the ruler [THE HUNGER GAMES]¹

Fifteen.

AFTER spending hours with Mace and Koa at the pond, the three of us eventually stroll back to victors village. Mace has stopped teasing me about my late-blooming first kiss to listen to my worries about Snow and also the strange encounter with Plutarch. He tried to act cool about it but I can tell the realisation that there actually is revolution within the districts is scaring him. He has a family to care for, I don't. I'll never know what he feels and I won't pretend to. I add that to the list of things I'll need to make sure are in order whenever things go down.

I split from them at the gates to the village, giving both quick hugs before crossing the lawns to my house. When I'm close enough I can see that my front door is wide open. At first I think I've been robbed, but then I remember the security around here and know it would be impossible. The first peacekeeper crosses the porch when my feet hit the bottom step.

I skip the next few steps and launch into my welcome hall, "excuse me?! What are you doing?"

I'm ignored. Two more peacekeepers are exchanging my kitchen phone.

"Hello? What are you doing?" I demand, annoyed now. Peacekeepers think they're so much better than everyone when really they're just above avoxes in the eyes of the Capitol. People who got into so much debt that the only way out was twenty years of squalor in the Districts.

"Special orders from the Capitol, all victors phone numbers are to be changed," the youngest looking one says.

"How will I get hold of my stylist?" I question, masking the fear that I've been cut off from Finnick and Peeta.

"Don't worry, all contacts in the Capitol have been informed of your new number," the older one says. I can tell by his demeanour that he is District, possibly outlying which is why he's so smug at this invasion of my privacy.

I have nothing more to say to them. I have no fight against Snow when it comes to this, otherwise it would be obvious what we were doing. I can count that my lines will be tapped now if they weren't already. It's probably for the better that the only ones with my number will be my high maintenance prep team.

I sulk in my living room whilst the three phones throughout my house get changed and then the peacekeepers dismiss themselves without another word. The front door slams and sends an echo of silence throughout the walls. All alone once again. Just like the nights in my Capitol room before the Games, or the warm, damp nights in the arena where I was surrounded by allies but had never felt more detached from anything that I loved. No contact with Finnick or Peeta means months of bouncing between a school-bound Mace and an awkward Jacinth. How sad. A whole districts worth of people but only two who really know me.

The night is restless. I toss and turn late into the hours before giving up and going to the phone that sits on a small table in the corner of my room. I decide it won't hurt if I try Finnick's old number that I have memorised as easily as my many sparring patterns from the academy. I punch the digits onto the display and wait for the familiar buzzing that tells me it's connected but nothing comes. The line stays silent and I stare off at the wall behind the phone, growing more miserable with the minute. I realise that Peeta may think I've given him the wrong number on purpose and I won't have the ability to reassure him until the summer. In my heart there is nobody in Two who could sway me from the blonde boy in that time, but who knows the amount of girls waiting at Peeta's feet in Twelve? He could walk into the Quarter Quell with a new sweetheart and I would have zero claim over him. We're not an item, just two kids who kissed on the roof in the Capitol.