Disclaimer: I wish I owned the The Hunger Games.
A/N: Thank you for taking the time to look at this! Constructive criticism is welcome!
Chapter 1
All I can hear are Rory and Vince's snores on either side of me. My mother is snoring, too. Posy isn't but she's talking, and the familiar cacophony is too much for me to bear, especially on a day like this. Tomorrow at this time, I might be gone.
I get to my feet. The only sound is the rusty bread frame's long, drawn-out creak. Rory and Vince snuggle into the warm space that I've left and I tuck the blanket closer around their small bodies. Rory shifts, his snores hitching, and I think he's going to wake up but he doesn't. Instead, he punches out a fist that misses Vince's nose by less than an inch and then rolls back over, his snores continuing again. Posy mutters something about kittens, but I have given up attempting to decipher her words.
My mother cracks open her gray eyes and looks at me for a long time. I can't bear her stare, either, so I turn away. I hear her moving in the bed, settling Posy closer to herself. When I turn around shortly before I'm out of the room, her eyes are closed again.
It's so early that it is still very dark. I love this time of day, when no one is around and I can believe that there is no Reaping, that there are no Hunger Games. Nobody is milling around nervously, already in their best clothes, waiting for two o'clock. It's just me in the darkness, walking my well-worn path to the woods and slipping effortlessly under the fence that is supposed to be electric all the time but only occasionally is. I retrieve my weapons from the center of a tree—I only keep some of them in the hollow log—and continue walking through the forest. My first snare, a simple one that catches the leg of an animal as it takes a morsel of bread, has a wide-eyed squirrel in it already. I kill it quickly and continue. The rest of my traps yield two more squirrels, two rabbits, and a blackbird. All of them go into my bag. It's Reaping Day. There are bound to be Peacekeepers everywhere, anywhere. Most know perfectly well what I do, but if one was feeling uncharitable, I could get whipped and imprisoned.
Whipped and imprisoned. The thought intrigues me for just a second. I could get caught. I could get whipped and put into the stocks. But then I wouldn't get Reaped. They would fix it, wouldn't they? Surely they wouldn't want to let tributes who were already injured. They wouldn't let me out of the stocks to go to the Capitol, either.
I squash down the thoughts as quickly as they come. It's no good to hope. I don't want to get whipped, and I don't want to be put into the stocks. Even if I did and I got Reaped, they probably would make me go to the Games, anyways. They might think it's funny.
People are just leaving their homes as I'm getting to the town square. They wish one another luck. "May the luck be in your favor," they say. I know that they don't mean it. They want the luck to be in theirs.
The bakery is already open. I can see two of the baker's sons in there already, one bent over at the counter, arranging pastries in the glass case. The other is in front of the ovens, pulling something out. The smell of something sweet reaches my nose. Cake? Cookies? I don't know, because I've never tasted either of them. If things go badly today at the Reaping, I probably never will.
Neither the baker nor his shrew of a wife are present. There aren't any customers in there, so I walk in. The baker's younger son—Mellark is their last name—turns from the ovens with round pans on a slab of stone. He's saying something to his brother. "That's not what Madge—"
He sees me. I look at the round pans. They must be cakes, even though they're too flat. I hear there are layers in cakes, with sweet frosting in between. That's what Prim says, but I couldn't really care less.
Mellark looks at my bag. "Trade?" he queries. When I nod, he sets the pans on a stone counter. Wiping his hands on his apron, he comes out from behind the swinging partition that and walks past me, to a door that I know too well. He opens it and goes in. I follow. The room has a stone table. I set my bag on it and pull out the squirrels. He exits the room for a and returns with a large loaf of bread. It's more than the squirrels are worth, but I'm not one to question extra food, so I nod and put it in a different section of my bag.
I'm about to leave when Mellark says, "Good luck today. You and your friend—" he falters slightly on friend, which makes me pause and turn. Does he—
He looks up and his bright blue eyes meet my not-so-bright-or-blue ones. "Just—good luck, alright?" He's slightly nervous, but he doesn't twitch.
