Lucy Gray kept Reaper in her sights, but he’d made no move to engage her. Suddenly, she rose as if impatient to get on with things, and retraced her steps to Treech’s body. Taking hold of one ankle, she began to drag him over to Reaper’s morgue. Reaper appeared to wake up the moment she touched the body. He leaned out and shouted something unintelligible, then hurried down from the stands. Lucy Gray let go of Treech and ran to a nearby tunnel. Reaper assumed the job of transporting Treech, placing him neatly in the row of dead tributes and covering him with the flag remnant. Satisfied, he made his way back to the stands, but he’d only just reached the wall when Lucy Gray ran out from a second tunnel, pulled one of the flag pieces off the bodies, and gave a holler. Reaper whipped around and ran at her. Lucy Gray wasted no time in vanishing behind the barricade. Reaper replaced the flag, tucking the fabric under the bodies to hold it more securely in place, and went to rest against a pole. After a few minutes, he seemed to drift off, his eyes closed against the sun. Lucy Gray darted out again, yanked one of the flag segments free, and this time ran off with it trailing behind her. By the time Reaper had come to realize her disruption, she’d put fifty yards between them. His indecision allowed her to widen her lead, and she dragged the flag to the dead center of the arena, where she left it in the dirt and made for the stands. Angry now, Reaper ran over and repossessed his flag. He took a few steps after her, but the exertion had taken a toll on him. Pressing his hands against his temples, he panted rapidly, although he didn’t appear to be sweating. As Lucky’s recent update had reminded them, that could be a sign of heatstroke.
She’s trying to run him to death, thought Coriolanus. And it might just work.
Reaper staggered a bit, as though drunk. Flag in tow, he made his way to his puddle, one of the few that hadn’t dried up during the afternoon. He dropped down on his knees and drank, slurping until only a muddy sludge remained on the bottom. As he sat back on his heels, a funny look crossed his face, and his fingers began to knead his ribs and chest. He vomited up a portion of the water, then retched for a while on his hands and knees before rising unsteadily. Still gripping the flag in one hand, he began to walk, in slow, uneven steps, back toward his morgue. Reaper had just made it when he collapsed on the ground, dragging himself in line next to Treech. One hand made an attempt to pull the flag over the group, but he managed only to cover himself partway before he drew in his limbs and went still.
Coriolanus sat frozen in anticipation. Was that it? Had he really won? The Hunger Games? The Plinth Prize? The girl? He studied Lucy Gray’s face as she watched Reaper from the stands, but she had a distant look, as if she were far away from the action in the arena.
The audience in the hall began to murmur. Was Reaper dead? Shouldn’t they be declaring a winner? Coriolanus and Clemensia waved Lepidus and his mic away as they awaited the outcome. Half an hour passed before Lucy Gray climbed down from the stands and approached Reaper. She placed her fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. Satisfied, she closed his eyelids and tenderly arranged the flag over the tributes, as if she were putting children to bed. Then she went over and sat against a pole to wait.
This seemed to convince the Gamemakers, because Lucky appeared, jumping up and down, announcing that Lucy Gray Baird, tribute of District 12, and her mentor, Coriolanus Snow, had won the Tenth Hunger Games.
Heavensbee Hall erupted around Coriolanus, and Festus organized a few classmates to lift his chair and parade him around the dais. When they finally set him down, Lepidus hounded him with questions, to which he could only reply that the experience had been both exhilarating and humbling. Then the entire student body was directed to the dining hall, where cake and posca had been provided for a celebration. Coriolanus sat in a place of honor, receiving congratulations and downing more posca than was good for him. So what? Right now, he felt invincible.
Satyria rescued him just as his head felt fuzzy, ushering him from the dining hall and directing him to the high biology lab. “I think they’re bringing your girl over. Don’t be surprised if they put you on camera together. Well done.”
Coriolanus gave her a spontaneous hug and hurried for the lab, grateful for the moment of quiet. He felt his lips stretching into an insane grin. He had won. He’d won glory, and a future, and maybe love, too. Any minute now, he’d have Lucy Gray in his arms. Oh, Snow lands on top; it most certainly does. He forced his cheeks to relax as he got to the door, and straightened his jacket to help conceal the tipsy mess he actually was. It wouldn’t do, somehow, to let Dr. Gaul see him like that.
