My district, surprisingly enough, isn't much like the others. Our air is clean, any pollution absorbed from the air by the crops. Our skies, then, are clear; the atmosphere is not foggy and yellow with exhaust like in the other districts. Here, corn and wheat fields stretch as far as the eye can see, and a little further beyond that.
Our streets are dirt, no gravel, and if you're careful and watch where you're going, you can run barefoot. Lining the streets are small shack-like houses, the wood bleached white from the sun; I've heard that in the career districts, their houses are given color, but not here. Our homes do not slump to one side or the other as is rumored to be done in other districts, especially twelve. Rather, they stand straight and resolute. While we spend most of our time in the fields, we still find small minutes to keep up our homes so as to maintain a relatively happy existence.
It's peaceful here, uninterrupted by the hustle and bustle of the career districts or the danger of district twelve, or even the stress of district ten. Out in the fields with no one to bother us, the only things we are concerned with is our corn and our wheat and when the next rain shower will be since the Capitol deemed it unnecessary to supply us with irrigation four years ago.
The exception to this peace is the annual Reaping.
Every year, our district's Games Escort, Miina Rodune, appears, in all her exotic, eccentric, wild glory, upon a Capitol-provided stage in the heart of our small village in District Eleven to perform the Reaping—the drawing of the names of two very unlucky (though this fact is usually poorly hidden behind wide smiles and congratulations from the Capitol) teenagers, one boy and one girl, chosen via name-drawing to "perform" in the Hunger Games.
"Perform" is the Capitol's sugar-coated tactic of saying "fight to the death."
This year, my name was entered in the drawing thirty-three times. I wasn't worried about getting picked; it was nothing I could control and honestly, what would worrying do for me? Besides, there were many others with their names entered in the drawing many more times than I, and if I were one of them, perhaps then I would be worried.
But I am me, and I refuse to be worried.
"It's today," Father told me blandly, not looking up from his coffee cup—straight black coffee, the kind that made me gag, but he said it was good. I stood before the sink, staring out into the street through the small window above it, and he sat at our small round eating table in one of the two rickety old chairs.
I knew what he was talking about; I didn't have to guess, never had to.
The Reaping.
"I know. I'll come in early from the fields," I replied, my voice coated with the same careful emotionless tone.
If one had asked me why it was only this day that my father and I spoke it short sentences, voices held in check in a soft monotone, I couldn't tell them. This was the way it had always been, since my first Reaping when I was twelve, four years ago. I suppose it was because if we allowed ourselves emotions I would enter the Reaping frightened, and fright always left a bitter aftertaste that wasn't necessary. We had never spoken of the reasoning, though; I didn't ask and he didn't tell, so I would never know.
It was just us, my father and I. My mother died in childbirth, nothing special considering the low quality medical support way out here, and I was her first and only child. We weren't particularly close, but we weren't strangers, either, and that was enough for me. A family.
"Why don't you take the day off?"
This surprised me. Father favored getting as much work done within a day as was humanly possible, and as such I'd never had a day off in my life. I had no problem with this.
Dropping the emotionless facade, I turned to face the tan, dark-haired man with a raised eyebrow. "Why?" I asked suspiciously.
Still refusing to look at me, he shrugged. "You're old enough now that you've worked your fair share and deserve a day to yourself. Take some time to read a book or something, relax."
"Dad," I protested, "I haven't read a book since sixth grade, you know that. What's really going on?"
"I just don't want to you to have to work today is all."
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and considered his offer. After a minute or so, I closed my eyes and sighed. "Alright. Just this once."
"That's m'girl. I'm going to head out; I'll be back in time to change and wash a little, and we can leave together." His voice, though kept carefully neutral, cracked on the last syllable.
Something's wrong.
Abruptly, Father stood and dumped his coffee down the sink drain, having taken exactly two sips. Before I had a chance to question his strange behavior, he was out the door.
I spent most of the day wishing away the time, and it dragged, stretching out forever. However, when I finally glanced outside at the sun, I was surprised to see that I had barely enough time to wash up before I needed to be at the Reaping.
