A Knife in the Dark | ✓

Forty Six

Leah flipped through the pages to find another. "There was a card in here somewhere...I think it marked something..." she kept flipping until she reached a section where the pages began to fall apart. "Here it is." Her expression darkened. She shoved the book towards me. Bell read over my shoulder.

This entry was from less than two weeks before the Reaping.

Something is off.

I don't feel watched. I don't know what it is, but Cato feels it too. Something is happening. An end is approaching. Cato says he's been getting weird feelings. I know that he's had weird dreams lately, but he won't tell me what they're about. It feels like he's shutting down.

Atala's the only one that hasn't seen it, and I refuse to mention it to her because of that. Cato has told me explicitly that he doesn't want her to know. She's burdened enough.

Cato's paranoid. Well, he's always been paranoid, but it's been worse lately. He thinks the Capitol knows. No, scratch that--he thinks that the President himself knows. He told me he's volunteering because if he doesn't, then they don't get their chance to kill him off. I asked what he meant. His expression turned dark, and he refused to elaborate.

I'm scared. I knew that my actions would have repercussions, but I'd stupidly hoped that we wouldn't be found out until we were far away from District 2. That's what we'd been planning all along. Cut ties with Atala, Saylee, and Jake (even if the latter two are beginning to suspect something) and run. We wouldn't have gone along, obviously. Cato's brothers had been planning to run for months, and after a lot of convincing, they finally caved and agreed to bring us. After the Reaping, we'd said. Now Cato wants to volunteer, and he's telling us to go without him. He's told us not to watch the Games, too.

I'm the only one he's told about his concerns, but he can't even look me in the eye when he tells me. It's always dark when he tells me, and he's never looking at me. I know he isn't too concerned for Jake or Saylee--they're his friends, but has the President ever seen them together? No. He's afraid that they'll go after Atala. I don't know why he's afraid. Atala can handle herself. They won't go after her. Still, he told me that if he survives the Games, he's cutting the connection to her immediately and leaving the week after she stops trying, and if he can, he's bringing Jake and maybe even Saylee with him. I don't understand his logic. Maybe, after he's gone, I'll fill in Jake, Saylee, and Atala, his wishes be damned, and take them with me. I'm still not sure yet. This is going to be a war, and I don't want them involved.

When I looked up at Leah, her face was blank. "My sister," she said slowly, "did not die to save someone else. She died because she dared to go against a corrupt system." She lifted her eyes slowly to meet mine and Bell's. "I don't care how old I am. I want to make these people suffer." She stood and swiftly left the room.

Bell flopped back against the couch, her eyes shut. "I feel terrible." She said after several long minutes of silence.

"You shouldn't." I replied.

She opened her eyes and fixed them firmly on me. "I shouldn't?" She laughed. It was not her normal, musical laugh. This one was harsh and grating, barely a laugh at all. "I knew what my brothers were doing. I sort of knew what Clove was doing. And do you want to know what I did about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I kept my damn mouth shut because I was afraid, and now my brother is dead and so is Leah's sister, and we're all miserable. I should feel terrible. I deserve it. And I do."

"Bell--"

"Don't feed me your bullshit, Atala, because it won't work." She said it tiredly, without any malice in her voice. "I know I didn't kill Cato. I know I didn't kill Clove. I know that everyone has to die at some point. But it is my fault that their deaths were a live spectacle for the whole country to see. I could have said something, yet I said nothing. I shouldn't have stayed silent. Silence is what has killed nearly two thousand children over the past three quarters of a century, and I'm just another idiot that helped that movement." She crossed her arms over her chest. "And not to sound like a horrible cliché, but I'm so done keeping my mouth shut."

I didn't bother trying to fight with her. A thirst for revenge is not easily shut down by reason. Instead, I asked, "Well, what are you going to do?"

She looked very determined and very much like her brothers. "Whenever my brothers and Saylee and Jake come back, I'm leaving."