Finnick's Games - The 65th Hunger Games

Chapter Eight

At dinner, I can't even bring myself to look at Adella. The sight of her face fills me with the urge for violence. The fight dummy stowed away in the hidden lounge - that I can live with. But this - this book ordeal. This crosses some kind of line.

When we finish eating, Hector beckons Adella into a separate room for some kind of top-secret discussion. Probably scheming up the best way to kill me in the arena - Hector could have instigated this illegal book smuggling, for all I know. Maybe he's been on Adella's side this whole time, playing a double act. The idea tempts me to start breaking things, but I just barely manage to hang on to my sanity.

"I'm going to lie down," I say to Mags, and remove myself from the table, dodging the Avoxes who have started to clear it. I hurry down the hallway and stop in front of Adella's bedroom door. Two looks over my shoulder confirm that the coast is clear. I press the button and enter her room, expecting to see the book on top of the dresser, where she'd placed it the night before. But no - all the surfaces in her room are clear and tidy. Not a book in sight.

Obviously, she's hidden it. I make sure the door is shut tight behind me before I start rummaging through drawers. I find folded items of clothes, a printed-off version of the food menu, a bottle of face moisturizer in the bedside table. I throw up the bedsheets and stick my arm under the mattress and - aha - rake up a book. Kneeling on the floor, I flip it over in my hands and in embossed gold lettering read: The Hunger Games: Sixty Years of Sacrifice. It's a hefty book, some of the canvas edges scratched away from repeated use. I wonder how many past tributes have had this very volume smuggled to them before the Games - or is Adella the first?

She won't be the last. Quickly, I stuff the book up my shirt and exit her room, cross the hallway and enter my own. I'm not sure how to lock the door - or if it's even an option to lock the door - so I just hope that whatever conversation Hector's having with Adella right now is a good one. I sit myself down in an armchair and finger the pages until I find the table of contents. The book is split into sixty main chapters, each one dedicated to its respective year of the Hunger Games. I briefly scour the text for any markings made by Adella - perhaps she has a favorite Victor, or a certain tactic she wants to remember. When I can't find anything of the sort, I instead tap into my curiosity.

Mags comes to mind. My chest tight with anticipation, I flick the pages until I land on the chapter entitled: The 11th Hunger Games: Mags Flanagan. I'm surprised that I was never curious enough to ask her how she did it - this tiny old woman from Village 7, the only female Victor from District 4. There's a part of me that wants to close the book and ask Mags directly - it almost feels like I'm invading her privacy. But I've gotten this far, and my eyes have already started to explore the page.

She was sixteen. Plutarch Heavensbee - the author - describes her as "A headstrong tribute with keen sensibilities and deft fingers." In her interview with Lucky Flickerman - the host that preceded Caesar Flickerman - Plutarch recounts how her sobering confidence in her skills won her the trust of many in the crowd. And, following the savvy female Victor from the year before, people were very much warmed up to female tributes.

This confirms one thing at least: Mags hasn't always been a mute. I'm beginning to suspect that something that happened in the arena - some sort of injury - cost her her voice. But as I read on - her ability at crafting fish hooks meant she could sustain herself, her intelligence got her out of every trap she was caught in, her slightness meant she was quick and good at hiding - I find nothing mentioning the loss of her voice. Mags was hardly even injured in the arena. She suffered an illness which she cured herself using the plants she found, bruises from scrambling over rocks and climbing trees, and a slash under her collarbone during a run-in with the boy from District 6. Her Games were long - it lasted twenty-three days. And she managed to outlast the others, it seems, on pure intelligence and survival savvy.