75th - part 11
katniss’s pov
They had Peeta’s voice. Screaming. Begging me to save him.
Finnick is right, jabberjays copy. So how could Snow have gotten that sound? As far as I can remember, Peeta never screamed like that in the arena. It would have had to be recorded live, which must mean that Peeta is alive. Snow probably has him trapped in some Capitol prison, saving him just for this moment, to torture me.
But I saw Peeta die. Didn’t I?
I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t know what’s real, and I just heard the voices of everyone I love in pain for an hour.
As soon as the time is up and the invisible barrier disappears, Finnick and I sprint out of the woods until we hit the beach. He stumbles into the ocean, but I sit down in the sand, exhausted. Eventually, I feel a reassuring hand on my shoulder. Expecting Johanna, I look up to see Cole watching me carefully.
“Are you ok?” Cole asks me.
Johanna scoffs loudly from nearby. “What do you think?” She paces back and forth, a furious look on her face, avoiding looking at me or Finnick. After a moment, she finally crouches down in front of me and firmly says, “Your sister’s fine.”
“But the jabber—”
“It wasn’t real.”
“It’s probably a voice distortion, which was then recorded by the jabberjays,” Beetee suggests. “Simple technology, but a…morbid twist. In any case, it would only take a brief recording of your sister speaking to generate a scream.”
So that’s how they got Peeta’s scream. I sigh, relaxing a bit at the fact that at least he’s not trapped in a Capitol prison.
“Exactly,” Johanna continues. “The Capitol loves Prim. If they hurt her, or did anything to her, they’d have a riot on their hands.” She stands up, chuckles sourly, and shouts at the sky. “Can’t have that, right, Snow? Setting houses on fire and gunning people down? You know, you can’t put everybody in here!”
A thick silence falls as we all stare at Johanna. I knew she was angry, but I didn’t think she’d be this stupid. All it would take is one word from Snow, and an avalanche or a wave could come crashing down on us all.
Johanna looks back at me, and her shoulders relax. “I’m…gonna get you some water,” she says calmly, then steps toward the jabberjay sector.
“Wait!” I don’t want her going back in there, even though the hour’s up. “They could still be in there.”
Johanna shakes her head. “They can’t hurt me…there’s no one left out there that I love.” She turns toward the forest and walks off without another word.
I’m totally thrown. Never in all the time that we talked last year did she mention something like that. Sure, she didn’t talk about her family very often, but I thought maybe they just weren’t close. Have they been dead this whole time? Or did Snow kill them as a result of the rebellion?
I suddenly remember watching Johanna’s Games a few months ago. There was a little boy who cried during the reaping, the only sound as Johanna made her way up to the stage. Who was he? What happened to him?
And then there’s Blight. He might have been the only person Johanna had left, and it hits me like a freight train that with him gone, Johanna has no one. No one to go home to. No one to fight for.
It breaks my heart.
When Johanna returns, I’m sitting on a bank of sand, watching Finnick drag his trident across the waves. He’s been distant since we left the jabberjay jungle. Beetee and Cole are several feet away, talking to each other. I think Cole asked Beetee about the wire, which led to him explaining every feature in great detail.
Johanna hands me a makeshift bowl of water, but doesn’t say anything.
“Thanks,” I say, taking a sip. As Johanna sits down next to me, I glance out at Finnick and quietly ask, “Who’s Annie?”
“Annie Cresta?” I nod, and Johanna continues, “The girl Mags volunteered for. She won like four—five…years ago.”
“Is she the one that went a little…”
Johanna nods, rhythmically whacking the sand with her ax. She stares out at Finnick for a moment, then sighs. “Love is weird.”
A silence falls, interrupted by the thump of the ax in the sand. I want to know more. About Johanna, not Finnick. About everyone Johanna loved before. But I don’t know how to ask it. Instead, I just stare at her.
