That’s when I understand the meaning of the shovel, and with a quick smack on the back of the head, Pita is out like a light.
I spend the next few hours rolling Pita out of the cave and into the exposed wilderness. Some fresh air would do him good while I’m at the Buffet.
I build a fire next to Pita’s unconscious body to keep him warm, and tell the quartet to play as loud as they can throughout the night, so that Pita will be entertained when he comes to. I am about to leave for the Buffet when I remember that the audience wants to see more of the star-crossed lovers angle. I draw my face in close to Pita’s and exclaim, “I’m pregnant!” Then I leave.
It takes me almost five hours to get to the Cornucrapia because I have a long conversation with Bob, a friendly cameraman, and get sidetracked. When I finally reach the Buffet, I am famished, and I’m disappointed to learn that they haven’t even started serving appetizers yet. Like me, the other tributes will all be hiding in the woods that surround the Cornucrapia impatiently making do with breadsticks and glasses of water. I think of who is still left in the games besides Pita and me: Archie Nemesis, his girlfriend Mandy, Smash, Dogface, and the boy tribute from District 9. Even though the District 9 tribute doesn’t have a memorable name or any recognizable characteristics, I remind myself that he has as good of a chance of winning the Hunger Games as anybody.
Suddenly the ground splits open and a large, white table emerges from inside the horn of the Cornucrapia. Seven backpacks are on the table, each of which has a number between one and twelve written on it. Those mysterious numbers could mean anything. “I’m number one!” I exclaim, instinctively rushing toward that backpack.
Before I can snatch it, I take a moment to honor my contractual obligations to the Hunger Games.
“Darn!” I exclaim, looking straight at the camera and scowling. “It doesn’t look like any of these backpacks contain Professor Moura’s Cinnamon-O’s. That is what I need more than anything else this morning! Professor Moura’s Cinnamon-O’s: end the Hunger Games inside your stomach.”
Even before I finish plugging my breakfast cereal, I see a figure darting out of the Cornucrapia. It is the tribute from District 9. He has been hiding in the Cornucrapia all night, right under our noses. As he grabs one of the backpacks and starts to run away, I gasp. What a stupid strategy! Every idiot knows you don’t go first in a situation like this! Archie Nemesis pops out of the bushes and kills him immediately. BWOMMP BWOMMP.
I breathe a sigh of relief (my sixteenth of the Games). I’ll never have to pretend to know that tribute’s name again. Each time I ran into him, I would awkwardly call him “man” or “dude,” and I think he was beginning to catch on.
Thankful for the distraction, I make a run for the table. I only get a few yards before a knife hits me straight in the forehead. It doesn’t hurt much, because the handle side hits me rather than the sharp side, but it is enough to make me draw my bow in anger. Another knife whizzes past my head. As I load my bow, I see that my assailant is Mandy, and she’s about to throw a third knife. I fire an arrow at her. It completely misses Mandy, but it does hit a squirrel straight through the eye. Celebrate the little things, Kantkiss, I remind myself to keep from getting frustrated. You might still be in mortal danger, but that was some damn fine squirrel hunting there. Right when I am beginning to feel better about myself, another one of Mandy’s knives hits me in the forehead. This time it’s the sharp side. I fall to the ground.
“Well, well, well … If it isn’t my old friend Kantkiss Neverclean,” Mandy gloats as she approaches me. “Not so clever with a knife sticking out of your forehead, are you?”
“Oh my God!” I tremble as I pee myself. “Please don’t kill me!”
Mandy opens her jacket to reveal an impressive assortment of knives. A fixed blade knife, a gut hook knife, and a few menacing butter knives. She selects a particularly nasty-looking one with a long, curved blade and holds it up to my face.
“Consider this knife,” she begins. “Consider its handle, in particular. Does anything about this handle strike you as odd, Kantkiss? That’s right. It is made out of wood. Look around us, Kantkiss. We are surrounded by trees.”
I panic. “Pita is hiding by the cave next to the triangular rock by the stream!” I interrupt. “Kill him instead of me!”
But Mandy continues as if she didn’t hear me. “Webster’s dictionary defines victory as an act of defeating an enemy or opponent in a battle, game, or other competition. But to me, victory is as much a process as it is an act. I’d like to take a few moments to explain why I think that is.”
