Chapter One
The Reaping
"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things."
-Lemony Snicket
Today was the reaping, I had been to it everyday for sixteen years now so I knew how it went, people got dressed up, they stood in the square and acted as if nothing was wrong.
Last year my sister, Chloe DiMera had been one of the many children to be reaped. She was only twelve years old, and me like a fool, well, I'd been out hunting and avoiding the silly reaping because I knew my chances of getting chosen were pretty high, I decided that if I did get chosen I would just go on the run, because in those days, I didn't want to die. I wanted to live, I wanted to live my life to the full and I knew that the hunger games was an instant death sentence.
I could hunt very well, I knew how to use a bow and arrow, but my main line of defence was probably my knives and swords. I was a fierce sword fighter like my father had been, he taught me everything I knew about hunting, that was how he had won the hunger games, with his knife combat.
After my sister was killed in the hunger games, my father lost interest in everything though. I lost interest in everything. We always made it a weekly activity, me, my father and Chloe out there hunting in the wild, we'd take out bows and knives and come back with all kinds of game to feast ourselves on, and we always traded the meat too.
Since my father committed suicide over Chloe's death, I didn't know how to feel. Bitter? Hallow? Angry? I felt all of them and more.
I wanted revenge on the capitol, I wanted revenge on the sick people who designed the hunger games and made my sister pay for a crime she didn't commit. I just wish I had been there when they called her name. Now I would volunteer in place of the unfortunate soul who had been reaped this year as payment for what I had done.
Besides, I wanted to die, and if somebody else could do it, all the better for me as then I wouldn't have to try and survive this awful world on my own.
I refused to get dressed up for the barbaric ritual that the Capitol made us attend, I pulled on my old combat pants, a low cut shirt and my knee high. lace up boots. To finish the outfit I decided to wear my leather jacket, or my fathers.
It had been his from a time when he himself was in the hunger games, but he had survived.
District twelve only had two victors over the years, my father who had won because of his great aerial attack skills, climbing in the trees and waiting like a cobra to strike with his knifes from above, and Haymitch, a drunk man who had won by manipulating some kind of forcefield to his will, which by looking at the man now you wouldn't think was very possible as he looked like a bumbling idiot most of the time… all of the time.
I bet that had pissed off the capitol though, when he had used their own weapon against somebody, now that is the kind of stunt i would have to pull to get back at them, just something, anything to piss them off, and then I would finally get to die and be with my family again.
I smiled inwardly, I would love to piss off the capitol. Maybe volunteering would piss them off because it wasn't customary. Then again, maybe not.
I looked in the dirty, cracked mirror. It was covered in coal dust so I took my sleeve and wiped it against the glass. My hair was a bit of a mess, it was cropped pretty short to my chin as it was more convenient that way. It was almost perfectly straight when long, but if it grew past my chin, it started to bunch into frizzy curls.
My gray eyes stared back at me, I looked ill. I was pale, my cheeks slightly sunken, but when you refused to eat that's how you would look. Most of the people in the seam looked like this though, typically they had gray eyes, black hair and olive skin. At least my skin was different. Though, I guess my eyes were too. where as most had stormy gray eyes, i had eyes that were a blueish-greenish-gray. They could change colour depending on my mood, the weather or the light. They also had flickers of silver and gold in them and a darker blue rim around the edges.
I rarely ate or hunted now, not since my sister and father had died. Call it depression if you will, but the way I see it I was trying hard to starve myself to death, but that's harder than it seems when you are already starving as it is. This is because when you're hungry, you want to eat, but when you don't want to eat and you're hungry, it drives you insane so you have to eat something.
I sighed and stood up.
I headed out of my home and into the dry and dusty streets of the seam in district twelve. I could taste carbon in the air and the particulates from the sulfur and other crap they dug up in the coal mines. I would rather die in the hunger games any day that have to work there when I was of the age to.
I could see my school in the distance, the tacky, rundown old building that I had to spend thirty hours of my week indulging in bullshit they spouted about how great the capitol was and how we would all be coal miners in the future.
I'd be dead before that happened.
I continued to walk down the dusty roads until I got to the square, a place slap bang in the middle of district twelve that seemed to be filled with life at the moment, though not happy life. People stood around waiting for the reaping to happen, highlights of previous hunger games played on as I got in line with the people my age, people in front of me were younger than me.
I sort of blanked out and began to kick a rock with my foot, playing with it until my foot began to hurt from pressing it onto the floor so much and kicking at the rock. I had scuffed my boots, which wasn't really an issue considering they were scuffed anyway, but they were the good hardy type of boots, ones you only needed to replace every few years or so.
I saw a woman with horrid bright pink hair walk up onto the stage. I mean, really? Bright pink hair?! Of course I'd seen worse, people with dyed skin, disturbing shades of orange and green, people with implants under their skin to make they appear different and unique.
To me it seemed silly and shallow to waste money on such amenities, but when you had money to throw away like in the capitol, I guess you could do those things.
I hated the capitol. They were the reason my sister was dead and I hoped that one day they would pay, whether by my hand or by somebody elses. I had nobody, so they couldn't hold anybody against me. I blanked out for the beginning of the ceremony really, there wasn't much to interest me. All I cared about was getting my place in the hunger games.
