Prologue:
His dad and my dad were on the same fishing boat and our moms worked the same packaging factory so it was inevitable that we would meet each other. I remember exactly how it happened back when I was nine years old. I was sitting on the dock, waiting for my dad's boat to come in. It was his birthday, and I wanted to bring him a shell I had found him a few weeks before. The sun was blazing down on my already tan skin and my blonde hair was rippling in the wind. I had my feet hanging over the dock trying to get them to reach the water so I could splash. It was summertime, and it was a particularly hot day so just sitting there was making me sweat. I thought I was the only one there, until I heard someone else come running up behind me. It was him. I had seen him around the District before, he was in my grade and I knew our parents worked together, but I had never talked to him before. He sat down next to me and put his feet in the water. They barely fit, but I remember being jealous that he could reach the water and I couldn't.
Hi," he said to me squinting from the sun.
"Hi," I replied.
"My name is Fir," he told me.
"Mine's Laurel."
"Your dad works on my dad's boat right?" he asked. I nodded. "Is that why you're waiting here?" I nodded again.
"It's his birthday," I explained. "Why are you here?"
"I like the sea," he said. For some reason, that sparked a friendship. He became my closest friend that I would do everything with. Five years later when we were both 14, we both admitted to wanting something more and two weeks later I got my first kiss. There was never a doubt in my mind that he was the only boy I could ever love. With every word, with every touch, with every day spent with him I fell more in love with him. He became a fisherman and every day I would wait on the dock to come home. We would spend time together just sitting and talking or chasing each other on the beach or helping out parents out around our houses. He was perfect and we were perfect and I was ready to spend the rest of my life with him. Until the Reaping of the 74th Hunger Games. That's when everything changed.
