Chapter 2: During
Because District 10 is so large and so populated, our Reaping is a tad more complicated than those in the smaller areas. About two weeks before Reaping Day, there's a prelim round of drawing in the District capitol that determines which village or town will provide which Tributes. The drawing is weighted based on the eligible population of the area and how much tesserae they've received, so the lot usually lands with the cow or pig or chicken farms, since that's where most of the population lives.
It's bad news for them, but good for the little towns, like 23. Even with every family taking tesserae at one point or another, 23 is still small enough that we almost never get drawn. Our last Tribute came fifteen years ago. It'll probably be fifteen more before we ever have to send another.
I try to keep that in mind while I'm helping Emma with her hair. Only the male tribute this year will come from 23. If the odds stay in our favor, my sweet sister will never face the possibility of the Arena.
Still, her hands tremble, clasped tight over her knees. When the braid is done she spins around and throws her arms over my shoulders. They're too thin, barely more than sticks, but still there's strength in them as she clings to me, the new white shirt a thick and foreign barrier between us.
"Jack," she whispers in my ear. "I'm scared."
Scared for me. I wrap my arms around her waist and hold tight. "I know. But it's going to be all right. Everything will be okay."
She sniffles, careful to wipe her eyes on the back of her hand where nothing can get stained or smudged. "No it's not," she says.
"Would I trick you?"
"Yes. You always play tricks."
I laugh. She's got me there. "Well, alright. But not this time." I give her waist another squeeze, stroking the length of her braid. "I promise, everything's going to be fine."
"How can you know?"
I waver, because I can't know. Our village, as I might have mentioned before, is tiny. There's barely two dozen boys to pick from. No matter whose name comes up, it will be someone we know. A classmate. A coworker. A friend.
But I can't tell Emma that, so instead I smile, pushing her just far enough away that I can rub the saltwater off her cheeks with my thumb. "You just have to believe me, okay? Everything's going to be all right. It's only a…a game. Like the one we play in the winter, with the dice. You remember how hard it is to pick the right number?"
She scrunches up her face, trying to remember. The game's usually limited to adults, gambling in the desperate shadows behind barns, but during long snowstorms it moves inside, where kids bet buttons and rocks. She nods.
"Well, there you go. It's exactly the same."
Emma frowns, like she knows that my logic's off somewhere but she can't figure out exactly where. I always hate the way she looks when she frowns. It reminds me of the time after Da died but before I'd gotten up the nerve to scavenge and trap on my own, when she was too little to hide her hunger and too young to go so long without her belly full.
"Hey, perk up. We've got good odds today." I give her my best conspiratorial grin and pull her close by the sash around her waist, whispering into her ear. "We've even got a special treat for dinner tonight, with plenty of fresh meat. But don't tell anybody 'cause then they'll all want a bite and they'll eat up all the good parts. It's just between you and me, you got it?"
It's not my best distraction. Even I'm running low on material on Reaping Day. Still, Emma smiles, if only to humor me, and nuzzles her head into my neck like a kitten from the barn. I hold her close a moment longer, thinking of how her eyes will light up when she sees the nice plump juicy rabbit that Jamie and I hid away as our Reaping Day surprise.
Then Mom appears at the door to our room. She hesitated in the entryway, tries to speak, and fails, pressing her hand over her mouth. By the time she's composed herself again, we've broken away and she manages to pull herself together.
"It's time," she says quietly.
I nod and straighten my new shirt before taking Emma's hand and leading her out into the street.
We meet the Bennetts just outside our home, Jamie holding tight to Sophie's hand to keep her from wandering off. Missus Bennett ruffles my hair with something almost like affection before taking hold of Jamie's free hand. Without a word, we walk together to the heart of Village 23, soon joined by the rest of our neighbors as the clock tower rings the one o'clock chimes.
The town center is almost unrecognizable by the time we get there. Normally, it's just an open lawn of mostly-dead grass in front of our tiny Justice building, bisected diagonally by the road and lined with storefronts on either side. Today, thanks to the tireless efforts of 10-1's Reaping Committee, it's been transformed into an outdoor theater worthy of Capitol attention. The stores are draped in colored banners bearing the seal of Panem, which almost hide the cameras perched on rooftops and out windows to catch the best views.
The centerpiece of the whole affair is a wooden stage set up just past the step of the justice building, draped in cloth to match the banners. A glass globe the size of a rare harvest cheese wheel hangs in the center, its silver supports tarnished from years without use. Its backdrop is a projection screen, currently dominated by the Seal of District 10. It's quite a clever set-up, really; anyone not from 23 would never guess that they built the whole thing from our gallows.
It doesn't take too long for the population of 23 to file in. There's only about three hundred or so, total. The eligible boys – including Jamie and I – are herded to the roped-off pen in the center of the lawn. We're left standing there for a long while after check-in, no doubt waiting for the twenty-two larger (and five smaller) towns of District 10 to get ready. Reaping Day is the one time a year we're all united in spite of our distance and differences.
I stand on my toes, trying to spot Emma or Sophie in the crowd, but they're too little for me to catch a glimpse. I settle for Jamie, who stands right on the front of our pen with his classmates, Monty and the twins. They're all fidgeting like they want nothing more than to cling to each other and cry, but they're holding it in because boys don't do that. When James steals a glance my way, I give him a thumbs-up and grin. He returns the smile and quickly faces front again.
With his attention back on the stage and everyone else occupied with their own problems, I can finally admit the truth, if only to myself: I am terrified. Ice sinks into my stomach, settling into a heavy sludge. The new white shirt feels stiflingly hot and it's all I can do not to tug on it in my own squirmy bout of nerves.
