The Hunger Guy, Chapter 2

By: Storychan

Hey, everybody! I know I haven't updated in….well, forever LOL

There's a good reason for that tho. My dad wouldn't let me bring any of my books with me to college….and there's a good 500 miles between my college and my bookshelf back home. -_- It's hard to write fanfiction for a book you don't have a copy of.

But I'm home for the holidays, and one of my college friends told me they really liked this story (Thank you, Jenni, for the idea for Female Peeta's name!) so I'm updating. Yeah that's right, you get to meet Female Peeta this time around. Are you excited?

Anyway, enjoy, and don't forget to review!

-Storychan

Once, I was at the Hob and Greasy Sam gave me the last bowl of stew he had to sell that day, and one of the other Seam boys, who was starving, like all of us, decided to fight me for it. He punched me right in the stomach, knocked me straight onto the ground. The impact knocked every wisp of air out of my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, exhale, to do anything.

That's how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as Eddie Trinket's words reverberate around in my skull. Herbert Everdeen. That's Herb's full name. Did he really just say that? Is this just a nightmare? No, it was plain as day. Herbert Everdeen. Shit. Someone, a girl from the Seam, is grabbing me, propping me up, because I'm about to fall, and I feel pathetic. Man up, Tuber, I tell myself. I jerk away from the Seam girl. A real man stands up by himself and faces reality, I try to tell myself.

But I'm still in denial. This has to be a mistake. Herb's name was one slip of paper out of thousands! I'd taken all the tesserae, as the man of the house, I hadn't let him take any. The odds were absolutely in his favor. But it hadn't mattered.

Dimly, I hear the crowd muttering to themselves, as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen, because they think this is unfair. And then I see him. He's gone white as a sheet, but my little man is trying to be brave, head held high, fighting back the tears, as he walks, fists clenched, in short, small steps, past me, and I see the back of his button-down shirt sticking out over his short pants, It's this detail, the untucked shirt forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.

"Herb!" I cry, and suddenly my muscles are able to move again. "Herb!" I don't have to shove my way past the crowd, because they're making my room for me, somehow, and I reach him just as he's about to take the stage. I shove him behind me, and before I know what I'm even doing, I'm screaming, "I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!"

There's some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn't had a volunteer in years. In some districts, being reaped is considered an honor, but here, reaping is pretty much synonymous with the word dying. Eddie Trinket starts muttering about the volunteering process protocol, but Madam Mayor speaks up sadly and says, "What does it matter?"

She's looking at me with a pained expression. She doesn't know me, but there's a faint glimmer of recognition there. I'm the boy who brings the strawberries. The boy who hangs out with her son on occasion. The boy who, five years ago, stood huddled with his father and brother as she presented him, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for his mother, who died in the mines. Does she remember that? Does she remember that my mom was the only female miner, that every other family had a wife mourning her husband, instead of my pathetic excuse for a father who let his wife do the mining for him and now had to mourn her, because he was too weak to let her stay home? "What does it matter?" she repeats softly. "Let him come forward."

Herb is screaming, raging, behind me, pounding his tiny fists into my back, trying to fight me on this decision but he can't, bellowing, "No, Tuber! No! You can't go!"

"Herb, don't touch me," I say harshly, because I'll look pathetic, unmanly, if I start crying now. If I cry, when they replay the reapings on TV tonight, they'll immediately peg me as a wimpy guy, an easy target. I need to look like a tough guy if I want to survive. "Don't touch me!"

I can feel someone grab Herb's hands to stop him from beating on me in protest again. I turn and see Galeina is dragging him away, and he's trying to yank his arm out of her grasp. "Up you go, Tuba," she says, and I can see she's trying not to cry – not that anybody would blame her, she's just a girl – and then she grabs Herb's wrist more tightly and pulls him back toward my father. I steel myself and climb the steps.

"Bravo, dude!" Eddie Trinket whoops, "That's the spirit of the Games!" He sounds like a guy watching a sporting match that just got interesting. "What's your name?"

I swallow hard. "Tuber Everdeen," I say.

"I bet my hat that was your little bro. Don't want him to look like the bigger man and get all the glory, huh? Come on, everybody! Let's give a big hand to our newest tribute!" hollers Eddie Trinket.

To the everlasting credit of District 12, nobody claps. Maybe because they know me from the Hob, or because they knew my mom, or because they've encountered Herb, who everybody loves. But no matter the reason, they've decided to risk the biggest public dissent possible. Silence. Which whispers, without a word, This is wrong. We do not approve.

Then, something I didn't expect happens. Or, at least, I didn't expect it because I know nobody in District 12 cares about a nobody guy like me. But by taking Herb's place, I've become….somebody. Somebody important. So one by one, people start pressing the three middle fingers of their hand to their lips and then holding them out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, sometimes used at funerals. It means thank you, it means admiration, it means goodbye to somebody you love.

