I swung my axe over my shoulder as soon as I heard the seventh chime of the shift clock. I was free to go home after an excruciatingly long day of work. Despite the frigid weather, my hair was plastered to my face with sweat. But I knew that in just a few minutes, that sweat would freeze and make my skin icy cold, so I rather than going straight home, I followed a crowd of my fellow woodcutters to the locker house, where we kept all the heavy coats we didn't need while working. As I walked, my brother appeared at my side and grumbled, "Look at this splinter! It's gotta be two inches long!" as he tugged out the shard of wood that had embedded itself in his forearm.

I rolled my eyes. "Palmer, you're my big brother. You're supposed to be the tough one."

The three guys in front of us cackled. "Palmer Brisbow? Tough? Yeah right," the shortest of the them said over his shoulder.

"Shut up," I shot back before Palmer could say anything. He just clenched his jaw and awaited the normal string of verbal abuse.

The boy who had spoken, Birch Elwood, turned and blocked our way. "See what I mean? He's gotta get his baby sister to stand up for him." His friends seemed to find this hilarious.

Encouraged by his friends' reaction, he stepped right up under Palmer's nose and said, "Hey, I heard that Sickle saw you kissing another boy the other day. Is that true? I bet it is."

That was the last straw, and not just for me. Palmer, who was usually the most passive guy you'd ever meet, grabbed Birch's shoulders and shoved him away, snarling, "Leave me alone!"

This, predictably, did not make Birch leave him alone. Quite on the contrary, he shoved Palmer right back, even harder, and laughed, "Oh, so the sissy boy wants a fight?" And with that, he punched Palmer square in the jaw, causing him to stumble backwards and grab his bleeding face.

My fists clenched. No one hurt my family, no one made my brother bleed without getting a beating from me.

I dove at Birch's waist and dragged him down onto the cold, dusty ground and straddled him, throwing punches at his face. Filled with a blind rage, I didn't even really think about what I was doing, and I certainly didn't care that I was hurting Birch far more than he'd hurt my brother. Finally, he tossed up his arms to protect himself as his cronies dragged me off him.

My arms still flailing, I screamed, "Oh, who's the sissy boy now? You can't even fight a girl alone!" Held between the two other guys, I felt my heart pounding far more than my physical exertion had warranted. Palmer tried to reach out and grab Birch, but he was too slow. I knew I was in for a beating.

Sure enough, the first blow landed on my stomach. Then my face, my neck, my jaw, my nose. I felt the bridge of my glasses snap and gauge under my eye. As he rested his fist after a slew of attacks, I managed to writhe fast enough to squirm out of the boys' hold, and I threw myself across the ground and grabbed my discarded axe. Pushing Palmer behind me, I held out the tool-turned-weapon and said, "Take one step closer. I dare you."

Birch stepped back, hands held up. "Whoa, whoa, calm down there."

Glaring and bleeding, I let Palmer wrap his arm around my shoulder and lead me away. That is, until I felt one last wave of rage and turned around to throw the axe right into the tree next to Birch's head.

His eyes wide as saucers, he stared with an open mouth at the quivering axe, then ran away as fast as he could, closely followed by his accomplices.

Palmer grabbed the axe from the tree and gently tossed it to me. "What have you done?" he murmured as he wiped the blood from my face with the sleeve of his shirt. His voice was full of guilt, which was not what I wanted to hear.

"Don't worry about me," I said. "I'm fine. Are you okay?"

He nodded, frowning at me. "Of course. I barely got scratched compared to you. Oh, gosh, Terra, this cut under your eyes is really bad." He dabbed off the blood as best he could, then we proceeded to the locker rooms.

Upon arriving at home, I tried my best to sneak into my room without my parents seeing. But of course, as I slowly cracked the door open, I heard my father shout from the kitchen, "Terra! What happened today?"

I sighed and turned the corner to the kitchen, my bruised and beaten head hung in shame. "It was nothing."

"Oh, Terra," my mother whispered as she saw the carnage that was my face. I picked up a clean pan and looked at my reflection; it was worse than I'd thought. My mom took the pan from me and pulled me into a tight embrace. "Oh honey, you know what we've told you about fighting. You're strong, we all know you're strong, but you don't need to get into these terrible fights."

I nestled my face into her shoulder and fought back tears. "I know. I… I know. It's just, they were being so mean to Palmer. That obnoxious guy, that bully Birch was saying all these mean things to him and then punched him, and I, I just got really mad."

My dad turned to Palmer. "She did this for you? You let your little sister get beaten up for you? What kind of man do you think you are?"

Palmer stepped back. "I… I didn't want her to. I told her not to. But you know how she is when she's mad! Before I knew it, she was just tackling him and punching him and there was nothing I could do." Tears streaked down through the grime and blood on his face, and his voice cracked painfully at the end of his sentence. I was torn- on one hand, I really wanted to step in and help him, but my doing just that was the reason Dad was yelling at him anyway. So I stood silently with Mom's arm wrapped around my shoulders and watched.

To an average observer, Dad would have appeared perfectly calm. But to Palmer and Mom and me, he was clearly brimming with fury, about to start yelling if Palmer said a single thing wrong.

