(Book 1)The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Author:Suzanne Collins
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2013-06-07T18:30:00+00:00

I enter a nightmare from which I wake repeatedly only to

find a greater terror awaiting me. All the things I dread most,

all the things I dread for others manifest in such vivid detail I

can’t help but believe they’re real. Each time I wake, I think, At

last, this is over, but it isn’t. It’s only the beginning of a new

chapter of torture. How many ways do I watch Prim die? Re-

live my father’s last moments? Feel my own body ripped

apart? This is the nature of the tracker jacker venom, so care-

fully created to target the place where fear lives in your brain.

When I finally do come to my senses, I lie still, waiting for

the next onslaught of imagery. But eventually I accept that the

poison must have finally worked its way out of my system,

leaving my body wracked and feeble. I’m still lying on my side,

locked in the fetal position. I lift a hand to my eyes to find

them sound, untouched by ants that never existed. Simply

stretching out my limbs requires an enormous effort. So many

parts of me hurt, it doesn’t seem worthwhile taking inventory

of them. Very, very slowly I manage to sit up. I’m in a shallow

hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallu-

cination but with old, dead leaves. My clothing’s damp, but I

don’t know whether pond water, dew, rain, or sweat is the

cause. For a long time, all I can do is take tiny sips from my

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bottle and watch a beetle crawl up the side of a honeysuckle

bush.

How long have I been out? It was morning when I lost rea-

son. Now it’s afternoon. But the stiffness in my joints suggests

more than a day has passed, even two possibly. If so, I’ll have

no way of knowing which tributes survived that tracker jacker

attack. Not Glimmer or the girl from District 4. But there was

the boy from District 1, both tributes from District 2, and Pee-

ta. Did they die from the stings? Certainly if they lived, their

last days must have been as horrid as my own. And what

about Rue? She’s so small, it wouldn’t take much venom to do

her in. But then again . . . the tracker jackers would’ve had to

catch her, and she had a good head start.

A foul, rotten taste pervades my mouth, and the water has

little effect on it. I drag myself over to the honeysuckle bush

and pluck a flower. I gently pull the stamen through the blos-

som and set the drop of nectar on my tongue. The sweetness

spreads through my mouth, down my throat, warming my

veins with memories of summer, and my home woods and

Gale’s presence beside me. For some reason, our discussion

from that last morning comes back to me.

“We could do it, you know.”

“What?”

“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we

could make it.”

And suddenly, I’m not thinking of Gale but of Peeta and . . .

Peeta! He saved my life! I think. Because by the time we met

up, I couldn’t tell what was real and what the tracker jacker

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venom had caused me to imagine.

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