Sometimes when I'm alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena.

Oh, well. At least my blood is flowing.

Maybe everyone is just trying to protect me by lying to me. I don't care. I'm sick of people lying to me for my own good.

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

If you die and i live there's no life for me back in District 12. You're my whole life. I would never be happy again.

The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.

Look, if you wanted to be babied you should have asked Peeta.