I look myself over in the mirror one more time. Old, worn button-down shirt and slacks. Slicked back hair. Fearless, blazing eyes.

Today is the reaping. Everyone is terrified of getting chosen, and while I know that I am about as safe as a can get, a part of me wants to get picked. I want to show the Capitol up somehow, make it look foolish, even if I lose my life trying. The cruel game that the Capitol plays to keep the twelve districts in submission is getting old. It infuriates me that they can control every aspect of our lives, and end them in a split second if they so desire, but no one stands up to their tyranny. Everybody is too scared. Not that I can blame them. But I know that someday, I'm going to stand up to them. I'm going to work to make a better world for the generations ahead. Because I have an advantage that most other people don't. I have nothing to lose.

The Capitol's favorite way to control people is hurt or kill their loved ones. People aren't scared for their own lives; they're scared for the lives of those they love. But I don't have anyone that I truly love. My parents were killed when I was just six years old by a forest fire that devastated District 7. Almost a thousand people were killed and nearly half the district's lumber was burned into uselessness. The orphanage was flooded that year as more and more parentless children were brought in. I was one of them. And I watched as kids died left and right of starvation because there was no money to buy food without the profits from the lumber that had been burned.

The loss taught me to harden myself to emotions, to learn not to care for someone because it'll just get you hurt. Some have called me heartless because of this, but it doesn't bother me. Words, like emotions, just bounce right off me.

The clock strikes noon. I hear Candi, the overly-hyper director of the orphanage, yelling at everybody to come to the front hall so that we could leave for the village square and have time to get checked in before the reaping. I sigh as I glance at my reflection one last time and leave the room that I share with eleven other teenage boys.

"Name?"

"Kole Thurman."

The peacekeeper finds my name on his list, takes my blood sample, and lazily points me in the direction of the rest of the seventeen-year-old boys that I am to stand with. I take my place between two boys I know from school. We give each other curt nods, but none of us are in the mood for conversation. No one ever is until the reaping is over and the danger to themselves or their loved ones is lost.

The sun beats down on my face as I watch Polly Strumpet, our district's escort, the mayor, and the previous victors file onto a stage at the front of the square. One of the victors, Johanna Mason, winks at me.

I claim not to care about anyone, but she could be the sole exception. Because she's so much like me. She too grew up in the orphanage, and although she's a few years older than me, we became friends and looked after each other growing up. I was fourteen when she was reaped a couple years ago at the age of sixteen, and I watched as she played the part of a sniveling coward, fooling almost everyone but me, and then murdered viciously when the time came. The children at the orphanage always watched the Games together there, forced to listen to Candi's wails if one of the orphanage kids is a tribute. During Johanna's year, she cried every time the cameras time the cameras followed her if the arena, bemoaning the "poor girl who couldn't hurt a fly." But I was never worried about her. I laughed when, as Candi predicted, the last two Careers came after her when there were only a couple of players left. But unlike Candi predicted, Johanna didn't die. She shocked the Careers by burying an axe in the head of the girl from District 1 and using the massive District 2 boy's temporary befuddlement to grab the girl's knife and slit his throat before he even knew what had happened. She then hunted down the last two, a pair from District 6, and killed them mercilessly. And then she was a victor, returned to District 7 with a new respect from everyone.

A hush fell over the crowd as the mayor stepped up to the podium to read his speech about how Panem came about. Nobody paid attention until it came time for him to sit back down and Polly stood up to pick the names of this year's tributes. But first she treated us to a gushing spiel about how happy she was to be the escort for District 7, how she knew we would have a winner this year, and a bunch of other lies that no one cared to listen to. Finally, with a cry of "Ladies first!" she waltzed over to the glass bowl filled with the girls' names and drew a slip.

"Lilly Montgomery!" I turned around to see a tiny, thirteen-year-old girl step from the crowd and start toward the stage. I hear the boy to my right yell out, and, with a pang, realize that she is his sister. But there is nothing he can do. Only a girl can volunteer for another girl, and the crowd is silent as Polly asks if there are any volunteers. As little as I try to care, I do hate it when children that young are picked. They're still so innocent. And then they're forced into arena where they must watch children die bloody, gory deaths before being inevitably murdered themselves because they're just no match for the giant Careers.

"Time for the boys now!" Polly shrieks joyfully as she turns to the boys' bowl. I hold my breath as she pulls out a slip, half hoping it's my name that she'll read out, half-hoping that it will be someone that I've never met.

"Kole Thurman!"

I disengage myself from the crowd and walk toward the stage, my face emotionless except for the sadistic smile playing at my lips.