If you recognise it, it's not mine.
My name is Primrose Mellark. I am six years old. We all live in a big fancy house next to the Meadow, me and my mother, Katniss Everdeen, my father, Peeta Mellark and my little brother Mitch. That's short for Haymitch, after Uncle Haymitch. He lives next door. Mother and father have never told me why I am called Primrose but I know.
Once when I had just learned to read I looked for books. Mother and Father have some, on a shelf. I needed to climb on two chairs and a cushion to reach them. One was about flowers, but Mother already taught me and Mitch all that. There was a couple about baking, but Father taught us that, too. But the last one had pictures so I looked at it instead.
It was all about people. A girl called Rue who could fly through trees. A man called Cinna who could make amazing clothes. A miner who looked like mother, who would sing and the birds would fall silent. A baker who looked like father, who made cookies. A boy called Thresh who was really strong. A girl called Madge who had an aunt called Maysilee. A man called Finnick with sea-green eyes who could swim really well. A girl called Lavinia and a man called Darius. Soldiers, Homes, Jackson, Mitchell, Castor, Messalla, two sisters called Leeg. Old people too, Mags and Seeder and Chaff. A long long list of teenagers. All these people seemed to be dead. I don't know. But then I saw her. I knew who she was, mother had a picture of her in a gold locket. Aunty Primrose. The story said she had a goat called Lady, that she had healing hands. She was the one who owned mother's ancient cat, Buttercup. And she was in the book of dead people. I closed the book and went downstairs.
I knew it had something to do with why father's eyes seem to look into a different world sometimes, and why mother wakes up at night screaming. I knew it had something to do with the things they never talk about.
Me and my brother play a game, we've played it forever. One of us will say something and the other will say whether it's Real or Not Real. Mother and father never play it with us. Whenever I ask them something about the Hunger Games we learned in history, they say nothing, and their eyes look all sad. They will tell us something one day.
Real or Not Real?