You're not going to die. I forbid it. All right?" "All right," he whispers.

But in my head I can hear Haymitch's smug, if slightly exasperated, words: "Yes, that's what I'm looking for, sweetheart.

I'm almost there, almost to the barricade, when I thinks she hears me. Because for just a moment, she catches sight of me, her lips form my name. And that's when the rest of the parachutes go off.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to rill in and die for their entertainment?

If you won't talk about yourself, at least compliment the audience. Just keep turning it back around, all right. Gush.

I don't write about adolescence. I write about war. For adolescents.

Dawn comes before sleep does.