When he opened the door to the high biology lab, he found only Dean Highbottom, sitting in his usual place at the table. “Close the door behind you.” Coriolanus obliged. Perhaps the dean wanted to congratulate him in private. Or even apologize for abusing him. A falling star might one day have need of a rising one. But as he approached the dean, a cold dread washed over him. There, arranged on the table like lab specimens, were three items: an Academy napkin stained with grape punch, his mother’s silver compact, and a dingy white handkerchief.
The meeting could not have lasted more than five minutes. Afterward, as agreed, Coriolanus headed directly to the Recruitment Center, where he became Panem’s newest, if not shiniest, Peacekeeper.
Coriolanus leaned his temple against the glass window, trying to absorb any bit of coolness it might have retained. The stifling train car had just cleared when a half dozen of his fellow recruits piled out at District 9. Alone at last. He’d been on the train for twenty-four hours without a moment of privacy. Forward motion was often interrupted by long, unexplained waits. With the fitful travel and the jabbering of the other enlistees, he hadn’t slept a wink. Instead he’d feigned sleep in an attempt to dissuade anyone from talking to him. Perhaps he could nap now, then awake from this nightmare that seemed, by its tenacity, to actually be his real life. He rubbed his scabby cheek with the stiff, scratchy cuff of his new Peacekeeper shirt, only reinforcing his hopelessness.
What an ugly place, he thought dully as the train chugged its way through District 9. The concrete buildings, flaking paint and misery, baked in the relentless afternoon sun. And how much uglier District 12 had the likelihood of being, with its additional coat of coal dust. He’d never really seen much of it, just the grainy coverage of the square on reaping day. It didn’t look fit for human habitation.
When he’d asked to be assigned there, the officer’s eyebrows had lifted in surprise. “Don’t hear that much,” he’d said, but stamped it through without further discussion. Apparently, not everyone had been following the Hunger Games, as he didn’t seem to know who Coriolanus was or make mention of Lucy Gray. All the better. At the moment, anonymity was a condition greatly to be desired. Much of the shame of his situation came from bearing his last name. He burned as he remembered his encounter with Dean Highbottom. . . .
“Do you hear that, Coriolanus? It’s the sound of Snow falling.”
How he hated Dean Highbottom. His bloated face floating above the evidence. The tip of his pen poking at the items on the lab table. “This napkin. Confirmed with your DNA. Used to illegally smuggle food from the dining hall into the arena. We picked it up as evidence from the crime scene after the bombing. Ran a routine check, and there you were.”
“You were starving her to death,” Coriolanus had said, his voice cracking.
“Rather standard procedure in the Hunger Games. But it wasn’t so much the feeding, which we overlooked for all the mentors, but the thieving from the Academy. Strictly forbidden,” said Dean Highbottom. “I was all for exposing you then, presenting you with another demerit, and disqualifying you from the Games, but Dr. Gaul felt you were of more use as a martyr for the cause of the wounded Capitol. So instead we had your recording bellowing out the anthem while you recuperated in the hospital.”
“Then why bring it up now?” Coriolanus asked.
“Only to establish a pattern of behavior.” The pen tapped
the silver rose next. “Now, this compact. How many times did I see your mother pull it from her handbag to check her face? Your pretty, vapid mother, who’d somehow convinced herself that your father would give her freedom and love. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say.”
“She wasn’t” was all Coriolanus managed. Vapid, he meant.
“Only her youth excused her, and, really, she seemed fated to be a child forever. Just the opposite of your girl, Lucy Gray. Sixteen going on thirty-five, and a hard thirty-five at that,” observed Dean Highbottom.
“She gave you the compact?” Coriolanus’s heart dropped at the thought.
“Oh, don’t blame her. The Peacekeepers had to wrestle her to the ground to get the thing. Naturally, we do a thorough search of the victors when they leave the arena.” The dean cocked his head and smiled. “So smart about how she poisoned Wovey and Reaper. Not really fair play, but what’s to be done? Sending her back to District Twelve seems punishment enough. She said the rat poison was all her idea, that the compact had just been a token.”
