I don't even smell the meat anymore when I get up out of bed in the morning. It's there, always, hanging in the air, stronger some days and more subtle on others. It gets steadily worse, and more awful and rank, the closer I get to work, though I'm not going to be going to work today. On my first day at the slaughterhouse I almost passed out from the stench. I was convinced I'd never wash it out of my clothes and hair, and I was right; I probably never will.
You could get to crave the vegetarian shtick in District 10.
Too bad that kind of lifestyle is sort of impossible to maintain when everyone's main concern is keeping enough food on the table.
I hear her before she invades my room, but that doesn't mean I have time to react. One minute I'm alone, counting my sore muscles and the next second my door bursts open and Emily has thrown herself into my personal space.
"Yessss, Reaping Day," she groans, her sigh zero parts sarcastic and unabashedly reverent. She flops down at the foot of my bed, landing square on both of my feet, and I squirm and kick out from under her. My insane little sister is the only person in all of District 10 who enjoys Reaping Day.
"You're an idiot," I state for her, plainly, though this is far from the first time I've suggested it. Emily rolls on my bed, pleased as punch, and I swing my feet over to finally touch down on the worn wood floors of our one-story shack. I know she's going to defend her "Reaping Day is the best day" argument again before she even starts, and I try to tune her out as I get out the only shirt I own with no holes or patches.
"If I'm gonna get picked, I'm gonna get picked," Emily says for the umpteenth time. I can practically hear the eye-roll. "What's the use spending a day off from work bitching and moaning? Or hyperventilating?" I feel her jab me in the back with something—her heel, I realize, and I squirm away from her foot. It's probably dirty. Plus, she's poking fun at the panic attack I had during my first Reaping. My sister will never be accused of being the nicest of people.
"I dunno, Em. Maybe we spend our time worrying about it because it's scary as fuck. Or because running around celebrating Reaping Day feels like some kind of, I dunno. Challenge to the Gods or some crap." I make a vague gesture skyward and she snorts, loud, behind me. Before she can flay me alive with sarcasm I plow on. "Plus, it's pretty damn disrespectful to the people who got Reaped the year before." I pause. "And the people who are going in this year."
I can tell I've made her uncomfortable. A childhood friend of ours, Julia, was Reaped a few years ago. Like virtually all the other Tributes from Ten, she did not come home.
Still, that was long ago enough that Emily has moved on and returned to her bizarre coping mechanism-slash-weirdly optimistic outlook. I can't tell which it is most days. "If I got Reaped I'd still want people to laze around and enjoy their day off."
"Don't even say that," I groan, realizing I mis-buttoned my shirt. My fingers never work on Reaping Day, though to be fair, they aren't that talented every other day of the year, either.
"Say that I want people to have fun?" Em challenges.
"Say that you're gonna get Reaped. In any way, shape or form. Even in hypotheticals."
"Oooh, four dollar word," she teases, and I give up trying to talk sense into her. Maybe there's something to her blind optimism and utter crass. Whatever happens today will be completely out of my hands, and I'm sure it must feel kind of nice to embrace that with open arms.
Not like that's ever going to be a possibility for me.
Breakfast is waiting downstairs, and as usual, it's a huge one. Mom cooks to soothe her nerves, and normally you'll hear no complaints from me on that front. Only I always get sort of queasy on Reaping Days, so it's a mis-match when it comes to the amount of food provided and the amount I can shove in my face before I feel like I'm going to throw up. Dad is already dressed for the event, leaning against the threshold to the hallway with his arms tightly folded over his chest. He's smiling at us, but he's forgotten himself—normally his body language wouldn't be this telling.
I lift a hand stiffly at him and grin in what I know is a plastic way. It's not that I mean to look fake. I'm just this awkward with everyone, even my own family, and doubly so on Reaping Day. Mom and Dad know it and don't give me grief over it.
"Jeez," Em says as she throws herself down into a chair. It creaks dangerously from under her—like everything else in our house, it's falling apart. "You guys are acting like someone died."
"That's not funny, Emily," my mother says, but there's no real gumption behind it. She just looks pale and distracted, the way she always does this time of year, though if I give her a look that borders too much on concern she'll hitch a bright smile to her face and start fussing over my hair and clothes. Instead I turn my attention to my food.
"So," Dad says, and I fight back a grimace. I know what's coming. "How is everyone feeling? Do either of you want to talk about what you're experiencing this morning?"
Every year it's the same thing. Dad is one of the supervisors at the slaughterhouse I started working at this year, and he's taken it upon himself to serve as a psychiatrist and counselor of sorts to the men and women who work under him. Only problem with that is that he tends to bring his work mindset home with him.
Emily snorts, then says, "I'm feeling very angry and impotent," giving me a double-eyebrow wiggle for God knows what reason. I frown at her, not understanding the implication but not liking it anyway. "I am awash in helplessness and despair."
"And humor is your coping mechanism, darling… as always," Dad says, sighing but giving Em a half-smile. He should know better than to expect any deep replies from her by now.
Unfortunately that means the spotlight's on me now. I try not to shrink down in my seat as he studies me. "How about you, Joshua? You going to supply me with a more serious answer?"
