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I keep to my house after that. I manage to stay drunk enough for long enough that I lose track of the days.

I don't lose track of the executions. I leave my television on all the time now, watching the names scroll past, adding them to the list of people I've killed.

Filigree. Brocade. Titus. Ballum Harrowroot. Marlys Seney. Kinner Abernathy. Vernard Abernathy. Josser Mellark. On and on, until my head is swimming with them and my hands are black with their blood.

I understand now why Larvina never leaves her house. If I stay up here, alone and drunk, the deaths on television turn glossy and distant, like the Games. A few people is a tragedy. A slaughter is a spectacle. Now that Rook has killed off my family and friends, the faces on the screen start to blur together. They still hurt, but not as much. Though that could be the alcohol.

There's still one face it would hurt me to see on the screen, but Rook seems to be saving that as a last resort. I haven't seen my Dad once since the Harvest Festival. That fact would break Mom's heart, so I try not to think about it. Instead, I tell myself I'm grateful to have him safe, away from me.

Elsabet was right about one thing: I am a poison to District 12. I once accused Rook of the same thing. Or maybe I'm right – maybe Rook is the poison, and I'm the delivery method. The wound that tears open the skin, breaks through the body's fragile defenses, and lets in all the vile toxins of the Peacekeepers and the Capitol and Snow, working together to cause Twelve's slow and painful death.

Whatever the source, poison spreads through the district, stealing into every home and infecting everyone it touches. My screen shows images of blood-spattered snow, of steam rising from raw, bloody backs, of Peacekeepers marching over ridges of frozen mud. I drink and I sleep and I wake up screaming and I sleep some more. Sometimes I'll miss whole days. Other times, I live the same day over and over again, like a pebble thrown out of the arena that keeps coming back.

The line between sleeping and waking blurs. My nightmares stalk out of the shadows and attack me when I think I'm wide awake. Vernie hides under my kitchen table, crying and covered in burns. Maysilee screams from the closet until I tear it apart, ripping shelves right out of the wall. Then she starts screaming somewhere else. I find Marlys in my bed, her skin black and cracked, oozing something evil onto the sheets. I don't sleep there at all after that. I take to carrying a kitchen knife around with me, falling asleep with it in my hand like I did in the arena. It doesn't stop the nightmares, but it makes me feel a little better.

Finally, when it seems like the winter will never end, like the killings will never stop and I'll go completely insane, the frost breaks and Twelve begins to thaw. Snow melts, making big, slushy puddles in the green in Victor's Village. Ice drips off my roof, pattering on the ground like rain. The sun rises earlier and sets later. Curfew rolls back with the sunset, then disappears altogether.

The executions drop off as the temperature rises. Maybe people aren't as desperate now that they're not freezing to death. Maybe Rook is tired of killing us. Maybe the Capitol is afraid there won't be enough of us left for the reaping. Whatever the reason, the Peacekeepers' chokehold on Twelve starts to loosen. I watch the little streams of snowmelt trickle past my house, down the hill toward town, and imagine it's the poison seeping out of the district.

There's one last death before winter ends: Larvina Candlewood, District Twelve's first ever victor. I see it on the news one morning and run straight to her house so she can tell me it's not true.

Her door is locked, so I break a basement window and slither through it, landing hard on the cement floor. I'm too drunk to feel it.

I am not too drunk to feel the panic that chokes me as I stumble from room to room, calling her name. Someone has already been here to clean, and my voice echoes back at me from empty walls.

I wind up in the kitchen, where we always sat when I visited. The table and chairs have disappeared, and I slump onto the cold floor. Marble countertops shine in the dull light that filters through the curtains. Cleaning chemicals sting my nose. I might as well be in any other house in Victor's Village. Where are the dishes covering the counters, where Larvina can reach them from her chair? Where are the stained cardboard boxes stacked in every corner? Where are the beaten up books she used to read to me?

The sane part of my mind answers that most of Larvina's things will have been thrown away, since she didn't have any family. Maybe her furniture found its way into the Peacekeepers' barracks. A few personal items might be going to the Victor's Museum in the Capitol. Her body will be headed the same way. They bury victors in a special graveyard there, so their fans can visit them. Even if she'd had a family, it wouldn't have changed that.

Her funeral is on the Capitol news. I drink until I'm too numb to cry, then sit down to watch it. A few old victors from other districts are there, along with Caesar Flickerman and a smattering of Capitol fans. Venetia and Lush are the honored guests. Venetia cries prettily for the cameras. Lush is wearing neon green, which he claims was Larvina's favorite, and coincidentally the signature color of his new spring line.

The footage cuts to the studio, where one of the hosts wonders how this will affect District 12's odds in the Games this summer.

"With Haymitch Abernathy as their mentor?" her cohost laughs. "Those tributes don't stand a chance!"

They start debating whether I skipped the funeral because I was too drunk or just plain ungrateful. I change the channel.

It didn't occur to me to ask if I could go. I doubt it would have been allowed if I had. Either way, it seems like the Capitol audience is starting to sour on me. That suits me just fine.

The headlines claim that Larvina died of old age, which is probably the only thing that ever kills people in the Capitol. I think about that bottle of pills and know better.

I wonder how long she'd been planning it. She must have waited years for me. I wish she could have waited a little bit longer, because now I'm all alone, and the 51st Hunger Games are speeding toward me like a Capitol train.