"You could have fought those boys off! If Terra could take him, you sure as hell better have been able to! You've been a woodcutter for how many years? Eight, nine? Hasn't that made you strong? Hm. I suppose strength means nothing if you're a coward, though."

Palmer seemed to shrink smaller and smaller with every word, every accusation. He tried to respond, but he was crying to hard to even get out a single word.

Finally, I stepped in. "Come on, Dad," I muttered. "Aren't you gonna tell me how strong I am for beating up a guy? For standing up for myself, for my family?"

He whirled around to stare me down, his heavy brow furrowed over his deep-set black eyes. I immediately regretted my decision to speak up.

"I don't want a daughter who goes around beating up guys! What the hell kind of man is going to want a wife who might try to beat the shit out of him?"

"I don't care! I'm seventeen, Dad. I'm not going to get married any time soon! And besides, would you rather me marry a man who might try to beat the shit out of me?"

"Yes!" he shouted in reply. One simple word that hurt worse every punch Birch had landed on me. I winced, and I was sure the neighbors could hear him by this point. He always got louder as he got madder.

And I lost it. I mean, I really, really lost it at this point. It was like tackling Birch all over again, except this time I was throwing words instead of punches. And three little words were all it took.

"I hate you!" I screamed. Did I really, truly hate my own father? No, probably not. But in that moment, did I really, truly believe I did? Definitely. I certainly didn't regret what I'd said. Not then, at least.

The whole room fell silent. My mother covered her mouth with both her hands, Palmer stared at me slack-jawed, and my father became completely still. Not a single hair on his head twitched.

I turned and quietly closed myself in my room. The rough fabric of my sheets provided little physical comfort, but it was a blessedly familiar feeling against my aching skin. But I had no time to rest. My father was beating on the door to my room, shouting, "Open the door, Terra! Now!"

But I was already tossing some clothes into my backpack. An extra coat, a blanket, the few bits of food I had laying around. Just enough supplies for a couple days, enough time for tempers to cool. And with that bag, I hopped out of my window, landing deftly on the frozen ground. The moon lit the forest up in a silvery white glow, casting long shadows across the dirt and making the pine trees look like black spears stabbing the sky. I didn't really have anywhere to go, so I headed into the forest, away from civilization. When my feet couldn't carry me any farther, I tossed my blankets down on the ground and curled up in them. I tried my best to block out the day's events, but images of Birch and Palmer and my father my own destroyed face kept surfacing in my mind.

I really was out of luck- and that was putting it mildly. My father was furious at me, and he was even more mad at Palmer, whom I'd left home alone with him, and I'd broken my glasses so I could barely see, and I'd run away from home, and I was sleeping on a blanket in the middle of a frozen forest.

For the first time since that morning, I remembered something. Something I, nor any other young citizen of Panem, should ever forget. Tomorrow was the Reaping. And at seventeen, I was a prime target for tribute. But oddly enough, I couldn't bring myself to stress about it. I was too physically and emotionally exhausted to even worry.

So I curled up tighter under my wool and burlap blankets and quickly fell asleep.

Morning broke cold and dewey with a thin covering of frost on the ground. I groaned as I tried to sit up; the combination of the beating I'd undergone the previous day mixed with the fact that I'd slept on a tree root made my whole whole body ache something terrible.

I had to get myself to the Reaping. It was as if I'd recalled that I had to go to the grocery stall that day or something; I felt that disconnected from it. So as I changed into a clean outfit and tried to wipe the last of the dried blood off my face, I repeatedly reminded myself that this was in fact happening, that at the end of the day there was a chance that I would be a tribute in the 42nd annual Hunger Games. I tried to focus on that instead of the pain that coursed through every particle of my body, or on the events of the previous day. It was funny, really, that I found the idea of becoming a tribute better than facing my brother and father. Perhaps it was because my fights were real, and the idea of being chosen at the Reaping was just a vague possibility. I'd never even

We really were supposed to dress nicely for the Reaping, but at this point that was kind of out of the question. So I pulled back my long black hair, tucked in my shirt, and tried not to get too much dirt on anything. I managed to find my way out of the woods back into town, where I joined in the stream of people heading to the town square, where the Reaping Stage had been set up.

Checking into the Reaping seemed like a normal routine by this point in my life. I'd done it five times, but it seemed like more than that. The finger prick, the crowds, the noise, the roped-off age groups. I didn't see anyone I knew, and honestly I didn't really want to. Everyone around me seemed tense and nervous, whispering to each other with furrowed brows or just standing there in shaky silence. But I hurt to bad to worry.

Standing with the other seventeen-year-olds, I realized that a lot of people were staring at me. Not only was I dressed in old pants, work boots, and a baggy, faded wool shirt, but I also must have been positively black and blue with bruises. I could actually feel the swelling of my right eye, where my glasses had cut me, and realized that the unwashed wound had likely gotten infected. I saw Birch staring at me through the crowd, and I leveled my gaze back at him. Yes, you did this to me, my expression said. To be fair, though, he did have several purplish-green blotches on his face too. Then he turned away from me and focused on the stage.

