【饥饿游戏】15

Chapter 4
For a few moments, Peeta and I take in the scene of our
mentor 1 trying to rise out of the slippery vile 2 stuff from his
stomach. The reek 3 of vomit 4 and raw spirits almost brings my
dinner up. We exchange a glance. Obviously Haymitch isn’t
much, but Effie Trinket is right about one thing, once we’re in
the arena 5 he’s all we’ve got. As if by some unspoken 
agreement, Peeta and I each take one of Haymitch’s arms and 
help him to his feet.
“I tripped?” Haymitch asks. “Smells bad.” He wipes his hand
on his nose, smearing 6 his face with vomit.
“Let’s get you back to your room,” says Peeta. “Clean you up
a bit.”
We half-lead half-carry Haymitch back to his compartment 7.
Since we can’t exactly set him down on the embroidered 
bedspread, we haul him into the bathtub and turn the shower 
on him. He hardly notices.
“It’s okay,” Peeta says to me. “I’ll take it from here.”
I can’t help feeling a little grateful since the last thing I want
to do is strip down Haymitch, wash the vomit out of his chest
hair, and tuck him into bed. Possibly Peeta is trying to make a
good impression on him, to be his favorite once the Games
begin. But judging by the state he’s in, Haymitch will have no
memory of this tomorrow. “All right,” I say. “I can send one 
of the Capitol people to help you.” There’s any number on the
 train. Cooking for us. Waiting on us. Guarding us. Taking care 
of us is their job.
“No. I don’t want them,” says Peeta.
I nod and head to my own room. I understand how Peeta
feels. I can’t stand the sight of the Capitol people myself. But
making them deal with Haymitch might be a small form of 
revenge. So I’m pondering the reason why he insists on taking
care of Haymitch and all of a sudden I think, It’s because he’s
being kind. Just as he was kind to give me the bread.The idea 
pulls me up short. A kind Peeta Mellark is far more dangerous 
to me than an unkind one. Kind people have a way of working 
their way inside me and rooting there. And I can’t let Peeta do 
this. Not where we’re going. So I decide, from this moment on, 
to have as little as possible to do with the baker’s son.
When I get back to my room, the train is pausing at a platform
to refuel. I quickly open the window, toss the cookies
Peeta’s father gave me out of the train, and slam the glass
shut. No more. No more of either of them.
Unfortunately, the packet of cookies hits the ground and
bursts open in a patch of dandelions by the track. I only see
the image for a moment, because the train is off again, but 
it’s enough. Enough to remind me of that other dandelion 
in the school yard years ago . . .
I had just turned away from Peeta Mellark’s bruised 8 face
when I saw the dandelion and I knew hope wasn’t lost. I
plucked it carefully and hurried home. I grabbed a bucket and
Prim 9’s hand and headed to the Meadow and yes, it was dotted
with the golden-headed weeds. After we’d harvested those,
we scrounged along inside the fence for probably a mile until
we’d filled the bucket with the dandelion greens, stems, and
flowers. That night, we gorged 10 ourselves on dandelion salad
and the rest of the bakery bread.
“What else?” Prim asked me. “What other food can we
find?”
“All kinds of things,” I promised her. “I just have to remember
them.”
My mother had a book she’d brought with her from the
apothecary 11 shop. The pages were made of old parchment and
covered in ink drawings of plants. Neat handwritten blocks
told their names, where to gather them, when they came in
bloom, their medical uses. But my father added other entries
to the book. Plants for eating, not healing. Dandelions, 
pokeweed, wild onions, pines. Prim and I spent the rest of the 
night poring over those pages.
The next day, we were off school. For a while I hung around
the edges of the Meadow, but finally I worked up the courage
to go under the fence. It was the first time I’d been there
alone, without my father’s weapons to protect me. But I 
retrieved 12 the small bow and arrows he’d made me from a 
hollow tree. I probably didn’t go more than twenty yards into 
the woods that day. Most of the time, I perched up in the 
branches of an old oak, hoping for game to come by. After 
several hours, I had the good luck to kill a rabbit.
I’d shot a few rabbits before, with my father’s guidance. But
this I’d done on my own.
We hadn’t had meat in months. The sight of the rabbit
seemed to stir something in my mother. She roused herself,
skinned the carcass, and made a stew 13 with the meat and some
more greens Prim had gathered. Then she acted confused and
went back to bed, but when the stew was done, we made her
eat a bowl.
The woods became our savior, and each day I went a bit
farther into its arms.