Summary: The new Abernathy Show is auditioning for their 2 leading child stars, and Katniss thinks Prim will be perfect for the part (opposite the famous Peeta Mellark) and save their lives in the process. They lost their parents at a young age and hey don't have a lot of options left.

Ok,so, hard to categorize this one or write a summary without giving too much away lol...this will be split into two stories. When this one ends I will be posting the second shorty after. Both are outlined already as well so I know exactly where this is headed. I dont have a beta so, sorry about mistakes, they are all mine. I tried to have one on another story and never had luck with turn around time on them so I always posted them messed up anyway. (If you have ever read the book where i got the story idea from, you will know exactly where this is headed, please dont ruin it for others though! And i'll tell you the book name at the end, because I don't want anyone going to read the book and getting spoilers because it follows the book pretty closely)

CH 1.

Katniss stared out the window of the bedroom in the small 2 bedroom trailer as all the lights in the park start to shut off. It was an hour past closing time and there was nothing to do on a monday night around here.

A burst of laughter sounded from the next room as the Caesar Flickerman Show audience responded to one of Ceaser's jokes about peanuts and President Snow . Aunt Sophie always had the television on. She said it kept her from missing Uncle Earl's voice. Earl had died a year and a half ago, leaving Sophie the owner of the Panams Dist. 12 Amusement Park. She hadn't exactly been a ball of fire when he was alive, but it was even worse now that he was dead, and Katniss was pretty much in charge of things.

As she drew back from the window, she knew it wouldn't be much longer before Sophie fell asleep. She never lasted much past midnight even though she hardly ever got out of bed before noon. Katniss propped herself up against the pillow of the bed she shared with Prim. The trailer was hot and airless. Despite the fact that she was wearing only an orange Panam Uni T-shirt and a pair of thin shorts, she couldn't get comfortable. They used to have a window air conditioner, but it had broken down two summers ago just like everything else, and they couldn't afford to replace it.

Katniss glanced at the clock on the crate next to her bed. It was 10pm and Prim was still out. She had a sinking suspicion at to why and she was not happy about slipped her feet off the bed and into a pair of old flip flops that had long since conformed to the shape of her foot, before heading out of the bedroom and towards the front door.

As she passed her aunt, who had fallen asleep on the old recliner in the living room once again, she sighed. Her aunt should be the one wondering where the 14 year old girl in her care was at 10pm. Her aunt should be the one worried about how they were going to pay the bills that had been piling up for a year. But she knew that getting mad at Sophie wouldn't do her any good, just as getting mad at her mother hadn't got her anywhere all those years ago.

"I'm going out for a bit."

Sophie snorted in her sleep.

The air was heavy with humidity. As she passed beneath a series of weathered Southern yellow-pine support columns, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts and told herself that this time she would keep going. This time she wouldn't stop and look. Looking made her think, and thinking made her feel like she was being swallowed into a black hole. She moved doggedly ahead for another minute, but then she stopped anyway. Turning back the way she had come, she craned her neck and let her gaze move along the length of the tallest ride in the park. The roller coaster's massive frame stood unmoving in the dark. Her eyes traveled up the steep incline of the lift hill and down that heart-stopping sixty-degree drop. She traced the slopes of the next two hills with their chilling dips all the way to the final spiral that twisted down in a nightmare whirlpool over Panam Lake itself. Her heart ached with an awful combination of yearning and bitterness as she took in the three hills and the steeply banked death spiral. Everything had begun to go wrong for them the summer the roller coaster had stopped running.

The quiet night and the smell of burnt popcorn brought back a faded memory,. She was a small girl curled in a ball in the corner of the trailer,. scabby knees drawn up to her chin. An angry voice echoed in her mind.

"Get her out of here, Sophie! Goddamnit, she's givin' me the spook's! She's hardly moved since you brought them here last night. All she's done is sit in that corner and stare." She heard the crash of her uncle's fist on the kitchen table.

"Where am I going to put her, Earl?" Sophie sighed. She was tired of the little girl already. The other one was quiet and stayed out of the way.

"I don't give a shit where you put her. It's not my fault your sister went and killed herself. Those welfare people had no right to make you go get them. I want to eat my lunch in goddamn peace without her spookin' me!"

Sophie came over to the corner of the trailer's living area and kicked her foot. Katniss whimpered once again.

