The Hunger Pains (12 page)

My father figure’s words make a lot of sense. Maybe rebelling against an oppressive political regime should take
priority over my teenage love triangle with Pita and Carol. Maybe I should think twice about murdering a fellow teenager, even when this incredibly evil regime tells me I shouldn’t.

I am so grateful for my father figure and his wisdom. If I spend enough time with him, I feel positive that I can return to being a sensible, emotionally well-adjusted young woman capable of dealing rationally with her difficult situation.

“All right, I’d better be going,” he says abruptly. “I was only hired for the afternoon.”

“Father Figure!” I cry out, as he climbs back into his backpack.

“I love you, Kantkiss.” He kisses me on the forehead as he zips the backpack up. “Please don’t murder anybody else.”

Then, as quickly as he entered my life, my father figure leaves it forever. I tearfully walk back toward Pita and the cave. On my way, I see a baby deer pick a flower with its mouth, which cheers me up immediately.

When I get back to the cave, I don’t see Pita anywhere. Everything else is how I left it. The fire is still burning. The quartet is still playing next to a large apple tart. The entrance to the cave is still well exposed, to let fresh air in. I bite into the giant apple tart as I think the scene over.

“Ouch!” exclaims the apple tart. Pita has done it again.

P
ita waits with bated breath while I recollect the grim
details of what happened at the Buffet. “There were backpacks, and Smash was there,” I say.

“Hm,” says Pita.

“Oh, and he’s dead now,” I remember.

“Weird.”

There is an awkward lull in the conversation. I am happy to let it die. But Pita adores small talk. “So, where is Smash from?” he asks, genuinely interested.

I lean in and kiss him, this time because I want to. It feels good, and I instinctively reach for one of his breasts and start to massage it tenderly. Pita pops his left foot as he moans softly, moving his round, doughy head to invite me to kiss his neck. Just then a parachute floats to earth outside the cave. The distraction brings us out of the moment, and Pita jumps away from me, covering his breasts in indignation. I step out of the cave and retrieve Buttitch’s latest gift. It is a box full of
circular, foil-wrapped candies. I unwrap the foil and find it’s not candy in there at all: the box is full of balloons. Slippery balloons. I’m not sure why Buttitch would send us these slippery balloons in this time of great hunger, but I inflate all of them and decorate the cave like it’s my birthday. After the nightly announcements, I fall asleep to the sound of smooth jazz.

At dawn, I smell Pita’s early morning farts and open my eyes. Through the cracks in the rocks of the cave, I see the smoky gray of an overcast day. I hear the pitter-pat of a light drizzle. The Rainmakers must have caused this weather to torture our minds by depriving us of sunlight, trying to give us seasonal affective disorder. There is no other possible explanation.

“Will the Rainmakers ever let us be?” I ask Pita.

He looks at me and starts to blink uncontrollably. Back home, when we need to talk with each other but are worried about being overheard by Pacemakers, we blink at each other to communicate. Blinking slowly and normally means everything is fine, and blinking rapidly is a way of expressing something controversial, like
The Capital sucks!
or
Slimey Sue for president!
Perhaps Pita is trying to tell me something that he doesn’t want anyone else to pick up on. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I ask him. “Do you have more jokes about Pedro the cameraman’s huge mole?”

“No,” Pita whispers to me. “I wanted to tell you that I get scared when I’m not near you. I want to go hunting with you today.”

As Pita tugs gently on my shirt, worried that I am not giving him enough attention, I can’t help but remember how Carol never does this but instead has hunted wild boars ever since he was six years old.
But does Carol know how many cups of sugar you need to make a cinnamon roll?
I think to myself.

“Okay, Pita,” I say, resisting my urge to kiss him passionately, “you can come hunting with me today.”

“Yes!” Pita jumps in the air, and his big doughy head collides with the roof of the cramped cave. “Kantkiss and Pita, hunting together forever!”

We pack what little supplies we have left. We say good-bye to the quartet and set off from the cave, heading toward the Cornucrapia. I move stealthily, making sure to avoid stepping on any crunchy leaves. Pita’s walking strategy ruins my attempt to be inconspicuous, though. He insists on wearing light-up sneakers, which he pounds into the ground extra hard to ensure full illumination with each step.

“Shut up!” I hiss at him, “You’re scaring off the animals!” But he doesn’t hear me because he has burst out singing:

He sings this again and again. I realize that if I’m going to catch any animals today, I will have to separate myself from Pita and convince him that he’s doing something worthwhile.