My dad used to call me Josh, but once I hit Reaping age it's always been "Joshua." I used to have a problem with it, but I barely notice it anymore. Trying to calculate the perfect response—one that'll seem sincere enough that Dad will get off my back, but simple enough that he won't press for more—I push my food around on my plate.
"I'm nervous, like most years," I admit. "But it's not as bad, the more years go by."
"Strange," Dad notes. "Since each boy or girl's chance of getting Reaped increases as they get older."
Yikes, thanks Dad, I think grimly, but manage to keep it off my face. I shrug, not sure what to say to that.
"I don't want to worry you," Dad says. "I just want to make sure you're not trying to repress the way you really feel about this."
"Yeah, okay," I say, and Mom, bless her, steps in.
"You'd better finish up your food soon," she warns. "I'd like to beat the rush to the square."
Mom was right. We start off for the square a good hour early but we still get swept up and crushed in the foot-traffic heading down from our subsection of the district. If there's one thing I can say for Ten, it's that we all get a lot of exercise. Carts are used almost exclusively for hauling product and equipment, and if it's got four hooves it's probably going to end up in the slaughterhouse, which makes pack mammals that are used for transportation a rarity. I can't help but wonder what in the world the holdup is all about. We do this every year and yet we always seem to run into a huge traffic jam the closer we get to the square. I'm not exactly in a rush but still. Slugging along at a half a mile per hour in the sun isn't pleasant, and I'd rather get to the square, sign in, and find a spot to stand and zone out until this is all over.
Em is stubborn as hell, and it's a mark of how important a day this is to my mom that she's won the argument over whether or not Em dresses up for it. Right now my sister is decked out in a dress, something I only get to see roughly once a year, and it gives me some minor satisfaction that she's hating every second of it. For a while she was ranting about it, but once she realized I wasn't listening she gave up and started shamelessly checking out some of the other girls all gussied up in their Reaping Day outfits.
It feels like half my life's passed by the time we make it to the square. I remember how Em was during her first Reaping. She was talking nonstop on the walk down, nervous and trying to hide it, but right before we parted ways into the girls' pen and the boys', she gave me a look. It was just a little thing, a flash of her eyes up to me, a little wider than they should be.
Em's never given me that sort of look again. It's a weird thing to think, I guess, but I almost wish she would. It's not that I want my sister to be scared, or anything. I'm glad she's so much braver than I am. But as she gives me a two-fingered salute and saunters off towards where the other girls are queueing up, I realize that she knows just how powerless I am in the grand scheme of things. Twelve-year-old Emily looked at me like maybe, in some way, shape or form, I could say or do something to make her feel better. Fifteen-year-old Em knows better, and it makes me feel like shit.
It's not the best mindframe to be in as I put my hand out to get the familiar jab of the needle into my index finger. I'm in a daze as I get registered and processed, then herded along the way into the pens.
I call them "pens" because there's really no other way to describe them. It's completely ghetto and I wonder if the other Districts put a little more oomph into their Reapings than we do. Eleven and Twelve, probably not, as I've heard they're in about as much of a state of perpetual poverty as we are, if not worse off. Still, the plastic orange fencing material they have haphazardly laid out in large, lopsided geometric shapes to separate the genders makes it look as if the people in charge only just realized the Reapings were taking place today and had to scramble to erect the gates with anything they could get their hands on. What's sad is this is what it looks like every year.
When I went to my first two Reapings I stuck near the back, as if staying as far away from the front of the group would keep me safe. Dad and I talked about it once I turned fourteen, and he convinced me somehow that moving up to the front would help me conquer my fears. I tried that for my third Reaping, and while it didn't make me feel any better, it at least gave me some things to look at and distract myself with. Now that I'm seventeen it's become a bit of a Reaping Day tradition.
One of the things I find most distracting is our only living past Victor, Aidan Waite. I used to split my attention between him and our other Victor, an old man named Douglas who never tried to look like he was anything less than 100% miserable with life, but he passed away about six months ago, so now only Aidan is left.
He's young, but I can't remember which Games he won, so I can't put a precise number on him. I know he can't be more than ten years older than me, though. He's always early to the Reapings, seating himself unobtrusively to the side of the platform a good fifteen minutes before even the Mayor arrives. He's always in the same outfit, too—old jeans, black boots, a worn leather jacket over a white shirt, his eyes hidden behind broad shades. It's an unusual look for our District, and I wonder if Aidan doesn't realize he stands out, or if he knows and just doesn't care. I've never seen him react to any of the Reapings before—he's perfectly poised, and if any expression goes on behind his sunglasses, I'm not privy to it.
It sort of makes me even more nervous about the prospect of being Reaped, if that's at all possible. I wouldn't want my mentor to be a softie, necessarily, but the idea of having to talk to Aidan for any length of time twists my stomach into knots, even without the prospect of what that would mean for my future. He seems so cold and unreachable, it's hard to imagine him really giving a crap what happens to us.