“It’s true,” said Coriolanus. “It was. A token of my affection. I don’t know anything about any poison.”
“Let’s say I believe you, which I don’t. But let’s say I do. What, then, am I to make of this?” Dean Highbottom lifted the handkerchief with the tip of the pen. “One of the lab assistants found it in the snake tank yesterday morning. Everyone was baffled at first, checking their pockets to see if their own hankies had gone astray, because who else had been near the mutts? One young fellow actually claimed it, saying his allergies had been particularly bad and that he’d misplaced his handkerchief only a few days before. But just as he was offering his resignation, someone noticed the initials. Not yours. Your father’s. So delicately stitched in the corner.”
CXS. Stitched in the same white thread as the border. Part of the border pattern, really, so unassuming that you’d have to look carefully for it, but irrefutably there. Coriolanus never bothered to examine his daily handkerchief; he just stuffed one in his pocket as he headed out. There would’ve been a slim chance of denying the charge if the middle name hadn’t been so distinctive. Xanthos. The only name Coriolanus even knew that began with an X, and the only person who carried it was his father. Crassus Xanthos Snow.
There was no need to ask about the DNA test, which Dean Highbottom had surely run, finding both his and Lucy Gray’s signature. “So why haven’t you made this public?”
“Oh, believe me, I was tempted. But the Academy, when expelling a student, has a tradition of offering them a lifeline,” the dean explained. “As an alternative to public disgrace, you may join the Peacekeepers by the end of the day.”
“But . . . why would I do that? I mean, why would I say I would do that? When I’ve just . . . won the Plinth Prize to the University?” he stammered.
“Who knows? Because you’re that kind of patriot? Because you believe learning to defend your country is a better education than a lot of book knowledge?” Dean Highbottom began laughing. “Because the Hunger Games changed you, and you’re going where you can best serve Panem? You’re a clever young man, Coriolanus. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“But . . . but I . . . ?” His head swam with posca and adrenaline. “Why? Why do you hate me so much?” he blurted out. “I thought you were my father’s friend!”
That sobered the dean. “I thought I was, too. Once. But it turned out I was only someone he liked because he could use them. Even now.”
“But he’s dead now! He’s been dead for years!” cried Coriolanus.
“He deserves to be, but he seems very much alive in you.” The dean made a shooing motion. “Better hurry. The office closes in twenty minutes. If you run, you can just make it.”
And so he’d run, not knowing what else to do. After he’d enlisted, he made straight for the Citadel, hoping to throw himself on Dr. Gaul’s mercy. He was denied entrance, even when he pleaded infected stitches. The Peacekeepers phoned down to the lab and were told to redirect him to the hospital. One of the guards took pity on him and agreed to try to get his final paper to Dr. Gaul. No promises. In the margin, he started to scribble a note begging for her to intercede but felt the pointlessness of the thing. He merely wrote Thank you. For what, he didn’t know, but he refused to let her feed on his desperation.
On the walk home, the congratulations from neighbors went like daggers to his heart, but the real agony began when he entered the apartment to the sounds of tin horns and cheers. Tigris and the Grandma’am had gotten out the party favors they used to celebrate the new year and had bought a bakery cake for the occasion. He attempted a weak smile, then burst into tears. And then he told them everything. When he finished, they both became very calm and still, like a pair of marble statues.
“When do you leave?” asked Tigris.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said.
“When will you be back?” asked the Grandma’am.
He couldn’t bear to say twenty years. She would never last that long. If he saw her again, it would be in the mausoleum. “I don’t know.”
She nodded that she understood, then drew herself up in her chair. “Remember, Coriolanus, that wherever you go, you will always be a Snow. No one can ever take that from you.”
He wondered if that wasn’t the problem. The impossibility of being a Snow in this postwar world. What it had driven him to do. But he only said, “I’ll try to one day be worthy of it.”
Tigris rose. “Come on, Coryo. I’ll help you pack.” He followed her to his room. She hadn’t cried. He knew she would try to hold in her tears until he left.
“Not much to pack. They said wear old clothes to throw out. They provide all our uniforms, hygiene, everything. I can only bring personal items that fit in this.” Coriolanus pulled a box, eight by twelve inches, about three inches deep, from his book bag. The cousins stared at it a long moment.
