Hey my fellow readers! This is my first story after reading hundreds of them on this site. Decided to give it a try. Review and tell me what you think. Man if you like it that much, tell other readers to read it and review! So read on and enjoy!
Oh and this story will be in Peeta's point of view. I don't think it will ever be in Katniss' point of view. But we'll just have to wait and see now will we.
Chapter 1: Peeta POV
The thin streams of light coming through my little eighteen be eighteen inch barred window is what woke me up from a dreamless slumber. I rubbed my tired eyes with the heels of my hands as I sat up in my bed. I look over to my cell door, the only thing that separates my room to the rest of the prison, to see that it's closed, which means it is before nine. The prison usually opens our cell doors in the morning so we can shower and grab breakfast in the commons down below on the first floor. I lay back down on my bed and waited for the guards to open our doors.
It wasn't too long before I hear a long alarm bell and a series of clicks. All of the doors started to slide open and prisoners started pouring into the overlook walkway in the front of the cell doors. I get up and walk out the door, molding into the stream of prisoners. I walk one cell down and stand in the doorway. I lean against the frame and admire the person inside. She has long dark brown hair that is out of its usual braid. A tan body peeks from her gray jumpsuit, which is only halfway on, with an over-sized white T-shirt as a top. I knock twice on the frame I was leaning on to get her attention. Mesmerizing gray meet my blue ones as she turns around. She looks at me for a second before giving me a smile.
"Ready to go Katniss?" I ask her. Katniss and I always walk down to breakfast together.
She comes up to me and ruffles my blonde hair with her tiny hand.
"Don't you think you should take a shower first? You stink," she tells me, kidding around. I shrug my shoulders and smile.
"Nah. My smell will keep away the other prisoners away," I joke back. She laughs and slaps my arm lightly. She pushes me towards the showers, where most of the other prisoners are located. I finally give in and head towards the showers, with Katniss in tow. At the entrance, they give us a new change of clothes, wash clothes, and soap. Since I can't take showers with the rest of the prisoners because of gender, I get to go into one of the private showers. I quickly wash up and go to meet Katniss down for breakfast.
Its not hard to find Katniss down in the lunchroom, since her and I are the only ones with gray jumpsuits in a sea of orange ones. The reason why Katniss and I get different color jumpsuits than the others is because of our age. We are only fourteen. Teenagers in prison. And we are never able to come out. The reason I'm in this high security prison is a pretty long story.
I was an orphan, parents abandoning me at the orphanage as a baby. The orphanage was crowded and out of control, with kids running around in every direction messes everywhere, and the list goes on. After years and years of dealing with the chaos, I would just leave whenever I could. Sometimes I would have to sneak out, because the people running the orphanage don't like kids leaving unsupervised. But most of the time it would be so busy that I would just walk right out the front door; don't even notice that I'm gone. I was just another one of the kids, nothing special.
So when I sneak out the fire escape one night when I was ten, I go unnoticed. I walk down the streets, stopping at various stores that are still open, even at such a late hour. I start to head back to the orphanage, passing some apartment complexes on the way. I hear some glass shatter above me, and I immediately put my arms above my head to protect it. I hear the glass shatter as it hits the ground around me. I cautiously move my hands down and look up. There was a shattered apartment window. I also heard some footsteps running away from me, knowing that the person was running away from the scene. Something is telling me to run away from the place and to get away before anyone see's you. I looked back up at the window and recognized the plants on the small balcony just outside the broken window. That was an apartment I was very familiar with. A man lived there, Rick was his name. I helped him carry some of his things home from a hardware store once, since then we have been close. Rick was like a father to me, taking care of me whenever I was around him. I took off running towards the fire escape stairs before my mind could process what I was going to do in the first place. I ran up the stairs, skipping every other step. I get to the window and break away some jagged edges of the window and went in.
