CATCHING FIRE Part 5 ppt

“Thank you. I'll tell him. I'm sure we'll all sleep a little more soundly

now that security has addressed that lapse.” I'm pushing things, I know it,

but the comment gives me a sense of satisfaction.

The woman's jaw tightens. None of this has gone as planned, but she has

no further orders. She gives me a curt nod and leaves, the man trailing in

her wake. When my mother has locked the door behind them, I slump

against the table.

“What is it?” says Peeta, holding me steadily.

“Oh, I banged up my left foot. The heel. And my tail-bone's had a bad

day, too.” He helps me over to one of the rockers and I lower myself onto

the padded cushion.

My mother eases off my boots. “What happened?”

“I slipped and fell,” I say. Four pairs of eyes look at me with disbelief.

“On some ice.” But we all know the house must be bugged and it's not safe

to talk openly. Not here, not now.

Having stripped off my sock, my mother's fingers probe the bones in my

left heel and I wince. “There might be a break,” she says. She checks the

other foot. “This one seems all right.” She judges my tailbone to be badly

bruised.

Prim's dispatched to get my pajamas and robe. When I'm changed, my

mother makes a snow pack for my left heel and props it up on a hassock. I

eat three bowls of stew and half a loaf of bread while the others dine at the

table. I stare at the fire, thinking of Bonnie and Twill, hoping that the

heavy, wet snow has erased my tracks.

Prim comes and sits on the floor next to me, leaning her head against my

knee. We suck on peppermints as I brush her soft blond hair back behind

her ear. “How was school?” I ask.

“All right. We learned about coal by-products,” she says. We stare at the

fire for a while. “Are you going to try on your wedding dresses?”

“Not tonight. Tomorrow probably,” I say.

“Wait until I get home, okay?” she says.

“Sure.” If they don't arrest me first.

My mother gives me a cup of chamomile tea with a dose of sleep syrup,

and my eyelids begin to droop immediately. She wraps my bad foot, and

Peeta volunteers to get me to bed. I start out by leaning on his shoulder, but

I'm so wobbly he just scoops me up and carries me upstairs. He tucks me in

and says good night but I catch his hand and hold him there. A side effect

of the sleep syrup is that it makes people less inhibited, like white liquor,

and I know I have to control my tongue. But I don't want him to go. In fact,

I want him to climb in with me, to be there when the nightmares hit tonight.

For some reason that I can't quite form, I know I'm not allowed to ask that.

“Don't go yet. Not until I fall asleep,” I say.

Peeta sits on the side of the bed, warming my hand in both of his.

“Almost thought you'd changed your mind today. When you were late for

dinner.”

I'm foggy but I can guess what he means. With the fence going on and

me showing up late and the Peacekeepers waiting, he thought I'd made a

run for it, maybe with Gale.

“No, I'd have told you,” I say. I pull his hand up and lean my cheek

against the back of it, taking in the faint scent of cinnamon and dill from the

breads he must have baked today. I want to tell him about Twill and Bonnie

and the uprising and the fantasy of District 13, but it's not safe to and I can

feel myself slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. “Stay with

me.”

As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word

back, but I don't quite catch it.

My mother lets me sleep until noon, then rouses me to examine my heel.

I'm ordered to a week of bed rest and I don't object because I feel so lousy.

Not just my heel and my tailbone. My whole body aches with exhaustion.

So I let my mother doctor me and feed me breakfast in bed and tuck

another quilt around me. Then I just lie there, staring out my window at the

winter sky, pondering how on earth this will all turn out. I think a lot about

Bonnie and Twill, and the pile of white wedding dresses downstairs, and if

Thread will figure out how I got back in and arrest me. It's funny, because

he could just arrest me, anyway, based on past crimes, but maybe he has to

have something really irrefutable to do it, now that I'm a victor. And I

wonder if President Snow's in contact with Thread. I think it's unlikely he

ever acknowledged that old Cray existed, but now that I'm such a

nationwide problem, is he carefully instructing Thread what to do? Or is

Thread acting on his own? At any rate, I'm sure they'd both agree on

keeping me locked up here inside the district with that fence. Even if I

could figure out some way to escape—maybe get a rope up to that maple

tree branch and climb out—there'd be no escaping with my family and

friends now. I told Gale I would stay and fight, anyway.

For the next few days, I jump every time there's a knock on the door. No

Peacekeepers show up to arrest me, though, so eventually I begin to relax.

I'm further reassured when Peeta casually tells me the power is off in

sections of the fence because crews are out securing the base of the chain