My name is Smoke Wilson. Weird name, I know. I'm sixteen years old, dirty blond hair, gray eyes, about 5'10, and I live in District 9. Grain. We don't have the easiest life here, but it's not the worst either. We take the bull crap the Capitol feeds us and pretend to believe it. We don't try anything stupid. So, basically, we live, reproduce, and die. Nothing special. If we're lucky, we find someone to spend our lives with or get into a nice hobby to occupy us between harvests.
I live in a hay farming neighborhood. My family is middle class in the district. We work eight hours a day during harvest. My particular job is usually loading the hay onto the trains headed to District 10 to feed the cattle. We have a sort of city square near the middle, where the school, city hall, and most of the stores are located. To the south, are wast wheat fields. To the North, where my family resides, are about only 160 acres of hay fields.
This year, the 37th Hunger Games will take place. Last year, our very own Aspen Waters won the 36th Games at fifteen years old, the youngest to win so far. She goes to my school, only a grade up from me. Of course, she's very famous around the school. She killed five people in the arena. She has black hair, bright green eyes, is about 5'7, and the richest person in the whole district ever since she won. I can't count how many times my mother has said "You should ask her out!" or "You should sit with her at lunch and ask her to tell you stories that the camera didn't catch!". That's not happening. When it comes to dating, in our school, we more or less just stick to our own year. I haven't worried to much about it, yet. I just try to keep my grades up and not piss off the Peacekeepers.
"Hey, Smoke! Did you beat it yet?" Hugo asks, walking up to me in the hall.
"Yeah, of course." I reply.
"What are you guys talking about?" Adam asks, following behind Hugo.
"Assassin's Creed."
"Oh, yeah. I haven't played in a while." he says. We were exploring the old warehouse on the edge of town that used to be for wheat storage when we found some machines that hooked to a television and allowed you to control a character. When we got them working, we found that several titles of "Assassin's Creed" had been loaded onto them. We have spent the last several weeks trying to beat them. When the power is down, however, we do something completely different. We use our break time to go out in the barn and work on our project, to recreate the notorious Hidden Blades from the games. So far, we have gotten the setup, but we can't figure out a mechanism to extend and retract the blades.
My friends begin to go on about their favorite aspects of the game, while I glance around the hall. My eyes settle for just a moment on our school's pride and joy, Aspen. She looks up we lock eyes for a split second. I immediately look down.
"Whoa, look at this!" Hugo says.
"What?" I ask.
"Looks like someone-"
"If you finish that sentence, I swear, I will replace every slip in the reaping with your name!" I yell, causing a few by passers to stop and stare for a second,"I mean, no, I don't have a crush on Aspen Waters." I say, reddening slightly.
"Lighten up. At least you didn't witness half of your family publicly hanged." Adam smirked.
"Right, I'm not Ezio."I replied,"Well, I'll see you tomorrow, hopefully."
"May the odds be ever in your favor!" Adam yells, running off.