If you'd been taken by the Capital and hijacked and then tried to kill Peeta, is this the way he would be treating you?

I curl up, make myself smaller, try to disappear entirely. Wrapped in silence, I slide my bracelet that reads 'mentally disoriented' around and around my wrist.

Because I'm selfish. I'm a coward. I'm the kind of girl who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn't follow to suffer and die.

How are you managing? And don't say you're fine." It's true. Whatever the opposite of fine is, that's what I am.

I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away.

Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.

My mother just wanted me to forget it. So, of course, every word was immediately, irrevocably branded into my brain.