . .”
“Now, this battery is made up of copper, zinc, and the phosphoric acid in the potato juice, which is an electrically conductive solution. It makes it possible for ions to travel between the two metals. Our goal is to create a circuit and illuminate this bulb.”
He’s lost me already, but I nod like he’s making sense.
“First, we need a space for the coin.” Beetee cuts a coin-sized slot into the side of his potato and I copy him. “Then we wrap one of the copper coins in wire and insert it, leaving the long tail out.”
I sink my wire-wrapped coin into my potato. “Does this mean it will be dark in the arena?”
“Oh, I have no actual knowledge of the arena. They say if you boil the potato, you can increase your output, so that’s something to keep in mind.”
“But if I could boil a potato, I’d already have successfully made a fire. So . . .”
A smile plays on his lips. “So you’d have achieved an alternate light source, and this whole potato exercise would be a waste of your time.”
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