Author's note: Hello there everyone! My name's Jean, and this is my first fan-fiction so please go easy on me. Reviews, Follows, and Favorites are always welcome. :P
P.S. This is just a random hunger games story I wanted to write, it's going to be the 43rd Annual Hunger games, because why not? :P
In the Spotlight
My eyes shoot open. I look around the room, the lights flicker. For being the district of power, my house sure lacks it. I lift myself form my bed, my back against the headboard. My name is Amora LeCeram, my parents told me that in an ancient language, before the Dark Days, Amor meant love. I'm Seventeen.
I look for my younger sister. She's only eleven, so she still does not have to worry about being reaped. I on the other hand, just have this year, and the next, and then I'm free. But next year, if my sister is reaped, I know i'll volunteer for her, like the good older sister I am.
The lights flicker again, i'm used to the lights flickering, especially on this day, the day of the reaping ceremony. I move my lower body over to the side of the bed, sitting now. I stand up, not caring enough to wear my slippers. The floor is shiny, I live in the richer part of District five after all.
I wonder if my dad is at work, even though it's reaping day, people still have to go to work in the hours before the actual ceremony is held.
My dad is a geologist, one of the few of the district, my district has a low population, so we really don't worry about lack of jobs or supplies, even the poorest family in the district only goes hungry a few nights every couple of weeks.
My mom on the other hand, is one of the five managers of the supplies that come from other districts, vegetation from eleven, coal from twelve, new technology for safer energy supply processing from three. Each manager is in charge of around two districts, my mom is in charge of districts nine and ten. The grain and livestock districts.
My parents are well off, and because they are well off, so are my sister and I. In the reaping I only have my name in 8 times, it should be 6 for my age, but when I was 13, we had a rough year, so I took out two tesserae for my family and I.
As I said before, my district is well off, the capitol favors us over some of the power districts since we do provide them with the electricity that keeps their city glowing, although, we aren't favored enough like the Career districts. We are just in between, no excess, and no poverty.
This worries me, my odds would be better if my district did have poorer families, they'd be forced to take out tesserae. I mentally hit myself, that's a cruel thought.
But it's true.
Through the haze of my thoughts, I realized I've walked to the kitchen and have opened the fridge. I pull out five eggs, and some butter, I plan to make breakfast for my sister and I.
I realize I haven't even checked the time. I look at the clock, it reads '7:00 A.M." The reaping will be in four hours, my district is one of the earlier districts. The capitol loves to watch all the Reapings live. Their entertainment, our suffering.
By the time I'm done frying the eggs, pouring the orange juice, and slicing some apples and carrots for my sister and I. I notice that only 10 minutes have passed by, and that my sister is walking down the stairs from her bedroom next to my parents' room.
I place the plate with eggs and orange juice in her favorite seat, I give her the small bowl of carrots, she loves carrots more than she loves apples, I take my meal, and sit down next to her. I look at her and smile. She has some resemblance to me, but just in a couple features.
Like our long blonde hair. But our eyes differ, her's are brown, and mine are blue. Something about recessive genes and other things I never cared to learn about in school. It doesn't matter, i'm mostly going to end up in a job Electricity related, not biology related.
She grimaces.
"I'm worried for you, sis," She says. She looks me in the eyes, pushing a streak of blonde hair out of her face. Her words are the first I've heard all day.
"Annalisa, Don't you fret, nothing will ever be able to separate us," I say, smiling at her, although inside, i'm completely scared for myself too. Twelve year olds with only one slip of paper have been reaped before.
I take a hair band from the counter, placing my hair into a pony tail, I leave my breakfast on the table, as I quickly go to a mirror and fix my hair. I look at it, my hair is pulled back tightly into a ponytail, the hair in the ponytail is curled making it look shorter than it is. I go back to the table and finish my breakfast in silence, and so does my sister.
I look at the clock, it's only 7:30 AM. We still have three hours and a half to waste until we must be standing in the reaping ceremony.
I sigh, my mom and dad aren't home, so they must be at work, they won't probably be home until an hour before the ceremony.
"What do you want to do 'till the ceremony?" I ask Annalisa, I always either don't go to sleep, or wake up early on reaping day.