“What will you take?” asked Tigris. “You must make it count.”
Photographs of his mother holding him as a toddler, of his father in uniform, of Tigris and the Grandma’am, of a few of his friends. An old compass with a brass body, which had been his father’s. The disk of rose-scented powder that had once lived in his mother’s silver compact, wrapped carefully in his orange silk scarf. Three handkerchiefs. Stationery with the Snow family seal. His Academy ID. A ticket stub from a childhood circus, stamped with an image of the arena. A chip of marble from the rubble of a bombing. He felt for all the world like Ma Plinth, with her handful of District 2 memories in her kitchen.
Neither of them slept. They went up to the roof and stared out at the Capitol until the sun began to rise. “You were set up to fail,” said Tigris. “The Hunger Games are an unnatural, vicious punishment. How could a good person like you be expected to go along with them?”
“You mustn’t say that to anyone but me. It isn’t safe,” Coriolanus warned her.
“I know,” she said. “And that’s wrong, too.”
Coriolanus showered and dressed in a fraying pair of uniform pants, a threadbare T-shirt, and broken flip-flops, then drank a cup of tea in the kitchen. He kissed the Grandma’am good-bye and took one last look at his home before heading out.
In the hall, Tigris offered him an old sun hat and a pair of sunglasses that had been her father’s. “For the trip.”
Coriolanus recognized a disguise when he saw it and gratefully put them on, tucking his curls up under the hat. They remained silent as they walked through the largely deserted streets to the Recruitment Center. Then he turned to her, his voice raspy from emotion. “I’ve left you with everything to deal with. The apartment, the taxes, the Grandma’am. I’m so sorry. If you never forgive me, I’ll understand.”
“Nothing to forgive,” she said. “Write as soon as you can?”
They hugged so tightly he felt several stitches pop on his arm. Then he marched into
the Center, where three hundred or so of the Capitol’s citizens milled around, waiting to embark on their new life. He felt a flicker of hope that he might fail his physical, then a flare of panic at the thought. What fate awaited him if he did? A public dressing-down? Prison? Dean Highbottom hadn’t said, but he imagined the worst. He passed easily and they even took out his stitches without comment. The buzz cut that separated him from his signature curls left him feeling naked but looking so altered that the few curious glances he’d been receiving stopped entirely. He changed into spanking-new fatigues and received a duffel bag filled with additional clothing, a hygiene kit, a water bottle, and a packet of meat-spread sandwiches for the train trip. Then he signed a stack of forms, one of which directed them to send half of his small paycheck to Tigris and the Grandma’am. That provided him a scrap of consolation.
Shorn, costumed, and vaccinated, Coriolanus joined a busload of recruits going to the train station. It was a mix of boys and girls from the Capitol, mostly recent graduates from secondary schools whose commencements fell earlier than the Academy’s. Burying himself in a corner of the station, he watched Capitol News, dreading a report on his predicament, but he saw only standard Saturday fare. Weather. Traffic rerouted for reconstruction. A recipe for summer vegetable salad. It was as if the Hunger Games had never happened.
I’m being erased, he thought. And to erase me, they must erase the Games.
Who knew of his disgrace? The faculty? His friends? No one had contacted him. Perhaps word had not yet gotten out. But it would. People would speculate. Rumors would fly. A version of the truth, twisted and juicy, would win the day. Oh, how Livia Cardew would gloat. Clemensia would get the Plinth Prize at graduation. In the month of summer break, they would wonder about him. A few might even miss him. Festus. Lysistrata, maybe. In September, his classmates would begin university. And he would slowly be forgotten.
To erase the Games would be to erase Lucy Gray as well. Where was she? Had she really been sent back home? Was she at this moment returning to District 12, locked in the stinking cattle car that had brought her to the Capitol? That’s what Dean Highbottom had indicated would happen, but the ultimate decision would be Dr. Gaul’s, and she might not be so forgiving about their cheating. Under her direction, Lucy Gray might be imprisoned, or killed, or turned into an Avox. Or, even worse, sentenced to a life of experimentation in Dr. Gaul’s lab of horrors.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Page 30
