I wake early and lie in my bed, listening to a lone bird singing in the tree outside my window. No bird answers its plaintive call but it sings on, its solitary song mournful and slow, as if it knows the depth of sorrow and anguish every citizen in the Districts will feel today.
It is July first. The sky lightens by degree. A chorus of birds is singing before sunlight falls through the tree outside my window, joining in the eerie song they seem to sing but once a year. Maybe it's me who hears, instead of the boundless chirping we grow accustomed to because it's an omnipresent noise, the slow and doleful tones of a funeral dirge. It's as though they know our sorrow—the sorrow of a nation, on this terrible, beautiful day.
It dawns cloudless; hot. The tree canopy is heavy and hangs oppressively outside the fence around the pigpen, while wildflowers struggle in the dirt along the main road. "Road" calls forth something different, something more. This is just a wide, dirt lane, not even paved. There are few cars in District 12—only the officials or Haymitch Abernathy, District 12's only living victor of the games, could even afford one, but even then, where would they go? We're enclosed, as are all the Districts, by a high fence that's supposed to be electrified at all times. We get power in the evening sometimes; it's always spotty and we can never count on it, unless there's a televised announcement from the Capitol, and they're always mandatory. And during the Hunger Games.
The nation of Panem grew out of the chaos that followed climate change, monetary and then governmental collapse and the attending wars among the various countries of the world. The ruling body lives in the Capitol, an ultra-modern city made of glass and steel, far from the dirt roads and antiquated shacks of District 12.
I get dressed and go downstairs. My family moves through the house, ghost-like, eyes downcast, faces drawn. Each is, I think, contemplating what horrors this day holds, what the ramifications are if my brother Daefit (who is eighteen and will stand in ranks this one, last time) or I are chosen. The family bakery is a full-time business and requires the full-time participation of everyone. The entire dynamic would be skewed if one of us were taken away, but beyond that, if I care to examine it further, is the debilitating and seething hatred we would all be left with if Daefit or I were to perish in the arena.
I drink a cup of mint tea but bypass the fresh blackberries that my father bought from Katniss Everdeen.
Katniss. She's a slender, dark-haired beauty who floats down the road with such a light step she doesn't even disturb the dust. She exudes an aura of otherworldliness, as if she were but a supernatural spirit in human form, made more beautiful still by the sun skimming the single braid down her back and throwing her features into silhouette. If it weren't for the canvas game bag she usually has hoisted over her shoulder, filled with animals she's hunted, either on the run, on the wing, or in the pond, I'm not certain mortals could glimpse her at all.
I first saw Katniss when we lined up for school, when we were both five years old. My father pointed her out. "See that little girl?" he said. "I wanted to marry her mother but she ran off with a coal miner." When I asked why the woman had done that, he smiled. "Oh, he is very handsome. He's a nice man, and when he sings, even the birds stop to listen."
Most of the children had a parent or older sibling with them, but Katniss stood alone. Later, in music class, our teacher asked if any of us knew the valley song. Her hand shot up and the teacher stood her on a stool and she sang for us. I'd never heard her father sing, but Katniss clearly took after him. She trilled the song in a high, clear voice and not only the children and adults stopped to listen, but the birds outside actually fell mute, and heard her song.
We were the same age and always shared a teacher, so I got to observe her grow, uneventfully, from self-possessed, confident five-year-old to the shell-shocked girl who lost her father in a mine explosion six years later. The entire shift of one hundred and eleven men died in an accident so severe, there wasn't anything left to bury. The town turned out for the memorial service and the District provided each family with a meager sum of money equal to one month of the father's salary.
Katniss wandered the halls at school for weeks after, with a vacant, haunted look in her eyes. Not even twelve years old, she took over as head of her house, trying to feed her little sister Primrose, who was four years her junior, her mother, and herself. Rumor had it that she'd taken out tesserae (oil and grain for one person for one year) for herself, mother and sister, in exchange for her name in the reaping ball three additional times per year.
It may be her tenacity, as much as anything else, that keeps my attention drawn to her. She's a fighter. A hunter. A survivor.
The mine was refitted and reopened in a matter of weeks. Not long after that, we suffered an early spring storm that dropped inches of ice, delaying the planting of small garden plots that make up so much of District 12's sustenance. Rail fell in relentless, icy sheets, keeping customers in their homes, effectively securing for my family weeks of stale bread for breakfast. As I helped my mother in the kitchen, we heard the trash bins rattling. Instead of ignoring it and letting whoever was out there scavenge a few crusts of soggy bread, she threw wide the door and began screaming.
