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.

Finnick!" Something between a shriek and a cry of joy. A lovely if somewhat bedraggled young woman--dark tangled hair, sea green eyes--runs toward us in nothing but a sheet. "Finnick!" And suddenly, it's as if there's no one in the world but these two, crashing through space to reach each other. They collide, enfold, lose their balance, and slam against a wall, where they stay. Clinging into one being. Indivisible. A pang of jealousy hits me. Not for either Finnick or Annie but for their certainty. No one seeing them could doubt their love.

And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day," she said. "Do you see?

Glimmer, I hear someone call her - ugh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous.

Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous.

The problem is, I can’t tell what’s real anymore, and what’s made up.

Whatever the truth is, I don’t see how it will help me get food on the table.