Author: admin

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” I know every word of the song, since I learned it for Lenore Dove’s birthday last December. It wasn’t that hard, it being what she calls an earworm, meaning it sticks in your…

I recognize Juvenia, the District 1 escort who Drusilla sneered at, tentatively descending the train steps in snakeskin boots. Behind her come her four tributes, cuffed and chained together, towering over their Peacekeepers. When the car door shuts behind them, the boy bringing up the rear suddenly turns and kicks the window. The glass shatters…

Inside we’re told to strip, which is easy from the waist down but undoable above the belt with our cuffed hands. Peacekeepers come around and cut away our shirts with knives. If anyone objects, they laugh and say it’s all the same to the incinerator. It hurts watching them slice through Ma’s careful stitches. I…

Drusilla pretends to draw a name. “And the first gentleman who gets to accompany the ladies is . . . Wyatt Callow!” In some strange replay, I watch Wyatt, as impassive as before, go by and obediently take his place on the stage. Drusilla’s hand hovers over the ball, then removes a slip with surgical…

If anything, the McCoys are more stony-faced than before. It’s not confusion; it’s a blanket refusal to put on a show for the Capitol. “Cut.” Plutarch rubs his eye and sighs. “Take the girl to the train.” Peacekeepers whisk Louella into the Justice Building as the McCoys finally crack, crying out her name in anguish….

W? That’s yours. W for your name, Willamae, and flipped around it’s an M for Ma!” And Ma always looks pleased, because when does she get anything nice, let alone something so fine as her own set of stars? It’s all about her giving things to us. I pretended not to see her bring in…

“I don’t need help from anybody who said my sister uses coal dust for powder,” Louella tells her. Maysilee smiles a little, remembering. “She got a lot cleaner after that.” This reminds me of when I was six and got chiggers and Maysilee nicknamed me “Itchy Itchy Haymitchy.” Nobody would come near me for two…

Peacekeepers’ boots tramp through the audience as the soldiers grab anyone marked with gore, including Otho, and push them into the nearby shops to conceal them. “We need another boy! That dead one’s no good!” says Drusilla, clunking down the steps into the square. There’s a high-pitched keening followed by Peacekeepers barking orders. Then I…

“Happy birthday,” she says when we come up for air. “Didn’t expect to see you until after.” She means the reaping, but I don’t want to talk about it. “Hattie let me go early,” I tell her. “Gave me this, too – a present for my big day.” I pull out the bottle. “Well, that…

“Happy birthday, Haymitch!” The upside of being born on reaping day is that you can sleep late on your birthday. It’s pretty much downhill from there. A day off school hardly compensates for the terror of the name drawing. Even if you survive that, nobody feels like having cake after watching two kids being hauled…