Collateral: the 30th annual Hunger Games
Chapter 1-Hunting
The sweat that gathered at my brow slowly dripped down my face, eventually joining the shallow puddles that had formed in the ridges of my collar bones. The desert sun beat down on my face, the wind whipping sand into my half closed eyes, and yet I remained as I was, standing in the middle of the desert, staring up at the sky with my bucket. Hating my life.
No, I didn't hate it. I had a lot to be grateful for considering. Both my parents were alive (which is more then some kids around here could say), and it hadn't yet been deemed necessary for them to go under. But I knew that soon, maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon, the Peacekeepers would come knocking, and one of them would leave forever. I knew how horrible life was for those left behind. My best friend's father had been taken and she didn't eat for about a week after. Not because she was depressed or anything-but because her family had no food. Dahlia was the oldest of five, which was an exorbitantly large number of kids for Nine, and the younger ones had to eat first. You know how it is. That's why I have no siblings, well, unless you count Ohlick as a sibling. Which I do. But even he sometimes has to go hungry, because when you live in a place where nothing ever grows, where food is so scarce that the population can be counted in hundreds, the less food has to be divided, the better.
"Cassie?" a voice called me back from my musings, slamming me back into my body, rather harshly, and reminding me of the task a head.
"What Liss?" I replied, still not turning to look at the tiny woman behind me.
"Oh, nothing." She laughed nervously, probably in response to my tone, though I couldn't be sure because I still hadn't looked at her, "Just looked like you spaced for a second, sorry."
"No problem Liss, I'm fine." I brushed away the sweaty hair from my brow, finally turning to her and flashing what I hoped to be a convincing smile. I don't know what it was, but something about Liss just bugged me to no end. She was nice enough I guess, we had known each other since I could remember, and she had lived next door to me for just as long. We had gone all through school together, even sat next to each other because our last names began with the same letter. Our parents were best friends for God's sake! Yet, despite all that, we were never close. We had been nothing but coolly pleasant to each other in all the time we had been acquainted. I wouldn't have even counted her among my group of friends if it wasn't for the long afternoons we spent together roaming the desert in search of something we almost never found.
"Okay, well do you want to get to work?" she smiled brightly, swiping a loose strand of yellow-gold hair out of her eyes.
"Yeah." I replied shortly, trying to resist the urge to smack the crap out of her. "I'll go north today, you take the eastern-'
"Perimeter," she finished, "Done and done."
"Okay, now lets review…"
"Oh Cass, I know the rules!" She laughed cutting me off yet again, and dismissing me with a wave of one small hand. As her hand moved, her perfectly polished nails caught the sun light and I was reminded, yet again, of how much I disliked her. I couldn't resist a glance at my own nails, bloody and broken, chewed to a pulp, and had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from snapping at her.
"Yeah, we both do, but let's review just in case."
"Uhh Cassie, your such a stiff." She rolled her eyes, but, thankfully, complied without further complaint, perhaps sensing my tension.
"Okay, not too far from the nearest marker."
"Got it." She echoed in a mock-serious tone.
I turned to glare at her.
"Okay, Okay!" she held up her hands as a sign of defeat "I'll take it seriously!"
"Do you think this is a joke?" I asked, my inexplicable anger rising to the surface.
"No."
"Oh, good." I said in a overly sugary tone, "because I don't either. People have died out there Liss, so unless you want to come back on the back of a Peacekeeper's wagon with half you face chewed off, I suggest you take the time to listen to the god-damn rules!"
She cowered under my gaze, and it was only then that I became aware of how close I was to her face. I liked that she was scared, she should be. Today of all days she should be just a terrified as the rest of us were. She shouldn't get not to feel this, this overwhelming panic that settled comfortably in our stomachs, clawing at our insides, begging us to scream.
And just like that, my day was ruined.
I sighed and turned my back on her, "You know what? Whatever. Your right, you know the rules."
"Really?" she asked, tentatively grabbing her bucket and standing once again.
"Yeah, just be careful, alright?" But before I could even finish the sentence she was gone, running off across the desert without a second glance back.
I sighed once more, and shook my head, trying to clear my clouded thoughts. I picked up my bucket and began to head North West towards the low mountain ridges in the distance that never seemed to get closer no matter how far you went. As I walked I scanned the ground, trying to loose myself in the sand. There had been a lightning storm recently, and Dad and Mr. Novel always sent Liss and me out afterwards to look for lightning glass, though we almost never found it. But we did it because it helped. It helped keep our fathers in business; it helped keep our families together, so we tried.
District nine was the glass- making district. All the Capitol's glass was made right here in D9 in dark underground factories, where the workers were almost never allowed to sleep and were kept working continuously. No one went down to the factories willingly. Once a person went down there, it was months; perhaps years before their families saw them again. If they saw them again. Many of those who went down never came back up. Probably poisoned. Glass making can be toxic if not done correctly. My father was one of the few glassmakers who still made glass by hand. His designs were popular enough to shake up some demand in the capital for hand made glass, which had kept him and his business partner (Liss' father) out of the factories. But there are so few of us in nine that eventually, the peacekeepers come to take anyone of working age down.
That's where I'll have to go. Underground. Where it's damp and dark and cold. So far away from my sun, my heat. That is, if I survive today.
I shy away from those thought as quickly as they enter my head. I would not dwell on what was to come. As I looked down at the ground, something shiny caught my eye. It looked like gray, crystal bubbles had formed atop the sand.
Bingo! I thought as I reached to pick it up. It was warm, but whether that was still left over from the lightning or from the sun, I couldn't say. I suspected the latter, however. It was strange to have something that you had searched for for so long, resting in your hand. A beautiful little victory in a world ruled by repression. As I dropped the glass in my bucket, I, for the first time in a long time, felt a bit better about everything. One word-Mistake.