Author's Note: This is my first fanfic. R&Rs are greatly appreciated and I will do my best to answer them all!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games, or any of the characters.
I wake up in a cold sweat. My lightweight shirt and shorts are drenched but I know it has nothing to do with the weather. Staring up through the darkness at the old wooden rafters in my attic bedroom, I realize there is still a long time until dawn. The time I spent tossing and turning before I fell asleep obviously wasn't as long as it seemed. I turn my head and squint my eyes, barely able to see the lumpy form in the bed near the tiny open window on the other side of the room. I'm not sure exactly how early it is, but judging from the deep, waffling snores coming from underneath the blankets, my brother won't be up any time soon.
Listening hard, I think I can hear movement two floors below in the kitchen. If my father is already awake I don't see any sense in trying to fall back asleep. I know I won't be able to, not on Reaping Day.
I get up and dress as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing my brother. We get along fairly well if we ignore each other, but waking him up is not a good idea. He's like our mother that way. The small, rickety staircase is more of a challenge, but I manage to make it to the bottom without making too much noise. I tiptoe past my parents' bedroom, even less eager to waken my mother. If I'm quiet she won't be up until dawn when the ovens are hot and ready to be filled with the breads, pies and cakes for the window displays in the front of our house. My parents run the only baking business for the town.
This is usually my favorite part of the day, before dawn and before my mother is awake. My father and I spend the early hours stocking fuel, starting the fires and stoking the flames until the huge brick ovens reach the perfect temperature. It's a quiet time without my mother's shrill, disparaging voice to ruin the peace. By the time I reach the next flight of stairs down to the narrow hall that leads to the kitchens, I begin to feel the glowing heat from the fires. My father has already started. I come down the stairs and enter opposite the gaping mouths of the ovens, whose hunger demands a constant stream of raw confections that eventually feed the district.
His back is to me and he's struggling to carry more wood from the storage bins to massive firebox. Rushing over, I take the heavy load from his arms. My father unlocks and opens the grated iron guard door and the heat immediately becomes more intense. It's an easy thing for me to lift the heavy load of split logs and gently place them into the flames, keeping sparks from flying around the kitchen. My brothers usually just throw them in without checking to make sure the embers aren't too far scattered to maintain an even bake, which is why my father either does it himself, or asks me.
We could use coal, the main resource produced in our District, to heat our ovens, but my grandfather held that bread baked over wood tastes better, so that's what we've always done. I think it has something to do with the way coal ash flies, coating almost everything in town with a fine layer of dust my mother meticulously wipes away from our windows every morning. Coal ash and good bread wouldn't mix.
When I turn to look at my father, his ruddy face is shining with sweat in the firelight. His sleeves are pushed up around his dry, cracked elbows and I can see the scars from a lifetime of burns crisscrossing his skin. His eyes seem tired. He is usually a quiet man, but the silence this morning is different, as if he wants to say something but can't find the words.
Among my friends and family, I can usually be relied on to know what to say to lighten moods or lift spirits. At school, the girls laugh and say my words are as golden as my hair. I wish I knew what to say right now, but my mouth is dry and my tongue seems stuck to the roof of my mouth. The sad truth is there's nothing to say that will change what may happen today, so why bother?
He finally just nods at me, and we fall into our early morning ritual. Since I've come down, he leaves the fires to me and moves towards the cellar door cut into the floor beside the prep table. I stack more wood in my arms from the low pile in the box by the back door, and watch as he makes his way down into the cool darkness, his head disappearing as he nears the bottom. He's going down to get the raw loaves we prepared last night, put in the cellar to rise away from the radiant heat left even after the fires are put out. It's where we keep everything that needs to be preserved, like the fruit, meats and cheeses that go into our pies. The kitchen is always warm, but with the fires fresh it is approaching uncomfortably hot.
I unload the last of the wood from my arms into the firebox, and pick up a poker to rearrange the burning fuelwood. It would not be good from me to let a hotspot form in the ovens. A mistake like that could burn loaves, and it wouldn't be forgiven, even today.
I hear my father climbing back up the stairs. I wipe my hands on a rag sitting beside the firebox door and turn to see him carrying two trays of dough ready to be baked. He also has a jug I don't recognize tucked under his arm. He places the trays on the long, stone topped prep table. We'll put those in as soon as the sun rises and the fires have cooled down a little.