“Oh, Pita?” I ask him gingerly.

“
Would you like to order the deluuuuxe
—yes, darling?”

“Could you collect some big rocks for a fire pit?”

I see Pita’s grin fade from his face as he begins to tremble. “But … won’t that mean not being with you?”

“Here,” I say, “I’ll give you a piece of my shirt. You can hold it tight when you begin to feel afraid, and it will be just like I’m there.”

I cut off a piece of my sleeve and give it to Pita, who hugs it and smiles. He waves a temporary good-bye and hustles off into the forest in search of big rocks.

I begin setting rabbit traps, stepping on slow squirrels, and looking for birds that have fallen out of trees. Everything is much easier without Pita around.

BWOMMP BWOMMP
. I’m startled to hear the sad trombone. Who could have died? Oh no! Could it be Run? Sweet little Run? Wait—she’s already dead.
Phew
. Then I remember that it could also be Pita! He was still alive! I hurry in the direction Pita went as fast as my legs will carry me.

I get to a clearing and see Pita lying motionless on the ground.

I shake Pita’s body and slap him a few times. No response. My whole body goes numb with shock. Why on earth did I let this idiot out of my sight? I don’t see any visible wounds on his body. He must have had a heart attack. “You ate too many carbs!” I say between slaps.

“Huh … what?” Pita says groggily after a moment, drooling as he opens his eyes and squints in that confused, irresistible way of his.

“Pita! You’re alive!” I exclaim, slapping him some more because he had me so worried. “
Never
do that again!”

“I was just napping.” Pita stifles a yawn. “It was a long walk between when I left you and this clearing, and my legs got so tired.”

I try my best not to blush, because every time Pita talks about his legs, I get excited. “But if you’re not dead, then who did the sad trombone sound for?” I ask.

“All I know is that I collected some mighty fine rocks before I went to sleep,” Pita says. “I really did you proud, baby. Look.”

I look in the direction Pita is pointing and gasp. Lying next to a small pile of rocks is Dogface. Her eyes are rolled into the back of her head, and there is gravel all around her mouth. Her cold hand grips a large rock with a bite taken out of it.

“I promise there were more, Kantkiss,” Pita says in a whining tone of voice. “It’s just not fair!”

I am about to take Pita in my arms and kiss him like there’s no tomorrow, but just then the hovercraft descends to pick up Dogface’s body. The doors slide open.

“That sounds like a perfect location.”

“It is. We’ll have to renovate the kitchen. But other than that, it’s ready.”

“I can’t wait to go. There’s no good seafood place in the Capital right now.”

“Ours will be the best. Top-notch stuff.”

“And the financing is all taken care of?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. How would you feel about coming in as a part owner?”

“Jesus, Dave, I’m not sure if—”

The hovercraft doors slam shut. As it flies away, an icy breeze fills the air. I shiver slightly. “Are you cold?” I ask Pita.

He shrugs. “I’m actually a little bit warm. I would give you my sweater, but then I might get cold.”

Rainmakers. They have created this breeze. There is no other plausible explanation for it. If we get cold enough, then we will have to fight to the death, just to keep warm. Those monsters.
Where can we go to warm up?
I remember that there is a café inside the Cornucrapia that serves hot chocolate and has central heating. That is where they are forcing us to congregate.

“To the Cornucrapia!” I exclaim.

“Fine,” says Pita. “But did you hunt any food?” He rubs his belly. “I haven’t had a snack in nearly an hour.”

Bashfully, I realize that I didn’t catch any birds in my bird trap—a pane of glass suspended between two tree
trunks. And I don’t want to disturb the birds in my birdhouse. “Uh … sure,” I say, slyly picking some bright orange berries from a bush behind my back. “Lots of food.”

“Kantkiss!” Pita exclaims when I show him the berries. “Those are poison berries. My father used to bake with them, and it led to so many lawsuits. If you eat one of those things, you will die in a matter of minutes!”

“Oh,” I say, about to toss them on the ground. Pita stops me, though.

“Keep them just in case,” he says. “Who knows how hungry I will get later?”

As we walk toward the Cornucrapia, the clouds shift through the satin sky, and pretty soon the sun is beginning to drop, creating purple and orange things I never learned how to describe with science. The rapidly approaching season finale of the
Hunger Games
has me excited. I look into the camera and say my catchphrase, which I imagine is emblazoned on hundreds of thousands of T-shirts and lunch boxes throughout Peaceland by this point. “It’s Kantkiss time!”

