Playing Games

Chapter Two Cousins

I remember when I was around 6 my father took me to the bakery. As soon as we walked in a lady came out from the back and was furious at seeing us.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed at me father.

"Come on now, it's been 7 years don't you want to see her? Meet your nieces? Have her meet your sons?" My father whispered as if to keep from my hearing.

"She made her choices when she married you and turned herself into another piece of seam trash."

As they continued on I saw a little boy with gold hair and blue eyes peak around the counter at me. He smiled at me the scurried away when his mother looked at him.

Then five years later after my father died in a mine accident I was suddenly in charge of feeding my mother and prim. We were starving. I wasn't old enough to sign up for tesserae. I was looking through people's trash in town and I ended up outside the bakery. Peeta saw me and threw me partially burned loaves of bread ignoring his mother who told him to give it to the pigs that we weren't their problem.

My mind rushes back to the present where goodbyes go by in a blur and I'm being hurried onto a train. The train that will take me to the Capitol where I will most likely die.

On the train Peeta, Effie, Haymitch, and I sit down to a lavish table piled high with food. It's enough food to feed a family in the seam for a month. It makes me sick. But I eat because I have never seen this much food in my life.

After dinner we sit to watch the reaping from all the districts. As I'm watching I think to myself, how am I going to kill these people... I have to get back to prim. I promised her.

"It's just like hunting..." Gale had told me in his goodbye.

Peeta's dad, my uncle, came to say goodbye to me. I realize he must know we are related. He gave me a box of cookies and stared at me with tears in his eyes before telling me to stay safe. That is the first time I ever spoke to him. 

I sneak a look at Peeta,how can I kill my own family? Does he even know we are related? I sigh, there are 24 of us, odds are someone else will kill him before I have too.

"What did I miss?" Haymitch slurs stumbling into the room.

"Nothing, nothing Haymitch." Effie smiles, " we saved you some desert."

There is more dessert than any of us could hope to eat in a week on the table.

Haymitch stumbles toward the table and leaves over like he's going to pick something up, but instead he throws up all over himself. It smells really bad.

Peeta and I both stand up not sure what to do.

"I'll take him to his room and clean him up" peeta suggests.

"I'll help you" I say taking a step towards them

"It's okay, I'll take him." Peeta says.

I nod and head to my room wondering why he insists in taking care of him and all of a sudden I think, it's because he is being kind. Just like when he smiles at me in the bakery and threw me the bread.

The idea pulls me up short. A kind peeta Mellark is far more dangerous to me than an unkind peeta Mellark. Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there. And I can't let peeta do this, not where we are going. It's bad enough he's family. Even if I don't have to kill him I will still never see him again after the game is over. So I decide from that moment on, to have as little as possible to do with him.