For all my talk of luck, the fact is that twenty-four of the folded slips in that orb of class have 'Jack Frost' written on them in careful script. Though I know that the eighteen-year-olds – all four of them – and at least two of the sixteen-year-olds are in similar bots, it still means that the odds are against me. My fellow upper-years seem to understand this. The glances we give each other are curt and cold, carrying solidarity, not friendship.
I close my eyes and black out the world, repeating my own words back in my mind. I am Jack Frost. Lucky Frost. The one who survived. Winter loves me. The mountain loves me. The odds love me.
They will not draw my name.
The sound of someone tapping the microphone draws my attention back to the stage. The woman perched coquettishly on her stool up there is not technically the District 10 escort, she's his assistant. That means she's barely more than twenty five, as generically pretty as hideous Capitol fashion allows, and always gets sent off to the smaller or more remote of the two Tribute towns so her boss doesn't have to bother.
I recognized her from previous years. He name is something like Claudette, but I only remember her because of the tiny animal with electric blue fur sticking out of the handbag she's got perched on her knees. I've been told that thing is a dog, but it doesn't look like any dog I've ever seen. It'd be useless for herding or hunting or anything else dogs are actually meant for. Leave it to the Capitol to engineer animals for fashion statements. I don't even know if it's the same one as last year or if she buys a new breed every year to match her garish outfits.
She bats her terrifyingly long fake eyelashes and clears her throat into the mike, calling for silence in a field where no one speaks. She then turns, expectantly, to the projector screen. The District logo flickers, then disappears. It's soon replaced by the live broadcast from 10-4, where the female Tribute will be reaped.
The ceremony that follows is the same as every year. Claudette and her boss – a male escort in his forties who changes his hair every year and wants to be Caesar Flickerman so bad I'm almost embarrassed for him – exchange scripted banter cluing Capitol viewers into which "beautiful regions of District 10" their sacrifices will come from this year. Then the District mayor comes on for the long and boring speech on the history of Panem, the Dark Days, the annihilation of District 13, the Treaty of Treason, and finally the Hunger Games.
As he reads off the list of District 10's past Victors – five total, three still living – I allow myself to imagine what it might be like if our Tribute actually won. Ten's last Victory came twelve years ago and was directly responsible for three times our usual number of infants surviving the winter, including Jamie and Emma. And that was just a District victory. Having a local winner means securing the lion's share of the reward for your home town and that of your District partner. It means a whole year of good wheat, fine oil, actual sweets, clothes, blankets, and shoes.
It's not worth the Games. Nothing is worth the Games. But imagining a world where our people have those things makes the hardship easier to bare.
Once the living Victors have been showcased along with summaries of their greatest deeds, attention cuts back to the escort in 10-4, who's all a-twitter as usual. He gleefully selects a name from a glass that must be three or four times the size of ours, calling a strawberry blonde from among the chicken farmers. Admirably, she doesn't break down, just scowls at her feet and gives curt answers to all his questions.
Finally, after almost an hour of pomp and circumstance, he turns it over to Claudette. She doesn't get a speech, but she's still so excited to be here and announces as much while she totters to the orb with her dog tucked under one arm.
I can't watch. The moment she draws the slip, I close my eyes.
They will not draw my name. They will never draw my name. They could never…
It is not my name.
And yet, my heart falls straight out of my chest and shatters on the ground like a ball of ice.
"Jamie Bennett?" Claudette reads again, louder and more clearly than before. She peers over her reading glasses at the place where the twelve-year-olds have turned inwards, all of them staring at Jamie in horror. Jamie can barely stay upright on his trembling knees, rooted to the spot with his face as a white as a frozen corpse.
Claudette giggles in delight. "Are you just the cutest little thing? Come on up dearie, don't be shy."
Shy or now, Jamie comes, plucked from the crowd by Peacekeepers who flank him on the long trek to the stage. Time slows to an agonizing crawl. One of the eighteens shoves my shoulder because I've stopped breathing. When I start again it's ragged, barely more than dry sobs.
How? How could it be him? I never even though to worry for him, the chances were so low. It's his first year and he's only ever had to take ones tesserae. His name was only in there twice!
In the dead silence of the crowd, I hear his mother muffling sobs into someone's clothes. God, his mother. God, Sophie. Can she even understand what's going on?
After what seems like an eternity, Jamie finally reaches the stage and is swept to the mike by Claudette. The wood gives a little beneath his feet and it hits me like a sandbag to the gut: he's standing on the exact same spot where both our fathers died.
"Such an honor!" Claudette gushes into the mike, pulling Jamie against her until he cringes in discomfort and disgust. I want to scream at her, live TV or no. Honor? What honor? To die at twelve? What's wrong with the Capitol that murder before puberty can be called an honor?
This is wrong. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong.
"I can't wait to get to know all about you, sweetie," says Claudette, giving Jamie's shoulder another fierce squeeze. "There's just one last formality to clear up before we make it official: Do we have any volunteers?"
My hand shoots up before she's even finished the sentence.
An instant later the reality of what I've done sinks in. Claudette wasn't expecting an answer. No one ever answers. No matter how bad life gets in the District 10, no one would willingly throw it away for the Arena.
But it's not for the Arena. It's not for the Capitol. It's for Jamie. He can't go. I won't let him.
I think I must have shouted something when I raised my hand, because now everyone is staring my way. Seconds tick by with even Claudette stunned into silence. I'm sure every camera in 23 is focused on me now.
I drop my hand and straighten up as best I can. This is my first impression for the Capitol types. They'll want to see proof of my strength, evidence of my resolve and my will to live. With my eyes locked on Jamie, I lift my head and speak again, as loud and clear as I can muster.
"I volunteer as Tribute."