“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:
District Twelve is the Telemarketing District.
It’s the District above Eleven and below the now-defunct District Thirteen.
It’s responsible for the calls your house receives at dinnertime,
And boy, do we have a mighty good time!
Would you like to order the deluxe package?
It comes with a seal of authenticity.
No, you cannot speak to my manager right now,
He is currently speaking to somebody else!
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 alw
ays 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.
“Oh, Archie!” I swoon. “You’re wonderful.”
“Get thothe dogth off of me!” He pushes me away with all the strength he can muster. “Uh … Pleathe do that for me, thweetheart?”
“Sure thing, baby.” I walk a few steps away from Archie. “Come here, puppies!” I beckon, clapping. “Good dogs!”
While Archie gasps for air and starts to recover, I play with the puppies, but I am distracted by Pita’s loud sobs.
“Suck it up, dough boy,” I tell him. “Archie is the complete package.”
“I’m just worried he will hurt your feelings,” Pita says, his voice wobbling. “And my feelings are hurt because I miss all the attention you gave me. I … I’m so hungry and I just want to go home.” He breaks into another fit of sobs, but I resist the urge to throw myself into his arms. I’m Archie’s girl now.
But Pita’s homesickness brings up a good point. Only two of us can make it out of here alive. There can only be two champions. If I don’t kill one of these heartthrobs, the Hunger Games will go on forever. Unless …
“Quick, Pita!” I say. “Give me those poison berries!”
He hands them to me and, one by one, I throw them at a nearby camera as hard as I can. “Take that! And … that!” I figure it’s only a matter of time before the Rainmakers will concede defeat. “And a little bit of this!”
I throw nearly all the poison berries with no result. The Rainmakers are playing hardball. As I pause to reconsider my strategy, I see that Archie, my true love, is standing up again.
“Hello, sweet thing,” I greet him. “Feeling better?”
He staggers toward me. When he is a few steps away, I lean in to kiss him. He takes out a plank of wood and lifts it above his head, but then drops it and brings his hand to his face to sneeze.
“Is there a dog nearby?” he manages.
“Oh, sorry!” I exclaim, taking Run the puppy from my pocket and placing her on the ground a few steps away from Archie. “What were you doing with that wooden plank, darling?”
“I, uh … wanted to give you a prethent, baby. Didn’t you mention thomthing about liking wooden plankth?”
“Oh, Archie,” I say, kissing him on the forehead as I admire how solidly constructed the wooden plank is, “I love it!” I have the most thoughtful boyfriend ever. But I am suddenly jolted out of my romantic reverie when I look over at Pita.
“Stop it!” I shout desperately. Pita is picking up one of the poison berries and is about to put it in his mouth. “Don’t kill yourself because I chose Archie over you!”
“Huh?” Pita says. “Oh, it’s not that. I’m just so hungry.”
“That’s too bad, Pita,” I say. “I don’t care how hungry you are, you can’t eat that—” I stop speaking. I have just had another brilliant idea. If Pita eats the berry and dies, then I can live in the woods forever with Archie and raise a family with him. The Rainmakers will make life hard for us by creating fires and tornados and things, sure. And there won’t be much for the kids to do when they grow up, but at least this way I will be able to stare into Archie’s harsh, unmerciful eyes to my heart’s content. “Er … never mind,” I finish my sentence.
Pita returns to his poison berry. He is just about to pop it in his mouth when he sneezes, blowing the berry into a puddle. This is the last straw. Pita sits down and cries softly. After a moment he picks up the berry from the puddle and prepares to eat it, but now I can’t let that happen. I can’t explain it, but seeing him sitting there, covered in snot, I feel a renewed sense of passion for Pita. I might be Archie’s girlfriend now, but I can’t just sit back and let such a sexy man die.
“Wait!” I say. I have just had another brilliant idea. “Gather round, guys,” I tell Archie and Pita. “You know how the Capital values the lives of the tributes so highly?” They both nod. “Well, if we threaten to kill ourselves by eating the poison berries, then they’ll do anything to save our lives. Sound like a plan?”
“Does it ever!” exclaims Pita excitedly.
“Let’s do it!” chimes in Archie.
“On the count of three, then,” I say, handing them both poison berries. I look directly in the camera and address the Capital. “Unless you want your gladiatorial event to end with the only three remaining tributes dying painful, climactic, awesome deaths, you’d better do what we say—” I am cut short by the beeping of a car’s horn.
BEEP! BEEP! We look up to see a red convertible speeding through the clearing. In it are three tributes: two from District 4 and one from District 8. Huh. I guess not all the other tributes are dead after all. “We’re going to win the Hunger Games!” the driver from District 4 boasts, but he is so distracte
d that he drives off a cliff. The car explodes in a burst of flames, leaving no survivors.
As the sad trombone sounds three times, Archie, Pita, and I return to our plan. “Are you ready?” I ask. They nod.
I take a deep breath and start counting. “Three post-Mississippi … two post-Mississippi … one post-Mississippi …”
Right when I am about to reach zero post-Mississippi, the loudspeaker crackles to life and Greg the Announcer frantically shouts, “Herzledewoog! Wahhammihmih! No-wooleybog!”
Greg’s supervisor intervenes. “All right! All three of you can win! Just don’t swallow the berries!” I throw my berry on the ground and pump my fist in celebration as Greg’s supervisor continues speaking, obviously thinking that his microphone is turned off. “Greg, I’m sorry. You know that nobody is a bigger supporter of our Jobs for Felons program than I am, but this just isn’t working out. Please clear your desk.”
“Mazzydagor!” Greg curses angrily, before the loudspeaker finally cuts out.
Whatever, I think. I just won the Hunger Games! “Yippeee!” I exclaim, turning to Pita to celebrate. But Pita is sprawled out on the ground, bright orange juice dripping down his face.
“Pita!” I shout. “Pita, why are you ignoring me? Pita, you’re being a dick!”
“I was … so hungry,” he gasps, before closing his eyes and going silent.
A million different thoughts race through my head at once. I barely notice the loudspeaker as it blares on for the final time: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the victors of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: Kantkiss Neverclean and Archie Nemesis!”
Applause plays live over the speakers, followed by a slow clap, which doesn’t catch on. When I hear Archie Nemesis speak, it seems like he is a million miles away.
“Woo hoo!” he’s saying. “I’d like to thank my mom and dad for pushing me to become a Varsity tribute since I was a little boy. I couldn’t ask for better parents! I’d like to thank my trainer, Adolf Evilman, for all his guidance in the arena. They said that a team of stock villains couldn’t win the Hunger Games, but we showed them, buddy! And of course, I couldn’t have done it without the big man upstairs.” He folds his hands in prayer. “Lord Bernette, our president and divine creator.”