Chapter One
I wake up in the middle of the night screaming and drenched in sweat. The reaping. It's today. Katniss and Peeta Mellark chose for the Capitol to have to have a Games, they make it. I'm from the Capitol. President Snow is dead. They get to decide what happens to everyone left alive. I am thirteen years of age. My name is put into the glass bowl. The odds might be in my favor. We can only hope.
I've always been a quiet person. I've never dressed in the silly gowns and dyed hair and all that stuff. I let my very long dirty blonde hair down. I am a slender girl, not too skinny but not too plump. I have a beautiful mother and a sister, Callie. She looks different from me, though. She has black, straight hair and she's a chubby little girl. She is only 4 years of age, though.
I go back to sleep, or at least try to. My bed is huge, but it feels empty. Just my body to take up this whole bed space.
When I wake up again, sunlight is streaming through my windows. I dress in a pale blue dress, and put my hair into a bun on top of my head. This is a very scary day.
I walk downstairs, and find my sister asleep still. She doesn't have to go to the reaping, she's not of age yet. First ever reaping. Here we go. My mother is dressed like me, although she won't have her name in the bowl at all. She's over eighteen. "You look beautiful today, Caroline," my mother says.
I reply with a small "thank you." The reason my mother and I don't talk very much is because she is on the Capitol's side. She was absolutely devastated when Snow died. I was happy. I hated living here growing up. I hate it even more now that people I know and love might die.
The bell rings. It's time for the reaping. I walk down to the square with my best friend, Melissa. She and I grew up together. She hates the Capitol too.
We prick our finger on the needle, which I see people that helped kill Snow doing it. They put my blood on the paper and I walk to the square with Lissa.
This time it's Katniss Everdeen picking the names from the bowl and reading them aloud. "Happy First Hunger Games," she says in a sarcastic voice. A careless one. I'm surprised to see how badly she wants revenge.
We watch a new video, one about how the Capitol destroyed everything for the districts and how this is how they will get even with us.
"I love that video. It makes it so clear for the people who will go into the Games. This year, 12 girls and 12 boys will be chosen, because there aren't districts to choose from. Volunteers are allowed," she says, then turns to the bowl holding the girl's names. She draws 12, and then reads them aloud one by one.
She reads off people that I don't know for the first eleven. Then, there's one more. It can't be me.
She unfolds the paper slip, so carefully. She reads the name aloud.
"Caroline Evanston."