Mockingjay(37)

“It’s painful to watch, actually,” says Cressida. “He knew so many of them personally.”

“That’s what makes it so effective,” says Plutarch. “Straight from the heart. You’re all doing beautifully. Coin could not be more pleased.”

Gale didn’t tell them, then. About my pretending not to see Peeta and my anger at their cover-up. But I guess it’s too little, too late, because I still can’t let it go. It doesn’t matter. He’s not speaking to me, either.

It’s not until we land in the Meadow that I realize Haymitch isn’t among our company. When I ask Plutarch about his absence, he just shakes his head and says, “He couldn’t face it.”

“Haymitch? Not able to face something? Wanted a day off, more likely,” I say.

“I think his actual words were ‘I couldn’t face it without a bottle,’” says Plutarch.

I roll my eyes, long out of patience with my mentor, his weakness for drink, and what he can or can’t confront. But about five minutes after my return to 12, I’m wishing I had a bottle myself. I thought I’d come to terms with 12’s demise—heard of it, seen it from the air, and wandered through its ashes. So why does everything bring on a fresh pang of grief? Was I simply too out of it before to fully register the loss of my world? Or is it the look on Gale’s face as he takes in the destruction on foot that makes the atrocity feel brand-new?

Cressida directs the team to start with me at my old house. I ask her what she wants me to do. “Whatever you feel like,” she says. Standing back in my kitchen, I don’t feel like doing anything. In fact, I find myself focusing up at the sky—the only roof left—because too many memories are drowning me. After a while, Cressida says, “That’s fine, Katniss. Let’s move on.”

Gale doesn’t get off so easily at his old address. Cressida films him in silence for a few minutes, but just as he pulls the one remnant of his previous life from the ashes—a twisted metal poker—she starts to question him about his family, his job, life in the Seam. She makes him go back to the night of the firebombing and reenact it, starting at his house, working his way down across the Meadow and through the woods to the lake. I straggle behind the film crew and the bodyguards, feeling their presence to be a violation of my beloved woods. This is a private place, a sanctuary, already corrupted by the Capitol’s evil. Even after we’ve left behind the charred stumps near the fence, we’re still tripping over decomposing bodies. Do we have to record it for everyone to see?

By the time we reach the lake, Gale seems to have lost his ability to speak. Everyone’s dripping in sweat—especially Castor and Pollux in their insect shells—and Cressida calls for a break. I scoop up handfuls of water from the lake, wishing I could dive in and surface alone and naked and unobserved. I wander around the perimeter for a while. When I come back around to the little concrete house beside the lake, I pause in the doorway and see Gale propping the crooked poker he salvaged against the wall by the hearth. For a moment I have an image of a lone stranger, sometime far in the future, wandering lost in the wilderness and coming upon this small place of refuge, with the pile of split logs, the hearth, the poker. Wondering how it came to be. Gale turns and meets my eyes and I know he’s thinking about our last meeting here. When we fought over whether or not to run away. If we had, would District 12 still be there? I think it would. But the Capitol would still be in control of Panem as well.

Cheese sandwiches are passed around and we eat them in the shade of the trees. I intentionally sit at the far edge of the group, next to Pollux, so I don’t have to talk. No one’s talking much, really. In the relative quiet, the birds take back the woods. I nudge Pollux with my elbow and point out a small black bird with a crown. It hops to a new branch, momentarily opening its wings, showing off its white patches. Pollux gestures to my pin and raises his eyebrows questioningly. I nod, confirming it’s a mockingjay. I hold up one finger to say Wait, I’ll show you, and whistle a birdcall. The mockingjay cocks its head and whistles the call right back at me. Then, to my surprise, Pollux whistles a few notes of his own. The bird answers him immediately. Pollux’s face breaks into an expression of delight and he has a series of melodic exchanges with the mockingjay. My guess is it’s the first conversation he’s had in years. Music draws mockingjays like blossoms do bees, and in a short while he’s got half a dozen of them perched in the branches over our heads. He taps me on the arm and uses a twig to write a word in the dirt. SING?