The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Author:Suzanne Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2020-02-28T19:23:40+00:00

Coriolanus had been in a state of denial about the taxes, but now the reality of his family’s displacement hit him like a truck. How could he say good-bye to the only home he’d ever known? To his mother, to his childhood, to those sweet memories of his life before the war? These four walls not only kept his family safe from the world, they protected the legend of the Snows’ wealth. He would be losing his residence, his history, and his identity in one fell swoop.

They had six weeks to come up with the money. To scrape together the equivalent of Tigris’s income for the whole year. The cousins tried to assess what they might still have to sell, but even if they sold every stick of furniture and every keepsake, it would only cover a few months, at the most. And the tax bills would keep showing up, every month, like clockwork. They would need the proceeds from selling their possessions, however paltry, to rent a new place. Eviction due to tax troubles had to be avoided at all cost; the public shame would be too great, too lasting. So move they must.

“What are we going to do?” Coriolanus asked.

“Nothing until the Hunger Games are finished. You have to focus on them so you can get that Plinth Prize, or at least another one. I’ll handle this end,” she said firmly. She made him a cup of hot milk laced with corn syrup and stroked his throbbing head until he fell asleep. He dreamed violent, unsettling things, replaying the events of the arena, and awoke to the usual.

Gem of Panem,

Mighty city,

Through the ages, you shine anew.

Would the Grandma’am still be singing it in their rental in a month or two? Or would she be too humiliated to raise her voice again? For all his derision of the morning recital, the thought saddened him.

As he dressed, the stitches on his arm pulled, and he remembered he was supposed to drop by the Citadel to get them checked. Dark red scabs had settled on his scraped face, but the swelling had abated. He dabbed some of his mother’s powder on, and while it didn’t really cover the scabs, the scent soothed him a bit.

Their hopeless financial situation made him accept the tokens Tigris offered without hesitation. Why bother pinching pennies when the dollars had fled long ago? On the trolley, he choked down his nut butter on soda crackers and tried not to compare it with Ma Plinth’s breakfast rolls. It crossed his mind that, given his rescue of Sejanus, the Plinths might provide a loan, or even a payout for his silence, but the Grandma’am would never allow that, and the idea of a Snow groveling before a Plinth was unthinkable. The Plinth Prize, though, was fair game, and Tigris was right. These next few days would determine his future.

At the Academy, the ten mentors drank their tea and readied themselves for the cameras. Every day brought them more scrutiny.

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