"You stop actin' like that, go on outside and find Prim. You haven't seen the park yet. You two can go explore" Only a few years later would Katniss realize a 4 and 6 year old had no right wondering an amusement park alone.

"Goddamnit! Get her out of here, Sophie!"

"Now see what you've done." Sophie sighed again. "You got your Uncle Earl all mad." She grasped her arm and marched her outside the trailer. "Come on. Let's go get you some cotton candy."

Walking out of the trailer and through a gate, Katniss dragged behind her aunt. She didn't want cotton candy. Sophie'd made her eat some cereal that morning, and she'd thrown up. Sophie dropped her arm when they crossed the gate.

"I want my mama." Katniss whispered as they walked towards the nearest vendor.

"Your mama's dead. She's not—" The rest of Sophie's reply was drowned out as a roar skid past their heads. Katniss screamed.

All the fear she had held inside, to be a good role model for little Prim, had finally snapped in her. Again and again she screamed. She had a vague idea what a roller coaster was, but she had never ridden one, never seen one this size, and it didn't occur to her to connect the sound with the ride. She heard only a monster, the monster that hides in the closet and skulks under the bed and carries off little girls' mothers in fearsome fiery jaws. The screams fell from her mouth . After being nearly catatonic for the six days since her mother had died, she couldn't stop, not even when Sophie began to shake her arm.

"Quit that! Quit that screamin', you hear?"

But Katniss couldn't quit. Instead, she fought against her aunt until she broke free. Then she began running beneath the tracks, running from the pain and the fear. When she got to an area on the track too low for her to go under, she grabbed onto the wooden post of the thing that scared her so much. She never noticed the splinters digging into her palms as she screamed, trying to drown out the sound of the monster above her.

"Goddamnit, stop that noise!" While Sophie stood helplessly watching, Uncle Earl came up behind them and dragged her off the post with a jolt.

"What's wrong with her? What the hell is wrong with her now?" "

I don't know," Sophie whined. "She started doin' that when she heard the coaster. I think she's afraid of it."

"Well, that's just too goddamn bad. We're not coddling her, goddamnit." He snatched Katniss up by the waist and pulled her out from beneath the coaster. Walking with great loping strides, he carried her through the crowd of people waiting to board the coaster. A train sat empty, ready for its next group of passengers. Ignoring the protests of the people waiting in line, he pushed her beneath the lap bar in the first car. Her screams continued. She struggled to get out, but her uncle held her down.

"Earl, whatcha doin'?" Chester, the old man who ran the ride rushed up to him.

"She's goin' on a ride."

"She's too little, Earl. You know she's not tall enough for this coaster." "

"That's too damn bad. Strap her in. And no goddamn brakes." "

"But, Earl. . ."

"Do what I say, or pick up your paycheck." She was barely aware of the loud objections of several of the adults waiting in line, but then the train began to move, and she realized that she was being delivered into the very stomach of the beast that had taken her mother. Her mind ran.

"No!" she screamed. "No! Mama!" Her fingers barely met at the tips as she grabbed the lap bar in a death grip. Sobs ripped through her. "Mama . . . Mama . . ." The ride creaked and groaned as the train crawled up the great lift hill . It moved with such slowness, giving her child's mind time to conjure visions of terror. She was six years old and alone in the universe with the monster of death taking her away.

She wasn't big enough, strong enough, old enough to protect herself, or Prim, and there was no adult left on earth who would do it for her. Fear gripped her and her tiny heart throbbed in her chest as the car reached the top of the great lift hill. Her last scream echoed from her throat as the car cleared the top, and she had one glimpse of the terrifying scene ahead of her before she was thrown into the deepest part of her nightmares….only to….Rise again.

And then back into hell…..And rise again. She was plunged down and back up again three more times before she was sent into a spiral. She slammed into the side of the car, only to level out at the last second,and be shot back to higher ground. The coaster slowed as it reached the station and the end of the ride. She was no longer crying. The cars came to a stop. Her Uncle Earl had disappeared, but Chester, the ride operator, rushed up to lift her out. She shook her head, her eyes still wide, her tiny face white as a ghost.

"Again," she whispered.

She was too young to understand the feelings the coaster had given her. She knew only that she had to experience them again—the sense that there was a force greater than herself, a force that could punish but would also rescue. The sense that somehow that force had allowed her to touch her mother. A force that for the first time in what felt like an eternity, gave her hope.