Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
We take inventory of our stuff, which seems fruitless until I spy the wineglass. I remember how the juice filled the entire stem. “How attached are you to this?”
“Less attached than I am to water,” says Maysilee.
Placing the glass carefully on the log, I chop off the base and the bowl, leaving a hollow glass tube. Maysilee slides it into the hole. The jagged glass does a nice job of holding it in place.
“That should work,” she says. “Now all we need’s a rain shower.” She folds the tarp carefully and returns it to her pack. “So, what’s the plan? I was thinking we might go back to the Cornucopia to see if we can find any food that got left behind. Then we could go look for the other Newcomers. Or do you think we should find them first?”
“I think we should head north.”
“North? Whatever for?”
“I just have a feeling about it,” I say, so the Gamemakers won’t suspect my next move.
“Haymitch, I need food.”
“Thought you weren’t a breakfast person.”
“Well, in here, I’m a breakfast-lunch-and-supper person. Never really knew what it was like to be hungry before. I mean, really hungry. It hurts.” She presses her hand against her stomach. “And it scares me.”
“I’m familiar. But I’m bent on heading north.”
“Can we at least try to locate the Careers’ packs? They must’ve hidden them somewhere around here before they hunted you.”
“Good thinking, but not for too long. Fifteen minutes and we go.”
Maysilee gives me a probing look but begins the search. She suspected I wasn’t being up front with her back in the apartment. I don’t know if she credits me with the arena breakdown, but she knows something’s still up that I’m not sharing. Should I tell her? How? When? Those cameras have to be on us.
We go back to the site of the fight and spiral out, looking for any supplies the Careers might have stashed. Sure enough, we find some tucked under a rock shelf, only a short distance away. Three backpacks of various sizes. We dump them out on the ground and take stock of the contents. A hammock like mine. Two empty water jugs. Three handkerchiefs. A bottle of syrupy medicine for when you’ve been poisoned. A second tarp. A blowtorch, something like the one I’ve seen Tam Amber use. I press the lever, there’s a click, and six inches of flame shoot out.
Maysilee raises her eyebrows. “Starting fires will be a cinch now.”
Almost makes me sad, seeing Lenore Dove’s gift become obsolete so quickly. “Until the fuel runs out,” I counter.
We lay out the food with care. A flat tin of sardines. A banana with brown spots. Four rolls. A jar of nut butter with about an inch left. I add my two potatoes and Maysilee her three dried beef jerky strips and olives. Could be worse.
“Okay, breakfast person, what will it be?” I ask her.
Maysilee takes charge of the food, halving the rolls and spreading them with the nut butter, artfully arranging slices of smushy banana on top. I’m not sure about the combination, but one bite dispels any doubt. “This is prime,” I say.
“Well, I am responsible for the more innovative flavor combinations at our shop. Did you ever try our hot pepper cherry taffy?”
“I did! That was Mamaw’s favorite!”
She gets out her knife and fork and cuts off a piece of her roll. “That was mine. Also, the cream cheese cinnamon balls and the lavender suckers. The mayor was partial to those.”
“Sounds like the job wasn’t all bad,” I comment.
She sighs. “Ironic is what it was. I don’t even care much for candy. So many more interesting things to make.”
I wolf down my sandwiches before she’s even finished her first and look around for something to do. I take the lids off the Careers’ water jugs, hoping for a few drops. Dry as a bone. “Guess they were thirsty, too.” Stripping some vines off a tree, I rig the second tarp for water catching. “No tube for this one.”
“We’ll make it work,” says Maysilee. “With a second hammock, maybe we can both sleep up in the trees.”
“Sure. Feels safer up there. If we go high enough, we won’t need to be on watch. We’d hear anybody coming.”
We pack up our booty, and she gestures for me to go first. “After you.”
Trouble is, I don’t know where we are. I head off like I do. Trekking through the woods might give me an opportunity to reorient myself. Since I don’t entirely trust the sun’s position anymore, I’m hoping for a few landmarks to get my bearings. We run into one after about ten minutes: the blueberry bushes with the broken branches where I hid my first night. That hedge really spit me out a long way from where I entered.
“That’s where Lou Lou found me,” I tell Maysilee.
“Oh. Blueberries.” She pulls out a small bowl and begins to gather them by the handful, which alarms me.
“You know we can’t eat those, right?”
“‘Course I do. But my poison’s running low. Need to restock.”
I guess the darts didn’t come poisoned. Leave it to Maysilee to make them lethal. She mashes the berries into a juicy paste.
“You really need to do all that now?” It’s already late morning, and I’m getting fidgety.
“What’s the big rush, Haymitch?” That shuts me up. She knows I’ve got a secret worth telling and she’s using it against me. Like she did with Lenore Dove, I guess.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.