Careers Don't Love

Chapter Eleven

Katniss POV

There had been a day, a couple of years ago, when Gale and I had gone out into the woods to hunt and found an injured hummingbird instead.

The little birds were notoriously difficult to catch, or even see. They zipped around faster than your eyes could follow, there and gone before you had the time to even blink. I'd never seen one, and never up close.

This one wasn't going anywhere.

It had clearly broken its wing, lying pathetically on the crushed leaves that blanketed the muddy floor of the woods. I remembered the frantic thud-thud-thud of that one good wing, the other one moving feebly, trying with all its might to get itself aloft again.

Gale had taken it home, set its wing, fed it and cared for it until it had been well enough to fly home again.

Now I understand how the hummingbird must have felt on that long-ago summer day.

Trapped, panicked, alone. Left to die without mercy or relief, nothing but carrion for the vermin to pick over.

Only there is no Gale to save me here.

My heart pounds in my chest, quick, fast beats like the flap of hummingbird wings. My body temperature seems to shoot up, while my insides plunge into the frozen depths of icy oceans. There is a peculiar feeling of being underwater, an unreal silence settling in my head.

I can feel the shock reverberate in the room, hear the clamor of loud voices and objections, but appears distant, distorted like it's echoing through a tunnel to get to me. Peeta turns to me, face full of concern and surprise, and says something I cannot hear or understand. I nod silently, pretending to agree, to listen, when I am doing neither of those things.

The world shrinks to a sliver of time and space.

What was it the girl said?

Five minutes.

How much time had passed since she'd rushed in here to deliver her announcement? How much more time did I have before I was expected to go up in front of the people that I hate most?

I wonder if this announcement has transmitted to the districts. What will Prim and my mother think? Gale? The rest of District 12?

Gale would tell me to see it as an advantage, I know. You're the first one up, Catnip. You'll have all of their attention, so use it. You can seize them from the beginning and make sure they'll never let go. Make them love you.

And suddenly, the frantic beating of my heart slows. It's funny, Gale's not even here but it feels like he is. It feels like he's standing right beside me, leaning in to brush his lips against my ear, whisper to me in that low, gravelly voice of his.

He - or rather, my imagination's version of him - is correct. This is a huge advantage. The beginning of the show is the time when the audience is most attentive, most eager - before the boredom and the drinking set in, before they begin to lose interest in what they consider just another set of tributes for the Hunger Games.

They are already intrigued by me - by Cinna's unforgettable dress, by that unprecedented eleven, by my moniker of the Girl on Fire.

I am a rarity - not just in these Games, but in the history of the Games itself.

And I can use that to my benefit.

The Capitol already knows my name, my face. According to Haymitch, now they're raring to know me - to pick apart and understand every facet of Katniss Everdeen.