I am dead.
Mind blank. Body numb. People speak but I hear nothing. I feel nothing. So I must be dead. Like my father. Down in those dark, dirty mines.
He should be here. Getting his medal of valor. But I guess that's the point. The only reason he's earned this medal is because he died. Never mind all the times he faced danger with a courageous heart and a steady hand. If he lived he must not be brave. But now that he's dead everyone stands in honor of him in the Justice Building, a place he never once set foot in.
I feel a nudge on my arm. I must not be dead. I was certain for a moment there that I was. But now, I turn to my mother who is trying to get me to move forward. Looking back around I realize everyone is staring at me. Then I see the mayor standing beside the podium with my father's medal, watching me, and I know it's time. I walk quietly to the stage. The mayor shakes my hand and presents me a round medal on a tiny pillow.
The pillow is a small square about five inches in length and width. The cloth is a deep violet and made of some shiny material too expensive for me to know what it's called. It couldn't even be used for an infant's head.
As I take it in my hands, anger burns through my veins, and suddenly I feel so alive. For surely, surely, a dead boy could never feel such rage, It courses through me like fire. I wonder if this is anything like what my dad felt during the explosion. A heat that engulfs your body until you no longer recognize your limbs, stomach, your very toes. Wave after furious wave crashes over me as I walk back to my mother and two younger brothers. And another sibling. A brother or sister. I don't know yet because my mother still stands with the mystery child still cradled within her. My father will never know his last child.
I take the medal of valor in one hand and hold the pillow in the other. I can sell the pillow. I'm sure someone in the hob will pay for it or trade in some item for the cloth. But the medal I won't sell. For one my mother would never let me, and another, I doubt anyone would take it.
I reclaim my place beside my mother. Vick and Rory, my younger brothers, cling to her. Tears streak down their faces, and my mother pats their heads, trying to calm them despite her own trembling grief.
I stand like a stature as the mayor continues to deliver his condolences accompanied by useless medals to other families who lost someone in the mines. A young woman steps forward to accept one for her husband who she just married a month ago. I remember hearing the music filling the streets of the Seam as they celebrated. Next an older man wordlessly steps forward as the mayor honors his son. I guess his son never got the chance to marry and start his own family.
Then a girl a couple years younger than me steps forward. She receives her father's medal with a blank expression and returns to her mother and little sister. I recognize the look on her face, because it's the one I wear right now. Though, my body pulses with fury my face shows none of it. I won't let the Peacekeepers see it or the mayor. I won't even let my mother see. I think it would scare her.
My hand holds tightly to the round medal. I didn't pay much attention to the details on it, but I noticed a star-like shape. I feel the relentless metal pressing into my hand as I squeeze it, but I don't let go. Even when it begins to hurt I hold it more tightly still.
A total of twelve men perished in the mine explosion that killed my father. Once the delivery of medals is finished, the mayor says a few empty words about courage, strength and sacrifice. Sounds like the Hunger Games. Pointless words met with pointless actions. It all means nothing! Those men who died were nothing but slaves! Slaves forced down into the wretched mines to provide coal to a government who in return forces them to send their kids to the Reaping; to be sacrificed in a ritual of execution disguised as some sporting event.
My hand stings as the medal cuts into my flesh, but I don't loosen my grip. Finally, finally, the ceremony is over and I follow my mother and brothers to the elevator. The rickety enclosure sends us downward to ground level, and we exit into the lobby, before we vacate the building. My mother walks with her arms around my still clinging brothers, and slowly we make our way home to the Seam.
We don't say anything as we walk, but I can hear Vick and Rory weeping on either side of my mother. I should say something. As the oldest I am now the man of the house...
I stop.
My mother continues on ahead for a moment before she too stops and turns.
"Gale," she says softly. Her face is wet with her tears, and her eyes sparkle with fresh ones. Like morning dew. I look into her face wanting to run to her, to wrap my arms around her like Vick and Rory. I want nothing more than to be her son, and have her take care of me as she always has. But I can't. Because she's pregnant, due any day, and soon I will have another mouth to feed.
I can almost feel the weight my dad always carried settling around my shoulders, and it's far heavier than I ever could have imagined. I was seven years old when my father took me into the woods with him for the first time. He showed me all kinds of snares, and taught me to think like the animals. There aren't many who go into the woods to hunt for food. People are frightened of the woods and what lives in it. But my father was one of the few who was brave enough to venture out there, and desperate enough to risk getting caught. My mother didn't like the idea of my joining him, but eventually she gave in, and I was permitted to learn the trade of feeding my family. I became my dad's hunting partner, and I couldn't have felt more proud or grown up.
Now, he's gone, and I am alone. My mother could never go to work in the mines with the baby on the way, and I'm too young. I will have to find food in the woods, trade for the precious items we need to survive, enter my name more times in the Reaping, and even then it probably won't be enough.
"Gale," my mother says again. She looks really worried now, and I know that my face is beginning to change. The wall that went up the moment I heard of my father's death is beginning to crack. There can be no witnesses.
Without a word I turn and run.
"Gale! Gale!" My mother is calling for me, but I don't answer. I just run, faster than I ever have before, until I'm slipping beneath the fence. It's not electrified like it's supposed to be. It almost never is. Useless. Like everything else in this district.
As I reach the woods my feet begin to slow, and the wall crumbles into pieces. I glance down at my hand and, opening it, find the medal has broken my skin which now blossoms with dots of bright red blood. In a blinding flash of anger, I scream and hurl the thing away. Then I take the pillow I was holding in my other hand and rip it to shreds.
Howls of anger and grief pour from my mouth like some dying animal, and I fall to my knees amidst the dead leaves and twigs and cotton stuffing from the pillow. Shaking with my sobs I fall to my face, holding my head in my hands grasping at my hair for something to hold onto. I don't know how long I stay like this, but eventually my energy dissolves until I physically cannot cry any more.
I lie on my side, curled into a fetal position as I listen to the branches overhead creak in the wind. Then I hear a loud snap, and I sit up straight. Waiting. But no animal or Peacekeeper makes an appearance, so I slowly stand and head in the direction of the noise I heard. It doesn't take long to find it.
One of the snares my dad and I set up a couple of days before the explosion entraps a wild dog. The dog is dead, killed instantly by the branch that was prepared to snap it's neck. I stare at it for a moment, and then as if following some command I bend down and cut it free. Dad always said the people in the Hob will buy any meat you bring them, all you have to do is get it. Wiping the wetness from my face, I haul my load onto my shoulders, and start back to District 12 where my new life awaits.