I wake up to the smell of burning. It's a smell of something burning that I can't quite put my finger on. It's not food…it's…it's…on the tip of my tongue…it's wood. Our house is being burned down.
My mind races and I kick my feet vigorously until the covers are on the floor. I spring up and my feet shuffle trying to remember where Gale's, my little brother, room is. My memories start to flood back. I race to the hallway and run into Gale's room. "Gale!" I cry. I shake him awake. "Prim? Why are you up? What's wrong?" he doesn't stop with questions. I don't respond I let him figure it out himself.
Once he realizes what I have without speaking we race to our parent's room. Without speaking Gale shakes dad awake and I do the same to mom. We don't say anything because when we wake them up my room falls to ashes. "We've got to get out of here," says mom.
We race out and we find out it's no natural cause that burned down our house, its people. Colorful people stand there with lit torches. These people, I've heard of them but they don't exist anymore, or so I thought. There from this place that used to be in Panem but was destroyed, it was called the capitol.
We don't have to ask what they're doing and why they're doing it because they come out. An orange man with a torch comes out from the back, "You took away some of our jobs, our entertainment, yes, the games. You need to be punished."
In school we learn what the games, the hunger games are but they don't tell us more than that. We don't know who started them, who won them, or who stopped them but from the sound of it, my parents did. I know my parents were young once but I can't imagine it and I definitely can't imagine them doing something like this. "Why now?" asks dad. "Yeah," mom comes in, "why did you wait all these years?" "It takes planning," the same guy answers. "Our jobs done here!" yells someone in the back and they walk away, gone, just like that.
I look down at what was once my house but is now just a pile of ash. I bite my lip trying to hold in the tears but one escapes my eye. "What now?" asks dad. "I guess we go to Haymitch," responds mom. No, not Haymitch. Haymitch is close to being sixty years old and he sleeps with a knife. He's an alcoholic and one sip away from death. He scares me and scares Gale even more but we both don't say anything.
On the way to his house I realize something, whoever those people were, whatever my parents did, they weren't happy with it and they want the games back, The Hunger Games.