He beckons me over to the rough wooden table where our family takes meals, and motions for me to sit. I pull out my usual chair, the one toward the far end facing the windows and door on the back wall. The door leads to our backyard, where our animals are kept.
Looking up at him, I see my father staring at me with that tired look again. Without the distraction of work, his gaze makes me uncomfortable, and I'm relieved when he speaks.
"Hungry, son? How does some breakfast sound?"
I nod, "Good, sounds good."
Words are still escaping me, and I really just want something to drink, but preparing breakfast will give him something to do other than stare at me. He moves to the counter where he places the trays and pulls a basket towards him, picking through its contents until he selects two dark rolls. Under the high prep table top are several shelves containing mismatched plates, bowls, tin cups and our two precious drinking glasses which neither I nor my brothers are allowed to touch. My father's hands skip over the plates and grab those two glasses, which to my surprise he places on the table. I'm surprised again when he pours a bright golden liquid into each glass, bubbles forming thick white foam around the top. He slides one towards my end of the table, along with one of the rolls. His seat is at the head of the table, almost opposite mine. He sits, takes a bite of his roll and a swig from his glass. His eyes go slightly vacant. They usually do when he's eating, as he's lost in his own thoughts.
I look at my own glass. I can guess what it contains, but I've never had it before. Beer is something my mother detests, not from a moral aversion to intoxication, but a pathological hatred for spending money on anything other than herself. I've always suspected my father kept some secreted somewhere in the house. I wonder if he offered some to either of my brothers when they turned sixteen, or on a Reaping Day. I tip the glass to take a sip, foam tickling the bottom of my nose. It's crisp and cool, and the fizz is unlike anything I've had before. I swallow and feel a very slight, pleasant burn down my throat, but it sits heavily in my stomach. The aftertaste reminds me of the dark, dense bread my father makes when we get a special shipment of rye flour every year during the Victor's Tour for the feasts.
"Beer?" I ask quietly, my voice still hoarse from dryness and I guess tension from what the day will bring. My father briefly brings his mind out of its wanderings to look at me and nod. He puts his first finger over his lips in a motion that means keep quiet. I know he means right now, and to never talk about the beer after it's finished. He brings his hand down and is already back in his own world. The fires are crackling cheerfully, a sharp counter point to the silence between us.
As I alternate between bits of the roll and sips of beer, I sit back in my chair, falling into thoughts of my own. Today is Reaping Day.
The Reaping is a lottery of sorts, but not one anyone in our district ever wants to win. In the better off districts, like 1, 2 and 4, boys like me would literally kill to be named a tribute in the annual Reaping. To have their name drawn out of all the other boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to be selected to participate in the Hunger Games. I've even heard announcers from the Capital broadcasts say how jealous they are of us District dwellers and our eligibility in the Reaping. Jealous, I think, jealous that we can get chosen to die?
I stop myself. I shouldn't even think things like that. My family is considered well off for District 12, the coal mining district. It's roughly separated into a town built up right outside the mines, and the Seam. The poorest, hungriest of District 12 scratch out an existence in the Seam. Government officials, merchants and Peacekeepers live in relative comfort in the town.
Being the son of the town baker means I've never been really hungry, never had the sunken cheeks and deadened eyes of the Seam children I see in school. I'm usually well fed, unless I've made an inexcusable mistake and set to work without a meal by my mother. Even if my meals consist of stale bread or cheese too old or meat too tough to add to our pastries or pies.
Thinking bad thoughts about the Capitol is dangerous, because my family's respectable status as merchants could disappear in an instant. For the most part, the Capitol leaves our district alone. As long as we meet coal quotas to appease their ever increasing demand for energy, they consider us too poor to waste their time. That doesn't mean that we can say or do as we please. I remember a family of tailors who lived in the house two doors down from us. I was friends with their oldest son growing up, until suddenly one day they were just gone. Windows boarded up, doors locked. The merchants who came into the bakery would whisper about it with my father, but my mother would loudly proclaim that those who thought themselves better than our lot in life deserved what they got. It put an end to the whispers.
I never really knew what she meant exactly, but it must have had something to do with the way the tailor always stood up for the poorer citizens of District 12 when they ran afoul of the Peacekeepers.
A/N cont: What did you think? Let me know! I apologize for any mistakes, I'm using a basic word processor and trying to catch everything on my own.
From this point forward, the chapters will more closely follow those in the original novel. I was just too excited to wait to get this out!