The Boy With The Bread

The Letter B Chapter 2: The Boy with the Bread 

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When she was eleven years old, her mother turned catatonic over losing her husband, that forced Katniss and Prim to fend for themselves and they almost starved to death. Katniss went to trade in some baby clothes in the marketplace they call the 'Hob' hoping she could get something to eat to bring home. All they'd had to eat for 3 days was hot water and mint leaves.

The boy in the bakery threw her the bread perhaps because he loved her 'from the first moment he laid eyes on her.' Whatever the case was, his mother told him to throw it to the pigs because no decent person would buy it and he got a black eye for it. Except to Katniss, it was her last hope. "You don't forget the face of the person who was your last hope." Reduced to steal from the garbage bin to keep her family from starving and fearing Peeta's sick mother would hit her with her broomstick, she sat down tired, exhausted and hungry underneath an apple tree and watched Peeta chuck the loaves that were meant for her.

"It didn’t occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me. But I dismissed this. It must have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn’t even know me. Still, just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have inevitably resulted in a beating if discovered. I couldn’t explain his actions." pg.31 chapter 2