It all started with my granddaddy, Mitchie Abernathy. Mitchie was from District 12, but how I hear it, that ain't no nice place at all. Real dirty, is District 12; filled with stinking mines full of stinking coal.

But Mitchie was clever. My daddy used to say I was lot like him, old Mitchie; he didn't want to stay stuck in Twelve. He wanted to go all the way to the Capitol, but was only able to negotiate up to 9. Still, he learned everything there was to know 'bout grain farming. He wasn't doing too badly, but then that was an easier time, back before the Rebellion.

Before the Hunger Games.

See, my granddaddy got very excited about some things. He'd get an idea in his head and nothing could ever stop him doing it. So he joined the rebels.

Obviously they didn't win, the Capitol being the Capitol and all, but life went on, but this time the Capitol started them Hunger Games. Lots of the rebels got executed, my mamma used to say she'd see them swinging by them necks, like laundry on a line. But not my granddaddy; he went on right as rain. He continued his farming grain, getting big deals in the Capitol. Nobody knows how he didn't get the swing. My mamma said it was the "Abernathy charm" and he'd talked his way out of it. She also said that I should never mention granddaddy at school. I didn't know why; I always felt that my granddaddy was clever and a hero. But I did what my mamma said.

Mitchie looked after us, in District 9. There was my mamma, Carla Abernathy and Aunt Emmeline, who scared the hell out of me, when I was 7. Still does now; she gets a similar reaction out of everyone here. I get good grades when I bring Aunt Emmeline to Open Day at school.

She took over the grain business when granddaddy died and ran it for him. I've never seen anything like it. When Emmeline ran the show, nobody misbehaved.

I saw my mamma less and less, and then one day she went completely. All that was left of her things was on a side table in the hall: a jade bracelet, some old pink slippers and her wedding ring.

Nobody told me at the time, so I made my own ideas. I told everyone at school about how my mamma was kidnapped by the little green men from District 13. I got a Severe Warning from a Peacekeeper not to talk about District 13, much less the little green men from it. I asked why; and he cuffed me 'round the ear and said I was insolent. I guessed that District 13 must be some kind of new bad word, like the kind that daddy [John Wishart] used when he dropped something or burned dinner.

It weren't not a good day when my daddy told me the truth: my mamma had run off to the Capitol with a Peacekeeper and I wasn't ever gonna see her again. Turned out she wanted to be in the city of style, not stuck on the outlines of 9.

And I haven't never seen my mamma since, though she writes when she feels like it. On my first reaping you sent me a postcard and a pretty ribbon. She's hasn't written for over two years now.

My daddy moved on too, he met a lady called Harryo and they got married. I have a little brother now, he's Georg, and my sister's Nanaire. Nanaire's too young and too silly to do anything, but Georg is the best playmate you ever saw. We was always daring together; the Peacekeepers went nuts but they could never prove it was us. District 9, the corn fields, the tractor yards and granaries and bakeries- the best bakeries, are a playground to little kids. We were a big district, with a decent sized city centre. Loads of kids had tesserae, but we didn't have to. We had our own little world.

All it took was one day each year.