District Seven's escort emerged. A short, curvy young woman wearing typically absurd Capital clothes stepped up to the microphone. She wasn't nearly as ridiculous as many of the past escorts that I remembered. She wasn't wearing too much makeup, for one, so she didn't look totally inhuman. Also, although her hair was dyed inky black with pale blue streaks, it was styled simply and elegantly in a clean bun. "Hello, my dear District Seven! Allow me to introduce myself. I am Decima Lynn, and I will be your tributes' escort for the 42nd annual Hunger Games."

A few people clapped unenthusiastically. At least her voice wasn't as comically high-pitched as many Capital citizens'.

She gave a trite speech about how glorious the Hunger Games were and showed the required movie about the history of the gladiatorial practice, and the clapped when the governor gave a speech. But for some reason, I got the feeling that she wasn't as enamored with the Games as most people were. There was a sort of sadness in her face as she reached for the first glass bowl. "And the boy who will be tribute for District Seven is…."

You could have heard a feather drop in the middle of the crowd.

"…Sickle Midian!"

A tall, beautiful, dark-haired boy pushed his way out of the eighteen-year-olds' pen. The rest of the crowd parted as he strode quickly and surely towards the stage. He was the kind of young man who commanded respect, despite being from one of the poorer districts of Panem. A prince born in dirt. His quick blue eyes seemed to take in everyone around him and see right into them. His eyes briefly met mine, and chills shot down my spine.

"Ooh, such a handsome tribute! And strong, too! I daresay District Seven has a great shot to win this year," Decima enthused. Sickle stood next to her, towering over her despite her high-heeled shoes.

"And would you like to learn which lucky lady will be joining you?" She made it sound like some sort of game show. Which, I realized, is exactly what it is to people who never have to fear participating.

"Just get it over with," he snarled.

"Oh, everyone does love a dark and brooding hero!" she exclaimed. I realized that every time she made a cheerful quip, she looked right at the cameras and beamed, but when she was looking right at the crowd or Sickle, her smile faded and her face darkened. "And now for the lady tribute." Her manicured hand reached into the second bowl and grasped a tiny slip of white paper.

She unfolded it and before she even spoke, I knew deep down just what she would say.

"Terra Brisbow!"

My heart dropped into my feet. I began breathing deeply, way too deeply, and I almost forgot to move my feet, to walk up to the stage. I moved as if in a trance, the people around me staring in silence. The stairs to the stage seemed to launch me up and suddenly I was in front of the whole crowd, the entirety of District Seven. I locked eyes with my father, and saw tears streaming down his face. Next to him, Palmer had his arm wrapped around my weeping mother as they sobbed.

Sickle, looking dapper as can be in a crisp white collared shirt and dark pants, seemed all the more resplendent next to me, in my dirty work clothes. But he wasn't looking at me with distaste or haughtiness; rather, his expression was one of utter horror. But why? I'd never even seen this boy in my whole life. Then I remembered something Birch had said- "Sickle saw you kissing another boy the other day." So this guy knew my brother, and was spreading rumors about him that got him beaten up and teased. But in a way, that made his reaction all the more confusing. If he disliked Palmer so much, why was he so horrified to see his sister picked as tribute?

I decided that there would be plenty of time to figure that out later. For now, we were being led back to the community center, where we would say goodbye to our families and board the train. Sickle and I were sent into different rooms, where we each sat and waited alone. The room I sat in was sparsely decorated in shades of white and grey. A bit of natural sunlight found its way in through cracks in the metal blinds on the single window, but most of the light came from a flickering florescent strip in the ceiling, bathing the grey surroundings in a sickly greenish glow.

Finally, the door creaked open and my family entered. Their eyes were all swollen and red from crying, even my father's. I jumped from my seat and threw my arms around Palmer and Mom. All three of us began crying again, so I quickly pulled away and wiped my eyes. Now wasn't the time to be weak; not now, not until after the Games. If there was an after.

"I'm so sorry for what I said, Terra," Dad whispered. I could tell that it hurt his pride to say it, and I knew for sure that he wouldn't have said it at all if the situation had been different, if I hadn't been getting ready to ship off the the Hunger Games and my possible death.

"It's okay," I replied, though I was still mad about what he'd said. "Do I have your permission to beat up boys now?"

He choked out a laugh through his tears. "Yeah, honey. You go get 'em. And come back to us, okay? You've gotta come back."

I nodded. "I will. No matter what." And I really meant it- nothing would stop me from coming home, no matter what I had to do in the Games. No matter how they tried to dehumanize us.

Before I knew it, security guards came into the room and told my parents that our time was up, that I had to board the train to the Capital now. As they left the room, Palmer called over his shoulder, "Terra! About Sickle-" But the guards silenced him before he could finish.

I followed a guard out onto the platform, where the train waited just for us. Decima Lynn and Sickle stood by the door, and when I reached them, they allowed me to board first. I think they could tell that I'd been crying.

They followed me on board, and as soon as the door slid close behind us, the train lurched off to the south.