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I woke up in a house that wasn’t mine, but the McCoys’ home. I had no idea how I got here, until the thoughts of Ma and Sid burning alive in the home I grew up in came to me. I couldn’t save them. My family is gone — all because of me.
I managed to push myself up from the bed and snuck out of the window to visit my girl, Lenore Dove, since she is all I had left, and Snow would never take her away from me. I knew that the McCoys would be grieving Louella, and I didn’t want to interrupt them.
District 12 was very quiet, much to my surprise. I had no idea what time or day it was, but from my guess, it was about 6 a.m.—the sun was rising. I walked to the meadow where Lenore Dove normally hangs out, but she wasn’t there. From my guess, the peacekeepers hadn’t released her yet from the peacekeeper base.
I waited for approximately 10 minutes at the meadow when I saw my girl skipping along the grass. Once her uncles, Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber, went inside the Covey house, I immediately ran to her.
“Haymitch…?” she whispered.
“You’re alive…”
She pulled me into a tight hug, and I savored every single detail about her. She was back in my arms, where she belonged.
"Yeah i am." I replied.
Lenore dove, pulls back, and goes to pick up a bag of gumdrops from the meadow grass. The bag was the same one that I told Sid to give to her after the reaping.
She opened the bag up, and her head laid on my knees as I fed her the gumdrops.
"I will go inside and grab the bag of gumdrops that you told Sid to give me after the reaping they are underneath my pillow" she said.
Other bag i think to myself then what president Snow said to me that he would kill the ones i love Ma and Sid already are dead but since Lenore Dove is everything to me i can't lose her.
"Lenore Dove spit out the gumdrop".
"I can't i already swallowed it." She replied.
Panic surges through me but also her
"Can you throw it up." I shrieked.
“No, I haven’t eaten anything. The peacekeepers wouldn’t let me eat anything.”
She fell into my arms, dark red blood coming out of her mouth, and her breath started to shallow.
“Lenore Dove, stay with me, please…” I whispered in a panicky voice.
“Haymitch… I love you like all-fire—stop the sunrise on the reaping.”
My arms are shaking like a leaf. I need to get help, but my body won’t move, so I use the one thing I can—my voice.
“CLERK CARMINE AND TAM AMBER, HELP!” I shouted.
Not even a second later, they sprung out of the Covey house and took my girl out from my arms.
“Haymitch, go get Asterid March right now, boy!” howled Clerk Carmine.
So I managed to get my body to move and started to sprint to the Marches’ apothecary to get help for Lenore Dove.