It’s not wondering what I breathe in, but who, that threatens to choke me.

Katniss, got that spile?" Finnick asks, snapping me back to reality.

They're betting on how long I'll live!" I burst out. "They're not my friends!" "Well, try and pretend!" snaps Effie. Then she composes herself and beams at me. "See, like this. I'm smiling at you even though you're aggravating me.

What will break me into a million pieces so that I am beyond repair, beyond usefulness?

District 12. Where you can starve to death in safety," I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you.

Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.

I've asked you fifty questions and still have no sense of your life, your family, what you care about. They want to know about you, Katniss." "But I don't want them to! They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to time in the past!" I say.