Mrs. Pallas
I stared at the dark screen of the television set in our family's living room, wishing my mind could be that blank. It would be less painful for all of us, the whole family, if thought didn't exist. If our own natures didn't force us to dwell on the terrible fact that looked us in the eye now: Suddenly our own daughter was the victim of the city we had served for so many decades. I remembered every year of service I and my husband had committed myself to—long before the twenty-five years that we'd been the governing family of District Eleven, one of the poorer districts of our nation, Panem. We had served all our lives; twenty-five years ago only marked the beginning of our recognition for that service…
I remembered it clearly, too—the bloody war that ensued between the outlying districts and the capitol, the constant fear that we wouldn't survive, the humiliation as the rebels outwitted each of our weapons against them—and then the victory, the realization that there was no more need for fear, the triumph as the Capitol announced it to the world, the smugness as the government set up the new rules and regulations, the taxes and laws, and most humiliating of all—the Hunger Games. Every district, all twelve of you surviving districts, will give us two of your children every year, and those children will fight to the death in an arena until there's only one left while the rest of us watch and laugh and call for more blood. And if you refuse to send your tributes, we'll blow you up like we blew up your beloved neighbor, District Thirteen. It was atrocious, of course. Shocking when it first came out. But in the Capitol, they had quickly adapted, and now the Hunger Games were the highlights of the year there.
And then my husband was set as mayor for District Eleven, and we moved out of the Capitol to live here, where although our children's names were always put into the drawing for the Hunger Games—the reaping, it's called—there was never really any chance they would be picked, because we, as the mayor's family, are rich and don't need to trade extra slips of paper with our names on them for grain and oil. But now it's the Twenty-Fifth Hunger Games, the first Quarter Quell, a special game that comes around only every twenty-five years…so there's a new twist flung in to make it even more interesting and exciting for all the bloodthirsty viewers back in the Capitol. The districts get to vote the people that go into the Games.
Our daughter, Rose, was rich. She wasn't hungry. She never had to sign up for a year's worth of grain and oil in exchange for extra slips of paper with her name on them in the reaping. She'd never really been in the running. She'd never had to worry. Every other kid between the ages of twelve and eighteen had. So naturally, the entire district hated her…and that meant that she was going into the Hunger Games, because there was no way the district would vote for anyone else for female tribute.
It would have been different if she were only twelve. Nobody liked to see a twelve-year-old go, and to vote for one would be like killing the child yourself. Abominable. But Rose was eighteen, so this was the last year she was legally allowed into the reaping. Nobody was going to vote for anyone under seventeen this year. And that meant that in a few months, when the Hunger Games started…Rose Pallas was going into the arena. And Rose Pallas, the girl who never even stepped on bugs because she didn't want to hurt them, was going to die there.
No matter how I tried to stop them, the tears ignored me, and my face became a flood.