Catching Fire

imagine him sipping it from a teacup. Dipping a cookie into the stuff and pulling it out dripping red.
    Outside the window, a car comes to life, soft and quiet like the purr of a cat, then fades away into the distance. It slips off as it arrived, unnoticed.
    The room seems to be spinning in slow, lopsided circles, and I wonder if I might black out. I lean forward and clutch the desk with one hand. The other still holds Peeta’s beautiful cookie. I think it had a tiger lily on it, but now it’s been reduced to crumbs in my fist. I didn’t even know I was crushing it, but I guess I had to hold on to something while my world veered out of control.
    A visit from President Snow. Districts on the verge of uprisings. A direct death threat to Gale, with others to follow. Everyone I love doomed. And who knows who else will pay for my actions? Unless I turn things around on this tour. Quiet the discontent and put the president’s mind at rest. And how? By proving to the country beyond any shadow of a doubt that I love Peeta Mellark.
    I can’t do it, I think. I’m not that good. Peeta’s the good one, the likable one. He can make people believe anything. I’m the one who shuts up and sits back and lets him do as much of the talking as possible. But it isn’t Peeta who has to prove his devotion. It’s me.
    I hear my mother’s light, quick tread in the hall. She can’t know, I think. Not about any of this. I reach my hands over the tray and quickly brush the bits of cookie from my palm and fingers. I take a shaky sip of my tea.
    “Is everything all right, Katniss?” she asks.
    “It’s fine. We never see it on television, but the president always visits the victors before the tour to wish them luck,” I say brightly.
    My mother’s face floods with relief. “Oh. I thought there was some kind of trouble.”
    “No, not at all,” I say. “The trouble will start when my prep team sees how I’ve let my eyebrows grow back in.” My mother laughs, and I think about how there was no going back after I took over caring for the family when I was eleven. How I will always have to protect her.
    “Why don’t I start your bath?” she asks.
    “Great,” I say, and I can see how pleased she is by my response.
    Since I’ve been home I’ve been trying hard to mend my relationship with my mother. Asking her to do things for me instead of brushing aside any offer of help, as I did for years out of anger. Letting her handle all the money I won. Returning her hugs instead of tolerating them. My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn’t help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father’s death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.
    Like me, for instance. Right now.
    Besides, there’s one wonderful thing she did when I arrived back in the district. After our families and friends had greeted Peeta and me at the train station, there were a few questions allowed from reporters. Someone asked my mother what she thought of my new boyfriend, and she replied that, while Peeta was the very model of what a young man should be, I wasn’t old enough to have any boyfriend at all. She followed this with a pointed look at Peeta. There was a lot of laughter and comments like “Somebody’s in trouble” from the press, and Peeta dropped my hand and sidestepped away from me. That didn’t last long — there was too much pressure to act otherwise — but it gave us an excuse to be a little more reserved than we’d been in the Capitol. And maybe it can help account for how little I’ve been seen in Peeta’s company since the cameras left.
    I go upstairs to the bathroom, where a steaming tub awaits. My mother has added a small bag of dried flowers that perfumes the air. None of us are used to the luxury of turning on a tap and having a limitless supply of hot water at our fingertips. We had only cold at our home in the Seam, and a bath meant boiling the rest over the fire. I undress and lower myself into the silky water — my mother has poured in some kind of oil as well — and try to get a grip on things.
    The first question is who to tell, if anyone. Not my mother or Prim, obviously; they’d only become sick with worry. Not Gale. Even if I could get word to him. What would he do with the information, anyway? If he were alone, I might try to persuade him to run away. Certainly he could survive in the