Chapter 1
I crawl into the barn I choose to shelter me for the night. I've been coming to this barn for a few days now. It's a lovely well built stable with a rustic red paint job and a few horses. Tonight, I'll have the whole night to myself, worry free about getting caught. I feel myself getting excited now. A night of peace with the familiar choir of mooing and bleating of the livestock in the background. Although a small part in the back of my mind is ignorant to the peace. It knows why the barn is vacant and why everyone is resting for tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the reaping.
They announced the fourth quarter quell yesterday. I heard a group of women surrounding a crying mother, whispering about what the capital came up with to creatively change the murder of twenty three children. The women discussed the group of high ranked capital citizens, including president snow himself, who would visit each district and choose for themselves, a young boy and young girl to compete as a tribute in the one hundredth hunger games.
I walk back further into the barn looking for it. I made sure the pale hay covered its wooden body flawlessly. After a few minutes of searching, I finally spot a glint of the metal wire string. I reach down and rescue the rest of the body from the hay and lower myself down on the bouncy straw. I pluck a few strings turning the top pegs on its neck until the string stretches to the pitch I need.
It was my grandmothers. Who got it from her grandma, and has been passed down from since before the apocalypse. After she retired from her horse breeding job, she spent her days cradling its body, tapping her finger in certain spots on its neck, brushing the fingers of her other hand on the opposite end of the strings. I was 5 and a half when I first heard the music. It was so beautiful that I remember myself being stunned at its beauty. I sat down at the door of the room, the music was coming from, and stayed listening to it until I fell asleep. After what seemed like a second later my grandmother was holding me telling me I fell asleep in the doorway. Rubbing my eyes I asked her to tell me where the music came from. She took me to her chair and pulled me on her lap. "This is my guitar."
Guitar. What and interesting name. I looked up at her and asked her "will you teach me?"
"Of course sugar"
And from then until she died she taught me all she knew about the guitar and I became very good at playing this guitar. But it was just me and grandma for a long time and grandma wasn't working. To get our food, gran taught me how to steal.
One day when I was around seven, she took me out to a beat up old grocery shop and told me, "alright baby. Now you see that red apple?" We never had anything as special as apples before.
Licking my lips I nodded.
"I want you to go get it and bring it out of the shop."
"Grandma? Why can't you go get it?"
"You see baby, that's the thing, not any old person can walk in and take stuff and walk out. But you can. The shopkeeper told me he won't get mad at you for stealing".
"Why won't he get mad at me?"
"Well because he knows it's just a game."
"ohh a game?" my innocent mind has always understood games.
I loved games. I thought I was good at them too. My grandma taught me how to play an old game called chess. Id beat her every time. Or so I thought. Looking back at it now I realize grandma probably allowed me to win all this time.
"Yeah, baby, you're so good at games, that guy won't know what hit him."
I smile at the thought of winning. I always loved to win.
"How do you play the game grandma?"
"Well that's the thing, the hard part isn't getting the fruit, the hard part is getting the fruit without him knowing you took the fruit."
I cocked my head to the side trying to develop a plan on how to win this game. Even as a young girl I knew, in order to be successful, you needed careful planning.
I look up at my grandma and nod. A smile creeps on my grandma's face, which makes me smile. I was happy if my grandma was happy.
Grandma puts her hand on my shoulder. "I'm proud of you baby."
Hearing those words, I pulled up my chin and walked into the store. The shop owner saw me and furrowed his brow, probably wondering where my parents were. He didn't say anything. I gave him a big smile. I've always heard gran talk about how I have a great smile. Been told I'm pretty too. With my big deep green eyes and long light brown colored curls. Although some people think of freckles as blemishes that should be covered, I wear my spray of dark freckles across my nose proudly.
Walking across the store I pretend to check out a bunch of bananas. I've never eaten bananas before then but I pick them up and check out their bright yellow form as if I know what I'm doing.
The shopkeeper walks over to me.
"Need any help miss?"
"No thank you."
I answer giving him, what I hoped, was a dazzling smile.
"Alright sweetie just let me know if you need help."
I give him the innocent little girl look and reply "thank you Mr."
He smiles to himself as he walks back to the front desk to await another customer.
