Chapter 1

The Reaping

I awoke with a start, I was having a terrible nightmare that I was being chased by Muttations that the Capitol had made. The Capitol is the huge city that rules over the twelve districts in Panem, we tried to rebel once, and that's why there were thirteen districts and now there are only twelve. To remind us that we are never to rebel again the Capitol hold a sick event called the Hunger Games, this is when two tributes between the age of twelve and eighteen from every district are selected and fight to the death in a massive arena, the games are never fair though the capitols pet districts are well trained and are always well fed, districts one, two and four show up to the games and just murder everyone, why wouldn't they? They have been trained to kill since the moment they were born. Getting selected in those districts is an honour, but here in district ten, it means you're funeral will be in a matter of days.

I don't even know why I think about the games, it always gets me on edge. I get out of bed and get dressed, the reaping isn't until two so I may as well do something until then, my family are the butchers in district ten, and seeing as our districts main productivity is livestock you would think that we would have a lot of meat to sell. Wrong. Most of the meat that is processed in district ten I sent to capitol immediately, leaving my family with very little to work with, but we scrape by. I walk into the kitchen and my father is there cutting some gammon for a customer, he looks up at me and says

"Ah Charlie, can you go charge Mrs Cooper for her four slices of gammon."

"Sure thing Dad." I say

I walk past him and into the serving area where all the fresh meat is on display, Mrs Cooper looks at me with her cataract littered eyes

"Is that you Charlie?" she asks with an unsure voice

"Yes it is Mrs Cooper, it will be four fifty for your slices of gammon." I say,

"Okay dearie I will give that to you know." She says.

She plunges her hand into her pocket and brings out an enormous amount of coins, this is the bright side of being in the hunger games, if you win like Annabel Cooper did twenty years ago, you are rich and famous until the day you die, then you become more famous for dying and your relatives are rich because all your money is left to them in your will.

"Here you go dearie." She says handing me the coins,

I put them into the cash register and give her the slices of gammon, she hobbles out, muttering to herself about how nice gammon is. I chuckle a she bends down and pets a mail box saying "Good dog" I got bored very quickly of serving customers so I grabbed my boots and went outside, my friends Alex and ben are waiting for me, Alex and Ben are twins and are constantly arguing.

"Good morning sleepy head." says Ben

"It's a national holiday, I deserve to sleep in." I say

"Need all your beauty sleep for the reaping?" teases Alex

"I was trying to get so much in so I could have enough for the both of us" I tease back

We all start walking towards the fence, when we are about ten inches away we stop and listen for the low vibrating hum, it's not there and rarely is, I guess the capitol doesn't care about us district ten citizens, once we are past the fence and a good two hundred metres into the wood the twins go and retrieve their bows, Alex and Ben are unbelievable at archery, they can shoot a bulls eye in almost complete darkness, as for me, I'm okay with a bow nothing special but when it comes the throwing knives, that's when my talents come into play, being a butchers son, I grew up with knives, so it was either know how to use them or lose all your fingers. I can kill any target with a minimum of one knife and a maximum of two, that's how good I am, I may not be the best at archery but when it comes to throwing knives, I am unbeatable.

We have a very successful morning, killing four wild dogs, two turkeys and three squirrels. We decide that we have enough meat and start looking for edible vegetation we sit underneath the old apple tree and have a lunch of apples,

"Happy Hunger Games everyone!" says Ben sarcastically.

"And may the odds," starts Alex.

"Be ever in your favour!" I finish.

We take twenty apples and put them in a sack which I throw over my shoulder and carry, it was already one o'clock so we decided it was time to go home, we split the game and the apples, two thirds for them and one third for me, they tricked me again they took all the apples, two wild dogs and a turkey, all I have is two wild dogs, a turkey, and three squirrels, which to be honest was more than the average district ten citizen has, I smile as I see my families butcher shop getting closer, if I walked through the door with all this game it my Dad would take a fit, he likes me coming through the back door so he can just skin the animals and either cook them or put them up for sale, I come through the back and put the game on the table next to my Dad, he grunts at me which basically means he is busy. I go upstairs undress and have a bath and let the water relax me, most people in district ten don't bother with baths, the water is never that warm, but I am not picky, it's warm enough for me, I look out the window which overlooks the square, it's ten to two! I rush out of the bath and get dried, I get dressed into a white shirt on the pair of black trousers I have for school, I roll up the sleeves because it's warm today and I would sweat like a pig if I didn't, I pause at my bedroom door and take a breath before I leave.

When I get to the square I file into my allocated slot with all the other thirteen year olds, I meet up with Alex and Ben.

"You guys nervous?" I ask.

"Yeah." Says Alex.

"Well no duh Sherlock!" replies Ben

Leave it to Ben to brighten the mood, our attention is quickly turned the woman with pink skin who is now walking across the stage, it's Trenise Deliberia, the Capitol official for our district, every year her skin is a different colour, and every year she annoys me more and more with her weird outfits and high-pitched capitol accent infected voice.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the seventy-third annual Hunger Games reaping, may the odds be ever in your Favour! In just a few moments I will select this years two tributes for the Hunger Games" She says

"Ladies First!" she titters,

She plunges her hand into the large bowl containing all the names of the girls in our district and takes out one, and walks slowly over to the microphone like she wants all of us to get more and more anxious as the time passes, she opens the note slowly and yells out,

"Sugar Clementine!"

I know her, her parents own the shoe shop across the square from my parents butcher shop, we were friends, and now she is going to die. Sugar walks up to the stage stiffly, with her face clear of all emotion, while Trenise plunges her hand into the boys reaping bowl, how could this day get any worse? When Trenise yells out

"Charlie Wright!"