I walk around the room eating goose liver and puffy bread until there's a knock on the door. Effie's calling me to dinner. Good. I'm starving.

But in my head I can hear Haymitch's smug, if slightly exasperated, words: "Yes, that's what I'm looking for, sweetheart.

I pull the sleeping bag up to his chin and kiss his forehead, not for the audience, but for me. Because I'm so grateful that he's here, not dead by the stream as I'd thought. So glad I don't have to face Cato alone.

Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.

"I don't know how to say it exactly. Only... I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense?" he asks. I shake my head. How could he die as anyone but himself. "I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not."

Because it doesn't matter anymore, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it.

I can't help comparing what I have with Gale to what I'm pretending to have with Peeta. How I never question Gale's motives while I do nothing but doubt the latter's. It's not a fair comparison really. Gale and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other's survival means our own death. How do you sidestep that?