The loaf of bread is hot under my shirt, but I hold it close all the same, hoping the baker didn't see me. Hopefully the lump above my navel isn't as conspicuous as it feels. When I'm sure I haven't been noticed, I slip out the door, down the cobblestone sidewalk and into an alley. A stray cat snaps at me but I ignore it.

It's very cold out this morning, and unusually quiet. Usually the street's filled with boots and voices and the quiet hum of conversation, but today, this is not so. Can't say I'm surprised. The day before The Reaping isn't a time for talking or bartering. Mostly it's a day filled with selfish hoping, staring down at your feet and hoping, just hoping that this year—this year will be another lucky break—this year will be someone else. It's fucked up, though, hoping for some other kid to get carted off to the slaughterhouse. You stand there watching them walking up to the platform knowing damn well that nobody is going to save them, knowing that it's twenty-three to one that they'll die. If they're lucky (what an absurd adjective), it'll be a swift death. Just a quick sword to the heart, or maybe a falling tree or an avalanche. But more often than not, we're watching them suffer, feeling pity for them and denying that disgusting little flicker of joy in the back of our head; the voice that whispers at least it's not you.

I slip through the near-deserted town square, passing the silent, cold buildings.

They seem especially unfriendly today.

It sounds weird, but they are. It's like today they're staring me down, blank and faceless. Tomorrow, they tell me almost confidentially, tomorrow could be your death sentence. They will look at you like meat, they will size you up, they will be wondering, betting on how you will die: spear to the head? Starvation? Exposure? All of those things, that will be you.

I hold the bread tighter, blow the dark fringe from my eyes. It's always in the way, always dirty, always messy. Always a reminder to both myself and others of what I am—Seam material. That's all. I'm the coal dust everyone tries so hard to scrape out from under their nails, but no matter how long you scrub, there I am, stubborn, sullied and permanently there.

The nicer part of town dissipates quickly- the houses steadily shrink and shrivel like old men: the porches sag, the shingles flake and the paint peels. I pass the community home—the place my siblings and I lived until Uncle sobered up enough to be pronounced a legal guardian. Life with him isn't a living hell, but it sure as hell isn't heaven, either—he's a recovering morphling addict and a practicing alcoholic, and mostly he's just useless. He doesn't hit us or yell at us like the people at the home; he just lies around taking space. I didn't mind it until Kellen and Suri died, because they actually tried keeping the place up. My brother supported us in the mines and my sister did the washing for some of the wealthier merchants. But then the forty-seventh Hunger Games happened—the odds were not in the favor of the Abernathy's that year.

They certainly fucking weren't.

Now I'm in my neighborhood. We're right in the center of the Seam, the veritable gutter of Twelve. The wind blows all of the coal dust, all of the fumes, all of the smoke here: follow the trail of pollution and you have arrived at your destination. Honestly, I'm sure my lungs now have a thorough coating and finishing of ash; my breath smells of my potbelly stove. I'm glad I'm used to it though—I have to, since I'll be down in the mines in another year. Then maybe I can do better than stealing. I would do more if I could—even try my hand at the woods, but the electric fence is on most days, and at night there are the wild dogs. I'm worth more to Tanier and Uncle as a thief than a corpse.

Uncle's house is actually not all that small—it's this lumbering, depressing old barn of a house, but half of it is unlivable due to an asbestos leak and a cave-in brought on by an infestation of termites. But it's my home, and a better home than the community one, at that. We get stuff from a merchant friend every month, and Tanier gets various care packages from the district for his condition, so add that to my stolen food and there's usually supper on the table every night. Anyway, the half of the building that we can live in is insulated well-enough and the four rooms, while crowded with all of Uncle's shit, are homey and comfortable enough, though we do have a bit of a problem with mice.

I ascend the creaky steps of the front porch, ducking down to avoid the overhanging branches from the gnarled old Mountain Maple that sits in our yard—it's roots have made the sidewalk crooked.

