Papa shakes me awake, and I continue the small, shivering gesture as the cold air wraps around me. My younger sisters, Esther and Hannah, have pulled the covers away from me again in their sleep. I look up at Papa's handsome, dark face as he smiles down at me.
"You'll be late to the harvest, Rue," he nods to himself, chuckling.
I sit up and examine the room. Mama sleeps on the cotton mattress across the room. I frown slightly. She even looks tired and beat-down in her sleep. Maybe it is because even when she rests, she knows she'll have to work hard while in the fields, all day. Maybe it is because Papa isn't with her. Or maybe it is because the reaping is tomorrow.
She tells the same story every year, retelling the story of how she felt during her first reaping. It now stabs my heart knowing that I'll be there tomorrow, with my name in 23 times.
I look down at my sisters' closed eyes, their fists curled up into fists. Esther snuggles into Hannah sweetly. I smile to myself warmly.
Beside the bed we lie on, Benny and Leon, my younger brothers, sleep as far apart from each other as possible. Thought they are twins, its incredible they despise each other.
I am the oldest now. I never mention to anyone my older brother Samuel, who was whipped to death in the fields for not working fast enough ten years ago. I was just two years old. My siblings do not know of their older brother; I cannot tell them.
It was Samuel, then me. Hannah came two years before Esther, and the twins were adopted from a dying woman across the street.
Our three-room home can barely fit all of us, but as long as we have each other, we learn to not care.
I nod up at Papa, trying to force a smile. Will this be the last day Papa wakes me up?
I try to climb out of bed as quietly as I can, but a creak from the bed wakes Esther.
"Rue?" she yawns. "Are you leaving?"
I kiss her tiny forehead. "Yes, Essie. But I'll be back tonight."
She nods sleepily and sinks back into dreams.
I pull my curly brown hair into a ponytail, pull on our district uniform, (a dull grey T shirt and jacket over jeans) and slide my feet into boots.
I start down the dirty road, pulling an orange from a nearby tree.
I am a Watcher. It is my job to climb my assigned tree, overlooking the workers in the field. There are only a few of us, but as we are the ones to alert when time is up, we are also the ones to tell any of the Enforcers if someone is not working they may have missed.
We never do.
The Enforcers are the ones who hold a whip as tough as the hearts the hold, their eyes piercing and sly, as a fox. They see to it that if anyone stops working, anyone at all, while they are harvesting in the fields, they are whipped.
The whip you, hard and fast, their pitiless hearts showing. They still want you to work, so they whip you until you can hardly bear it, and then they let you go, shoving you into the ground.
Tears come to my eyes as I remember that day when I found out what had happened to my brother.
He used to play with me, being the only ray of light in my dark, cruel world.
And then one day, he leaned down and kissed my head, telling me good-bye. I looked up at him with loving eyes, the way my younger siblings look at me now, if they see fit.
And then mama and papa came home, weeping. Our neighbor, who is dead now, came over and comforted them, telling them that God always had a plan. He always did.
Papa bought a Bible right away, reading its words until it brought him to tears. So now, every time I see a boy or girl, woman or man, being whipped, I will remember Samuel, however sadly or horribly it occurs in my head, seeing how handsome he was, seeing how kind. He always told me good would come of everything bad.
I come to the iron gates, checking in at the sign-in table.
A man looks over my shoulder as I sign my name.
"Rue Harmin?" he reads. I nod.
"Ben Harmin's kid?" he guesses, leaning on his cane.
I nod again, trying to smile. "My father, yes."
The man has blue eyes, which crinkle at the ends, like they smile on their own.
"I knew him when I was a boy. Are you his only child?"
My throat develops a lump in it. "No, sir," I say. "There are si—I mean five of us."
He pats my back. "I knew a Sam Harmin, too," he whispers. "Your brother?"
I back away and run through the fields.
My heart lifts again at the familiar cries of my name, so sweet and run-down and kind, it makes you want to laugh and cry at once.
I climb the ladder up to my tree, and watch the Enforcers, the other Watchers, and the innocent people of district 11.