Well hello there :) This is my first story so...yeah. I'm not an experienced writer so tell me what you think of it :)
-Josie ... thatsmellarkable
-1-
It was getting dark out. I continued to follow him through the woods, hearing nothing but the fallen leaves and twigs under our boots. Him. His name was Zane. Zane Bennett. My best friend since we were 12.
We met in the woods. It was my first time hunting out here alone. Mother would usually come and hunt with me but now that I'm old enough to go by myself, she's stopped. Food was going scarce in 12, and I needed to hunt for the sake of myself, mother, father, and sister Livvie. I was pretty handy with a bow and arrow, like my mother was.
That day I had only killed a squirrel. Seemed like game wasn't out to wander today. It wasn't enough to trade for or to eat. I looked around, bow aimed for whatever I see, and a perfect snare that had caught a rabbit. I reached my hand out to examine the trap.
"Stealing is punishable by death." I yanked my hand back. His voice wasn't quite deep but fairly mature. I turned around and saw a quite muscular boy. He was about two years older than me. Manly. Quite a looker, but I didn't know him.
"I wasn't going to." I say. I could feel my jaw tense up. The boy nodded and jumped off the rock he was standing on. How long has he been there? He took steps toward me, and I was watching his every move. His arm brushed against mine, sending a wave of shock throughout my body. He started taking the rabbit out of his trap.
"Name's Zane, you?" His back was facing me.
"Peyton." I whispered. He turned around and clipped the lifeless body of a rabbit to his belt. I gasped when I saw many animals clinging to his belt.
"Nice to meet you Peyton." He said as he held out his hand. I glanced into his eyes. Gray, like he was from the Seam. Mine weren't like that. I had my father's eyes, pure blue, like the sea. But other than that, I had my mom's features; long dark hair and ivory skin. Zane had the features too, otherwise the eyes. We looked alike, but we weren't related.
I grabbed his hand and we shook. "You too."
Ever since that day we've been best friends. Hunted together and watched each other's back.
He was quite the looker too. Girls would talk about him around school. It made me want to puke. I didn't know why. Maybe I was jealous. Of what exactly? Or maybe I had feelings for him.
No. Never. He was like a brother.
Or was he?
I don't know. I shrugged the feeling off and continued trailing behind him. We were getting closer to the fence. Poaching was illegal in 12, but the Peacekeepers here didn't care, as long as we traded with them.
Zane and I would usually go down to the Hob to trade. The Hob was a black market that operates in an abandoned warehouse that once held coal. When they came up with a more efficient system to transport the coal directly from the mines to the trains, the Hob took over the place.
"Peyton?" Zane said. I looked at him and He continued on. "Get some sleep tonight, okay?" He assured me. I nodded, but we both know I wasn't. Tomorrow was the reaping. After tomorrows reaping I'd have two more to go through while Zane had this last one.
After we checked the fence to hear no sound of the humming, which meant the electricity wasn't on, we crawled through a small hole that the fence had toward the bottom. On our way home, we swung by the Hob.
We easily traded six of our fish for good bread, and the other two for salt. Greasy Sae, a bony old lady who has been here ever since my parents were my age, and also sells bowls of hot soup from a large kettle, takes half of our greens off our hands in exchange for a couple of chunks of paraffin. We could do better elsewhere, but we make an effort to keep on good terms with Greasy Sae. Knowing her and my mother knew each other, but she's the one we count on to buy our wild dogs. We don't hunt them on purpose, but if you're getting attacked and take down a couple of them, well, meat is meat.
When we finish our business at the Hob, Zane tells me we'll meet tomorrow in the woods and get to the others tomorrow morning. I agree and we walk toward the Seam in silence.
Tomorrow was the reaping. The very day everybody dreaded. The system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst. Sure, my parents were the victors of the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, but that was nearly thirty years ago. We moved into the Seam and left Victors Village. Mom wanted us to be home. We quickly lost our money, and were soon to be poor. The Hunger Games started back up again 5 years ago, which would mean the 80th was this year.
You become eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve. That day your name goes in once. At thirteen, twice. And so on. Until you reach the final year of eligibility, eighteen, your name goes in then seven times. That goes for every citizen in all twelve districts of Panem.
But let's say you're poor and starving as we are. You can decide to add your name more times for an exchange of tessarae. Each tessera is worth barely a years worth of grain and oil for one person. You can do this for each of your family members as well. So at twelve, I had my name entered five times. Once because I had to, four times for tessarae for myself, Liv and my parents. Every year I would have to do this. And the entries were cumulative. So now at sixteen, my name would be entered at the reaping, twenty –five times. Zane, who is eighteen and has either been helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have his name entered in forty-two times.
As we walk, I glance over to Zane's face, stony expression as usual. He was always tough. And stubborn. Very. But he was my best friend, and once you're Zane's friend, you notice he's got your back.
We split our game, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each.
"See you in the woods." I say. Zane nods and we look into each other's eyes for a minute. We then pull each other in a warm hug.
"Sleep well tonight, Mellark." he whispers in my ear and we pull away, walking in separate directions.
As I walk inside our house, Livvie was watching the TV and my mom and dad were washing dishes.
"Hey Peyton." Liv said as she took her eyes of the screen and smiled her beautiful smile at me.
"Hi little Angel. How was your day?" I said as I walked into the kitchen with Livvie following me. I set the spoils on the table and kneeled down to Liv.
"Not really fun. Nothing basically happened at home. Mother and Father barely talked today so it was boring." she says as she makes a bored face. I laugh and say,
"Well I'm sorry, maybe next time I'll bring you hunting with me and Zane, okay?" She claps her hands and a giddy expression spreads across her face. "Missed you today." I say, and it was true. I loved Liv, she was my everything. Liv smiled and kissed my cheek.
"I missed you too, Peyton." I smiled and pulled her into a hug. Tomorrow was her first reaping and I told her not to sign for tessarae, leaving her with her name in once. She was not getting reaped tomorrow or the next six years of her elegibility. I hear Livvie sniffle, so I pull her closer to me.
"Shhh…" I say trying to calm her down, while I stroke her long blonde hair. "You won't get reaped, I won't let that happen." I could feel her nod and she calms her cries. I sigh and say "Go get ready for bed and meet me in my room." We pull away and she nods. I wipe away her remaining tears off her cheeks and notice the corners of her mouth curl up, and she dashes out of the room.
I stand up to find my parents cuddling on the couch. I quickly turn my head and barf in my mouth. I recover and sit on the end across from them.
"Something wrong, love?" I hear my dad say. I shrugged my shoulders. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what. My stomach was churning and I could feel my eyes go watery.
"Honey," I hear my mother say. "Are you okay?"
And that's when I broke down. My vision blurred and water was pouring out of my eyes. Why was I being so weak? I had always been strong, so why did I break down now? I could feel the strong arms of my father wrap around me while he whispered comforting words into my ear. I push my forehead further into his chest while mother rubbed my back, soothingly. I then fall into a deep sleep.