"There is one thing we can do!" She starts. "We still have those old games you played with when you were my age."
Annalisa smiles broadly, we played with those games once, long ago, she was five years old, and I was eleven. Before that, I was the only one to play with them, besides my friends of course.
After a morning of playing with games that consisted of jump ropes, lots of costumes to play pretend with, dolls, a dollhouses, jump ropes, water guns, and lots of bubble machines. My parents arrive home, and tell my sister and I to start getting ready for the reaping. I look at the clock, just an hour and a half 'till two children are taken away to their likely deaths. Even if one wins, the other dies.
I shower, comb my hair, and go into my closet and search for the dress my mom has bought me. It's a knee length gold dress, with sparkles all over, and a black ribbon tied around the waist, the bow at my side. I'm five feet nine, taller that most girls in my district, being shorter than most other districts is genetic in district five. But I guess it must have skipped me. More of that recessive and dominant biology things I never bothered to learn.
After putting on my dress, I search for the three final pieces, a hair bow, a black one, that contrasts greatly with my light blonde hair, and my gold dress, it matches the bow around my waist. I wear my hair in a pony tail, with the hair in the tail curled to make it shorter, and the rest of the hair pulled back into the ponytail tightly.
My second piece, a black metal shoulder pad, I place it on my left shoulder, it has spikes sticking out in all directions, though somewhat eccentric, it matches well with my dress. And my final piece, are my shoes, I wear sandals, nothing too flashy, I do need to walk around with them after all.
You may ask why I look so fancy? Well no matter the occasion, you can always dress to impress!
I walk out to the living room, the whole ordeal lasted an hour and ten minutes, my sister is ready as well, my parents come out a few minutes later, and they tell us to eat some snacks before going to the square.
After we finish eating some fruit, we go to the front door, and I take my token, it's a plastic light bulb, my father helped me make it when I was around six years old. It can't be turned on because the plastic will melt, but it teached me the fundamentals of electricity.
We had fifteen minutes, it was a ten minute walk from my home to the square, we saw other families that live close to us leaving at the same time, some had already left long ago and we could see them walking in the distance.
Once we arrived, I got my blood pinched by a peacekeeper, her machine showed who I was, and my age. The peacekeeper pointed me in the direction of my age group and gender, and said an authoritative 'Next.'
Standing by my age group, I looked around at the girls, most had tanner skin, and black hair with brown eyes, my mother told me that they were descendants of the people from nations south of Panem. Civilizations long destroyed, my name, comes from their language.
"Amora," I heard a soft voice speak.
I turned to my right, and looked at Lillieth, she had blonde hair, but green eyes, an was a couple inches shorter than me. We used to be neighbors, and went to the same school when we were around eight, but her older brother won the games when we were 10, and now her brother, her, and their parents live in Victors Village. She attends the the other school of district five, closer to Victors Village.
Something about District five you should know, it's like the shape of an eight, with the middle being where the plaza is, there are two circles, and in the middle of these two circles are the schools, a couple blocks closer to the edge of the circles, away from the town square, are hospitals on each side. On the very edge of each side, are the factories which generate electricity, they are separated to the residential area by forest, and to get to the factories, you take trains that leave in the morning, come in the afternoon, then in the afternoon take the other workers, and arrive late at night. Each side of the eight has the richer people, being closer to the plaza and therefore the shops, and the poorer people closer to the forest. The poorer sides have some shops spread across the houses, cheaper goods.
Oh and one more thing, each side usually wears their own colors, it's just a little symbol to represent where we come from. My side's colors are the warm colors, such as yellow and red. We also have black. Lillieth's sides colors are the colder colors, like blue and green. They also have white.
"Hey Lilly!" I said, I hadn't seen her since last year in the reaping ceremony, our schedules are completely different, and we never have the time. "How's it going?" I asked. "It's been an amazing year," She responded, "Remember that cute guy I told you about last year, well me and him are dating now!" She raised her voice for the last part, she must have been really excited.
"Okay, so since everyone has the day off today, we have to hang out, girl," I told her, and she nodded, then the noise a microphone makes before someone talks to is heard, and everyone turns to see the mayor by the microphone, waiting for the district to calm down, Tiliama, our district's escort standing behind him.
