CATCHING FIRE Part 3 pps

can he do? The Games were such a hit here, where the berries were only a

symbol of a desperate girl trying to save her lover.

Peeta and I make no effort to find company but are constantly sought

out. We are what no one wants to miss at the party. I act delighted, but I

have zero interest in these Capitol people. They are only distractions from

the food.

Every table presents new temptations, and even on my restricted one￾taste-per-dish regimen, I begin filling up quickly. I pick up a small roasted

bird, bite into it, and my tongue floods with orange sauce. Delicious. But I

make Peeta eat the remainder because I want to keep tasting things, and the

idea of throwing away food, as I see so many people doing so casually, is

abhorrent to me. After about ten tables I'm stuffed, and we've only sampled

a small number of the dishes available.

Just then my prep team descends on us. They're nearly incoherent

between the alcohol they've consumed and their ecstasy at being at such a

grand affair.

“Why aren't you eating?” asks Octavia.

“I have been, but I can't hold another bite,” I say. They all laugh as if

that's the silliest thing they've ever heard.

“No one lets that stop them!” says Flavius. They lead us over to a table

that holds tiny stemmed wineglasses filled with clear liquid. “Drink this!”

Peeta picks one up to take a sip and they lose it.

“Not here!” shrieks Octavia.

“You have to do it in there,” says Venia, pointing to doors that lead to

the toilets. “Or you'll get it all over the floor!”

Peeta looks at the glass again and puts it together. “You mean this will

make me puke?”

My prep team laughs hysterically. “Of course, so you can keep eating,”

says Octavia. “I've been in there twice already. Everyone does it, or else

how would you have any fun at a feast?”

I'm speechless, staring at the pretty little glasses and all they imply. Peeta

sets his back on the table with such precision you'd think it might detonate.

“Come on, Katniss, let's dance.”

Music filters down from the clouds as he leads me away from the team,

the table, and out onto the floor. We know only a few dances at home, the

kind that go with fiddle and flute music and require a good deal of space.

But Effie has shown us some that are popular in the Capitol. The music's

slow and dreamlike, so Peeta pulls me into his arms and we move in a

circle with practically no steps at all. You could do this dance on a pie

plate. We're quiet for a while. Then Peeta speaks in a strained voice.

“You go along, thinking you can deal with it, thinking maybe they're not

so bad, and then you—” He cuts himself off.

All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of the children on our kitchen

table as my mother prescribes what the parents can't give. More food. Now

that we're rich, she'll send some home with them. But often in the old days,

there was nothing to give and the child was past saving, anyway. And here

in the Capitol they're vomiting for the pleasure of filling their bellies again

and again. Not from some illness of body or mind, not from spoiled food.

It's what everyone does at a party. Expected. Part of the fun.

One day when I dropped by to give Hazelle the game, Vick was home

sick with a bad cough. Being part of Gale's family, the kid has to eat better

than ninety percent of the rest of District 12. But he still spent about fifteen

minutes talking about how they'd opened a can of corn syrup from Parcel

Day and each had a spoonful on bread and were going to maybe have more

later in the week. How Hazelle had said he could have a bit in a cup of tea

to soothe his cough, but he wouldn't feel right unless the others had some,

too. If it's like that at Gale's, what's it like in the other houses?

“Peeta, they bring us here to fight to the death for their entertainment,” I

say. “Really, this is nothing by comparison.”

“I know. I know that. It's just sometimes I can't stand it anymore. To the

point where ... I'm not sure what I'll do.” He pauses, then whispers, “Maybe

we were wrong, Katniss.”

“About what?” I ask.

“About trying to subdue things in the districts,” he says.

My head turns swiftly from side to side, but no one seems to have heard.

The camera crew got sidetracked at a table of shellfish, and the couples

dancing around us are either too drunk or too self-involved to notice.

“Sorry,” he says. He should be. This is no place to be voicing such

thoughts.

“Save it for home,” I tell him.

Just then Portia appears with a large man who looks vaguely familiar.

She introduces him as Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Head Gamemaker.

Plutarch asks Peeta if he can steal me for a dance. Peeta's recovered his

camera face and good-naturedly passes me over, warning the man not to get

too attached.