By the time we reach the Cornucrapia, the breeze has died down. Classic Rainmakers: starting and stopping the breeze at seemingly random times to disorient us and make us turn against each other in confusion. Still, it is too warm for hot chocolate now, so Pita and I wait outside the café. After half an hour, I hear a rustling from the edge of the forest and see Archie Nemesis running straight for us.

“Eeeeeeek!”
screams Pita, sexily hiding behind me.

But today Archie isn’t the confident, angry sociopath I’ve grown accustomed to. His eyes are puffy and red, and mucus is pouring from his nose. He’s followed closely by what look like several very small, ugly panthers. But these aren’t blood-thirsty, ugly panthers at all …

“Trannies!”
Pita and I scream in unison. Archie barrels past us and tries to scale the horn of the Cornucrapia, followed closely by Pita, but I stand my ground. One of the trannies jumps on me and licks my hand lovingly. I look closer. They’re puppies! And they are so soft and cuddly. They gather around me and I give them hugs and then tickle their bellies while they lick dirt off my face. I look up to Pita, wondering why he isn’t playing with even a single puppy.

“Those trannies are … fr—freaks!” He gesticulates wildly.

I look at the puppies more closely as they happily play with one another. One of the puppies is much bigger than the others. He pins his friend to the ground and is about to lick his face, but then pauses thoughtfully and lets him go. Another of the puppies—a purebred Staffordshire terrier—has a polite bird that always follows him around and deferentially collects bones for him. Another puppy keeps walking into a tree. I gasp when she finally turns around: Dogface! Her facial features are exactly the same as before, only now they look normal because she has the body of a puppy. These puppies are the fallen tributes!

Whatever the Rainmakers did to those dead tributes, it is delightful. I squeal with joy when I see the tiniest puppy of
all, Run, who bumps into me with eyes that haven’t opened yet and then falls over adorably. I scoop her up and put her in my pocket, where she licks my hand from time to time. If I win the Games, I’ll keep her as my purse dog.

Suddenly a steel football whizzes past my head, missing by only a few inches. I turn and see Archie Nemesis panting by the base of the Cornucrapia. His eyes are still puffy and red, and it is clear that dog allergies have reduced him to a shell of the all-district athlete who started the Hunger Games.
The old Archie would have knocked my head straight off
, I think nostalgically.

The puppies excitedly follow the football and roll it back to Archie with their little wet noses, eager to play fetch, as Archie frantically tries to fend them off. His face is swollen beyond recognition and he is getting weaker by the second. I walk over to him because I want to play with the puppies some more.

“Kantkith … Kantkith, don’t kill me like thith …,” he begs.

In all the puppy excitement, I had completely forgotten about killing Archie, but I’m glad he’s reminded me because I definitely want to. I look over at Pita, who is so terrified by the puppies that he is crying.
If I kill Archie now, I can kiss this stud all I like
.

“Thorry, Archie,” I say, adopting his strange manner of speaking, “I have to get out of thith arena.”

“Pleath don’t do thith, Kantkith!” he cries. I cover as many of the puppies’ eyes as I can while I draw my bow.

“Pleath! Pleath!” he pleads. “I love you, Kantkith!”

I lower my weapon. “What?”

“I have … uh … alwayth loved you, Kantkith!” he declares. “You are the prettieth girl I’ve ever theen!”

“Do you really mean that, Archie?” I ask, my voice tender and vulnerable.

“Yeth! Yeth, I do!” he exclaims excitedly.

“What are you waiting for?” Pita asks between cowardly sniffles. “Kill Archie! I want to get back to my bakery!”

I hesitate. Pita keeps shouting, “He is clearly lying to you to save his own life, Kantkiss! Archie is a complete psycho and he just tried to kill you two minutes ago! You’ve got a good thing going here.” He points at his tear-filled face. “Stick with it!”

“I’m thorry, Kantkith. I never meant to hit you with that football,” Archie explains. “I wath aiming at the tree behind you, and I feel like an idiot becauth I nearly hit you inth-tead.”

“That’s okay, Archie,” I say. I can’t believe it.
Archie Nemesis is in love with me!
And as I suddenly realize, I am in love with him too. I have been since the first time I saw him glare menacingly at me at the Opening Ceremony. He has always been the perfect man for me, I just didn’t realize it. I wish Mandy were still alive so she could be jealous of me.

“Come here, you old lug.” I swoop in and kiss Archie. It is hard to get to his mouth because his cheeks are so swollen, but I have had plenty of practice moving aside Pita’s cheek flaps.