"Tanny, I'm home!" I call as I slam the door behind me, kicking the cinders from the treads of my boots. "I have returned with the fruits of-"

"Tell me you didn't steal it, Haymitch."

His voice is tired, as it often is—he's long-since given up dissuading me of felony.

"Of course not—just about as legal as possible," is my answer, though I know he can see through my ruse as easily as looking through a sheet of wet silk held up in front of a lamp. He's good at that kind of stuff. I slip through the living room (where Uncle is passed out on the threadbare couch) and into my brother's room. Tanier got polio eight months ago, just weeks before his thirteenth birthday—he'd always been ailing, always a bit more apt to getting sick than everyone else. But this time, it hit him hard. He's paralyzed from the waist down now.

"I don't like you stealing."

He's looking at me from bed, leaning forward from the pillow he had been propped up on. He looks a lot like me—he's got the olive skin, the dark curls, the brows always knitted into either frustration or anxiety, except he's so thin and delicate—breakable. And he's got Dad's eyes, the grey ones. The color of tin cans. Mine are brown.

"I know. I know." I sit down at the foot of his bed and break off a hunk of the bread. "I won't have to do it much longer. Just a few more months and I can work."

He accepts it and turns it over in his hands a few times. "I'm just scared you won't come home."

He's right, of course. I've been caught before by a friendlier peacekeeper, and I got away with a black eye and a terse warning. Next time could be worse.

I sigh and tear off a bit of bread for myself. "Well don't be. That's what I do: I come home. Every time. I promise."

We're quiet for a little while, sitting and eating and pretending that we don't know what the other is thinking. But finally he speaks and I'm forced to acknowledge it, this elephant in the room.

"The Fiftieth Quarter Quell."

I try not to let my shoulders stiffen, to betray my fear to him. I'm not allowed to be scared. "Yeah." The bread's starting to taste sour in my mouth and I'm suddenly not hungry anymore. In a few minutes I'll have to turn the television on. Mandatory. To find out what 'surprises' the capitol has in store for us tomorrow.

"What if they pick one of us?" This is something he asks almost every year—he's been dead terrified of it since the forty-seventh games. He won't tell me straight, but it's obvious. He wakes up screaming some nights, telling Suri, not the cornucopia, not the bloodbath, just run away!—shouting at Kellen to turn around! Turn around, Kellen, God, turn around, she has a knife! They wake me up, they make me reel, because that's the only time when I ever hear the true terror in Tanier's voice. I hate it.

"You know I wouldn't let them take you," I told him. "It's not as if you can…" I trail off and look away from him, feeling ashamed. I know how much he hates to be reminded of his immobility.

"No, I don't mean me." He doesn't need to say any more: I know what he means. If I get chosen, he'll be alone, the last Abernathy. Of course Uncle would take care of him, but the old man could hardly bathe himself, much less take care of such a wry, sickly little shit.

To break the awkward silence, I get up and switch on our shabby little television, adjusting the knob to get rid of as much static as possible. Some Capitol programme is just coming to an end. The host, a plump woman with blue hair and skin the color of cherries is gushing to the guest about how glow-in-the-dark contact lenses changed her life. The show ends and a brief burst of static lights up the set, and then President Snow illuminates the screen. I feel my fists clenching, but Tanier's hand upon mine helps me control my anger.

He's standing at a podium in front of the Capitol Building, his pale fingers stark against the iron, and I notice that there is a young boy dressed in white behind him, carrying the little wooden box that contains the Card. The thing that will determine our fates.

Well, the anthem plays and then Snow begins. "Good evening to all of Panem. As I'm sure all of you are aware, the fiftieth Anniversary of the Hunger Games is tomorrow, the anniversary of the unity of our country…" He spirals into the usual drawl: the Dark Days of rebellion, how the Capitol pulled us out of anarchy and into the light. All the usual bullshit. "On the twenty-fifth aniversary, as a reminder to all who took part in the uprising, every District was to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it." I shudder, hoping that whatever they had planned for us this year wouldn't be as horrible as indirectly choosing which child to murder.

