I didn't know if it was morning or still night. We lived underground in District 13, so it was hard to tell the time changes. But I was awake and I couldn't sleep.
The Reaping was today, and my name was going in for the first time. It was also my birthday. I was 12 years old today, but there wasn't anything special nor celebratory about it. I sighed and rolled over trying to go back to sleep. It was going to be stressful enough without me looking like a puffy chocolate marshmallow.
I heard a knock on my door, but I didn't turn around.
"Nile are you awake?" My brother popped his head into my room and I rolled back over to face the door. He walked into my room and sat down at the end my bed. "Nervous?" his hand reached up and padded my leg gently.
"Just a little." I sat up. I was already wearing my Reaping outfit. A grey tunic and grey leggings. Everything in district 13 was grey. I figured it could bring me some good luck. Well it couldn't hurt.
He nodded and stared off into space. "This is my last year." My brother was turning 18 in two months. His worrying days were over. Well for himself anyways. There were 5 more of us who had the potential to be thrown to the lions in the Quarter Quell. He was the first one in the family to age out. We had planned a little party for him after the reaping. Though there were two of us now going into the pot. Me and my sister Timber who was 14.
"You'll be fine." I bumped shoulders with him. He smiled down at me. "Hey I thought you were supposed to be cheering me up." At least I hope that's what was supposed to happen.
The alarm tolled before he could answer and the lights popped on. I blinked back against the brightness of the lights.
It was time to get up and get ready. My sister River was still sleep and I hated to wake her up. She always looked so peaceful when her eyes were closed. As if she didn't have a care in the world. Which she didn't really. Being five all she had to do was eat, go to her lessons and run around the playroom all day. It was the life I wanted to get back. But I had to wake her up, it was a harsh punishment for missing the Reaping. Though she was only five she would still be punished.
I climbed off my bed. My legs felt like jelly. I had to lean against the wall till I felt like I could walk without falling over, but I made myself walk over to my sister's bunk to shake her gently awake.
Her hair was sticking up all over her head, but she had the face of an angel. "River" I shook her shoulder and she opened a blurry eye to blink at me. "Its time to go. Come on." She tired to go back to sleep.
Finally I had to pick her up and carry her into the bathroom for a quick bath. She was a big baby when you got down to it. I guess I spoiled her. Trying to make up for her never meeting our mom I guess. Our mom died giving birth to River. It had been a joyously sad day. We splashed and laughed in the bathroom. River loved my water monsters. It was easy to lose myself in the little game. It kept my heart from pounding right through my rib cage. I dried her off and gave her slicked up pigtails on the side of her head that ended in little afro puffs.
We didn't bother stepping up to the scanner to get our daily schedules. There was only one thing to do today. Go to the Reaping and afterwards there would be something like a wake for the tributes.
None of them ever came home.
Well there was always a Victor, but they were kept in the Capitol after winning. The Quarter Quell was a special Hunger Games just for the people of District 13. Since we instigated the rebellion and caused the Dark Days we were punished more than the other districts. Oh what a joy to be us.
The Hunger Games happened every single year. You could set your clock by it in fact. Our calendars revolved around it. Each district had to one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18. But the Quarter Quell was a special game that happened every four years that only district 13 participated in.
They still wanted their 24 tributes though. The numbers didn't change. 12 girls and 12 boys were sent into the Games. We still had to send one boy and one girl into the yearly Hunger Games though. It was brutal for us. You would think out population would be small. People were scared to have children, but that wasn't an option for us. The Capitol thought of that as well. Every woman over the age of 18 had to take hormone shots every month to ensure she had babies, and every woman had to have at least five babies over the span of her lifetime. They said that like anyone was going to have more than that. We had to have 100 newborns every year.
We were so lucky to be District 13.
Ohio made sure we were all dressed and ready to go. He had been our mom and dad since our mother had died from radiation poisoning when I was 5. Thesson had just been born nine months before our mom died to the day that River was born. For some reason our mom had six kids. She said she never regretted having any of us. Thinking about her today made my heart squeeze tightly.
When he was sure we were ready to go he nodded and we were off to the cafeteria.
The atmosphere in the halls and on the elevator was subdued. No one talked and none of the kids participated in idle chatter. I wasn't sure why I was paying this much attention. I never had before. Well I guess since my name was being thrown into my mix my brain wanted to record all the details.
I saw my friend Canary. She waved at me when we finally stepped off the elevator into the cafeteria. Her 12th birthday wasn't for another 4 months. She had another year before she went into the drawing. Her mother held her back from running over to me to talk. It made my eyes sting. I could have used the pep talk or at least a little hug. We had been best friends since the playroom. Friendships after the age of 12 were hard to maintain. You just never knew when their name was going to be called.
I managed to send a small smile her way before moving into the line to grab some breakfast. I was sure when the Reaping started I was going to throw up anything I had eaten but I was hungry. We were on a strict schedule around here and having dinner at 6pm last night always left me starving by the time breakfast rolled around.
All the Reaping eligible kids were given an extra potion of either rice of bread. I opted for the rice today. Eggs and rice. That was a protein and a carb. So I could bulk up and beef out. That thought made me giggle. I was twelve but I was the size of a seven year old. In fact my seven year old brother Thesson was taller than me. I was tempted to go sit next to Canary, but today of all days was not a day to defy the rules. Peacekeepers were out in force and it was frowned upon to sit in another sector's dining section on the best of days. Today I would get beaten and they would have propped up with poles for the Reaping if they had to.
I sat next to my sister Timber. Timber was always the overly serious one in our family, but today you would have been hard pressed to find her pulse. I patted her hand and she looked down at me. A slight tug at the corner of her mouth was all she gave me.
For Timber that was the equivalent to her turning a backflip on top of the table during the announcements.