The water was cold, but I didn't mind it all that much. I scrubbed hard, being sure to get as much of the dirt from my sun-tanned skin as possible, and washed my hair until it squeaked. Finally done, I looked myself over in the small mirror we had in our bathroom.
I had always been small. I was short and slender, not strong enough to lift anything heavy so I drove machines instead. My hair was long, reaching towards the middle of my back, though it was usually pulled back in a ponytail out of my face. Originally, my hair had been dark brown, but over time the sun bleached it to a dark honey-colored brown. My face was neither round nor heart-shaped, but rather balanced in the middle, slim. As far as skin went, naturally it was pale but the sun had long since tanned it past that. Wide, pale green eyes were my dominant feature, set under slender eyebrows.
I resembled my mother in nearly every way.
"Felixia, are you ready?" Father called, jerking me from the stare-down I was consumed in with my reflection. I grimaced; I hated my name. It was just a funky spelling of Felicia, but I went by Fell most of the time.
"Give me a moment to get dressed, Father, and I'll be out in a second!"
My hand was steady as I extended it to the woman behind the desk. She mechanically jabbed the tip of my index finger with a sharp needle, waiting for a moment as the blood welled into a drop before pressing the appendage to a sheet of paper.
"Next," she said monotonously, and I moved away to join the organized rows of teenagers, finding my place among the sixteen-year-old girls. I had only to wait for a short while before everyone had gathered and Miina Rodune had ascended the stage, an overly-enthusiastic and somewhat secretly vicious smile plastered over her pale powdered face.
"Welcome!" she said grandly into the microphone, causing several people to wince; I only stared at her. When she received no response, her smile faded a little, but she quickly continued onward with her speech. "I hope you're all as excited to be here as I am! This is a wonderful program we participate in, and you should feel honored to be able to partake in it!" She reached up and messed a little with her pastel-yellow hair—which I sincerely hoped was a wig—and smiled again. "Well—let's just cut straight to it then, shall we? Right after a video presentation."
The video was nothing special, only a couple-minute preaching of how the Capitol created peace for us all, which of course was a load of bull and we all knew it, but nobody said anything about it. When the video was finished, Miina bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet and clapped her hands.
"Oh, I just love that!"
She was met with silence.
"Well, let's get on with it, then. Ladies first!" And with that, she plunged her hand deep into a large glass bowl filled with several small slips of paper, each with a name printed on it. Thirty-three of those were mine.
When she pulled her hand from the bowl, I felt nothing. When she unfolded the slip of paper, I felt nothing. When she opened her mouth, however, my chest exploded with a feeling I knew well.
I knew the words before she said them; in fact, I mouthed them along with her.
"Felixia Galloway!"
My stomach dropped even as the words left her violet-painted lips, and all calm left me. Panic bloomed in my chest and anxiety filled my head to the crown, and yet somehow, somehow, I managed to remain still.
Rigid, in fact. Paralyzed.
"Felixia?"
She's saying it wrong, was all I could think as I stared numbly up at Miina with wide, shocked eyes. All eyes turned to me; the girl beside me, a girl I recognized but didn't know, clasped my hand tightly. I turned to her with a look of absolutely panic, and she squeezed my hand and gave me a comforting look before nodding to the stage.
Shakily, I stumbled forward, making my way towards Miina slowly but surely, each step carrying me closer to the official recognition of my ensured death.
No one said a word.
When I finally reached the top of the steps, Miina embraced me, seeming to ignore my disbelieving, empty stare. "Congratulations," she said warmly, smiling genuinely before turning towards the boys' bowl.
"Noah Wellwood!"
A boy I didn't know, with dark red hair and blue eyes, went stiff in the crowd of eighteen-year-olds, and everybody turned to look at him. Several seconds passed until he began slowly gravitating toward us, much in the same manner that I had.
Miina greeted him in the same manner as she did me, and urged us to shake hands.
We did, and we met each others' eyes with a mutual expression.
We were both going to die, and we both knew it.