"But now," he continues, removing the card from the box. "On the Fiftieth year of peace and prosperity, we will have an even more special celebration. This year, twice as many children from each district are required to take part in the Games. Four tributes in all, two boys and two girls."

It takes me a minute to realize I'm gawking. This can't be happening. Fifty years of this shit, and they were making it worse. Much worse than anybody who had contributed to the uprisings would have ever thought, I'm sure. My fist is clenching even tighter now and I feel the channel-changer's plastic creak in protest.

Tanier's hand has moved to my shoulder. "Haymitch, please, it'll be all right-"

I suddenly jump to my feet, throwing the remote to the floor. "No, Tan, no it won't be. Even if we don't get called this year, what about the kids who will? Four! Four- not two, four innocent children are going to get slaughtered like sheep! And this year, just like every fucking year, it won't be us that benefit—it won't be the people who need it. It won't be the latchkey kids, the pariahs, the homeless, the ones like you and me! It will be a career—another one of the Capitol's fucking lapdogs, just like every single other goddamn year!" My fist flies out and hits the drywall and I stalk out of the house.

The smog-choked sky had turned the color of ash; the horizon getting darker and darker every second. I almost want to turn back and apologize to him, but I just can't bring myself to stop moving. I know where I'm going; my thinking place that's as far away from it all as possible. I tear through the knee-high scrubs and grass in the lot a few leagues off, the barbed stems tugging at the strands of loose fabric of my trousers. I jump over gnarled logs and sidestep patches of puke-colored toadstools, and immediately begin to relax when I see the gigantic oak tree that stands only a few yards away from the humming of the electric fence. Every day after school, all four of us would race here, scaling the thick trunk and leaping from branch to branch. I didn't usually win; I got second or third most of the time. But that was before my parents died... before Kellen and Suri were taken away... before Tanier got sick.

Now, it's just me.

"I knew I'd find you here."

I start and stumble backward as several forms drop out of the leafy boughs above me and onto the ground.

"Look, Hazelle! You scared the shit out of him!"

"She seems to have that affect on people, don't you, sis?"

"Shuttup, Brayan!"

I can't help smiling as my friends approach me and I try to smile, but they can see right through it.

"You heard the announcement, didn't you?" Jove says.

I nod, giving up on my pathetically cheerful façade.

"What was it?" Hazelle asks.

I glare at Hoss. "You shouldn't let her skip the announcements! You both could get in trouble."

"What're you looking at me for? It was her idea; always is."

Hazelle shrugs. She may be just a few months younger than Tanier, but she's already a little too feisty for her own good. Then again, the pot shouldn't call the kettle black.

We stride over to the base of the tree and sit, leaning against the rough bark and staring out at the scraggily grey grass. Grey... like everything else in this goddamn place.

"It could be anyone, you know," Jove says softly, gazing at a fiddlehead he had picked from the ground. It's one of the few plants that actually contains a little bit of pigment in the entire meadow. "After all, it's four out of hundreds…"

"How's Tanier?" Brayan cuts in, trying to change the subject. He's always trying to make things seem far better than they are. What do you call those kind of people...optimists? I suppose that makes me a pessimist. Glass if half empty… well, shit, the glass is completely empty on Reaping day, fuck that.

"Yeah, he's... Tanier. Snarky as ever," I say.

Jove Hawthorne bumps me with his shoulder, his straight, dark hair falling over his eyes. "Sounds like somebody else I know."

"I wonder who?" Hazelle replies a little too-innocently. "I honestly wonder who he gets it from."

I scowl. "I guess it's my fault he's lost his innocence."

Hazelle's face falls, and she looks back down at the ground. "I'm sorry, Haymitch, I didn't mean it like that..."

I sigh, trying not to gag on the sooty air. It's their fault this is happening. It's not their fault that I have to steal to support my brother and I. It's not their fault that the world is slowly falling apart.

It's not any of our faults.