The wedge of light from the opened door fell on a retreating figure who stumbled back against the tree. I hovered behind my mother, struggling to identify the lone creature that had disturbed the sanctity of our trash and incurred the wrath of Waverly Mellark, an unpleasant woman under the best of circumstances. Clearly, bad economic times from a devastating accident in the mines, an ice storm that kept shoppers in their homes and then the audacity of a hungry child to paw at the sacred trash bins was not the best of circumstances.
When she was certain the trespasser had been dissuaded from further molestation of our garbage, my mother turned away from the door, muttering about brats from the Seam. I opened the door further to illuminate the yard and the person looked up. When our eyes met, I saw with a start that it was Katniss.
Her head snapped down, disappearing into the front of her massive coat. So the rumors were true. She'd come to my house, to my garbage, to try and find something to eat. How desperate must a person be to scavenge, not only in trash, but in the freezing rain? In the dark? And my mother had shrieked at her as if she were a wild animal.
I held the door open as the rain assaulted me. Part of me wanted to go to her, to rescue her from her vile circumstances, but another part of me knew that I couldn't. We were both kids, just twelve years old. My mother would never allow her in the house, and I had no resources to help her.
"Shut the door, stupid boy!" My mother's voice was hoarse from the screaming she did on a daily basis, but wearily I let it close. I brushed past my mother, thrust the bread paddle into the oven and swore as two loaves of bread fell off the rack into the flame. The burning crust alerted my mother, who was still muttering about how the trash bins needed to be in a locked enclosure. She dropped the dish she'd been washing and flew to the oven.
"Stupid boy!" she screamed again, as she pulled the loaves out of the flame with the handle of the paddle. One was burned only on its side, the other, on the bottom. Her face was apoplectic with rage as she grabbed them and quickly thrust them at me. "Who will buy burned bread, you stupid idiot! Throw them to the pigs!"
My heart hardened toward my mother that night, and I stood glaring at her, the bread burning my arms. Many things wanted to spill out of me on. I longed to scream back at her, tell her how we all knew that life as a baker's wife didn't suit her, that we were all constantly in her way. She had no regard for any of us, my father perhaps least of all, and this hurt me the most, as he was a good man. An honest and dependable man. He didn't love her and she certainly didn't love him but they worked together to make a life for the family. Anyway, from what I saw in District 12, love didn't have a whole lot to do with it. Survival. That was what it was all about.
I shook with rage but stood my ground and she brandished the paddle at me. When I didn't flinch, she bared her teeth and struck me under my right eye. I fell back against a rack holding bread pans, but didn't drop the bread that I'd purposefully burned for Katniss. White light danced inside my head for a few moments and the paddle crashed to my feet. I refused to cry out and opened my eyes to my mother's face, inches from my own. Her expression was murderous.
I pushed passed her and flung the door wide, relieved to see Katniss still camped beside the tree. Carefully, I tore of hunks of the burned area and threw them in the trough. When the bells on the bakery's front door tinkled, my mother slammed the back door, and after a quick glance to see that she'd actually gone, I tossed the bread to Katniss, a loaf at a time.
The first one landed in the rain but she caught the second one. After retrieving the first, she thrust them both under her coat and quickly left. I went inside and watched her trot down the road, disappearing around the corner as she neared her house. I've always regretted throwing the bread at her like that. The next day at school, our eyes met and I thought she would speak to me but she turned away instead. I never knew how to apologize for my act of cowardice and incivility, by tossing the bread to her instead of taking the few steps necessary to place it gently into her hands.
My mother appears at the door and looks at me pointedly. Clearly my time for reflection is over, and, reaping or not, bread still needs to be on sale tomorrow. I push away from the table, rinse out my cup and start on the white bread.
Yeast. Warm water from the pitcher on top on the ovens. Flour. Salt. I push and pull and fold the bread until a glistening dough ball sits before me. I quickly grease a clean bowl and toss the lump in, cover it with a dishtowel, and set it on the sideboard to rise. I do this five times. When I'm finished I step out the back door for a breath of fresh air in time to see Katniss and her fellow partner in crime, Gale Hawthorne, walking slowly down the road. Both have the familiar game bag on their shoulder.
