Playing Games

Chapter Thirteen Finding Peeta

I open the parachute and find a small loaf of bread. It's not the fine white Capitol stuff. It's made of dark ration grain and shaped in a crescent. Sprinkled with seeds. I flash back to Peeta's lesson on the various district breads in the Training Center. This bread came from District 11.

I cautiously lift the still warm loaf. What must it have cost the people of District 11 who can't even feed themselves? How many would've had to do without to scrape up a coin to put in the collection for this one loaf?

It had been meant for Rue, surely. But instead of pulling the gift when she died, they'd authorized Haymitch to give it to me. As a thank-you? Or because, like me, they don't like to let debts go unpaid? For whatever reason, this is a first. A district gift to a tribute who's not your own.

I lift my face and step into the last falling rays of sunlight. "My thanks to the people of District Eleven," I say. I want them to know I know where it came from.

I climb dangerously high into a tree, not for safety but to get as far away from today as I can. My sleeping bag is

rolled neatly in Rue's pack. Tomorrow I'll sort through the supplies. Tomorrow I'll make a new plan. But tonight, all I can do is strap myself in and take tiny bites of the bread. It's good. It tastes of home.

Soon the seal's in the sky, the anthem plays in my right ear. I see the boy from District 1, Rue. That's all for tonight. Six of us left, I think. Only six.

I wake up in the morning knowing I need a new plan but I've lost the will to do the simplest tasks. As usual, it's the thought of Prim's anxious face as she watches me on the screens back home that breaks me.

I give myself a series of simple commands to follow, like Now you have to sit up, Katniss. Now you have to drink water, Katniss." I act on the orders with slow, robotic motions. "Now you have to sort the packs, Katniss."

Rue's pack holds my sleeping bag, her nearly empty water skin, a handful of nuts and roots, a bit of rabbit, her extra socks, and her slingshot. The boy from District1 has several knives, two spare spearheads, a flashlight, a small leather pouch, a first-aid kit, a full bottle of water, and a pack of dried fruit. A pack of dried fruit!

Speaking of which, my own supply is running low. I finish off the loaf from District 11 and the last of the rabbit.

How quickly the food disappears. All I have left are Rue's roots and nuts, the boy's dried fruit, and one strip of beef. Now you have to hunt, Katniss, I tell myself.

I obediently consolidate the supplies I want into my pack. I try and head back in the general direction of the stream. I know

I'm on course when I come across Rue's third, unlit fire. Shortly thereafter, I discover a flock of grooslings perched in the trees and take out three before they know what hit them. I return to Rue's signal fire and start it up, not caring about the excessive smoke. Where are you, Cato? I think as I roast the birds and Rue's roots. I'm waiting right here.

I find myself wishing I could tell Peeta about the flowers I put on Rue. That I now understand what he was trying to say on the roof. Perhaps if he wins the Games, he'll see me on victor's night, when they replay the highlights of the Games on a screen over the stage where we did our interviews.

But I told Rue I'd be there. For both of us. And somehow that seems even more important than the vow I gave

Prim. And the talk I had with Finnick.

I really think I stand a chance of doing it now. Winning. It's not just having the arrows or outsmarting the Careers a few times, although those things help.