Coriolanus swallowed the saliva flooding his mouth as he reached for the gilt-edged plate embossed with the Academy’s seal. Even in the leanest days, the Capitol had not lacked fancy dishware, and he had eaten many a cabbage leaf from fine china at home. He collected a linen napkin, a fork, a knife. As he raised the lid on the first sterling silver chafing dish, the steam bathed his lips. Creamed onions. He took a modest spoonful and tried not to drool. Boiled potatoes. Summer squash. Baked ham. Hot rolls and a pat of butter. On second thought, two pats. A full plate, but not a greedy one. Not for a teenage boy.
He set his plate on the table next to Clemensia and went to retrieve his dessert from a cart, because last year they had run out and he’d missed the tapioca entirely. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the rows of apple pie wedges, each decorated with a paper flag sporting the seal of Panem. Pie! When had he last tasted that? He was reaching for a medium-sized piece when someone thrust a plate with an enormous slice under his nose. “Oh, take a big one. Growing boy like you can handle it.”
Dean Highbottom’s eyes were rheumy, but they had lost the glazed look of the morning. In fact, they were trained on Coriolanus with an unexpected sharpness.
He took the plate of pie with a grin he hoped was boyishly good-natured. “Thank you, sir. I can always find room for pie.”
“Yes, pleasures are never hard to accommodate,” said the dean. “No one would know better than I.”
“I suppose not, sir.” But that sounded wrong. He had meant to agree with the part about pleasures, but it sounded like a snide remark about the dean’s character.
“You suppose not.” Dean Highbottom’s eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at Coriolanus. “So, what are your plans, Coriolanus, after the Games?”
“I hope to go on to university,” he replied. What a strange question. Surely, his academic record made that evident.
“Yes, I saw your name among the prize contenders,” said Dean Highbottom. “But if you shouldn’t be awarded one?”
Coriolanus stammered. “Well, then we’d . . . we’d pay the tuition, of course.”
“Would you?” Dean Highbottom laughed. “Look at you, in your makeshift shirt and your too-tight shoes, trying to hold it together. Strutting around the Capitol, when I doubt the Snows have a pot to piss in. Even with a prize, it would be a stretch, and you don’t yet have one, do you? What then, I wonder, would happen to you? What then?”
Coriolanus could not help but glance around to see who else had heard the terrible words, but most people were engaged in mealtime chatter.
“Don’t worry — nobody knows. Well, hardly anyone. Enjoy that pie, boy.” Dean Highbottom walked away without bothering to take a piece himself.
Coriolanus wanted nothing so much as to drop his pie and run for the exit, but instead he carefully set the oversized slice back on the cart. The nickname. It could only be that the nickname had found its way back to Dean Highbottom, with Coriolanus given the credit. It had been stupid on his part. The dean was too powerful a person, even now, to be ridiculing in public. But was it really such a horrible thing? Every teacher had at least one nickname, many far less flattering. And it wasn’t as if High-as-a-Kite-Bottom had made much effort to hide his habit. He seemed to invite derision. Could there be some other reason he hated Coriolanus so much?
Whatever it was, Coriolanus needed to set it right. He could not risk losing his prize over such a thing. After university he planned to embark on some lucrative profession. Without an education, what doors would be open to him? He tried to imagine his future in some low-level city position . . . doing what? Managing the coal distribution to the districts? Cleaning cages of genetic freaks in the muttations lab? Collecting taxes from Sejanus Plinth in his palatial apartment on the Corso while he lived in some rat hole fifty blocks out? That’s if he were lucky! Capitol jobs were hard to come by, and he would be a penniless Academy graduate, no more. How was he to live? Borrow? Being in debt in the Capitol was historically a ticket to being a Peacekeeper, and that came with a twenty-year commitment to who knew where. They’d ship him off to some horrid backwater district where the people were hardly better than animals.
The day, which had held such promise, came crashing down around him. First the threat of losing his apartment, then the lowliest tribute assignment — who, on further reflection, was definitely crazy — and now the revelation that Dean Highbottom detested him enough to kill his prize chances and condemn him to a life in the districts!
Everyone knew what happened if you went to the districts. You were written off. Forgotten. In the eyes of the Capitol, you were basically dead.
Coriolanus stood on the empty train platform, awaiting his tribute’s arrival, a long-stemmed white rose balanced carefully between his thumb and index finger. It had been Tigris’s idea to bring her a gift. She had arrived home very late on the night of the reaping, but he had waited up to consult with her, to tell her of his humiliations and fears. She refused to let the conversation spin into despair. He would get a prize; he would have to! And have a brilliant university career. As to the apartment, they must find out the specifics first. Perhaps the tax would not affect them, or even if it did, maybe not soon. Maybe they could scrape up enough for the taxes somehow. But he was to think of none of that. Only of the Hunger Games, and how he might make a success of it.
At Fabricia’s reaping party, Tigris said, everyone was nuts about Lucy Gray Baird. His tribute had “star quality,” her friends had declared as they drunkenly slurped their posca. The cousins agreed that he needed to make a good first impression on the girl so that she would be willing to work with him. He should treat her not as a condemned prisoner, but as a guest. Coriolanus had decided to greet her early at the train station. It would give him a jump on the assignment, as well as an opportunity to win her trust.
“Imagine how terrified she must be, Coryo,” Tigris had said. “How alone she must feel. If it was me, anything you could do to make me feel like you cared about me would go a long way. No, more than that. Like I was of value. Take her something, even a token, that lets her know you value her.”
Coriolanus thought about his grandmother’s roses, which were still prized in the Capitol. The old woman nurtured them arduously in the roof garden that came with the penthouse, both out of doors and in a small solar greenhouse. She parceled out her flowers like diamonds, though, so it had taken a good bit of persuasion to get this beauty. “I need to make a connection with her. As you always say, your roses open any doors.” It was a testament to how worried his grandmother was about their situation that she had allowed it.
Two days had passed since the reaping. The city had held on to the oppressive heat, and even though it was just past dawn, the train station was beginning to bake. Coriolanus felt conspicuous on the wide, deserted platform, but he couldn’t risk missing her train. The only information he could get out of his downstairs neighbor, Gamemaker-in-Training Remus Dolittle, was that it was supposed to arrive Wednesday. Remus had recently graduated from the University, and his family had pulled in every favor they had to get him the position, which paid just enough and provided a stepping-stone to the future. Coriolanus could have inquired through the Academy, but he didn’t know if greeting the train would be frowned upon. No rules had been laid out, per se, but he thought most of his classmates would wait to meet their tributes at a session overseen by the Academy the following day.