The Girl In The Rain

The smell of baking bread filled the room, but I was too accustomed to it to stand sniffing the aroma. Besides, I was supposed to be helping my mother with the baking and I knew from past experience what she would do if she caught me slacking. She had a fierce temper; my brothers and I had all found ourselves on the wrong end of it many times. If we were lucky, she would do little more than shout at us, but her scoldings were more often accompanied by blows. She even kept a stick (cut from our old apple tree) in the corner, ready for when she needed it.

I remember when she cut that stick. My oldest brother, Theo, had been in trouble at school; I can't remember why, but I know my mother promised to "teach him a lesson he would never forget". And she was as bad as her word. The first thing she did when she got home was go outside to the apple tree and cut that stick. Then, she made Theo take down his trousers and bend over a chair as she gave him six whacks. Theo couldn't sit down properly for a week.

Suddenly, I heard something outside, the sound of someone lifting the lid on our rubbish bin. My mother obviously heard it too because, the next thing I knew, she was standing at the door. With the oven lit, the kitchen was hot, so the door had been left open even though it was pouring with rain outside. In fact, it had been pouring with rain all day and it showed no sign of letting up; my father had even remarked that it reminded him of a Gamemakers' storm in the Hunger Games, except those could be turned on and off at the flick of a switch. This rain just kept on falling. Anyway, my mother was standing at the door, yelling at the intruder.

"Go on! Get out of here before I call the Peacekeepers! I've had it with you brats from the Seam pawing through my bin!"

I peered round my mother's back to see who she was yelling at. A "brat from the Seam" could only be the child of one of District 12's coal-mining families, perhaps one that had fallen on hard times because the main breadwinner had been killed or injured in the mines and could no longer provide for the family. I'd never had much to do with the people who lived in the Seam, prefering to hang out with other merchant kids, but I knew many of them barely had enough to live on at the best of times. And, if someone was desperate enough to start scavenging in bins . . .

Then, I saw her standing there in the rain. A girl my own age with long dark hair in a braid, her wet clothes clinging to her body as she slowly replaced the lid on our bin (which had just been emptied) and backed away. I knew her name, even though I'd never spoken to her; she was Katniss Everdeen, the girl I'd had a crush on since my first day at school.

As my mother went back inside, muttering about how the kids from the Seam needed to be "taught to respect people's property", I watched Katniss as she walked around our pigpen and slumped down on the ground by the apple tree. She looked totally wretched, even by the standards of the Seam; she didn't even seem to care that the ground was soaking wet. As were her cheeks, though I couldn't tell if was from the rain or from tears. And, as I looked at her, I recalled the day I saw her for the first time.

It was my first day at school. I was waiting to go inside when my father pointed out a girl in a red plaid dress and told me he'd wanted to marry the girl's mother until she ran off with a coal-miner. I remember asking why; even at such a young age, I knew District 12's mining families didn't have it easy. So I wondered why this girl's mother would have chosen a miner over my father.

"Because," my father said, "when he sings . . . even the birds stop to listen."

I wondered what he meant by that, but, before I could ask him, the teacher came out and told us it was time to go inside. But I found out during music assembly when the teacher asked if anyone knew the valley song. The girl in the plaid dress put her hand up immediately; she was the only one to do so. "Yes?" the teacher said, smiling at her encouragingly. "You're Katniss Everdeen, aren't you?"

Katniss nodded.

"Well, why don't you come to the front and share it with us?"

Within moments, Katniss was standing on a stool in front of the class, singing the valley song. It's a simple little song, like most of the songs in District 12, nothing like the sort of music they have in the Capitol. But, when Katniss started to sing, I was immediately captivated by the sound; I'd never heard anyone sing so beautifully before. And, I realised, the birds outside the window had stopped singing, almost as if they were listening to her. Just like my father said they did when Katniss's father sang.

As Katniss returned to her seat after finishing the song, I knew she was the girl I wanted to marry one day. Of course, with the threat of ending up in the Hunger Games hovering over us while we were growing up, none of us who lived in the districts dared to make any long-term plans until we were at least nineteen. But I didn't think about this at the time; all I knew was that I had lost my heart to Katniss Everdeen. Ever since then, I'd been trying to pluck up the courage to speak to her, but I'd never quite managed it.

"Oi! Quit daydreaming and give me a hand with this bread!"

