The districts of Panem. Their first volunteers, and their last. The ones who got to choose, but they didn't really, because you can't choose this.


District One only rearranges its thinness: they show ribs in Twelve, but here, have the tiniest, most flawless waists and collarbones. Their hips are daggers cutting inward.


Two got a head start and churned out two blood-gorged mastiffs in five years. No, no no no, we are refined here. We will not send just anyone. We are not cavemen, you see; we cannot simply pick our strongest, because Two is stronger. We pick flowers with golden hair and nettles you cannot see until you clutch at them. Later we will grow roses and lilies of the valley and all sorts of nightshade, but we have nothing now. We want annual allowances of sugar. We need our Capitol's love back, our Father. We are desperate.

Gisele is a corpse flower.

It is the sixth Hunger Games, and Corona Lowry is tall and blonde but crying on the stage, thick, horrible sobbing. She will die. Gisele hunches, and her dark hair is matted where it isn't chopped near the skull. She grunts, pushes her own path through, treads up to Corona and smacks her across the face. The mark is doubly dark with dirt. She grabs Corona's neck to pull her down to hiss in her ear. We do not hear all of her words, but in them are 'disgusting' and 'worthless' and 'shaming the district.' Gisele knows:

A) it is not shameful to be ugly and dangerous instead of beautiful and dead.

B) she is bringing pride to her district, more pride than she ever would have, and disgusting is figurative, and worth is 'how many bodies will you bring down,' not 'how much is your body worth in looks and touches.' This is where Gisele will be worth something.

C) Four and Seven have victors. Eleven has a victor. It's ridiculous, it can't be allowed. They're filthy, disgusting fishers, lumberjacks, monkeys in the apple trees. They're worthless, not her, they're ugly and gross and they're nothing. She's better, she has to be. She's better and they're nothing. She does deserve this.

Gisele does not know:

A) she is wrong. She embarrasses us. We appreciate her effort all the same, we say.

It is the sixth Hunger Games, and they have just allowed the formal goodbyes in the justice building. Gisele locks the door. She doesn't need to. Even Corona doesn't come. We interview Corona after the Games. She says she is sorry. She is a good liar; we are proud of her. Corona smells like nectarines and rainwater. She wears penance in plain view and clean, homespun white silk.

Gisele smells of bodies and a raw need to be needed. They clothe her in bruise purple and sickened green and dying white, and shave her filthy head. Her partner Argent, tall and blond and convincingly at ease with his death, is in silver. They are not a pair.

District Two mocks her smell, which the Capitol showers do not purge. Gisele laughs derisively with them until she realizes what they're laughing at. She furrows her heavy face and nails Two boy in the ribs with a barbell. When he can stand and breathe through the fracture, he holds his breath anyway to pick her up and throw her into the climbing wall. He looks at Argent, who looks at this cave rat slime, the blind mole who is still from his district, this wilted scum, and Argent makes a choice.

We hear about it from our Capitol contacts. We assure Argent's family he did the right thing. Gisele is not really a One. She deserves nothing like One solidarity. She deserves nothing.

Two's ribs are bandaged on the day the Games begin, but Gisele wavers on one leg. The ankle is sprained, and in the x-ray, they found an inch-long plastic shard nestled next to the kneecap. It's better than the other leg. She should probably be crying. Gisele doesn't want to cry. She's sixteen years old and she thought we would be proud of her and she really couldn't have been more wrong.

The arena is a hothouse of carnivorous flies, grasping vines and rotting fruit. Gisele knows she will not make it more than a day. We would have mourned her, but she plunges Argent into a cloud of flies. We betrayed her, we see on her face. Argent didn't deserve this. We did. We grew him. But we always owe somebody, and Gisele is too short and dark and ugly to count. We gladly give her up to the vines.

We don't find her family, and hold no funeral. If she had one, they were right to stay silent.

The only good thing Gisele ever did was save Corona for next year. We love Corona. Corona is a lily of the valley. We abolish Gisele, wipe out the corpse flower. Corona is our first volunteer, we say. She makes us so proud.


District One wishes its children were born too hideous for Father to want.


Gloss thought he lost his sister once. He wasn't going to do it again. He knows they'll have to call him up too. The golden twins together again, the king and queen in a chess game they're rigged to lose, because of the Twelve slut, but he's not going to do that. He's going to break their damn chessboard. Just as soon as they call him up. He'll make them pay.

But they don't call him. They say "Culverin" into the ringing, breezeless One air. Culverin the idiot who trained with guns, how stupid can you get, guns that have never once been used in the arena, and Gloss was just entering the Academy when Culverin was going to volunteer, and he wasn't quite seven but knew how the Games were supposed to go. Culverin should've died. He wasn't good enough to be allowed stupidity. Victory was the best thing that could ever happen to anyone in the world, everyone knew that, and Culverin didn't deserve it. But strings got pulled, Culverin probably sucked off somebody important, and lo, guns. He got victory served to him on a golden platter, but Gloss is golden. Not Culverin. Cashmere is golden. She can't go in with this filthy pewter thing who will unravel her perfection by association, who will so easily let her die. Culverin doesn't deserve to be paired with her. Gloss loves her. So much more and better than anyone knows. Even her. She doesn't understand sometimes.

Culverin got Glimmer killed last year because he is worthless and wrong. Cashmere cried. Gloss doesn't want to see that ever again. If he dies for her, he won't have to.

Cashmere. Glimmer. Culverin. Gloss. Glimmer and Cashmere and Culverin and Gloss and Cashmere, Cashmere is better than anyone, she is more than all the furs and perfumes and shimmering nothings in the world, which is Panem, which is Cashmere's. Cashmere Cashmere. He thinks it so much it never sounds like a word anymore. He loves her like nobody else can.

Gloss volunteers for Culverin, for Cashmere. He hates Culverin. He loves his baby sister. It's okay, baby. Everything's going to be okay. He's here for her. Always. Love you, baby girl.

"I thought I was going to get away from you this time," says Cashmere on the train, in the voice he's filed as #138: teasing, but serious, but allowing but not wanting and carefully not crying. She's always been a little bit of a crybaby. It's okay, though, because he keeps tissues in his pockets for her. They're scented, like her skin, and so fluffy and light.

"You'll never do that, Cashmere." She doesn't want to love him, but that's what sisters and brothers do, love each other. Especially twins. Like the gods themselves knew they should be together.

He loves her that night, and every night. He would die for her.

Then- he does. There is nothing better. She deserves nothing less. His princess.

He doesn't see her embrace the axe: a shiny, rushed angel of death, too late to protect her from most things, but not too soon for her to smile #65: relieved, but apprehensive, but understanding and unloved.

Cashmere hated love.


And there were no more corpse flowers or golden angels, and District One could sleep alone.