The Hunger Games – From Peeta Mellark's point of view.
Chapter 1
Some nightmares don't end upon waking.
It's just beginning to get bright outside when I wake. A small trickle of light falls across the floor in front of me. That dream again, why that dream. I think. It's always the same no matter what I do. Always about losing someone, losing her. Looking around the room I see that I am the only one awake, both my brothers are asleep, dead to the world and I realize why today the nightmare won't go away, why it will haunt me today all day. Today is the reaping. I don't fear for myself though, I fear for her. For the only girl that I love,
Katniss Everdeen.
Pulling back the covers that lie over me I put my feet on the ground, feeling the dry hard wood of the floor and stand up. "Might as well get up seeing as your awake I tell myself." It's no good though, there is no where I could go and even if I did nothing to do.
Walking out the room and down the small dark staircase that smells of bread and cooking into the bakery that is my families, I think about what could happen today, how she could get reaped and all the ways that she could die in the arena. The thought fills me with such sadness that I push it from my mind, trying desperately to think of something else. It's no good though. I can't. Opening the door to the back yard I take a deep breath of air, smelling the scent of apple from the tree and the thick dust that hangs in the air from the coal mines.
District 12 – where I live – is a coal mining District. The 12 districts of Panem ruled by The Capitol all do something for it. I am not sure what the others do as we are never told at school, and maybe the teachers don't know themselves anyway.
I take another breath, trying to calm the emotions that are going crazy inside my head. Spinning round and round like they are having a race. "Relax" I tell myself "she will be fine; nothing will happen she won't get picked". Though I know this is not true. She has a higher chance than anyone.
Walking out the back yard I turn and head to the meadow, I don't know why I head there, maybe to get away from the thick air that surrounds me, though I know this is basically impossible. I am just placing me feet on to the meadow when I see her. Katniss. Coming out of her home, a small dark dirty looking place, but I only see her, looking about her and then head in my direction. She hasn't seen me. She is heading for the woods this I know everyone does, but I turn around and head home anyway feeling like I am somehow intruding on her space and have to right to be there at all.
My mind still reeling from Katniss I almost miss the other figure entering the woods. The shape of a man, tall and thin carrying something in his hands. I don't have to look any harder than a glace to know that it will be Gale, going to meet her. Jealous of him not because he can hunt, but because he gets to spend time with her. It's crazy. Jealous of someone I don't know. Stupid Peeta I think. Grow up. I shake my head and carry on walking trying once again to rid it of emotions as I head home, but no matter what I do they won't go away.
The door is still open when I get back. I walk in expecting to find my mother and for her to start shouting at me for disappearing but only find my father. He is sitting at the small table his head in his hands, turned towards the squirrel that has been placed on it.
"Did Gale trade with you?" I ask, knowing it was him. My father nods and that is the end of the conversation. I start to pull out the bread that is in the oven taking care not to drop it in the fire. "What did you give him" I ask, "Loaf of bread" my father replies "for him and the girl" I nod thinking that was kind of him to consider both of them. Putting more bread in the oven to bake I close the door behind me. Taking the still warm loafs I had just taken out I put them in another small room of to the side to cool completely before opening time. Then I walk to the table and pluck the squirrel off it "It will need skinned" is all I say as I go back outside taking the dead squirrel with me.
Once the squirrel is skinned and cooked, the rest of my family is up. We eat the stale bread from yesterday and share out the squirrel never saying where it came from. No need we all know just to bring it up would be like death in this house. Especially with my mother. We then busy ourselves with the bakery until it is time to go.
The reaping. What every child who is turning twelve this year will be dreading and everyone else up to the age of eighteen will be trying to forget. One boy and one girl form the ages 12 to 18 will be picked today, may they be Seam or Town kids I can't say all I know is, is that they will be in The Hunger Games and they will most likely never come home to their friends or family's waiting for them here.
The square is filling up fast when we arrive. I peel away from my mother, father and oldest brother - too old for the reaping - and go stand with other boys who are sixteen. We don't say anything to each other, just glace each other's way they look back at the stage. Effi Trinket – the lady who reads the names- is talking to Mayor Undersee.
It is about to start.
Just before Effi gets up I catch I sight of Katniss talking to her little sister Primrose. It's her first year and she looks terrified. Katniss is trying to sooth her and tell her it will be alright. I see them leave each other and go and stand in the designated areas for their age. Looking back towards the stage I see that Haymitch has arrived. He is the only living victor that District 12 has. I have only seen a couple of times in the market and then every year at the reaping of course but I don't pay much attention to him anyway. He is drunk but that's no surprise he is always drunk and hollers and staggers about the stage – tries to give Effi a hug – and finally falling into the chair that is there for him.
Effi gets the ball running by starting some silly little speech about how happy she is to be here. Even though we all know she hates it and heads to the girls ball saying in her silly high accent,
"Lady's first" like she does every year. Plunging her hand into the ball she grabs a slip of paper from it and heads back to the middle of the stage. The name that she calls is not Katniss. I am relieved until I realize, that although it wasn't her, she will go, because the name was her sisters.
Primrose Everdeen.
