"Annie!" I turn around sheepishly to face my mother. I'm supposed to be out in the warehouses helping sort what the Capitol calls "precious gems."
"Yes, Ma?" Usually, working in the warehouse isn't too bad, but today I'm just not feeling up to it.
"Are you not supposed to be out on the docks today?"
"I am"
"Well, go along now. We won't be given any food stamps without your hours working," instantly, I feel bad for not working. It was selfish of me, and now my family won't get enough food for tomorrow.
I begin the walk down to the ocean. The average District 4 citizen does not live as close to the ocean as one might think. 4 is the largest district in Panem, and there are large, fenced off areas past where we live. The poorest people, the fishermen and their families, live right on the coast. Two families share one dock, their boats on either side and gear stored inside their shabby homes. The rest of us live beyond the shore. Almost everyone starts working by the age of 11, either in the warehouses like me, selling goods in The Tap (our district's trading post turned black market). Some of the older reaping age boys and girls work out on the fishing boats with their parents learning the trade.
The large clock standing among the warehouses reminds me how late I am to work. Springing into a run, I make it to my assigned work station in just under 5 minutes.
"You're late," snarls my adviser
"Sorry, was held up."
"Well I'll have to mark you down. You missed an entire hour's work. Name?"
"Annie Cresta," he nods and scratches a note down on his clipboard, nodding me over to bench 6. I see that my friend, Maria, is there looking for defects in pearls and whatever new fad the Capitol sees.
"Why are you late?" she asks the second I sit down.
"Didn't want to come," I say, reaching for the bucket full of items to be inspected.
"Can't you get in trouble for that?"
"Well not really. My family just won't get food if I don't clock enough hours. Can we talk about something else?" Maria sighs beside me. We sort quietly for a few minutes.
"Do you think anyone will volunteer this year?" She asks, finally breaking the silence.
"Meh. I heard that last year's victor has an even more brutal sister. Her name's Cashmere or some other name that can only be used seriously in District 1," Maria snorts at my last remark.
"How do you know?"
"Heard it at school. I don't know about you, but Gloss even scared me. I'd hate to be thrown in an arena with his sister. Apparently she's even better with knives than he is. The 18 year old Careers this year aren't even that eager on entering the Games," Careers are what we call the kids who train for the Games. I think an outlying district used it first, but it's spread here.
"Yeah. That Calder kid is great with a sword, but I think he values his life too much to volunteer," Maria replies in a whisper, as our warehouse adviser is standing near us.
We work diligently sorting the treasures until the man leaves our table. I count 23 defects out of 164 gems. That's not too many. We are instructed to take the buckets of unusable gems and throw them back in the ocean. When Maria has enough, we walk out of the back door and walk down one of the docks.
"Are you taking out tesserae?" asks Maria as we empty the buckets.
"Yes. My 12th birthday is 3 weeks after the reaping so I'm safe until after then. Then I start training. Are you?"
"Probably. My birthday isn't until about 4 months before the next reaping. The market could change but I don't think that it will. Chelan used to take out the tesserae, but you know he can't anymore," I nod at her sympathetically and we make our way back up to work in silence. Chelan was Maria's half-brother. He volunteered last year for the Games. Got up to the final 5 before being betrayed by Gloss and stabbed through the heart. Maria was devastated, didn't show up to work or school for weeks.
We work the rest of the day in silence. Occasionally one of us will crack a joke, but we're both sick of working in this place. When it's finally time to go, we sign out, are given the food stamps (I get less fish than Maria because I was late), and make our way home.
We wave goodbye to each other when we get to the fork in the road. Right leads to my house, left to hers. The rest of the walk home is uneventful.
At home I am greeted by my three younger sisters, Odine, Kendra and Cascada. They tell me detailed stories about their day at the primary school. Odine read a story with her class, and Kendra and Cascada (twins) went on a swimming trip with their class.
"And then we played a game where one person was chosen to chase everyone around! When that person touched another one, then that person had to start chasing people! It was so much fun, even though we had to stop early because a boy started choking on water," rambles Kendra.
"Wow! I bet that was lots of fun!"
"How was work?" asks Odine. My mother gives me a pointed look.
"Oh, it was fine. Boring, as usual but I'm not complaining."
"Annie, darling, can I talk to you privately?" questions my mother. It's really more of a demand than a question, so I move Kendra off my lap and walk briskly to the kitchen where my mother is preparing dinner.
"Did you get into trouble at the warehouse?"
"No. Just lost a portion of fish," my mother nods.
"That can't happen again. Do you understand me?" she lowers her voice so that my sisters can't here. "We rely too much on you for you to just not go."
"I won't ever again. I don't know what came over me this morning. I promise that I'll work harder next working day," my mother nods, and pulls me in for a hug. Things have been difficult since Dad died. Not money-wise, because we've always been relatively poor for a Career district, but emotionally harder. Dad always knew what to say when we were faced with hard times. He died in a freak fishing accident the year Kendra and Cascada were born. I remember being on the stage they use for the reaping accepting the medal in honour of my father and his 'brave sacrifice to the Capitol', whatever that means.
When Ma lets go of me, I start helping her add spice to the soup she is making for dinner. About half an hour it's ready and we all sit around the table sharing stories about our day and laughing about the stories. When we're finally done, I go straight up to bed.