And now I'm really worried I'm going to start crying and look like a wuss, but fortunately Haymiss chooses this moment to come staggering across the stage in the high heels somebody forced her into to congratulate me. "Look at this guy! Whattaguy!" she trills, pulling me into a sudden hug that I'm surprised I can't escape. She's stronger than she looks. "I like 'im!" Her breath reeks of cheap wine, and she isn't wearing perfume or lotion or anything, I don't think she's even bathed. "Lots of…." She can't think of a word for a while. "Guts!" she says triumphantly. "More than you!" she says, releasing me and heading for the front of the stage. "More than you!" she shrieks directly at the camera.

Is she addressing the audience or is she so drunk she might actually be taunting the Capitol? I'll never know, because just as she's opening her overrouged mouth to continue, Haymiss plummets ungracefully off the stage and knocks herself out. I think if it were any other woman but Haymiss, people would be concerned.

She's a gross skank, so nobody is, but I am grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on her and the cotton bloomers she's showing now that her derriere is up in the air, I have just enough time to release the small, choked sound in my throat and compose myself. I ball my hands into tight fists and stare off into the distance. I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Galeina. For a moment, I yearn for something…the idea of us leaving the district, making our way into the woods…but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would've volunteered for Herb?

Haymiss is whisked away on a stretcher, and Eddie Trinket is trying to get the ball rolling again. "What an exciting day!" he hoots as he adjusts his tophat (made to match his suit) which has listed severely to the right. "But more excitement to come! It's time to select our girl tribute!" Putting one hand atop his hat to keep it from falling off, he dipped his other hand into the ball that contains the girls' slips and picks out the first one he touches. He zips back to the podium, and I don't even have time to pray for Galeina's safety before he's reading the name. "Torteeya Mellark."

Torteeya Mellark!

Oh no, I think. Not her. Because I recognize this name, even though I never spoken directly to its owner. Torteeya Mellark.

No, the odds are not in my favor today.

I watch her as she makes her way toward the stage. Medium height, curvy build, ashy blonde hair that falls in waves down her back. The shock of the moment is registering on her face, you can see her struggle not to look like a whimpering damsel, yet her blue eyes, made brilliant by glittering shadow, show the alarm I've seen so often in trapped animals. Yet she climbs steadily onto the stage and takes her place.

Eddie Trinket asks for volunteers, but nobody steps forward. She has two older sisters, I know, but one is too old to volunteer and the other isn't going to. This doesn't surprise me. Familial loyalty only goes so far on reaping day. What I did was the radical thing.

Madam Mayor starts reading the Treaty of Treason, like she does every year, but I'm not listening.

Why her? I think, but then I try to convince myself it doesn't matter. Torteeya Mellark and I are not friends. We're not neighbors. Our only real interaction happened years ago. She's probably forgotten it. But I haven't, and I know I never will….

It was during the worst time. My mom had died three months earlier in the mine accident, in the bitterest January anybody could remember. The numbness of the loss had passed, and now the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, making me choke back the urge to cry. Where are you? I'd scream inside my mind. Where the hell did you go? Of course, there was never any answer.

The district provided my dad with enough money to spend a month at home, mourning her. After that, he was supposed to get a job. Maybe finally become a miner, like he'd forced her to be. Or a healer, or a shopkeeper, or a farmer, or anything. Instead, he did absolutely nothing. He did nothing but sit around in a chair, or lay in his bed, and drink, or just stare into the distance. Once in a while, he'd stir, like he was going to get up, but he'd always just slump back down. No amount of screaming from Herb would change that.

I was terrified. Not only was my mom gone, but now, for all intents and purposes, my dad was, too. At eleven years old, with Herb just seven, I had to step up and become the man of the house. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market and tried to cook it the best I could, I tried to keep Herb clean and healthy and not looking like a total urchin. Because if it became known that my dad couldn't take care of us anymore, the district would put us in the community home. I'd seen the kids they sent there at school. They had black eyes and broken spirits. I could never let that happen to Herb. Sensitive little Herb who cried whenever he saw me gut a fish for dinner, who made sure my dad shaved every morning before he went to school, who still polished my mom's glass bottles of cosmetics every day because he hated the layers of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would crush him like a bug. So I kept our predicament a secret.

But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to death. No other way to put it. I kept telling myself that if I could just hang in there until May 8th, I'd turn twelve and be able to sign up for tesserae, earn us precious bread and oil. But my birthday was still weeks away. We'd be dead by then.

Starvation's not an uncommon fate in District 12. You see old people who can't work, kids from families with too many mouths to feed, miners injured on the job. You see them stagger through the streets until they collapse into a wall or the Meadow, and the Peacekeepers are called to retrieve their bodies. They always say "oh, a flu killed them", or "oh, they just had pneumonia", but they're not fooling anyone.

On the afternoon of my encounter with Torteeya Mellark, the rain was falling in icy sheets. I'd gone to the market to try and trade some old baby clothes of Herb's for food, but no dice. I'd been to the Hob with my mom before, but I was still too nervous to go in there by myself. A scrawny little guy like me might get beat up (Remember the stomach-puncher guy I mentioned earlier? Yeah. It's a legitimate concern). The rain had soaked through my mom's camo jacket, which I was still small enough to wear. For a week now we'd been living on nothing but boiled water with a few mint leaves in it I'd found at the back of a cupboard. I was so weak from hunger that I dropped the baby clothes. I didn't go back for them. Nobody wanted them anyway.