My mother's voice brought me back to the present. She was taking loaves of bread out of the oven and placing them on trays to cool before they were put on sale in the bakery. I followed her, but my mind was still on Katniss, wondering what could have happened to reduce her to scavenging in bins. All I could think of was that it must have something to do with the death of her father three months earlier; he was one of several men, two of whom had young families, who were killed in an explosion at the mine. In total, six kids (including an unborn baby) had been left fatherless.

My mother always said what went on in the Seam families was none of our business. But it looked as though Katniss's family was in serious trouble. I didn't know the full details, but I guessed the money Mrs Everdeen had been given as compensation for her husband's death must have run out. Not only that, but she was apparently still too grief-stricken to take care of Katniss and her sister; otherwise, she would have found a job by now and Katniss wouldn't be huddled in the pouring rain.

I wished there was something I could do to help, to keep Katniss and her family from starving like so many others in District 12. But what could I do? There was no way my mother would let me give away one of the loaves that were currently cooling on the worktop. Those were to be put on sale in the shop and our family would eat any which remained unsold after a few days. But, maybe if I ruined a couple of loaves so that they wouldn't be worth selling . . .

As I went to take two more loaves out of the oven, I deliberately dropped them into the fire. Needless to say, my mother immediately flew into one of her trademark rages. "You clumsy idiot!" she yelled, slapping me across the face. "That's two whole loaves ruined because of your stupidity!" she added, rescuing the bread from the fire and thrusting it into my arms. "Get rid of it at once!" She pointed in the direction of the door.

I staggered outside and sloshed through the mud with a loaf under each arm. I knew it was only the outsides of the loaves that were burned, that, once the blackened bits were scraped away, the bread underneath would be perfectly edible. But that wasn't good enough for my mother. "Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature!" she yelled at me. We kept a pig in the backyard to provide us with meat during the winter. It wasn't illegal to rear animals or grow fruit and vegetables for personal consumption, but few families in the poorer districts could afford to do so.

I could see her watching me from the doorway and slowly shook my head. I was not going to feed that bread to the pig, which we hadn't bothered to name, knowing it would only make it harder when the time came to kill it. I was going to give it to Katniss, but I didn't want my mother to know that.

"Why not?" my mother demanded, planting her hands on her hips. "No-one decent will buy burned bread!"

With my mother watching, I didn't dare disobey her. So I began to tear chunks off the bits of the loaves that were burned and toss them into the trough. Just then, however, I heard the tinkling of the shop bell. Another customer - that should keep my mother busy just long enough for me to give the loaves to Katniss. Even so, I was careful to make sure the coast was clear before I tossed first one loaf, then the other in her direction. I didn't stop to see if she picked up the bread; I went straight inside and closed the door behind me.

Hours later, I crawled into bed, exhausted; my brothers, Theo and Dillon, were already asleep. My mother had given me three strokes of the stick for burning the bread, in addition to the blow I'd received when I dropped those loaves into the fire in the first place. Then, she'd made me prepare two more loaves to replace the ones I'd ruined, making it clear that I would not be leaving the kitchen for any reason until I was finished. And, needless to say, I was refused supper as further punishment. "That'll teach you to be more careful in future," my mother told me. I didn't mind, though; at least Katniss and her family were getting what was probably the closest thing they'd had to a good meal for some time.

All the same, I knew my punishment would have been even worse if my mother knew what I'd really done with that bread. Katniss wasn't the first kid from the Seam she'd yelled at for being on our property; a couple of years earlier, she'd caught two Seam boys helping themselves to windfalls from our apple tree. They'd fled when my mother stormed outside and threatened them with the Peacekeepers, leaving the apples behind. Though I suspect they were more afraid of my mother than of the Peacekeepers, who, unlike in some districts, tended to turn a blind eye to certain violations of the law.

The next morning, the weather was much better. I woke to find that my injured cheek had swollen overnight and my eye had blackened. But I knew better than to expect sympathy from my mother; she would say I deserved it for being so careless with the bread.

At school, I caught a couple of glimpses of Katniss, once in the corridor when I was talking to my friends and again when it was time to go home. On the second occasion, our eyes met for a second, before I looked away. Even after what I'd done, even after putting myself on the line for her, I still couldn't pluck up the courage to speak to Katniss directly. And that went on for the next four years - until the day we both became tributes in the Hunger Games. But that's another story.