We are young, we have heart;  Born in this world as it all falls apart.

“You’re not going to die. I forbid it. All right?”
“All right,” he whispers.

“I don’t know how to say it exactly. Only…I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense?” he asks. I shake my head. How could he die as anyone but himself? “I don’t want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not.”

I bite my lip, feeling inferior. While I’ve been ruminating on the availability of trees, Peeta has been struggling with how to maintain his identity. His purity of self. “Do you mean you won’t kill anyone?” I ask.

“No, when the time comes, I’m sure I’ll kill just like everybody else. I can’t go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games,” says Peeta.

“Nervousness seeps into terror as I anticipate what is to come. I could be dead, flat-out dead, in an hour.”

But suddenly I am thinking of Gale and his forty-two names in that big glass ball and how odds are not in his favor. And maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me because his face darkens and he turns away. “But there are still thousands of slips,” I wish I could whisper to him.

“Good luck, Girl on Fire.”