She’s beautiful. Even in the arena, even when she’s tired and hungry, even when she’s screaming at the sky, she’s beautiful. I try to notice everything about her, so that when I die, I won’t forget Johanna Mason. I won’t forget the way her lips jut out when she’s upset, the curve of her jaw, the sound of her voice, how she was there for me even on the other side of that barrier. It won’t matter whether we die as allies, friends, or something more. Because no matter what, she means something to me.
Eventually, she glances up and catches me, rolling her eyes as she stops hitting the sand. “Snow killed my family to send a message. Now stop looking at me like that.”
I feel my face heat up instantly. “What do you mean?”
“Like I’m just another person you need to protect or feel sorry for, or God forbid both.”
So that’s what she thinks. I guess I should be grateful that she doesn’t know how I really feel. Against my better judgment, I decide to push her. After all, we might not have much longer. “You said there’s no one out there that you love.”
Johanna looks at the ground and quietly says, “Not anymore.”
“We spent all that time together last year and I never knew that. Did you tell me and I didn’t realize, or—”
“No, dumbass, I never told you,” she scoffs. “It’s not the kind of thing you run around telling everyone.” She hesitates for a second, then adds, “even people you…care about. Besides, at that point, I still had people. But I thought Snow couldn’t touch them.”
She must mean Blight. Of course she would think he was safe. We all were safe, as victors, until the Quell. “I cared about him too. I miss him.”
“Who, Blight?” Johanna won’t meet my eye again. “Uh, yeah…me too.”
I feel like my entire body is electrified, but I don’t know what to say. Was she talking about me too? I’m about to say something when she reaches for the medallion around her neck, the one that I took as a sign from Haymitch and Effie that we were supposed to be allies again.
“Katniss,” she says softly, and I can’t help but love the way she says my name, “I want you to have this.”
She hands me the medallion, and it’s heavier than I expected. There’s a latch, so I open it and reveal photos of Gale, Prim, and my mother. I stare at the photos, trying not to think of the jabberjays, and instead feel a deep sense of longing. I miss them more than anything.
“They need you,” Johanna says. “So you need to fight to get home. No matter what, remember what you’re fighting for.”
I close the locket and turn it in my hand, feeling the warmth of the metal. Johanna’s right, they need me, but there’s no way Snow will let me out of this arena alive. Still, I try to imagine it. Me, going home again, back to Prim and Gale and District 12. It’s all I want, except…
“What about you?”
Johanna meets my eyes and chuckles harshly. “What about me?”
“I…” I still don’t know what to say, how to tell her what I’m feeling. Maybe part of me is afraid to admit it. “I can’t lose you.”
“Yeah, you can,” Johanna says bitterly, hitting her ax against the sand again. “Don’t worry about me. No one needs me.”
I want to argue with her. I want to tell her that I need her, that I wouldn’t ever be the same without her, but something’s holding me back. I know Johanna hasn’t been afraid to speak her mind in the arena, but if Snow is really watching us now, I can’t. It’s dangerous work being connected to me. I can’t condemn Johanna to that.
But I make a decision, once and for all: I’m going to get Johanna out of this alive. She deserves another chance, a chance to build a new life. After all she’s done for me, this will have to be my last gift to her.
Suddenly, Beetee approaches us, announcing that he has a plan to kill the Careers.
Beetee explains the plan, making sure that we all understand what we’re getting into. I have to wonder if he was planning this all along, since he was so determined to protect the wire. Maybe this was his way of winning, but why would he let the rest of us in on it? I don’t want to doubt him, but I know I can only really trust Johanna and Cole.
Since it’s already past noon, we decide to camp on the beach for a few hours and go to the tree after dark. Johanna’s grateful for it, since she hasn’t had a chance to sleep since the blood rain, and she practically collapses on the edge of the jungle as soon as we settle down.