I stare at him for a moment and to his credit, he stares back. Then I nod again. "Thanks." My voice isn't friendly. Then I hitch the strap of my bag further over my shoulder and leave.
There are even more people out. A couple of them smile at me. I pass some light-haired Reaping-age kids, dressed in their Reaping finery. Their clothes mock me. They look nervous, which irks me to no end. They can have only a few names in the Reaping Ball, at the most. They don't need the tesserae to survive. I don't even want to think about how many names I have in the Ball, but even worse, I don't want to think about Rory's. His name is only in there once—I wouldn't let him take any tesserae at all. That is something for which I am glad. I have taken out so much, but it doesn't matter as long as he doesn't have to.
I pick up my pace as I near the fence again. It doesn't take me long to get to get to where I wish I could always be. She is already there, waiting. She grins a real grin at me and I give her one in return.
"Look what Prim gave us," she says, holding up a lump that I recognize as cheese wrapped in basil leaves. A plastic bucket of blackberries sits beside her left foot.
I grin and brandish my newly-acquired loaf of bread. She passes me the cheese and I'm about to open it when a quick movement from her direction catches her eyes. I turn reflexively in time see her toss a berry from the bucket and say with a nasally Capitol accent, "May the luck—"
I catch the berry in my mouth. "—Be in your favor!" I finish. We laugh.
We hunt, but the entire time, all I can think about is the Reaping. She is thinking about it too; I can tell. It shows in the way she looks but doesn't see, how she hears me but she doesn't listen. We collect strawberries together, but the walk back to town is silent. I carry the bucket of blackberries, since it's heavier than the basket of strawberries. Katniss doesn't say anything until we're at the back doorstep of the mayor and the mayor's daughter opens the door.
"Hello, Katniss," says the girl. She has an expensive-looking dress made of some expensive-looking material. Her curly hair is blonde, a sign of the merchant class, and it's all smooth and styled. There's a shining gold pin on her dress. I stare at it.
"Hello, Madge," says Katniss. She hands Madge the basket and Madge gives her money.
"Thank you," she says. She stands there awkwardly and so does Katniss, but then she shakes out her hair slightly and says, "Good luck at the Reaping today."
"Thanks," says Katniss.
"Are you nervous?" asks Madge.
Katniss shrugs as if she's not, but then Madge says, "I am."
I can't help but snort here. Both of them look at me and I say, "What do you have to be nervous about? You can only have your name in the Ball—what? Five times?"
Katniss shoots me a look and Madge smiles stiffly before saying, "Thank you for the strawberries. I'll see you at the Reaping, Katniss." Then she takes a step back into her house and Katniss and I go.
Neither of us say anything until we get back to the Seam. At the place where the path splits between our houses, I say tersely, "I'll see you."
"Wear something nice," she says flatly.
I don't wear a something nice because I don't have anything nice. I wear what I wore when I was hunting. Silently, my mother and I help Rory into his clothes, even though he's twelve years old and doesn't need us to. I leave my half of the blackberries in the cabinet under the stove because this is the Seam, and I wouldn't put it past anyone to break in because they saw food on the table.
Rory looks so much smaller than the other boys his age. They're all small and shaking. Some of them are skinnier and I feel a somewhat bitter sense of relief because even though he's smaller, he looks better-fed and stronger. Prim stands in the section adjacent to his, looking straight ahead. They stand next to one another, with just the rope between them. Rory leans over to whisper something to Prim, who nods.
I see Madge and Katniss standing next to each other in their section,. Katniss has her worrying face on and a deep furrow in her forehead as she stares at Prim. Madge takes her hand and squeezes it and I'm glad that Katniss, at least, has someone there with her.
I don't hear anything the mayor says. I just watch Katniss and Rory and Prim. It won't be them, I tell myself. There are so many names in the ball. What are the odds?