I walked in, expected to find a hurt man on the floor, but that was no where in sight. I looked down at me shoes to find blood covering the bottom of them. I Immediately knew that Rick was dead, but where his body was, that was a mystery. I turned around to inspect the room, and found Rick's body . But he wasn't together, he was in pieces. Arms and legs hanging from the ceiling from strings, while the torso was pinned to the wall. There was a message left on the wall written in blood, 'come and find me'. The view I was looking at caused me to go and vomit out the window. My hands were cut as I grabbed the broken glass left on the window sill, leaving blood on the glass. I go and see what the other damage was. The murderer left the murder weapon lying in the middle of the floor. Huh, well he was stupid. I crotch down and look at it. A huge machete. I touch the handle being hypnotized by the huge weapon. I stood back up, taking another look at the house. That's when I hear the sirens. I panic, and bolt for the window. I half run half trip down the stairs, successfully slipping on some of the vomit that had landed on the fire escape stairs. I ran down the street, half blinded by emotions and dirt. After about six blocks, i slowed down to a walking pace the rest of the way home. I went to the hose outside the orphanage once I got there. i washed my shoes off and my hands. The cuts burned and stung as the cool tap water ran over them. I clenched my teeth together as i dried them off on my shirt. I went inside the orphanage and changed out of my clothes. My shirt had small blotches of blood on the front of it, the stains caused me to throw away the piece of clothing. I went to bed, scared and traumatized from the scene I just witnessed. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the whole nightmare will pass eventually.
After a couple of days, I thought that night was behind me, but apparently not when the cops show up at the orphanage entrance asking for me. They arrest me on the spot, saying that all of the evidence pointed to me. The people running the orphanage asked how they even got my fingerprints to compare the ones at the scene to. The officers respond that they got them from birth certificates and other documents, saying that they ran the fingerprints on a national scanner for everyone. They took me to the station and held me in a juvenile detention center until my trial date, hoping that the judge and the jury would believe that a ten year old wouldn't commit such a horrible crime. They didn't. They thought that a person that could and had the intention of committing such a horrible crime shouldn't be let out. They trialed me as an adult, and sentenced me to life in prison, with no chance of parole. They also didn't send me back to the juvenile detention center, saying that I can influence the other kids in there to do worse things when they get out.
I was sent to prison, with other criminals that were charged with similar crimes. The prison was a women's and a men's prison, with each gender at opposite of the prison. Being in there was a long living nightmare. Prisoners would beat and torment me nearly on a daily basis. I would quietly cry myself to sleep some nights, actually wishing i was back at the orphanage. I was on the guys side for a year when I was moved to a different cell in the facility for good behavior. A lot less rules, and they can trust us. But the guards put me in the women's good behavior facility. They thought that I would like it better if I was with the only other person my age. And they thought it would be better for me to be moved over there than for her to be moved over where I was. I was shocked to learn that there was actually another person my age here at the prison. I was a little skeptical to meet the kid at first, not knowing how they were going to act like . But i thought that they must not be that bad if they are in the good behavior facility. That's where I met Katniss, who was in for the same reason I was, murder. But the body of the man she was accused of killing wasn't chopped up, he was open surgically. All organs showing and everything. Her court didn't believe her either, with too much evidence against her. She was put in this prison a month before me. She was put in the good behavior facility after nine months. The whole incident happened four years ago, I'm fourteen, and still in prison.
I find Katniss talking to a group of other prisoners we have grown to know over the years. The women looked nothing like their personalities, with their corn rows' on top of their heads and with tattoos on their arms. These women are actually the nicest and coolest people I know. I go up to her from behind and tap on her shoulder. She turns her head and scoots down on the table bench. She pats the spot next to her and I gladly take it. She slides me a tray of food that she got for me already. I take a forkful of eggs when the other women at the table speak up.
"Hey Peeta" a few of them say in unison. I smile at them and shove more food into my mouth.
When I'm done with my tray, I throw my food away and stand by the table, gazing at Katniss as she talks to the women at the table. A few of the women take a notice of me and start talking to one another.
"What do you think he's thinking about"
"He's thinking about Katniss of course,"
"Oooo I think he has a crush,"
"Man, he's a goner already,"
They all erupt in laughter and move onto another topic of discussion. Do I like Katniss? Of course I do, but prison is definitely not the place for romance. Maybe one day I would be able to tell Katniss one day how I feel. I never knew that day would come so soon.
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Jessica