Finnick and Cole take watch, so I lay down near Johanna and try to convince my body to rest. Despite how exhausted I am, the bright sun and continual danger of the Careers keeps me from closing my eyes. Finally, I roll onto my side and watch Johanna for a while.
I try to imagine us in another life, one without a Capitol, where we aren’t Victors. Would we have even become friends if we didn’t have to be allies? I try to picture a world where we would’ve been. We could have met at the Hob, traded back and forth for a couple months until we trusted each other, eventually fallen in love without the constant threat of losing each other.
After a while, I fall asleep and dream of that life.
After a few hours, Finnick wakes us up and we begin to make our way to the lightning tree. When we reach the right sector, we stop to rest in the jungle at the bottom of a hill to regain some energy before climbing it. Finnick and Cole tap into a tree while Beetee coils and uncoils the wire, muttering to himself, and I join Johanna on a nearby tree stump.
“Is it true that you can tell the age of a tree by looking at the rings?” I ask, trying to ease some of the weight between us after our last conversation.
She makes a face, like she’s surprised I would know that. “Well, yeah, but that’s—it’s more complicated than that. Look…”
We both stand, and Johanna points to the rings that fill the tree stump.
“See how some are darker? Basically, one light and one dark ring make a year. So if you start in the center and count every dark ring, you’ll get the number of years that the tree lived.” She traces her finger along the stump, counting quietly. “This one was about 40 years old when it died.”
I put a hand on the wood, thinking about the 40 years, how it stood here through all of that. My life, my dad’s life…until something, more than likely the Gamemakers, cut it down. What would it have looked like in its prime? For a moment, I miss my woods again.
“But that’s just part of it,” Johanna continues, watching me to make sure I’m still interested. “See how these lines are thicker than the others? That means the tree got more water in these years. And this…,” she points to a large brown spot, “is a scar. Probably from a forest fire.”
I start to notice myself staring at Johanna’s hands, noticing the gentleness that she shows this tree, and I can’t help it. I’m falling for her. I remind myself that I will probably die tonight, and force my gaze back to her face. “You can tell all that from rings?”
“Yeah. It’s like a tree’s life story. That’s why we make a big deal in 7 about rings. Like, when someone dies, the person’s family and friends hold hands and form a giant ring around the body. It’s supposed to represent the final ring on their tree, or whatever.” Johanna shrugs, as if it’s nothing, but I can tell it means something to her. “And at weddings, the couple gives each other a ring, because they’re starting a new life together, so it’s their ‘first ring’...anyways, yeah.”
In the silence that follows, I run my hand over the stump sadly, thinking of how the tributes from 7 must feel in the arena. Knowing that no one will be there to form a ring for them after they die, at least until their bodies are brought back to 7. I wonder if the district held a ceremony for Blight.
“Oh, I forgot something,” Johanna adds matter-of-factly, bringing me back to reality. “This thing didn’t grow here. I mean, this belongs in District 7 or District 12, not a jungle. The fire scar makes that really obvious.”
I laugh. “You sound like Beetee.”
“Shut up,” Johanna chuckles.
“No, seriously. ‘The fire scar makes that really obvious.” She punches my shoulder as I mock her. “Tell me more about how everyone should already know this.”
“Fuck you,” she laughs. “You’re the one who came over here asking about it.”
“That was before I knew you were a tree nerd.”
Johanna shoves me light-heartedly, and sits back on the stump. As our laughter fades, I sit back down next to her and sigh. The jungle would be beautiful, if it wasn’t so dangerous, but this tree stump is the first part of this arena that I’ve really noticed. Maybe because it’s supposed to be from up north, or maybe because of Johanna.
And as I look out at the jungle and try to appreciate the beauty, I carefully move my hand towards Johanna’s, slipping it over hers and resting it there. I don’t care if the cameras see it. Snow can think what he wants, because after all, we might both be dead anyways. She freezes and barely glances over at me, but doesn’t move her hand, so we sit like that until Beetee declares that he’s ready to move.