CHAPTER TWO
Hayden Pritchard
This sucks.
The Peacekeepers at the sides of the stage grab me by my arms and take me into the Hall of Justice. I pull my arms free from their grasp and glare at both of them, and they lead me up an elevator, and into one of the nicest rooms I'd ever been in. There's a couch, and a small table with a few chairs, and they leave me in there, closing and locking the door behind me.
My mother is the only one that will come to visit me. Likely, not for a while. I throw myself on the couch and rub my temples, trying to make sense of this new and scary situation. However, despite the impending doom being reaped spells, I can only form one question in my mind.
Why me?
I lay there on the couch for what seems to be an eternity, listening to the eerie silence in the hallway, when a short knock on the door interrupts my thoughts and my mother is thrust in, with the warning that she has 3 minutes. She runs to me and wraps her arms around me, tears streaming down her face. "Oh, Hayden…" She sobs, burying her face in my shoulder. I have my father's height and red hair, and I'm more than half a foot taller than her. She cries into my shoulder, and I have to pry her off of me. "Mother." I look her in the eye. "You'll be ok." This makes her cry again, and she holds me a minute longer.
"One of your friends will take care of you." I try to console her. "Don't watch the Games, if at all possible." She's quieted now, and murmurs something into my chest. I pull back. "Try to win." She says. "The district will be rooting for you." This sets off a tone of bitterness in my heart that makes me bite back the thought that there's no reason the district has had to root for me besides the fact that I'm going to be bludgeoned to death on live TV?
The Peacekeepers come back to take my mother, and I yell something to her about promising to win. I don't believe it, though. Hayden Pritchard has no chance in the Hunger Games.