Chapter Text
I wake up by my mother's side. I remember crawling in with her last night, when I was having nightmares. It is the morning of the reaping, my first. I've had a stake in it before- my sister Katniss, until this year, had been entered in the reaping every year since she was twelve. But this is the first time I will have a chance to be picked.
It is a very, very small chance. Katniss refused to let me get my name entered more times and get food and oil for our family in the form of tesserae. She says her hunting and her new job in the mines are enough to get us through the year. She always tries to protect me. So I have one slip, since I am only twelve. My sister had twenty-eight by the end of her reapings, and she was never chosen. But still, that one piece of paper, one slip among thousands, haunted my dreams last night.
My mother wakes up, and begins preparing for the day. I quickly wash, and then my mother brings out my sister's first reaping outfit. Then she gets out a nice dress that she wore when she was younger, and another one for Katniss. She's been giving Katniss her old dresses since Katniss was sixteen. My sister hasn't asked my mother about it since the first time. Katniss comes back then, bathes, and puts on her dress. She looks me over, a distant look in her eyes.
"You look beautiful," I say, mostly to distract her. And myself.
"And nothing like myself," she responds. Then she hugs me, and I sink into the embrace. I don't want her to ever let go. I was always so scared when my sister went to the reapings, but that didn't prepare me for my own.
Katniss looks at the back of my blouse. "Tuck your tail in, little duck." She smooths it down.
I giggle, and let the moment get lighter, just for now. "Quack."
"Quack yourself," my sister replies, laughing a little. She doesn't do that often, and it's a welcome sound whenever I can coax it out of her. She kisses my head. "Come on, let's eat."
We will have nicer stuff later today, stuff my sister gathered when she went out in the woods with her friend Gale this morning, some fish that she hunted, plants, and wild strawberries. There's bakery bread, too- she must have had a good load if she could trade for that. For now, though, we drink milk that we got from my goat, Lady, and eat bread made from the last of Katniss's tessera grain. No one eats much. I barely pick at my bread, my mother doesn't eat at all, and Katniss only manages a few bites, although I know she's trying to keep it together for all of us.
At one o'clock, after far too much waiting, it's time to head over to the reaping in the square. On normal days, I like the square. I love looking in the shop windows, even if usually we can't buy anything. Katniss will take me there, and sometimes she'll surprise me by buying me candy. Sometimes she even seems happy. Today, though, the mood throughout the square is grim. Two kids are about to be chosen for what in District 12 is equivalent to a death sentence.
The square begins to fill as people sign in. I'm herded off with the other twelve-year-olds to the back of the area roped off for possible tributes. Everyone else surrounds us, families tense, others taking bets on this year's tributes. I've never understood how they can do that. Two kids are probably going to die, and these people are acting like it's all a game. It's in the name, I guess. The Hunger Games.
Not everyone can fit in the square- some people end up on side streets watching on television- but it's packed claustrophobically tight. I stand with the others, near my friends, but we don't speak. There's nothing to say. We just want it to be over as soon as possible.
At two, the mayor begins a speech I've heard every year since I was born. The same story, about Panem's history, which I hear enough of in school anyway. The rising of Panem, the Dark Days of the uprising, and the defeat of the districts by the Capitol. The destruction of District 13.
I used to have nightmares about District 13. I'm there at the end of the war when the Capitol destroyed them. I'm running through a crowd of people to one last evacuation vehicle, even if I know there weren't any there when it happened, and missiles are coming. They block out the sun there are so many. I know that's unrealistic, but that's how I always picture it. I'm the last person to get on, and a woman whose face I never see grabs at me, begging to be allowed to join us. She never makes it on. And, as we're about to leave, I see my sister. Everything stops for a moment. Katniss stands there, and somehow among all the nameless people she's the only face I see. Unlike everyone else, she's calm. Determined, really, but it's clear on her face that she feels no fear. She mouths words that I don't understand.
And then the missiles strike. All around her, they crash down, and the last sight I see of my sister is her as a human torch before we're hit and blown to nothing.
I shake myself back to the present as the mayor goes over the rules of the Hunger Games. One girl and one boy from each district. They're put in an arena of some kind. They fight each other to the death. Last one standing wins. Simple. Terrible.
And, to make it all worse, treated as the name suggests- a game. A sporting event. There's even a prize- the victor is set up for life, and their district gets rewarded for a year. Pitting the districts against each other, as if taking our children wasn't enough.
District 12 has had only two victors- one a long time ago, and one still living: Haymitch Abernathy. Who has finally showed up, drunk. In an effort to distract the cameras from him, the mayor announces our escort for the tributes, Effie Trinket. She gives a peppy speech, somehow not seeming to process that she's here to take two kids to their deaths. At least, I'd hope so. It would be so much worse if she just didn't care. She's from the Capitol, Katniss's friend Gale would say. Of course she doesn't care. Katniss never says those things around me, or possible ever, but Gale's always been honest with me about what he thinks. He treats me my age, doesn't try to baby me, but still protects me when he can. I know if Katniss had been reaped he would have taken care of us. I hope he's okay. This is his last reaping, and his name is in there forty-two times, not quite double my sister's total last year.
"Ladies first!" Effie Trinket declares. She walks over to the glass bowl filled with thousands of slips of papers, a girl's name on each. One unlucky slip holds the fate of a girl. The crowd draws in a breath, and the potential tributes are dead silent. The escort takes a slip of paper and crosses the stage with it, smoothing it out to read the name written on it. The name echoes through the square.
It's Primrose Everdeen.