Hi, my name is Cassidy Kirkland. You may recognize my name as a winner of the Hunger Games.

But more on that later.

I lived in District 11 with my family and worked in the fields.

When this story begins, I was seventeen years old, and I hadn't seen my mother since I was seven.

My dad left my mother when I was five, and they got a divorce two years later.

I hadn't seen her since. She refused to even act like I was her daughter.

Almost immediately after the divorce was finalized, Dad wanted to re-marry, as he had fallen in love with someone else.

She, Ivy Carstairs, was a very young girl compared to my dad - he was twenty-seven and she was eighteen. Ivy had only one more year in the Reaping of the Hunger Games.

Blinded by their love, my dad and Ivy acted as if they had all the rest of their lives together.

Ivy quickly became pregnant.

She had twin babies, my stepsisters, Alana and Lucy, a few days before the Reaping.

Then she was Reaped as the female tribute for District 11, along with a young eleven year old boy. That was a terrible year to watch the Games, for me, a five-year-old, and my dad, who was in love with Ivy.

He was torn up, watching it all, and trying to take care of his new-born twins and me, all at the same time.

I think a piece of him will be forever trapped in that year, forever grieving for Ivy.

And sadly, Alana's and Lucy's mother did not make it out of the Games alive.

Ever since that year, we've been a relatively happy family. The girls couldn't even remember their mother, after all, and it was only Dad and I who really missed her (I was five, and Ivy was a mother-like figure, of course I missed her).

Dad raised the three of us on his own, and as I grew older I helped out as much as I could.

When I was eight, which is when children begin working in the fields in District 11, I became best friends with a boy from school named Ryan Davis.

He had jet-black hair and soft brown eyes and even when I was eight, he has always been a head and a half taller than me (it might not help that I've always been a very short person).

Ryan and I would always harvest in the same areas, and we would pull pranks to annoy the Peacekeepers and our parents, and somehow we always got away with it without anyone knowing it was us.

Now that we were older, we knew it was very dangerous, and now had a touch more restraint.

Just a touch.

What can I say? We both like to have fun.

We've stayed best friends all throughout our years of Reaping, which started when we were eleven. Ryan lost his older sister three years ago in the Games, and that was particularly rough year as well.

Dad has also taught Ryan, me, and the twins, certain survival skills that would absolutely necessary if we ever got Reaped for the Hunger Games. I think he mainly does it because he wished he had helped Ivy more when she was alive, and thought about what she might have to face.

I've gotten particularly good at hand-to-hand combat, as Ryan and I wrestle and tussle constantly, even now when I'm seventeen and he's eighteen.

But none of that really matters, because we've made it through, thick and thin, and I had to believe that this year would not be much different.

I hated the Games, but I knew that out of all of the children in District 11, it was highly unlikely that me, Ryan, or the twins, or anyone I cared about would get picked.

But boy, was I wrong.