Tiliama looked like all the varying colors of the ocean, changing without notice depending where you looked, except her hair, her hair was bright red, and curled all around. If you looked closely, you could see her nails were as long as her fingers, with the exception of the middle finger, those nails remained at normal length.
"I will never understand Capitol culture," I hear the girl standing behind me whisper to her friend. Neither will I, I think to myself.
After the annual greeting by our mayor, the victors getting up on stage to sit in their seats, and the greeting and video from the escort.
"That, I love!" She says into the microphone, "The men first, as usual," Something about Tiliama, things that should be said in the beginning of a sentence, end up being last. And unlike other district escorts, she does boys first, then girls, I never really understood why, but the Capitol hasn't done anything about it, so it must be okay with them.
She walks over to the bowl on the left, in front of where all the boys aged 12 to 18 of my district stand.
"Hey, look over there Amora," Lillieth whispers, pointing at a boy in the 17 year old section. I see the boy she's pointing at, she then whispers, "He's the boy I'm talking about, his name is-" she's cut off by our district escort.
"Eriken Lavoui," Our escort says with an excited, yet calm voice. I hear a gasp from Lillieth. Does that name mean something? I turn to look at the boys, and I see the boy Lillieth was pointing at, and was cut off before saying his name. She looks at him and he moves forward, most of the boys move out of the way, avoiding him as if he were the plague that wiped out hundreds of people after the Dark Days.
She walks a few steps towards him, but I extend my arm to stop here, it won't end well if she gets out of line, where the parents stand, I see a mom, tears in her eyes, I see a mom standing next to her, looking at her twelve year old son, she's sad that the women next to her lost her son, but she's happy it wasn't her own son. It's like that every year, everyone feels bad for the parents whose children get reaped, but inside, they're glad it's not one of their own.
He's made it to the stage, and at this point, Lillieth is shedding some tears, and her knees are shaking. I grab her and hug her, I'm sure If I don't, she'll fall, and the cameras will zoom in on her, to get her reaction, for the Capitol's entertainment. How cruel can they be to us?
"For the ladies, now," Our eccentric escort says, she walks over to the bowl with the name of all the girls between 12 and 18. My name is in there 8 times, In this moment, I wish all my slips are on the bottom, where an escort will never go, they seem to always take from the top, or a couple centimeters from the top. But this escort, Tiliama, sticks her hand in completely, and goes further in, her upper body is brought forward, as she reaches for the bottom, and I no longer wish for my name to be there.
She pulls outs a slip of paper, walks back towards the microphone. She looks around at the crowd of girls, opening up the slip, and it's at that moment when my biggest fears come true. "Amora LeCeram," She says, smiling broadly and looking towards the girl. I hear sobs from Lilly, who is still clinging to my arms, I let go of her, before the cameras find out who I am. I know I have to be arrogant and look proud of going into a slaughter. I turn to the middle aisle where there's a space, and I walk proudly there, girls move aside. I smile and wave as the cameras focus on me, There's a skip to my walk, and peacekeepers are around me to ensure I don't escape, I hear screaming from the sidelines, it's my mother, I notice the screens, I look beautiful, and egotistical, as if i'm happy to be sent into the games, as if I deserve to go into the games.
I look like the games are an award, that I deserve to win.
There are three different things going on that the screen shows, my mom is screaming for me, crying at her side is my sister, my dad is holding back tears, then there's me walking towards the stage, I just turned to go to the steps. Then the final image shows where I was standing, Lillieth has collapsed onto the ground, then the images cut from my mom and best friend. To my district partner, I have the feeling he knows who I am, I feel Lilly told him who I was. Then, our escort, beckoning my on stage.
I take the first steps, walking towards the stage, smiling, my shoulders back, head held high. I have to play this angle to win.
To win... How can I possibly win if it means I have to kill.
Through the haze of my thoughts, I've made it on stage, and I'm shaking Eriken's hand. I smile at him, and at the crowd , and I take the microphone, at Tiliama's surprise. "I'd just like to say, that it's an honor to represent my amazing district, and finally get to see the amazing and beautiful, Capitol!" I say into the microphone, at everyone's surprise now, the Capitol must be eating this up, a girl who is proud of being reaped that isn't a Career.
thank you for reading, 3