CHAPTER ONE
I'm sitting with my mother on our threadbare couch, watching a reluctantly clapping crowd on our television projector. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, disappear through the front doors of a Justice Building surrounded by tall pine trees. Flags in Capitol colors with "7" written on them flank the building, and the cameras zoom out to show the district square as the screen slowly blacks out.
My mother stands up and walks a few feet over to the kitchen and opens the pantry. A few minutes and she walks back over with two sandwiches comprised of thick cuts of cheese. "Eat up," she says as she hands me a plate and takes her seat next to me.
"Happy Hunger Games," I say with a weak smile before I take a bite. My mother opens her mouth to repeat the phrase, but then she sighs heavily and turns her head, as if to make sure no one's walking by our windows.
"Honey," she says in a very calm and neutral voice, "you don't have to be happy about the Hunger Games at home." She purses her lips and I'm puzzled by her expression.
The Hunger Games terrify me. Ever since I started school, we've been forced to watch reruns on breaks and at home. It's a living nightmare, watching people die multiple times a day to the point of remembering every detail. But no one speaks ill of the Games in District 8, not even my parents. The teachers are enthusiastic when we discuss them in class, and the mayor throws a huge spectacle for the Harvest Festival every year even though we haven't had a victor since before I was born. When I was younger, my parents kept me in my room while the Games were underway, and tried to keep the television off as frequently as it would allow itself to be off. Now that I've been in two years of school though, I'm old enough to take pop quizzes on them, so I'm required to watch the Games as they happen with the rest of my family every day when I get home. Outside of my own nightmares and the occasional free moments alone, I have never acted anything but entertained by the Hunger Games.
"No one wants to watch," she starts. "It's easier when you don't have a chance of being picked anymore, until your friends' kids turn twelve." She drops her gaze and reaches to hold my hand. "It's going to be scary and hard when you get older Selly. I know you've thought about that but I think you're old enough to talk about it."
The television flashes "5:00:00" to signify the time until the next reaping goes live. It's ours, so it's the only one I ever really watch. My mother stands up and closes the curtains, casually picking up the remote and reluctantly making her way back to me. She looks around quickly, and I wonder what she's looking for.
"We're going to be okay," my mother says assuredly. "You will never have to take tesserae, your father and I swear it. We wouldn't have you if we weren't sure we wouldn't risk your life to help us get by." Her voice is bitter but it begins to waver. "It won't be you." She speaks a bit louder as she says "Weavers and factory workers use much more tessarae than required by the Capitol, your father and I aren't as easily replaceable. The odds are definitely in our favor." She manages a small smile as she puts her arm around my shoulder. "Just try not to worry about it. I know it's scary to have to watch the whole Games over weeks now. You only have to be positive about them at school, but you have to try. No matter what we see on the screen, we have to be okay with it out there. It's easy to be upset by the Games but there's no use in trying to avoid them." She sighs as the projector flashes "00:01:00." We're silent.
The first week is easy to watch. Watching the tributes in the Capitol is never included in the daily reruns I've seen at school, and the food looks so delicious. They don't even focus much camera time on it but I salivate when they do and I don't even recognize most of the dishes. Most of the program focuses on the tributes training, which is actually kind of cool to watch, because the girl from District 8 seems like a fighter this year. I don't know her personally, which relieves me, but her name is Cecelia. She's seventeen years old and she looks strong. Cecelia tries every weapon in the Training Center, and most of the footage of her includes other tributes standing idle watching her. She doesn't do very well with the throwing knives, the bow and arrow or any of the close range weapons, but she's a natural with the spears and javelins. Cecelia goes to the blow dart station every day, which I find fascinating, but after two days trying out all the weapons she spends more time on the survival stations. They stop focusing on her after that, deciding to film the careers chopping up dummies instead.
Cecelia pulls an 8 in training and my parents and I genuinely cheer for her. "Most of our tributes rank lower," my dad tells me. The next day is interview night, and Cesar has his hair and lips colored a very light green shade. I'm instantly jealous of his bizarre hair and wonder if there's anything I could use to color my plain blonde hair. The first four tributes are extremely scary. I don't understand their eagerness to kill other kids their age and I find it terrifying that three of them are eighteen year old volunteers. The others seem mostly paralyzed by stage fright, until Cecelia takes the seat across from Cesar.
Cecelia wears a dark blue dress dotted with sparkly silver bits that look like stars. I've never seen anything as beautiful, and I think District 8 produces some really lovely dresses. She waves at the clapping Capital crowd, idly playing with her long brown curls and smiling charmingly. Cesar has to gesture for the audience to quiet down to ask his first question.
"So, an eight for District 8?" Cesar says. The audience laughs good-naturedly. "Tell us, what skill do you think will be most useful to you in the arena?"
Cecelia doesn't hesitate to answer. "I'm a good runner, so I'm not afraid to go into the Cornucopia and get myself a good weapon," she says. I get goosebumps on my arms when she says this looking directly into the camera. "But real skill wise, I've apprenticed as a seamstress, and I'm really handy with stitches, weaving and sharp objects." She pauses to look at the audience with a devious look, raising her eyebrows and getting a big laugh. "The blow darts were fun to play with, so those would be great to have in the arena." Cecelia looks directly into a camera again and says "Hint, hint," nudging Cesar with her elbow. The whole room laughs along with her, and she smiles and pretends to giggle with her. I can't help but notice how forced her smile looks though.
"I have to ask," he says, "What do you miss most about District 8?"