I watch the snow retreat bit by bit outside my windows. Pale leaves bud on the trees. In spite of the long frost, the grass grows back green again. It seems impossible that one year ago, I was just another kid enjoying the longer nights with his girlfriend, trying not to think about the reaping. I feel about a hundred years old now. I've got a permanent headache that only goes away when I'm at my drunkest. My eyes are bloodshot and the circles underneath them look like bruises. My teeth were never great – no one's are in the Seam – but now they've turned yellow from bile and lack of brushing, and my gums are red and swollen. I wonder if they'll clean me up for the cameras, or if they'll just leave me like this – a warning to the new tributes. This is what happens to people who live when they're not supposed to.

Summer arrives and I shut it away behind heavy curtains. My house gets unbearably hot but I don't try to figure out the fancy climate control system. I sit and wallow in my own sweat, which smells like last night's hangover. As much as my house feels like a prison, it feels safe, too. As long as I stay in here, no one can mistake me for a threat.

At night, I look out across the green at Larvina's dark windows and wonder how the hell I'm supposed to do this without her.

I know the Hunger Games are about to begin when my phone starts ringing. I don't bother answering. They know where to find me, and they'll be here soon enough.

Soon comes even faster than I expected. A new set of preps bursts in one morning and finds me hanging off the end of the couch, passed out above a pool of vomit. They haul me to the bath and scrub me down, wearing masks and rubber gloves. Venetia spends a lot of time talking quietly into her plastic tablet.

They pump me full of pills and medications and make me look like something resembling a human being. They drone around me, pinching and tweaking and tweezing, and I let them. They'll do what they want, and there's no point complaining about it.

Venetia reminds me that I'll be taken to the train straight after the reaping, so I should give the attendants anything I want to bring to the Capitol. I go into my room and look at the line of trinkets from the victors of Eleven, Eight and Three. In the end, the only thing I take is Donel's pack of playing cards. I put them in my pocket, a reminder of the people I'll hurt if I try to rebel. Whatever "little group" the other victors have going, I know now why Larvina didn't join it. Just in case I'm tempted, these cards will remind me why you never, ever go against the Capitol.

The reaping seems to take forever. The meds the prep team forced into me have pretty well sobered me up, but the sunlight is blinding after months spent indoors. Every speck of dust seems to catch the light and throw it back at me.

I take a break from concentrating on not throwing up to watch the tributes get called. Nettle Towhee and Roan Tassel – two underfed, scared-looking Seam kids that don't look like they could swat a mosquito, much less kill a Career. Nettle is a year younger than me, but she wasn't a friend of Marlys', and I'm distantly relieved that I don't know her well. Roan is a year older than me. One more year, and he would've been safe to cough to death in the mines.

While they say their goodbyes, I'm taken to the train, where I waste no time finding the bar car. It's a pretty thin selection, and I wonder if Venetia cleaned it out to keep me from overindulging. Joke's on her, because I have no problem drinking the little pink cordials and syrups she's left me with.

By the time Nettle and Roan get on the train, I've polished off two bottles of cordial and I feel more sick than drunk. Roan looks disgusted. Nettle just looks miserable. Both of them have been crying.

Venetia leaves us alone, probably to go make sure the rest of the booze is chucked off the train before I can get my hands on it.

The three of us watch District Twelve flash past and then disappear. It's the last time either of these kids will see it, and I resist the urge to tell them how lucky they are. I think about how scared and angry I was last year, when I was in their place. I didn't even know what fear and anger were. Odds are, these two will never find out.

I turn to look at them. Nettle is staring out the window with empty eyes, tears sliding over her brown cheeks. Roan is swallowing like he's trying not to cry. His Adam's apple bobs up and down in his scrawny neck like a cork. He catches me looking and his gray eyes narrow.

"So, what do we do?" he asks. I'm sure he's trying to sound fierce, but his voice breaks and his lips are trembling.

"What do you do about what?" I drawl, staring right back at him. He tries to look disgusted again. After a moment, he looks away.

All the training in the world couldn't have helped these kids. I can already see that neither has it in them do what it takes to win. It's no bad thing. It makes them both better people than me.

"What's your advice?" he presses, staring at his knees. "How do we survive in the arena – you know, find food, water, shelter? What do we do?"

His voice is verging on hysterical. It's giving me a raging headache, or maybe that's the sugar from this awful cordial.

"You want my honest advice?" I ask. They're both watching me now. Roan's whole body is shaking. Nettle's glassy eyes don't show a spark of hope.

"Here's my advice. Once you're in the arena, die as quickly and painlessly as you can. Until then, do whatever you need to do to make peace with that."

Nettle turns back to the window like I didn't say anything more surprising than the time of day. Roan chokes out a strangled sob and buries his face in his hands.

I don't want to see him break down. I can't help him. I was a fool to think it could ever be different than this. I get up and head for my room, hoping to sleep off my forced sobriety.

As I weave along the corridor of the train, I know that it will always be like this. Year after year of terrified tributes who can't or won't fight their fate. I can either lie to them and watch them struggle and die, or tell the truth and hope it gives them some kind of peace before the end.

Maybe someday, I'll stop caring about my last few connections to my old life, or there'll be some other fluke victor, and I can do like Larvina did and end it all.

Until then, I am stuck on this train, forever heading back into the Hunger Games.

A/N: So, that's it. Whew!

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