I couldn't go home to my dad, with the useless, far-away eyes, or my brother with the hollow cheeks and swollen belly. I couldn't tell them I wasn't man enough to provide for them.

I found myself wandering through the alley behind the shops catering to the wealthiest townspeople. Shopkeepers lived where they worked, so I guess I was trespassing in their backyards. I saw their soggy trashbins standing there in the rain.

Theft is a capital offense here in District 12, but whatever I could find in the garbage was fair game, right? Unfortunately, they'd just been emptied by the same garbage man who earlier had refused to give me a job on account of my age.

When I passed the baker's, the smell of bread made my stomach growl like an angry dog. The back of the bakery radiated warmth on the cold day. Shivering, I drew closer, just to stand there and get warm for a second.

Suddenly a voice was screaming at me. The baker, telling me to get lost or he'd call the Peacekeepers on my ass. I started backing away, and that was when I saw her, a blonde girl peering out from behind her father's back. I'd seen her at school, but I didn't know her name. She always stuck with those snooty town kids, so how could I? Her dad went back into the bakery, but she must've been watching me as I walked past her pigpen and leaned against the old apple tree. The realization that I wasn't going to be able to provide for my family finally sunk in, and my knees buckled as I collapsed onto the tree's roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh so tired. Let 'em call the Peacekeepers and take me to the community home, I thought. Or, better yet, just kill me now.

Then there was a clatter in the bakery and I heard a man hollering and the sound of a blow. I vaguely wondered what was going on. I heard somebody coming and I thought, It's him, he's going to beat the stuffing out of me for not vacating the premises. But it wasn't him. It was the girl. She carried two loaves of bread in her arms – I wondered how such a tiny girl was carrying such a heavy load, and I figured she'd burnt the bread because the crusts were black.

His dad was yelling, "Feed it to pig, you ditzy little bitch! Nobody decent's gonna buy burnt bread!"

She began to break chunks off and hurl them into the trough, and her dad went back inside to help a customer.

The girl never looked my way, but I was watching her, because of the bread, because of the red welt on her cheek. He'd hit her? My mom always taught me that guys should never hit girls. And she'd never raised a hand against me. The girl looked back at the bakery as if to check that the coast was clear, and then, still looking at the pigs instead of me, she tossed a loaf of bread in my direction. The second quickly followed, and then she skittered back to the bakery and slammed the door.

I stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were just fine, except for the burnt parts. Were they really mine? Was she really just giving them to me? She had to be. She'd thrown them at me, hadn't she? I was surprised a girl could throw something so heavy that far. But without giving it another thought, I grabbed the loaves and stuffed them under the shirt, wrapped the camo jacket around me and ran swiftly away. The heat of the bread burned against my skin, but I clutched it ever tighter, clinging to it like a lifeline.

The loaves were cold on the outside when I finally got them home and threw them on the kitchen table, but Herb's hand immediately reached out for a chunk. I made him sit, forced my dad to join us at the table, and poured warm tea. I scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. We wolfed down a whole loaf in about a minute. It was good hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.

I thew my clothes on the floor by the fire to dry, fell into bed, and collapsed into dreamless sleep. It didn't occur to me until the next morning that the girl might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped them into flames, knowing it meant punishment, and then delivered it to me. But I dismissed this. Smart girls don't go looking for trouble. Besides, she didn't even know me. Still, just throwing the bread could have earned her a mark on the other cheek from her father, which I couldn't believe she'd risk for me. I couldn't explain her actions.

We ate more bread and headed to school. It seemed like spring had come overnight. Warm air and fluffy clouds. I passed the girl in the hall. She'd tried to cover up the bruises on her face with makeup, but I could still tell. She was with her friends and didn't even look at me. But as I collected Herb and headed home that afternoon, I saw her staring at me from across the schoolyard. I looked away, embarrassed, and that was when I saw the first dandelion of the year, and knew we were going to survive.

To this day, I can never shake the connection between Torteeya Mellark, and the bread that saved me, and the dandelion that showed me I wasn't doomed. And more than once, I've caught her glitter-lined eyes looking at me from across the hall, only to flit away. I feel like I owe her, and I hate owing people. Maybe I wouldn't feel like this if I'd been able to thank her, but I'd never gotten the chance. Now I never would, because we were going into the arena. My mom had told me never to hit a girl, but now I wouldn't just have to hit her…I'd have to kill her.

Madam Mayor finishes her speech and motions for me and Torteeya to shake hands. Her hands are as soft and warm as bread. She gives my hand what may have been a reassuring squeeze. Or maybe it was just a nervous spasm.

Oh well, I thought. There are twenty four of us. Maybe some less chivalrous guy will strike her down before I have to.

Of course, the odds haven't been very dependable as of late.