My name is Katniss Everdeen, also known as the Girl On Fire. I'm a teenage girl, a victor of The Hunger Games, an archer, a hunter, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. But the one thing I never thought I would be was a lover. Never mind the lover to a fellow tribute in these horrific games
I had never been one to believe in love. I believed in fending for myself and making sure that myself and my family were taken care of first. I believed that romance made everything more complicated. I believed that it was a load of bullshit. I refused to buy into love and all it's strings that were attached.
Well boy, did I change my mind quickly.
I walked into the training arena that had been newly designed for the 75th Annual Hunger Games. Or as I like to call it, the stupidest excuse for a celebration ever. How people could find joy and excitement in watching 24 young kids fight till the death is beyond me. But alas, it's the 75th year so it must have an appeal to some people out there.
This year was the 3rd Quarter Quell. The Quarter Quell was a very special event for The Hunger Games; every 25 years a new twist gets added into the game. This year the twist was that living victors from previous games would be thrown into the arena to fight it out with each other. Kind of like a Hunger Games: All Stars edition. It made me sick to think that all these legends would be killed for the pure entertainment of the government, but there was nothing I could really do about it.
I glanced around the arena to inspect my competition. I saw Peeta; my fellow victor from last year. We both won the games in an act of defiance against the Capital, but we lied and claimed it was an "act of love." (I guess attempting to do a double suicide is romantic to some people?) You see, we'd been keeping up this act that we were desperately and hopelessly in love with each other and that our true love allowed us to win the games together. That, of course, was a load of bullshit. But we kept up the act because everybody in Panem loved our story and it kept them interested.
The truth was, however, that Peeta and I could hardly stand each other. We were friends, I suppose, but even that was a bit too much. We got on each others nerves constantly and it was just a generally bad situation. Practically every time we were in a room together we ended up fighting and bickering and had to be pulled apart by Effie or Haymitch. But somehow we kept up the stupid lovey-dovey act for the cameras without killing each other... yet.
In reality I had a little bit of a crush on the charming Finnick Odair. Finnick was a fellow victor in the games from District 4 and he had been chosen to compete in this years event. He won at the tender age of 14 and had been a huge celebrity ever since. With being a huge celebrity, practically every woman in Panem wanted to get into his bed (and probably lots of them did.) I couldn't blame them at all; he was tall, muscular and tan with a dazzling smile and piercing eyes. Pretty much everything you could ask for. He was the epitome of perfection in a lot of people's eyes.
And against my will, I thought he was pretty damn perfect, too.