Cecelia folds her hands in her laps and sighs heavily. The audience sighs with her like they already know what she'll say. "My boyfriend," and the audience sighs again. "Of course I miss my family just as much," she says quickly, wiping away a tear, "but I... I want to marry him." Cecelia half laughs half sobs, but her voice doesn't break. "Ian, I guess this is my proposal if I make it home!"
"Isn't that the sweetest thing!" Cesar says, and the audience agrees. "Well I wish you the best of luck, and when you make it out, you'll have to keep us updated on your wedding plans!" Cecelia nods enthusiastically and grins at Cesar, then turns to wave goodbye to the audience.
This year's arena is brutal, even compared to the older Games I've seen, which seemed to have more wrecked landscapes. It's pretty much a desert, but there are huge boulders forming unstable mountains around most of the arena. A few scruffy bushes pepper the large arena, but there aren't many places to hide. Four days in, Cecelia's on the brink of death by dehydration. The first thing I feel is disappointment, which feels me with shame because I should be feeling awful for her. I badly want my district to send her water, but nothing has come for her yet. I'm hoping they're saving up for something really good, there are only 9 tributes left and she actually stands a fighting chance. I'm excited by the possibility of being rich for a year, and then I try to feel excited that this girl from my district might come home. The order of my feelings about the Games is surprising and disappointing.
Cecelia finally discovers that the green spiky trees in the arena can be cut up and made into drinkable fluid. She gets tiny needles stuck in her hands from messily chopping at them with the scimitar she got in the bloodbath, but she saves the large ones, tucking them into the pocket of her large black backpack. At night she posts herself underneath a large tree in a group of shrubs and bushes, poking tiny holes in the thicker sides of the needles. She receives her first parachute, filled with medical thread, thicker thread for clothing, and a very thin metallic wire. Cecelia picks it up to inspect it and her fingers are immediately cut by the wire. She spends a night carefully wrapping the wire tightly around the thick tip of her long sword.
They start playing the reruns at school already, during dull moments in the arena. It reminds me of deaths I barely remember and gruesome ones I wish I had closed my eyes during. But that is discouraged in class, and teachers will demerit you if you do it too often. They spend a lot of time on this twelve year old from 5, even though she died on the second day. It makes me sick to my stomach because she was doing just fine hiding in trees, until she ran into the other two twelve year olds in the Games. There isn't anything I like about watching the Games now, not that there ever really was. I can't believe I was entertained by the Capitol's ceremonies and impressed by all those stupid rich people in stupid clothes. I'm just glad Cecelia is still alive and okay. She gets bitten by a non-venomous viper and stitches up the large fang marks as soon as the swelling goes down. Our teacher brings this up in our science lessons and we spend an unusual time talking about snakes. They freak me out so I try not to listen as I stare at the wrong page in my book.
It takes two weeks for Cecelia to make her first kill. A boy threw a broken spear at her and when it missed she moved in and sliced him with the wire wrapped scimitar. She takes his supplies and broken spears and leaves the scimitar with his body to be carried out of the arena. Our teachers tell us her kill is a good thing, because she'll get more sponsors in the Capitol, and mostly everyone seems to agree with this. I'm just worried for Cecelia now because the boulder piles are falling apart and their hiding spots are disappearing. She's practically out in the open at sunset when she gets bitten by another snake. This time it seems to be venomous, but Cecelia does something strange. She cuts a square of thick fabric off of the head cover of her desert gear, then bends over and sucks on the wound. She spits it into the pouch, over and over until the redness and tightness starts looking better. Cecelia's just wrapped the wound and settled for the night when she gets her second parachute, and it has six blow darts in a small pouch. For the first time in the whole Games, Cecelia laughs, not bothering to be quiet.
Eventually the girl from 2 and the boy from 4 have turned on each other; Cecelia hears the cannon and knows she and the older girl from 2 are the only ones left. Cecelia killed another tribute, the boy from 5, by throwing her poisoned spear through his neck. She ran from the fight scene, ditching the spear and dropping most of her supplies in her flight. Injured and bleeding, she ends up lying down too long under a semi-exposed tree when the girl from 2 appears on the horizon. Cecelia closes her eyes and tucks her tube under her face and conceals the dart case in her jacket sleeve before playing dead. The emaciated girl walks warily towards her still body with her short sword, and Cecelia stands to shoot darts at her. Her darts seem to be ineffective and Cecelia is slashed pretty bad before the venom sets in on her opponent. The Career turns a sickly pale white, the dart sites swell and blacken, and she falls to the ground groaning in pain. Cecelia grabs her sword, closes her eyes, and cuts her throat to make her death quick.
The whole district is celebrating but I don't know how to feel about the victory and the televised Victory Tour. I watched Cecelia slowly become calculating and vicious even though she was just desperate to stay alive, and she only killed people out of necessity. Now I watch her become constantly congenial on camera, laughing with Cesar in an interview and smiling in the footage of district feasts, but there are the few moments where she looks bewildered and terrified before the cameras cut away.
For the first time in my life I get to experience Parcel Day and it's wonderful being able to eat a solid meal two times a week most days of the week, but ironically I've lost my appetite. I know that this year's Harvest Festival is going to be extremely extravagant this year with our Mayor's enthusiasm and the Capitol's funding combined. Everyone's talking about the food and I'm excited too, but I don't know if I can actually stomach much. Seeing Cecelia come back from her victory tour is so disorienting, after watching her in the desert with weapons and poison a few months ago. Her expression is perpetually shell-shocked now, even when she gives her homecoming speech back in 8. It only takes a few months after the festivities are over, when Parcel Day and full days feel commonplace, for me to become obsessively aware of the four and a half years I have left until my name will be in the reaping.