The Reaping

It always begins with a Reaping.
That's how I count the years. That's the way I age. I am not fifteen years old. I am fifteen Reapings old.
My brother was chosen nine Reapings ago.
It has been seven Reapings since I last smiled properly. That sounds a bit drastic, but it's pretty much the truth. I haven't cracked a real, decent smile since I was eight Reapings old. When the occasion calls for it I sometimes bare my teeth. But not so much smile. My life in District Five hasn't given me much to smile about.
My life in District Five is defined by the Hunger Games. My family supplies the genes for the Capitol's muttations that they use to torment tributes. It's a hateful job, and it barely feeds us anyway, and the Capitol men who come by my father's lab for his latest experiment know exactly what the Hunger Games mean to us. They love to remind us that it was genes from our labs which they engineered the flying mutts that killed my brother with. I've almost grown deaf to it. It's always the same men, every time.
I help my father in his lab. It's only the two of us, really, as my mother is gone from the house much of the time. My father is a skilled geneticist, and under different circumstances would love his work. He did before Theo got Reaped. Almost all of his passion for DNA died with my brother.
Today I'm in the lab with my father, sullenly running the centrifuge and ferrying test tubes to and from his workplace. I move slowly, willing time to stop moving so fast and postpone the Reaping indefinitely. If there's one thing I fear, it's lining up with the other boys behind our partition ropes and crossing my fingers so hard they might break, or biting my cheek until it almost bleeds, or digging my fingernails into my thigh to keep my name from being called. One Reaping I ripped a pair of pants that way, by digging my fingernails into my thigh. Tore a chunk right off of my right pocket. That was the Reaping they called the guy next to me, and when he moved I thought I'd moved and misheard and they'd called me, but they didn't, so he went up and got a handshake and a death sentence and I got a handful of corduroy and another Reaping to look forward to.
I move slowly so that time will too, but the hour of the Reaping shows up way too fast and we have to close shop. And shuffle off to the Justice Building, where two people die each Reaping.
My father and mother meet up and walk with me, each with a hand on my shoulder. I'm grateful for their hands. It's comforting all around. This way none of us loses touch with the other.
I still feel the imprint of my parents' hands on my shoulders as I line up in the middle of the pool of kids with the other fifteens. I don't look at anyone, instead staring at a chair leg belonging to the escort for District Five. He is an effeminate, fat schmuck named Waldo Tart, and he has blue fingers and green eyebrows. He's also got great glittering diamonds stuffed up his nose, and he's wearing a dubiously frilly suit. I sort of hate him. But at least he treats the Hunger Games with the proper respect. He reads off the names in an especial funeral tone, even though his normal voice is high and piping.
Five's mentors arrive and take their seats. These are two from a couple of years ago each, Nero Michaelmas and Lidia Small. Nero is tall and lithe and surprisingly affable. A people person. He's also a ruthless tactician. Lidia is small like her name and wiry, and she hates everybody. You can only get a few words out of her mouth at one time. I don't know how she is with her tributes.
Our distinguished mayor rises and blathers on about How We Got Here, or the Illustrious History of Panem, with all the capital letters pronounced. He explains the origin of the Hunger Games, and the Dark Days and the Rebellion and the Capitol coming down on the districts like a ton of bricks and forcing us to give up our children. He tells of the Treaty of Treason. He is the Capitol's puppet.
Waldo Tart oozes daintily over to the blasted glass balls which hold our names. "Let's start with girls," he trills, and plunges his hand into the sea of slips. He draws one out with especial bravado, and reads in a voice like an undertaker, "Eleanor Faust." The name echoes around the crowd and a girl with long black hair and deep black eyes strides to the stage. Her brows are knitted together fiercely, and her fingers are clenching and unclenching. Her teeth are probably gritted.
Waldo Tart now oozes over to the boys' ball. He's beaming, because Eleanor Faust is pretty and since he's a sick Capitol man, he likes pretty tributes. He actually dawdles over the boys' ball, watching Eleanor as she stares straight ahead with her arms stiff by her sides, her hair channeling her emotions and almost standing on end. Waldo Tart snaps himself out of it and time slows down (now, of all times, when it could have had the decency to do so earlier!) as his frilly arm descends into the glass orb and plucks a slip out from the grasping puddle of paper inside. He unfolds it with pomp and reads in his best doom voice: "Dion Longfellow."
"'Dion Longfellow.'"
Dion Longfellow.
That is me.
I can't breathe anymore. I can't move, either, or rather I think I can't since I actually am, I didn't know I had this instinct, why am I moving to the stage they must have misread I've misheard before, it wasn't me then, it can't be me now, why are my legs taking me up to the stage and why is my name Dion Longfellow and I'm mounting the stairs and standing next to Eleanor Faust.
I don't hear a word of the mandatory reading of the Treaty of Treason. I never have, really, but now I don't even hear the mayor reading. All I hear is "Dion Longfellow. Dion Longfellow. Dion Longfellow" in my head. I curse my name, and I want to weep. I won't weep. I want to weep.
Dion Longfellow. Dion Longfellow.
Eleanor Faust shakes my hand, and my chant has suddenly has four more words to it.
Dion Longfellow is going to die. Dion Longfellow is going to die.