Finally, the Reaping starts. Effie Trinket, District 12's escort, scampers up to the stage and talks about how exciting this will be. No one says anything in response, because it's not going to be any more exciting than it is every year. Then our one and only victor, Haymitch Abernathy, stumbles where he stands next to the podium. He grabs onto Effie for support, who shrieks when he knocks her pink wig off. The hair underneath is a shade of light orange, slicked back with product to make it fit under the wig. She stamps of Haymitch's foot and pushes him off before reclaiming her fake hair and sticking it back on.
"So," she continues, irked but pretending that whole scuffle did not happen. "Shall we do the gentlemen first?" No one answers, but I suppose she didn't need anyone to. Standing on her tiptoes, she sticks her hand into the boys' Reaping Ball and swirls the contents around before picking one. Clearing her throat delicately, she reads, "Rory Hawthorne!"
Rory looks so small. Trembling, he makes his way to the edge of his section and under the rope. The other boys have moved out of his way. There's a sound, a sharp cry that is both familiar and unfamiliar: my mother. I can't see Katniss' face, but her back is stiff, so stiff, like one of the arrows in the bow that is currently hidden in a rotting log in the woods. I'm never going to see that log again.
I don't even think before I shout, "I volunteer!" The boys in my section, some of which are my friends, clear out of my way. One of them, Thom Richardson, claps my shoulder but I don't respond because I'm too busy sprinting down the aisle and to the short staircase, since Rory hasn't stopped. I grab him by the back of his shirt and pull him down. He yelps but I push him back into the twelve-year-old section.
"No!" he shouts, trying to get back up the stairs, but Katniss is there, somehow, pulling him down. I catch a glimpse of her face and it's hard. I can't see her eyes because her head is ducked down.
"Go on, Gale," she says, her voice without any inflection whatsoever. I go up.
"What's your name?" Effie asks me cheerfully.
"Gale Hawthorne," I say. Katniss is standing in Rory's section, her arms clamped around his struggling self.
"I'll bet my buttons that he's your brother," she says, her voice even cheerier.
How could she not? Hawthorne isn't exactly a common name. "Yes," I say. It's then that I hear the whispers going around the crowd, the slight excitement because Rory was so small. District Twelve knows me. I have a much better chance of winning than Rory does. What a pleasant surprise this is for them.
Katniss is holding Rory tightly. I stare at her. I can't look away. I don't know how this could get worse.
"Well," says Effie brightly. "This is sure to be an exciting Hunger Games!"
No one says anything. Rory is still now, his head bowed. Katniss is looking at me, her face blank. There is a beat of silence, filled only with the sounds of my mother's sobs, and then Effie moves to the girls' Ball.
"Well," she says. There is little fanfare this time, as one volunteer is one more than she's ever experienced in her experience as an escort and she doesn't expect another one. Her arm looks like a dead baby bird's wing as she puts it into the ball. She doesn't mix up the names.
It seems to be a long time. My mother is hiccuping now. Mrs. Everdeen has an arm around her.
Effie pulls her hand out and it gets worse. "Primrose Everdeen!" she calls.
Katniss is frozen. I tear my eyes from her to see Prim, who is struggling to get through her section. Katniss' mother releases a wail, and now there are two mothers, side by side, crying because their children have been taken by the Games.
Rory twists in Katniss' arms, and Katniss has regained enough of herself to watch as Prim moves toward the platform. I can see the indecision in Katniss' face, which is no longer blank. She looks at Prim, then and Rory, then at me. Remembering the promise we made, that if one of us were Reaped, the other would take care of the families.
She squeezes her eyes shut and her shoulders shake once. Rory holds on to her. She opens her eyes as Prim is halfway to the steps. Then she starts shaking all over and she looks at me. There's apology in her eyes as she pulls herself from Rory, and I know what she's going to do. There's no way she would let Prim go to the Games. Even if it meant both of our families had to suffer. She's going to volunteer.
No, I want to shout. Not only because of my family, but also because of her. I can't fight in the Games with Katniss. Against Katniss.
She steps away from Rory, frantic. Prim is at the bottom of the steps. Katniss' voice is strong. "I—"
"I volunteer."
It's not Katniss' voice. The crowd turns to see Madge Undersee step out from her section and into the aisle.