Our mayor has arrived, and I turn my attention to him. Jeff Westin never struck me as sincere or trustworthy, but as I've heard my dad say more than once, elected officials don't have to be either of those things. He smiles too much, especially today, and I sigh and prepare myself for thirty long minutes of staring at the bug crawling across the back of the boy's shirt in front of me as he pulls out his prepared speech.
I don't know why, but they did away with District Reps when I was a kid, before my first Reaping. Maybe they figured it was redundant, since the past Victors and the District Stylists already know all the ins and outs that are necessary for the Tributes to navigate the Capitol. Maybe they just decided to cut funding. Either way, it's only Aidan and Mayor Westin who are up there now, as Mayor Westin doesn't have a family (anymore, anyway—he cheated on his wife enough times that she had the good sense to leave him.)
While Mayor Westin talks the bug flies away, aiming straight at my face for a second. I flail a little to wave it away and get a few weird looks for my moment of interpretive dance. Maybe the other boys are judging me and how I'd fare in the Games when a bug can still startle me if it moves quickly enough. I push them from my mind and return my focus to Aidan.
You can tell Aidan really hates the Mayor. It's not that he's glaring at him (not that you'd be able to tell behind the shades), but the fact that he never looks at him, not once. He manages to look bored without being outright rude for the entire thirty minute speech, and it's almost enough to take the edge off until I can sense Westin's wrapping up. Then the ball of nerves I'd been pointedly avoiding starts spinning downhill, wildly gaining mass and momentum in my stomach.
Girls first. Westin moves over to a device that reminds me strongly of my grandma's Bingo machine, a relic she liked to bust out and use whenever we had our Sunday evenings to ourselves. Little slips of paper, folded in half and sealed with a single red sticker, are stuffed into the huge devices which have been set up on either side of Westin. He approaches the one to his right first and gives it a huge spin, the little papers flapping and fluttering against each other like a hurricane flurry of hornets. I've got bugs on the brain today.
Mayor Westin is grinning like an idiot while he does this, as if it's fun for him and we should be having fun by proxy. I roll my eyes, a move I wouldn't have been gutsy enough to pull off when I was younger. I still feel like there's a spotlight on me most places I go, though Dad says that's just adolescent self-consciousness that I'm sure to grow out of soon. I know logically not everyone in the world can be paying attention to all of my fuck-ups all of the time, but I can't deny that I've got terrible luck. Particularly with girls. Whenever I do something insubordinate, rude, stupid, ignorant or clumsy, at least ten sets of eyes seem to be on me at the time.
I'm not the only one put off by Mayor Westin's display. There are sighs from around me and some of the boys shift their weight from foot to foot, looking away like his exuberance pains them. Others are tense, though, their faces pale and sweaty. No doubt they have sisters or girlfriends in the female pen they're worried about. And though Em won't do any worrying on her own behalf, I've got that base more than covered for her.
After what seems like a ludicrous amount of time, Mayor Westin selects a slip of paper and walks back to his podium and microphone. He pops the paper open, and though he's been hamming it up this whole time and dragging out the process, I barely have a chance to feel the familiar stomach-sinking thrill of horror in my gut before he reads a name that isn't Emily's.
"Nora Sergeant!"
The name is familiar to me, but I only recognize the girl when she steps up onto the stage. My face twists into what I'm sure is a complicated blend of sadness and discomfort. Nora, of course. I tried to flirt with her once when we were fifteen and it ended disastrously. I think it involved me somehow striking up a metaphor between her and a cow. I know I meant well by it, but I can't for the life of me think what was going through my head at the time.
Nora and I haven't spoken since then, but she would occasionally send me frosty little glances if we ran into one another at the market. Her family's in the slaughter business too, though last I heard she was about to get transfered to work at one of the few hospitals in our district. It's something I want to do too, but I kept telling myself I'd put it off for only a few more months, then a few more, and before I knew it I'd stopped studying altogether and fell into the routine I've been trapped in ever since.
What a horrific waste. A pretty, smart, bold, talented girl, skilled now in saving lives, heading off to get cut down in the Games. At least it's not Emily, I tell myself, feeling a wrench of guilt at how grateful I am for that. Nora doesn't deserve this, but maybe this year can be a year where no one I directly know or interact with on a regular basis will be struck by this bloodbath.
Nora's keeping it together so well. She looks like a mirror version of Aidan, face blank and ever so slightly challenging, back straight, arms at her sides. No fidgeting. I wonder if it's a natural toughness or if she's seen some stuff at the hospital that has steeled her for this. Maybe she's terrified and just has a great poker face. It makes me sad that I'll never get to know her well enough to know the answer.
While I've been musing Mr. Westin has moved over to the boys' name-drawing device. He spins it, and as I watch the slips of paper slide and scratch over one another, something strange happens to me.
It's a sense of calm. I can't say what it is; it's like I'm suddenly no longer worried I'll get drawn, like I already know what's going to happen. It feels like I'm tempting fate by feeling that way, and I try to muster up some fear so I won't jinx myself, but it's not happening. I peel my eyes away from Mayor Westin, look back over to Nora and Aidan, and a surge of cold in my stomach is my only warning.
When the name is drawn I'm not surprised at all.
"Joshua Levinson!"