Free Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

recent combat. Venia affixes my mockingjay pin over my heart. I take up my bow and the sheath of normal arrows that Beetee made, knowing they would never let me walk around with the loaded ones. Then we're out on the soundstage, where I seem to stand for hours while they adjust makeup and lighting and smoke levels. Eventual y, the commands coming via intercom from the invisible people in the mysterious glassed-in booth become fewer and fewer. Fulvia and Plutarch spend more time studying and less time adjusting me. Final y, there's quiet on the set. For a ful five minutes I am simply considered. Then Plutarch says,
    "I think that does it."
    I'm beckoned over to a monitor. They play back the last few minutes of taping and I watch the woman on the screen. Her body seems larger in stature, more imposing than mine. Her face smudged but sexy. Her brows black and drawn in an angle of defiance. Wisps of smoke--suggesting she has either just been extinguished or is about to burst into flames--rise from her clothes. I do not know who this person is.
    Finnick, who's been wandering around the set for a few hours, comes up behind me and says with a hint of his old humor, "They'l either want to kil you, kiss you, or be you."
    Everyone's so excited, so pleased with their work. It's nearly time to break for dinner, but they insist we continue. Tomorrow we'l focus on speeches and interviews and have me pretend to be in rebel battles. Today they want just one slogan, just one line that they can work into a short propo to show to Coin.
    "People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!" That's the line. I can tel by the way they present it that they've spent months, maybe years, working it out and are real y proud of it. It seems like a mouthful to me, though. And stiff. I can't imagine actual y saying it in real life--unless I was using a Capitol accent and making fun of it. Like when Gale and I used to imitate Effie Trinket's "May the odds be ever in your favor!"
    But Fulvia's right in my face, describing a battle I've just been in, and how my comrades-in-arms are al lying dead around me, and how, to ral y the living, I must turn to the camera and shout out the line!

    I'm hustled back to my place, and the smoke machine kicks in. Someone cal s for quiet, the cameras start rol ing, and I hear "Action!" So I hold my bow over my head and yel with al the anger I can muster, "People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!"
    There's dead silence on the set. It goes on. And on.
    Final y, the intercom crackles and Haymitch's acerbic laugh fil s the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, "And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies."

    6
    The shock of hearing Haymitch's voice yesterday, of learning that he was not only functional but had some measure of control over my life again, enraged me. I left the studio directly and refused to acknowledge his comments from the booth today. Even so, I knew immediately he was right about my performance.
    It took the whole of this morning for him to convince the others of my limitations. That I can't pul it off. I can't stand in a television studio wearing a costume and makeup in a cloud of fake smoke and ral y the districts to victory. It's amazing, real y, how long I have survived the cameras. The credit for that, of course, goes to Peeta.
    Alone, I can't be the Mockingjay.
    We gather around the huge table in Command. Coin and her people. Plutarch, Fulvia, and my prep team. A group from 12 that includes Haymitch and Gale, but also a few others I can't explain, like Leevy and Greasy Sae.
    At the last minute, Finnick wheels Beetee in, accompanied by Dalton, the cattle expert from 10. I suppose that Coin has assembled this strange assortment of people as witnesses to my failure.
    However, it's Haymitch who welcomes everyone, and by his words I understand that they have come at his personal invitation. This is the first time we've been in a room together since I