The woman, Effie Trinket as I now recognised her as, took her place on the stage. She muttered some rubbish about the hunger games and then she began to rummage around in the pot full of names.
I hoped she picked my name so I didn't seem too crazy when I volunteered, but I guess it didn't really matter, what mattered was that I could piss off the capitol and get my revenge for what they did to my sister.
"Primrose Everdeen." Effie Trinket said, the peacekeepers headed towards a young girl, of only around twelve years old, and at that, I saw the girl infront of me begin to fight her way through the crowd. I knew what she was going to do. I would have done the same for my sister.
"No!" She called to the girl, and that's when I took a deep breath, "I vol-"
"I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!" I called, and all eyes turned to me including the girl in the blue dress with her stormy gray eyes and her plaited hair.
"What?" Effie Trinket said looking a little confused, "Child, we have not asked for volunteer's yet, we need-"
"What's the point in waiting? We have a willing volunteer, let the girl come up and take her place as tribute." The mayor said looking a little pained as he looked at Primrose Everdeen, I'd seen her before. She was the daughter of the town healer. A nice, quiet girl who wouldn't have lasted five seconds on the field.
"You're right, please, miss…" Effie trailed off asking for my name.
"Leanne. Leanne DiMera." I answered with a smug smile as I made my way onto the stage.
"DiMera, as in the victor Anton DiMera? And the tribute who was chosen last year, Chloe DiMera?" Effie asked with a little shock in her voice.
"The one and only." I laughed dryly showing my displeasure at her mentioning my family's names.
"Well, it looks like we have our female tribute for district twelve! Now onto our male tribute!" Effie said in her high pitched and very irritating capitol accent.
"The male victor for district twelve it… Peeta Mellark."
A boy came forward, he was of medium height, a lot taller than my five foot, maybe five ten. He had ashy blonde hair the colour of sand that fell in slight waved across his forehead and past his ears similar to mine. His skin was pale, more tanned than mine, but still pale and he had brilliant blue eyes the colour of cobalt.
What surprised me was how stocky he was though, nobody in the seam was that stocky… unless he was well fed. Then I realised that Peeta Mellark was the bakers son.
I had seen him around, he was one of these people that seemed relatively happy, I don't think I'd ever spoken to him, he was a quiet boy who only kept to his friends where as I was the complete opposite. I had no friends. I refused to have people near me for fear that I would be hurt again.
"Will anybody volunteer for this young man?" Effie Trinket asked the crowd. Awkwardly everyone began to shuffle like they did when they were asked this question. "Nobody? Good. Well then! Happy Hunger Games and-"
"May the odds never be in your favour." I spat under my breath too low for anybody to hear, but clearly one person had heard what I said.
"You should watch yourself, if the capitol heard that they would have your head." Peeta said as he looked down at me, somehow he was now at the side of me without realising. I took a step back, not liking been in close proximity with people.
"Fuck the Capitol." I growled lowly to him before turning away from him and following Effie Trinket into the justice building, it was a rather grand place if i do say, but the problem was that it made me despise the capitol all the more knowing that they could afford places even better than this and I was living in a beat up old shack that was barely good enough for a dog to sleep in, let alone a young woman.
I watched as Peeta said goodbye to his family, not that they seemed particularly sad nor happy that their son would be competing in the hunger games. Maybe they knew he would die.
Nobody was there for me, I didn't expect anybody to be there for me. I wasn't nobody special, nobody within the community liked me, the worst thing they did was fear me because they knew of my past and what my father and sister were capable of.
The funny thing was, my father had killed eleven tributes on his own. He was seventeen when he won the hunger games.
Chloe was twelve and yet she had gotten down to the final two, that was the year we all thought that district twelve may have had another winner, she had killed only three of the tributes herself, but she was strong and tough and very agile. The thing what killed her was her agility in the trees, she was persude by the other last tribute- no surprise that he was from district 1, but how he had killed her had been violent and sickening.
"Hey, Leanne?" Peeta walked up to me and sat besides me, his family waiting over near his spot. I edged away from him, a little annoyed at him.
"Yes?" I asked, venom in my voice. If he noticed, he chose to ignore it.
"My father wanted me to give you this, he got it from the Mayor's daughter, she said you used to be friends before… well." Peeta frowned as he handed me what looked like a golden ring, I noticed that it was actually some kind of broch, it was beautiful of course, in the center of the ring was a bar and atop the bar was a bird in flight.
Not just any bird though, a mocking jay. I smiled slightly at the gift, one small act of defiance against the capitol, taunt them with their own failed mutt.
"Thank you, Peeta." I said sincerely, he seemed a little surprised but I turned my head and smiled genuinely at him, which made him smile back. For a brief second our eyes met and something passed between us.
I looked quickly away, refusing to make friends with the weak baker's son. I needed to die, and I knew I wouldn't die by some weakling's hand.
"Yeah, well." He rubbed the back of his neck and turned away, going back to his family.
"Time to go!" Effie called to us. I took the pin and clipped it onto my breast in plain sight, letting the world know how I felt about the capitol.
"Bye!" Peeta's family called to him as he walked onto the train, I followed after him, and as we set off from the station, the train zipping down the tracks at over 250 miles an hour, the pin now felt heavy on my chest and I began to feel something for the first time other than anger, bitterness and sorrow.