If your parent is deployed and you are that young, you spend the whole time wondering where they are and waiting for them to come home. As time passes and the absence is longer and longer, you become more and more concerned - but you don't really have the words to express your concern. There's only this continued absence.

This was the door to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key.

hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home," I say. "Katniss, I live three houses away from you," he says.

We follow instructions to my destination, a chamber for my preparation.

All the general fear I've been feeling condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. Somehow I knew the girl will not pursue me. That she'll be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff is gone. A grin crosses my face. Thanks for the knife, I think.

But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. "Katniss, there is no District Twelve."

I can't argue that Finnick isn't one of the most stunning, sensuous people on the planet. But I can honestly say he's never been attractive to me. Maybe he's too pretty, or maybe he's too easy to get, or maybe it's really that he'd just be too easy to lose.