A/N: Hello my dear readers! This is my very first attempt at writing fan fiction so I don't know how it is going to go. I will not go in to detail much on appearances. I figure if you've read the books you should know. Also, if you have not read the book I suggest you hit the back button because this story and future stories will contain spoilers from the original book and you probably won't understand some things that I write. But if you don't care to read spoilers or to be slightly confused then by all means READ IT. Doesn't matter to me it's your choice. I apologize if some of the characters seem a little OOC. I am open to any criticism but not rude criticism. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to make my story better. I take full credit for any grammar mistakes and if they are pointed out I will attempt to fix them ASAP. My author's notes usually will not be this long. This one is because it is the very first chapter and I would like to inform you of anything that I would like you to know now so I won't have to waste your time in the future. Anyway, thank you for taking your time to read my story and hopefully you will enjoy.

Disclaimer: I am not the wonderful Suzanne Collins. I do not own The Hunger Games (I wish...). All things recognizable go to their creators!

Chapter One

I just wish he was here. I hated growing up too fast. But I had to. For Prim.

One of the many unfair laws of the Capitol took my father away. When the oldest child of a family reaches the reaping age of twelve years, the father of that family must be brought to the Capitol to serve community service. The father will only be returned if he survives the manual labor of the Capitol and his oldest child survives until their eighteenth year reaping or through the Games themselves.

It was so unfair. I had never seen my mother so distraught the day that we bid him goodbye for the next six years. I was thinking positive. I knew my father had the agility to survive any labor that the Capitol threw at him. I was just hoping that my name wouldn't get chosen for the reaping that was happening the following day. My very first reaping, and my name was already in that big glass bowl four times. That was three more than any of the merchant kids who didn't have to worry about what they were going to eat that night.

Luckily, my name was not drawn from the bowl that year. My father and I had been hunting for months before he left to save up for money and food for which I was grateful. The less time I had to spend out there alone, the better. But I knew I would soon have to begin hunting on my own when the two weeks supply of food began to dwindle to nothing. I woke up early one morning, threw on my father's hunting jacket that he left me, put my hair in a braid, and began my walk to the fence.

The fence is supposed to be electrified at all times, or so the Peacekeepers in The Hob say, but usually it's not. I stopped a couple feet from the fence and listened and the fence was as silent as ever. Then I stepped through the broken chain link and ran the few feet to the edge of the woods out of the prying eyes of the district.

It was so silent out there without my father. Although, it was usually quiet when he was with me, it was like you could feel his absence all around you.

I stepped up to the hollow log that I keep my bow and arrows in. I peeked in and sighed when I caught sight of my father's bow. It was going to be a long day.

And a long day it was. For that was the day that I met my future acquaintance Gale Hawthorne.

After checking out one of his intricate snares, having him catch me, and assume that I was steeling (I really wanted to tell him what happened when people assumed things but I held my tongue.) he finally asked my name.

"Katniss." I said softly.

"Well Catnip, you do know stealing's punishable by death," he replied.

"Katniss. And I wasn't stealing, I was just looking."

That day I learned that Gale was two years older than me, making him fourteen, and that his father had been taken when he was twelve, just as mine had been a couple weeks before. Coincidentally, I began running into him more in the woods and we eventually came up with a meeting spot.

It took me a while to get used to Gale and him to get used to me. We finally decided it would be best to hunt together and split the game and profit that we sold at The Hob evenly.

We soon came up with a deal. If he taught me how to make snares, I would teach him how to shoot. He eventually became so talented that I gave him one of my father's bows that my father had made as a spare just in case.

I met Gale's family a year after I met Gale. His mother, Hazelle, immediately took me in saying that she had heard so much about me. Soon after, she began calling me her "second daughter" which, honestly, was kind of appropriate. The minute I walked in to The Hob with Gale by my side the rumors started and they haven't died down since.

Although there was nothing romantic between me and Gale then, and still not now, everyone believed that we would marry as soon as I turned eighteen. Not for romantic feelings for each other but for the convenience. Gale and I already split our food down the middle for the both of our families, why not have an extra house and an extra months free grain just for getting married?

But that was before. Before I was reaped for the 76th Hunger Games.

Please review and tell me what you think! Thanks!

-Britt