Walk over to the apple section and look back at my grandma standing in front of the shop window pretending to wait for a bus. I see that right above the apples are a bunch of cucumbers so I lean over the apples, on my tippy toes, and pick a firm green cucumber with one hand and snatch a apple with the other hand and slip it into my pocket. I stood for a while inspecting the cucumber and faked dissatisfaction with it as I put it back reaching again for another apple and slipped that one in my pocket too.
I looked down at two round bulges in my pockets, trying to think of a solution I can come up with to walk out of the store without him noticing the apples. I look up at the cucumbers and see a fat black fly resting on a cucumber. I get an idea. I look back at the shopkeeper who is looking down. Moving his lips to form silent words. He's reading something.
I scream a blood curling scream and yell "a fly!"
He runs over to me but before he gets to me I run towards the exit yelling "it's a fly!"
I run out of the store and down the street. I turn the corner and rest waiting to see if he would come looking for me.
It worked.
He didn't come and now I have two pretty red apples for me and grandma to enjoy.
I see someone turn the corner.
It's grandma. She has a big smile on her face.
"You did it baby! Let me see them!"
I pull out the two fat apples from my pockets and we walk home each of us enjoying our sweet apple.
And that was the first time I stole.
That's how we survived. We lived in an old abandon barn, slept on hay, ate stolen foods and played the guitar for each other.
But soon, my stealing wasn't enough. People started to realize there stuff was going missing. And I was getting cocky. Stealing things we really didn't need. I got jewelry, toys, blankets, and anything else sold at the market. But I was getting caught more often. Not that I wasn't as good at stealing anymore, that wasn't the case at all. In fact I got so good at stealing I could steal pretty much anything from anyone. But people started being more aware when I was around. I'd give them my pretty smile and they'd return it but I wasn't an innocent little girl anymore. By the time people stopped letting me get away with stealing, I was about ten or eleven.
I had grown into what my grandma called me, a stunning young lady. My freckles stayed intact on my tan nose while I grew older. People started noticing me more. My eyes and freckles stood me out and my hair lightened up from a normal light brown color to a pretty golden color. Some people knew I wasn't from here. And those who hadn't figured it out before, began to. They whispered about my mom and my grandma. But I got them back. I made sure they tripped on a "misplaced" twig while carrying their fresh milk or that their late mother's old jewelry disappeared from their homes. But they caught on.
I didn't go to school. Never. But I always wanted to. I would sit outside the school yard and watch the girls my age skip out the doors carrying their books all happily. I would sit and watch the kids play at recess from behind a bush. I would sit there and envy them, hate them. I hated them because they got to go to school. They knew how to read and write and I didn't. One day I asked gran why I couldn't go to school like Evangeline Thomas, or Susan Drimson. She told me people didn't want people like us there. I didn't understand then. I thought those people were just being mean, that they hated us for no reason. I didn't understand that we were thieves. We were scum.
The day after I asked gran why I could go to school, I returned to the school and watched the children, as I usually did. I saw a girl being taken outside by a teacher. The girl was yelling "I want another juice!" she was crying and squirming trying to untangle herself from her teachers grip. "Hush, Casey, snack time is over, you can't have another juice." Then the teacher told her she was going to be put in timeout. The teacher brought out a chair and sat her down, telling her that she needed to stay here for ten minutes. Then the teacher went back inside, leaving the crying child outside. After observing the girl for a few minutes I became angry at her. She got to go to school. And here she was crying because she didn't get her juice. I never had juice. I went up to her and she asked my through I few sobs what I was doing. I told her I was watching her. "you're a homeless girl! My daddy told me you were dirty and to stay away from you."
"Why" I asked.
"Because no one likes you." She stopped crying now. But she started crying again after I punched her in the face.
I hid behind the bush and watched the teacher come out to inspect Casey's fuss. She let Casey in before cursing the filthy thief brat and slamming the door. I spent the majority of the rest of that day behind the bush crying and cursing those happy children. Reading their books, playing tag and not appreciating one fucking minute of what they have.
Not able to sneak around often and steal, gran and I became low on food. I started sitting out in the side of the streets in the richer neighborhoods with my picker playing something beautiful to see who would leave my some spare change. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough. When i just turned twelve, reaping age, grandma became very weak from malnutrition. She died four weeks before my first reaping.
