My name is Katniss Everdeen. Why am I not dead? I should be dead.

I go back to my room and lie under the covers, trying not to think of Gale and thinking of nothing else.

I've asked you fifty questions and still have no sense of your life, your family, what you care about. They want to know about you, Katniss." "But I don't want them to! They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to time in the past!" I say.

The rat turned his glowing eyes on him, and Gregor was shocked by what he saw there. The intelligence, the deadliness, and, most surprisingly, the pain. This rat was not like Fangor and Shed. He was much more complicated and much more dangerous. For the first time in the Underland, Gregor felt completely out of his league. If he fought this rat, he wouldn't stand a change. He would lose. He would be dead.

That was the first time I ever saw him smile. It transformed him from someone menacing to someone you wished you knew.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me.

You could do a lot worse.