They chat as they walk. He leans down and whispers something in her ear and she laughs. They don't hold hands, but she spends all her free time with him. I know there's a romance between them that they keep private. I watch until they're out of sight. They don't come to my door today, and they don't see me, hovering here on the stairs. Katniss never sees me, although I've been watching her for years.
Sometimes, as I'm kneading bread early on Saturday morning, I see them go by on their way to the woods to hunt. Many are the days that I pretend I'm a bird in those woods. From high in a tree I watch Katniss retrieve her bow and sling the quiver of arrows over her shoulder. She glides through the trees silently. An animal stops and looks around. She quickly aims and it falls, dead. Soon her bag is full. She and Gale have parted to hunt but they reunite and he takes her in his arms and he bends over her to kiss her.
At this point in my scenario, I abandon the idea that I'm a bird and consign that fate to Gale. He's forced to watch Katniss give her affections to me and I pull her close, smell the woods on her hair, feel the desperation in her kiss. I'm always brought up short by a simple but well-known fact. Well, well-known to me, anyway. It can never happen between Katniss and me because, apart from the fact that she's never said word number one to me in eleven years, we have nothing in common.
Gale, although two years her senior, is a fellow survivor. His father perished in the same accident as her own, and he stepped up to care for his family in the same way Katniss did. They share a love of the woods. They understand the dynamic of nature. I only understand bread, and the proper ratio of flour to yeast to water.
I know that nothing will make Katniss see me. Although I saw her when we were but five years old, and I've been seeing her every day since that day, she probably doesn't know my full name. I might be 'the baker's son.' Or, 'the boy that threw me the bread.' But not 'the boy that's in love with me' or 'the boy that would marry me and love me every day for the rest of my life.'
In my heart I know I'll be consigned, as was my father, to watch the woman he loves turn to someone else. Katniss's mother at least knew my father's intentions toward her. I feel as if I'll die and never have the nerve to tell Katniss how I feel, how hope springs up in my chest when I hear her voice, or how my palms get sweaty when I see her sitting in our parlor, trading with my father.
I soak in a small tub of lukewarm water and wash my hair. My mother has pressed my only pair of dress pants, a worn pair of khakis that are so old, they're shiny. A freshly washed shirt hangs on my bedroom door. "Get clean socks!" she yells, as I get dressed. Clean socks. Of course. Can't go to the reaping, where the stinking Capitol forces families to enter their children into a contest where they'll fight to the death, if you're wearing dirty socks.
At fifteen minutes until two, my family walks out the back door single file. It's about a block to the town square. We're joined on our short journey by many others, all dressed in old, hand-me-down rags that have been washed nearly colorless. We walk as if to slaughter, trudging along as if to a funeral.
Nobody talks much. We stand in line and offer the index finger or our left hand for a finger stick. One drop of blood tells our name and age, and we're directed to the proper line. We're separated by gender and age. The rows on the left are for the twelve year olds, and they all look petrified, all wondering, I suppose, how they'd cope if their name was called.
District 12's escort is a scary woman named Effie Trinkett. Her skin and part of her lips are dyed white, but her hair is a different color every year. This year, pink. Pink must be the in color in the Capitol this season. After Mayor Undersee recites the obligatory story about how we came to have the Hunger Games, Effie takes center stage again and fairly bristles with excitement.
"May the odds be ever in your favor!" she says in a bright voice, her silly Capitol accent flavoring the words in a way that drops the ending 'r's and giving an odd cast to the vowels. Once you've heard it, it's impossible not to mimic it, even though that's dangerous water to swim in. People that make fun of the Capitol disappear. Poof. After you've seen families trying to cope with the loss, you start to keep your opinions to yourself.
District 12 has had two victors in seventy-three years, and only one is living. Haymitch stands beside Effie, clearly stinking drunk. He's only drunk on days that end in 'y', my father says charitably. He hugs Effie and nearly sends her pink wig on a one-way ticket to the ground but she saves it just in time. And it's almost comical as she stands under the awning in the stifling July heat, feigning enthusiasm for the names she'll pull out of the reaping ball.
Reaping. Harvest. The words roll around in my empty stomach and I wait uncomfortably. I steal a look at Katniss and she's looking resolutely at the large reaping ball, as if willing Effie to choose any name but her own.
And she does.
In a clear voice, Effie calls out the female tribute's name for the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games. It's not Katniss Everdeen.
It's Prim. Her little sister.