Part I: "The Tributes"
One
My mother is shaking me kindly to wake me up. "Prim, it's time," she says quietly, removing the hair off my face.
I take time to realize what I am doing, where I am. I feel my mother's body against mine, warm and protective, her gentle touch. In the middle of the night, I went to sleep beside her. Now I remember. This is the day of the reaping.
Immediately, I feel a chill down my spine. The fear I was feeling yesterday was nothing compared to what I am feeling now. I just turned twelve. That means that it is the first time my name is going to be in that glass ball. It is the first time that I am going to run the risk of going to the arena. To the Hunger Games.
Only by thinking about it I want to cry. But I won't. I wouldn't make Katniss see me crying.
Katniss! I look at her bed, wishing to see my beloved big sister, the one who can calm me down for sure, but the only thing that I find is the untidiness that she left behind. She must be hunting. Her boots are gone, and so is her forage backpack. She is certainly hunting. With Gale.
Someone meows beside me. Only then I acknowledge Buttercup's existence, who is sitting on my knees. He is my cat. Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash. The most beautiful cat I have ever seen. I named him Buttercup because of the flower. Katniss and I were named after flowers too.
I'm able to find strength to get up. My mother kisses my cheek. She doesn't try to tell me everything is going to be okay, because both of us know that is a lie, and I appreciate that. I am young but not stupid.
"It's time, sweetheart," Mom insists delicately.
"Coming," I say.
Before starting to get ready, I have to check something on the kitchen. I take a look at the table and smile. Katniss has gotten the gift I left for her: goat cheese, from my goat, Lady, wrapped in basil leaves.
I come back to the room and a tub of warm water waits me. I wash myself, get dried and find the clothes I am going to wear for the reaping on the bed I share with my sister. They are Katniss's first reaping outfit, when she was twelve, a skirt and a ruffled blouse. Mom has picked one of her own lovely dresses for Katniss to wear, a soft blue one.
I make myself dress the clothes. They are a bit large on me, but my mother promptly makes it stay with pins. She does my hair in two braids. After that, she prepares a tub for Katniss when she arrives covered with dirt from the woods and only then my mother dresses herself: a fine dress from her apothecary days.
When Katniss arrives, she enters the tub and scrubs off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even washes her hair. When she sees the dress Mom has laid out for her, she asks, "Are you sure?" Her voice is toneless.
I know that Katniss had to take care of the family when our father died in the accident in the mines. Our mother got so shaken up that she couldn't take care of us, so Katniss did all the work. Since then, she is angry at our mother. I can't blame any of them, though.
"Of course," says Mom. "Let's put your hair up, too." Katniss lets her towel-dry it and braid it up her head. I watch everything and look at her with admiration.
"You look beautiful," I tell her in a voice that is barely a hush.
"And nothing like myself," she says. But her voice is full of warmth, nothing like the way she had talked to Mom. She hugs me tight and I feel safer. I feel like I can go through the reaping. Now I'm not afraid of being reaped, I'm afraid of Katniss and her twenty name entries.
To those who are poor like we are, there is something to help, but it's a two-way path. You can opt to add your name into the pool more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year's supply of grain and oil for one person. Katniss wouldn't let me take out any tesserae, so she has been entering her name more than necessary to feed our mouths since she was twelve. My chances of being reaped are slim compared to hers.
"Tuck your tail in, little duck," she says, smoothing my blouse in the back.
I giggle and give her a small "Quack."
"Quack yourself," she says with a light laugh. I am the only one that make her do such thing as laugh. "Come on, let's eat." She plants a quick kiss on the top of my head.
The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. We decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for this evening's meal, to make it special we say. Instead we drink milk from Lady and eat the rough bread made from the tessera grain, although no one has much appetite anyway.
At one o'clock, we head for the square and it's like my legs are made of jelly. I love the square, because it has a holiday feel to it, but not on reaping days. Especially on this reaping day. Grimness is in the air.
The square is marked by ages in a decreasing way, those who are older closest to the stage than those who are younger. The ones who are available to compete in the Games are from twelve to eighteen years old. Family members are close by, full of tension, hoping not to hear one of their children's names.
I stand among a clump of twelve-year-olds from the Seam. They are as nervous as I am, because it is the first time they are on the reaping. I can see it in their eyes… They, like me, are just scared little kids. We are not ready to fight to the death. No one is.
I take a look on the crowd, starting to get scared. He told me he was going to be close by. After a moment of desperation, I see Rory Hawthorne, Gale's younger brother. I sigh with relief. Rory is the same age as me. Our friendship isn't as deep and Gale and Katniss's are, but we consequently know each other well. We exchange looks and he nods, though even I can see fear in those fierce eyes so like his brother's. Rory may transmit confidence, but today everyone is afraid, even him.
We all focus the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls. I stare at the paper slips in the girls' ball. Twenty of them have Katniss Everdeen written on them in careful handwriting. And one of them contains the name Primrose Everdeen.
There are three chairs on the stage. One is for Mayor Undersee, a tall and balding man. The other is for Effie Trinket, District 12's escort, fresh from the Capitol with her scary white grin, pinkish hair, and spring green suit. The last chair remains empty. The mayor and Effie whisper to each other.
The town clock strikes two. Now it's time. My heart races as the mayor steps forward to the podium and begin to read. It's the same story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.
The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.
They force kids to fight to the death to remind us that we must not rebel. They won't have mercy if we do. We don't want to kill. But that's the way it is: kill or be killed.
The Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as something to celebrate, a festivity. That is the most torturous part. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle starvation.
"It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks," intones the mayor.
Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. We can't even call it a list, though. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still alive. Haymitch Abernathy, a paunchy, middle-aged man, who at this moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage, and falls into the third chair. He's drunk. Very. The crowd responds with its token applause, but he's confused and tries to give Effie Trinket a big hug, which she barely manages to fend off.
In order to distract people from Haymitch, the mayor introduces Effie Trinket. She steps into the podium and gives her signature bubbly, "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!"
I hope the odds are indeed in my favor, Effie, I think.
She goes on a bit about what an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows she's just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors. But we, of course, have to pretend we are convinced that she's delighted to be at District 12, where you can starve to death in safety.
It's time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always does, "Ladies first!" and crosses to the glass ball with the girls' names. My entire body is trembling. Effie reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling nauseous and now I'm not thinking about how I wish it's not me. That gets in second plan. I find myself so desperately hoping that it's not Katniss, that it's not Katniss, that it's not Katniss. The odds are not on her favor. Please, I think, almost crying, don't take Katniss away from me. Please…
Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not Katniss.
It's me.