I feel woozy. I remember some advice my mother gave me when she was a healer. “Avoid getting knifed in the forehead,” she would say. I struggle to remain conscious before deciding it’s not worth the effort.
When I come to, Mandy is still delivering her lengthy victory monologue. “But enough about my childhood. It’s in the past now. And, if you think about it, isn’t time the true enemy?”
I am about to go back to sleep when Mandy leers over me. “But your time is just about up, Kantkiss Neverclean.”
She raises the knife over her head and gradually brings it down toward my neck as she counts down from forty. “Thirty-nine … thirty-eight … thirty-seven … thirty-six …”
I make my peace with the world. I pray that Prin grows up to be a beautiful woman and that Mother gets evicted from our house. I think of Carol, with his incredible shoulder muscles and jet-black hair, and Pita, with his man boobs and politeness, and regret that I will never get the chance to choose between them. I sadly reflect that I never got to know the real Slimey Sue.
“Four … three … two …” Just as Mandy is about to say “one,” an excited voice cuts her off.
“Pretty girl! Pretty girl!” Smash runs straight at Mandy, arms outstretched and a huge smile on his face. You have to hand it to him. For a guy with an IQ in the low forties, Smash has an impeccable sense of dramatic timing.
“Pretty girl! Pretty girl! Pretty girl! Pretty girl!” Before Mandy can stop him, Smash grabs her in his arms and starts petting her head. “Pretty girl …,” he coos.
“Put me down!” Mandy says indignantly, but before long she stops struggling. Oh my God, he’s crushing her! Even with her eyes rolled into the back of her head and her tongue sticking out, I have to admit she still looks pretty hot.
“Pretty girl?” Smash asks hesitantly, shaking Mandy’s body. “Pretty girl!”
BWOMMP BWOMMP. The sad trombone confirms his worst fears. “You loved too hard, Smash,” I tell him.
“Why love hurt!” Smash bellows, as he sets Mandy’s body on the ground. Then he picks up a rock and turns on me. “Now you hurt!”
I say my final prayers, just like I learned in Sunday school: “Our Bernette, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …”
Smash is about to hit me with the rock, but then he stops, his mind elsewhere. “In cafeteria … during training sessions. Aunt Kantkiss invite me to sit at table.”
I remember the incident Smash is taking about. Pita and I had asked him to join us at lunch.
“Just this one time, Smash let you go.” Smash says. “Because of lunch. Now you and Smash even. Understand?”
I nod fervently. I run to the table and grab the two District 12 backpacks. As I hurry back toward the safety of the woods surrounding the Cornucrapia, I hear Archie Nemesis arriving at the table after me. He looks inside his backpack and pumps his fist in the air. “Yes! Gatorade! Electrolytes!” he exclaims. But then he turns to Mandy’s body.
“You do this to my girl, bro?” he asks, walking over to Smash and shoving him.
“Maybe.” Smash considers. “Smash no remember.”
“Not cool, dude,” Archie says. He takes his metal football and throws it at Smash as hard as he can. It’s a perfect spiral that hits straight in the chest, but Smash keeps standing like nothing hit him. “Sick!” Archie mouths.
Smash picks up Archie and lifts him above his head. H
e is about to break him in half when he pauses. “In tribute parade stable. Quarter fell out of Smash pocket. Archie could have take quarter and bought gum ball, but Archie gave quarter back to Smash.”
Smash sits down for a second, thinking hard as he cradles Archie in his arms. Finally he speaks. “Just this one time, Smash let you go. Because of quarter. Now you and Smash even. Understand?”
“Sure, bro,” Archie says, catching his breath. “We’re cool.”
As Smash walks away, Archie throws a spear in his back. I can just make out Smash’s last words before he collapses on the ground: “He who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe!”
BWOMMP BWOMMP. I have bigger things to worry about than mourning Smash. One of the backpacks I am carrying is very heavy and there is still a huge knife sticking out of my forehead. I am bleeding profusely. No matter, I tell myself. If I make it out of the Hunger Games, I’ll be so rich I can pay somebody to have a regular forehead for me.
As I walk through the woods, I hear a sound coming from nearby the Cornucrapia. I turn around to see Dogface wandering aimlessly into the open. She doesn’t seem to realize that the Buffet is going on around her. After a little while she stumbles on the table with the backpacks and peers inside the only remaining one. Delightedly, she pulls out a ball of yarn and starts to play with it.