I ate quickly. I needed to do something to keep busy. If I stayed still too long I would get nervous and if I got nervous I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I knew it wouldn't be pretty.
My belly felt full and I felt like a whale. Though I never gained an ounce. I was blessed with a tiny frame with a promise of a curvacious body as one of my brother's former friends had said. Ohio punched him in the face for that comment. They weren't friends anymore.
The bell tolled.
On cue everyone stood and emptied their trash. I grabbed Thesson and Merlin's hand to keep a hold of them. I knew it was for my moral support, but I told them Ohio told me to look after them. They hated their sister babying them and looking after them. They patterned themselves real men now. It was cute. I hoped I would live to see them grow up. Timber and River were holding onto each other for support. Ohio was leading our clan.
The Reaping happened in the Great Hall which was on the 4th level. It was the closest to ground level I had ever been. My sister Timber was a scavenger so she got to go outside every day. I loved hearing her stories of what the outside looked like. I hadn't been assigned a job yet. If my name wasn't called I would get a job tomorrow.
You could land a helicopter in our Great Hall. The ceiling soared high above our heads and our shuffles bounced off the walls and sounded hollow in my ears.
The stage had been erected at the far end of the Great Hall from the elevator doors. The spotlights were giving off tremendous heat as we approached. They bathed the single microphone that stood alone in the middle. Ivy Boxer was twittering around the stage in all her Capitol glory.
Ivy Boxer was the strangest person I had ever seen in my life. Not that I had a lot of experience with Capitol people but I was sure she had to be the weirdest. She was brown skinned like me, but Ivy had tiny gold whiskers sprouting from the sides of her nose like a cat. When she scrunched up her nose she really did look like a cat. She hard large golden cat eyes that dipped toward her nose and fur covered ears that ended in points.
She was forever tucking stray strands of her fly away hair behind them. It would have been a cute gesture on anyone else. On Ivy it was disconcerting.
Today she was decked out in a bright green dress that glittered under the spotlight. It was very tight and I was sure on any other day it would have left nothing to the imagination for the mass of hormonal boys that were in attendance, but today it was vein move. No one was looking at her shapely hips with longing or lust. If given the chance I was sure some of the boys would happily strangle her in that lovely dress.
I blinked away the image of her dress to take in the rest of her. It was a wonder she walk in the shoes on her feet. The heels were almost a foot off the ground. And I know I was close enough to the ground to almost see clear up her dress. Which made me blush and fix my eyes on a point above her head.
Once we were all assembled she stepped to the mike. "Welcome to the 18th Quarter Quell Games. May the odds be forever in your favor." She threw her arms out in a fanfare that we didn't return. She did this every single year like we were going to jump out and shout. The woman was pounds of uranium short of a full load. Her cat eyes searched all of our faces. None of us were showing any emotions. It made for bad TV we knew, but what did that expect from us? We were going to our death's. Were we supposed to turn cartwheels for the audience?
I'm not why I did it, but I gave her a little wink and she winked back. Maybe she wasn't totally crazy. We stood and turned to watch the opening video. They showed it every single year, but for the quarter Quell it was always special. It showed how wicked we were to rebel. The devastation that the capital heaped upon us. It showed the world that we had threatened to set of nuclear bombs around the country killing people in other districts. They never painted a pretty picture for us.
After the video Ivy turned back to look at us. The cameras were rolling through our ranks getting our reactions to the video. There weren't any reactions to be had. We had made peace with our public image. "How about this year we start with the boys." She looked to the audience for approval. There wasn't one. It was only us.
You could have heard a cat fart. Ivy walked over to the Reaping Ball. Everyone sucked in a breath. She pulled out a piece of paper and walked back over to the mike to read the name. The vein in my brother's forehead was throbbing something terrible as he waited for her to read the first name. "Seven Brown." I could see a single drop of sweat escape his hairline.
Everyone stepped away from Seven as he started crying. He was 15, but he worked in the kitchens and he was a bit on the soft side. Not just in temperament but in physique. He was round in all the wrong places, and the boy was always crying over a little cut or burn.
I didn't like his odds of making it past the first few seconds after the start of the games. The Peacekeepers grabbed a hold of him. He struggled, but not for long. They took him away amidst his mother's wails. She worked in the gardens with my brother.
It was gut wrenching and he was only the first. Two other boys disslved into tears before being dragged away to their dooms.
Ohio stood ramrod straight. His eyes never strayed from the stage as all the boys were called. He wasn't called. He practically melted to the floor. Him and the other boys aging out of the games almost danced a jig. I smiled up at him. Glad that my brother was going to have a future. Well as much of a future as we could have in this world, but at least it was there. We might have been punished more than the other districts but our lives were nearly as bad as theirs. Some of their kids looked starved half to death. As if they had been surviving on nothing but air and good intentions. We might not be feasting everyday but we got 3 solid meals and enough to at least grow on.
Ivy pulled me out of my daydream. "Now for the girls," She announced. Timber reached over to grab my hand. I winced at the pressure but I didn't let go. I wanted the support. I didn't want to admit to anyone how scared I was. It wasn't necessary everyone else was just as scared, but somehow admitting it out loud made it more real.
Ivy for all the way through the Reaping and she didn't call Timber's name. There was only one more slip to be pulled. One more girl to go into the games and fight her friends and neighbors to the death. Timber started to bounce. I followed suit. We had both been pretty lucky. One more name. Then we could breath a little till next year.
"The last tribute for the quarter Quell games is." She unfurled the slip, reading the name slowly. I saw the words forming on her lips but I didn't think she was going to say it. "Nile Ferris." My heart stopped.
Timber froze in mid bounce.
Ohio's little jig stopped in mid kick.
She had called my name. The witch had called my name.
I was going into the Games.