Deciding I didn't have much to live for anymore, I applied for tesserae which got me ten slips of paper, with my name on them, in the big glass drawing ball at my first reaping. Terrified out of my wits at my first reaping, I cried of relief when they didn't pick me. But having no one to cradle you while you cry or not having anyone to tell you it's gonna be alright, hardens you up. I decided if I wanted to keep getting tesserae food, I'd have to keep entering my name. The odds were becoming less and less in my favor.
Understanding I might get picked, I trained myself in the barn. With stolen daggers and swords I sliced up dozens of self made hay people and killed about a dozen cows, sheep, and pigs to practice on moving targets. I got very good with my sword. I felt safe knowing id prepared for the games. I liked the confidence, carrying around my sword, gave me.
Ever since my gran passed I've moved from place to place stealing, playing my picker of the streets and doing small tasks for people every once and a while. Usually someone will come around and ask me to heard cattle or watch over grazing hours. I'm real good with the animals.
The horses especially.
Gran loved horses more than anything in the entire world. Except maybe me. When I was real young I would beg gran to let me help her treat her horses. The horses Gran worked with were always the best of the best. She worked for a rich horse breeder. My favorite horse to work with was CrestFallen. The horse never neighed, kicked, whined or got out of control. It was a very smart horse and did everything it was told. The show horse always stood, regal looking and lovely, with its shiny honey brown coat and long blond mane with a constant, serious looking, expression on its face. Gran used to kid that they named the horse CrestFallen because the horse always seemed to be depressed. But once I overheard a couple other workers that say the owner's wife died the day they acquired that horse.
Watching gran work I learned a lot about caring for horses. The proper way to groom them, how to calm them, what snacks they like. But most importantly I was taught how to ride them. I was an excellent rider. People always asked me to ride around and herd cows and they would give me food. That's all I did.
After an hour of playing myself a lullaby I sleep.
I wake up to the blinding sun squeezing through a crack in the old barn door. I open my eyes to find two large brown eyes staring back at me. The creature sticks out its wet tongue and licks me from my chin stopping at my eyes. Ew.
I jump up, still clutching the guitar.
I remember what day it is and I look at my reflection in the shiny wood of the back of the guitar to see five red slashes on my cheek. I must've slept on the strings. I bury it in the hay and grab my pack.
I kneel down and zip open the bag. I grab a stolen hair brush and use it to push down my curls at an attempt to control the madness. After my grandma died I cut my hair very short and tried to keep it that way but I haven't gotten the chance to get my hands on a pair of shears for a while and my hair is currently shoulder length.
The district always makes a show of reaping. Always having everyone look especially nice for the occasion. But really, no one knows what to expect today, with the capital on its way.
Once I brush out my curls I return the brush to the pack and pull out the dress I took from the clothing store, last week. I stole the dress for this occasion. The entire goal of this year's reaping is to not let your child stand out front he rest of the crowd. If you stand out, you will be noticed. And the last thing I needed was to stand out from the crowd because I'm not wearing a dress or because my hair is frizzy.
I made sure to pick a nice dress too.
The dress was an excruciatingly soft material which I am guessing is silk. My grandma had a silk scarf she kept tied around her waist. The color of the dress was a dark green color that i thought went nicely with my eyes. It had a not too low V neck and was fitted until it hit the waist and then flared out to a soft a line skirt that hit just above my knees. I slipped on my dress and admired how it hugged my curvy bust and gracefully outlined my waist.
I haven't worn a dress like this since last year's reaping, and that dress was nothing compared to the quality of this one.
I twirled enjoying my beauty and the soft fabric brushing my thighs and then I stopped. What if this dress is too pretty? What if they notice me?
I'll be in the front after all because of tesserae. This year, since there was no drawing of names, they are doing the reaping formations differently. The children are out in sections with the oldest, and the children with the most tesserae, nearer the front, and the younger ones of rich children farther away from the front.
The children are put far away because it's supposed to turn off the capital from choosing them. But really, no one knows what the capital is going to do when they arrive.
I leave the barn and head to the main grazing field that is cleared out for reapings.