Ignoring for some reason another perfect opportunity to kill Dogface, I head back toward Pita. The backpacks are really starting to weigh me down. I sit down beside a nearby boulder and open Pita’s backpack. It contains a Sweet Dreams sleep mask and a pair of earplugs, which confuses me until I remember a comment Pita made yesterday. “The thing I could use most in the world right now is a nice, long nap,” he said, yawning as he read his newspaper. I struggle to contain my anger as I think about how I nearly died twice for this backpack. I am almost angry enough to fall in love with Carol instead of Pita, but then I remember that whiny tone of voice Pita uses when I don’t give him enough attention, and I am back to not knowing which one to choose.
My own backpack is much heavier than Pita’s, and I have no idea what it contains. It keeps making strange, yelping noises, particularly when I drop it on the boulder. It almost sounds like it’s saying, “Please stop dropping me.”
I am about to thank my sponsors for this awesome noisemaking backpack when a pair of hands emerge and unzip the backpack. Eventually a tall, handsome man in his mid-forties crawls out of the backpack.
“Hello, Kantkiss,” he says, brushing himself off. “I am your father figure.”
“What?”
“I’ve been hired to be a strong paternal presence for you. To give you love and support,” he says.
My bottom lip begins to quiver.
“My poor little girl,” he says, giving me a hug. “Without a father figure in your life, you have turned into a moody brat!”
“I’m sorry I poked you with sharp sticks when I thought you were a noisemaking backpack, Father Figure,” I say, hugging him back. There are tears in my eyes.
“No, I’m sorry, Kantkiss,” my father figure says. “I’m sorry for being absent for so many years. I’m sorry I missed all your yelling recitals and dogfighting games in that terrible high school you go to in the Crack. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see you turn into the strong, beautiful young woman standing before me.” Now both of us are crying.
“Come on,” my father figure says after a while, “Let’s get that knife out of your forehead.”
After we yank the knife out, my father figure takes me fishing in a nearby lake, where we have a nice, long daughter-and-father-figure chat. “I want to hear everything, Kantkiss,” he says. “Catch me up.”
I tell him my life story. “Are you sure you’re not thinking of Battle Royale?” he interrupts me.
“No, the teenage angst makes it different,” I say.
“Of course it does,” my father figure reassures me. Father figures understand everything. “It sounds like you have had a very difficult life. Tell me, how did you avoid killing people when you were chosen for the Hunger Games?”
“Sorry?” I ask.
“When you were forced to compete in the Hunger Games, how did you avoid committing murder like the Capital wanted you to? You know, how did you maintain your sense of morality in a difficult situation?”
I gulp. “Actually … uh … I’ve sort of … er … just been killing people without thinking about stuff like that.”
My father figure drops his fishing pole in the lake. “What?”
“Yeah,” I say, “I’ve … uh …. kind of just been trying to win the Hunger Games.”
“Didn’t you consider right or wrong at all?” my father figure asks, horrified.
“I did a little bit before the Hunger Games started,” I say, “but once I got to the arena, I sort of just stopped thinking about it completely.”
“So you … you’ve killed a human being?” my father figure asks.
I tug on my collar nervously. “Yup. But if you really think about it, it’s really like self-defen—”
“Kantkiss,” my father figure manages after a long time. “By killing other confused teenagers, you are committing a very evil act. Plus you are on live television. If you refused to kill other tributes, you would not only remain a good person, you would also send a powerful statement that could bring down one of the most evil regimes in history.”
“But if I do anything rebellious, the Capital will hurt my family!” I argue.
“It is completely understandable to think of your family in a situation like this,” my father figure says, “but you have to consider the scale of what we are talking about. The Capital enslaves millions of people, forcing them to live in horrific conditions. This is a regime so evil that they genetically engineer bees to attack the children they force to fight to the death every year for their entertainment. If you get a chance to take down this regime, you have to take it and keep your personal matters in perspective. I love you, but bringing down this terrible regime clearly takes priority over any one person’s individual welfare. Anybody with a basic sense of community can see that. Plus, even if you don’t want to make a dramatic, rebellious statement, it is very easy not to kill people. Just don’t do it. Don’t commit murder, Kantkiss.”
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.
Pita 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.