Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

leg. “Bad day, huh?” “It's nothing,” I say.
    He takes a deep breath. “Look, Katniss, I've been wanting to talk to you about the way I acted on the train. I mean, the last train. The one that brought us home. I knew you had something with Gale. I was jealous of him before I even officially met you. And it wasn't fair to hold you to anything that happened in the Games. I'm sorry.”
    His apology takes me by surprise. It's true that Peeta froze me out after I confessed that my love for him during the Games was something of an act. But I don't hold that against him. In the arena, I'd played that romance angle for all it was worth. There had been times when I didn't honestly know how I felt about him. I still don't, really.
    “I'm sorry, too,” I say. I'm not sure for what exactly. Maybe because there's a real chance I'm about to destroy him.
    “There's nothing for you to be sorry about. You were just keeping us alive. But I don't want us to go on like this, ignoring each other in real life and falling into the snow every time there's a camera around. So I thought if I stopped being so, you know, wounded, we could take a shot at just being friends,” he says.
    All my friends are probably going to end up dead, but refusing Peeta wouldn't keep him safe. “Okay,” I say. His offer does make me feel better. Less duplicitous somehow. It would be nice if he'd come to me with this earlier, before I knew that President Snow had other plans and just being friends was not an option for us anymore. But either way, I'm glad we're speaking again.
    “So what's wrong?” he asks.
    I can't tell him. I pick at the clump of weeds.
    “Let's start with something more basic. Isn't it strange that I know you'd risk your life to save mine ... but I don't know what your favorite color is?” he says.
    A smile creeps onto my lips. “Green. What's yours?”
    “Orange,” he says.
    “Orange? Like Effie's hair?” I say.
    “A bit more muted,” he says. “More like ... sunset.”
    Sunset. I can see it immediately, the rim of the descending sun, the sky streaked with soft shades of orange. Beautiful. I remember the tiger lily cookie and, now that Peeta is talking to me again, it's all I can do not to recount the whole story about President Snow. But I know Haymitch wouldn't want me to. I'd better stick to small talk.
    “You know, everyone's always raving about your paintings. I feel bad I haven't seen them,” I say.
    “Well, I've got a whole train car full.” He rises and offers me his hand. “Come on.”
    It's good to feel his fingers entwined with mine again, not for show but in actual friendship. We walk back to the train hand in hand. At the door, I remember. “I've got to apologize to Effie first.”
    “Don't be afraid to lay it on thick,” Peeta tells me.
    So when we go back to the dining car, where the others are still at lunch, I give Effie an apology that I think is overkill but in her mind probably just manages to compensate for my breach of etiquette. To her credit, Effie accepts graciously. She says it's clear I'm under a lot of pressure. And her comments about the necessity of someone attending to the schedule only last about five minutes. Really, I've gotten off easily.
    When Effie finishes, Peeta leads me down a few cars to see his paintings. I don't know what I expected. Larger versions of the flower cookies maybe. But this is something entirely different. Peeta has painted the Games.
    Some you wouldn't get right away, if you hadn't been with him in the arena yourself. Water dripping through the cracks in our cave. The dry pond bed. A pair of hands, his own, digging for roots. Others any viewer would recognize. The golden horn called the Cornucopia. Clove arranging the knives inside her jacket. One of the mutts, unmistakably the blond, green-eyed one meant to be Glimmer, snarling as it makes its way toward us. And me. I am everywhere. High up in a tree. Beating a shirt against the stones in the stream. Lying