I : One in Seven Hundred

If the sun don't shine on me today

And if the subways flood and bridges break

Will you lay yourself down and dig your grave

Or will you rail against your dying day?

I can't speak for anyone else in District Ten, but our cattle have never observed even one national holiday.

Reaping Day, as a result, dawns much the same as any other of the three-hundred-sixty-four-point-two-four days of the year, and I should know; I'm always up before the sun is.

My family—stolid ranchers that we are—are also resolute about carrying on the day as if nothing is special. We eat breakfast at quarter-to-six, fully dressed for the morning's work. We have a spot of fence to repair, like we always seem to, some calves to brand, and a few other assorted jobs before the Reaping at three sharp. Nothing big for us to do today, since we won't have time, but plenty of work to keep our minds off what's coming.

As careful as we are to adhere to the appearance of normalcy, my little sister Bryn laughs a little too loudly at our older brother Nye's story from yesterday, while my brother Griffin—whose first ever Reaping is today—can't manage more than a wan smile while he pokes at his oatmeal. We aren't a poor family, by Ten's standards, but food never goes to waste. Griff seems to be force-feeding himself as a reminder that he usually (always) leaves the table wanting more.

My parents' deviations from our normal routine are harder to spot. They've had a lot more Reapings to worry about than any of us, between their own and now those of their six children, and that practice pays off. But while Dad's perfect efficiency is unwavering as he gives us all our jobs for the day, his voice is a touch less "aye aye, Captain" and a bit more… well, father-like. Mum drinks her hot water with all her normal cool poise, but the kisses she firmly plants on all our cheeks are maybe a little longer than usual this morning.

Dad takes the younger two to go brand the calves, and the oldest two—Lowri and Brody—will be helping them if necessary but mostly they'll keep the herd in line. This leaves me with Nye, as usual, and Nye's favourite job.

"Fence duty again, eh?" He shakes his head, practically moping as he goes around the barn getting ready for the day.

"They just know I like fixing fences and they love me more than you. It's nothing personal."

Nye just scowls.

The section of fence is pretty far from the ranch buildings, at the far corner of the field we'll be moving the cattle to at the end of this week. Brody spotted it yesterday before having to race off with Nye to help our neighbours with a bull that was causing problems. The fence in pretty rough shape, but Nye and I work quickly.

"So, what's your plan for this year?" Nye asks, taking a swig from his water bottle.

I look up from digging to see him leaning on his shovel. I adopt his stance, blinking away sweat. "Well, if ever there was a year to get Reaped, it's this one. But my strategy would depend largely on my partner."

"That's for sure." He thinks for a moment. "Well, say you get a typical nobody from an outlying district. They'll score about a six, maybe a seven."

It's a game Nye and I play, unbeknownst to most of the others, every year. This is my penultimate Reaping, but lucky Nye is staring down his last. Talking through a strategy, without getting emotional, just coolly making sure we each have a plan, helps both of us cope with the stress. I think of it as daring to think about the unthinkable, acknowledging the very small possibility that either of us will be Reaped, but refusing to get upset or scared at the prospect.

I told Lowri about it a few years ago, trying to explain our logic to her, but she just shook her head and said it works for us because we're psychopaths. Nye just laughed when I relayed her accusation to him.

"Well obviously no crying on the television, but no playing tough either. I don't want to be pegged as an easy hunt for the Careers, but I also don't want to be seen as serious competition."

"Blend into the mid-pack." He nods. "And then at training, just try to soak up as much information as possible. Everything about survival, pick up any new, non-weapon skills."

"Exactly," I pick back up my shovel, swinging it in a wide, dramatic arc. "Worst-case scenario, you can kill somebody with just about anything. I'll never beat a Career with a spear or a sword, but if I can lie long enough to catch them unaware, smash their head with a rock or something, well, they're just as dead."

Nye swings his shovel to meet mine, as if we're in a mock duel. "What if you get paired with one of those Careers? Personally, I'd love to be paired with another Topazz Taylor—you remember the girl from One three years ago?"

"How could I forget?" He hardly shut up about her. Nye sighs dreamily. "Wasn't she killed by Loren from Two?" I ask. She was. Brutally.

"Don't remind me," Nye laments, stabbing his shovel into the ground. "Together we would have been unstoppable."

"You'd have been something, alright," I tease. "I could go for a Finnick O'Dair, myself."

Nye whistles, but it's broken by his grunt, lifting a hunk of dirt from a growing hole. "Oh who couldn't? Although he might be a bit too promiscuous for my taste."

"You never were good at sharing," I concede.

"Exactly. If I did get paired with a Career, I'd want to somehow separate them from the pack of the six of them," he says firmly.

"Why's that?"

"Because I don't think the Careers will be too attached to their partners if they've also got the protection of the others, who would be much better trained than me."

I nod, seeing his point. "You're safer alone."

"Exactly. Especially me."

I think about this for a minute more, as I continue to dig. "I guess I would do that too, but only if I couldn't convince the Careers of my value otherwise. Say I could make them need me for another reason, whether it be knowledge of medicine, familiarity with the landscape of the arena—

"Some hidden talent with a bow and arrows, say, that you currently know nothing about?"

I smirk. "Or that."

Nye sighs, then grunts again. "I think this hole is finished. Pass me a post, will you?"

I finish my own hole a second later. "I'm curious to see how they'll decide who gets paired with whom."

"Beats me. If it's random, the odds of you being matched with a Career are six in twenty-three. Not bad. Over a quarter, isn't it?"

"Yes, assuming both Tributes from One, Two, and Four are volunteers. But those odds are effectively irrelevant; my odds of getting Reaped, I figure, are only one in seven hundred."

Nye hums thoughtfully. "I'm sorry, I'm going to need that in a percentage. Fractions mean nothing to me."

As older brothers do, he says this to bug me. It was a mistake ever trying to make him understand why fractions are superior to percentages and decimals, as he was quick to point out, no one cares about exactness beyond hundredths, if that. "See you think that will be hard but this is an easy one, and I actually know it to infinite decimal places—

"Four will suffice."

"0.001429 percent, rounded to the nearest millionth," I reply tartly. "No extra cost for the extra accuracy."

"What are my odds?"

"I don't know, I didn't look up the population statistics for your demographic."

I hear his shovel stop, and I look up and see the ground filled in and the post firmly in place, even with Nye leaning on it. "You didn't?"

I raise an eyebrow. "Of course I did. Around one in seven-eighty, I figure, which is roughly 0.00128 percent."

"Hmm… yep, you're right; by my calculations I'm getting the same thing."

I roll my eyes, moving on to the next post that needs replacing. "Keep up, meathead."

We finish the fence and are back at the house at twelve, taking the opportunity as the first ones home to get cleaned up for the Reaping before eating any lunch. The bathtub is old, and takes a while to fill, and no one has actual baths anyway so both of us are finished with our turn when the others arrive.

It's harder now for everyone, with Nye and me dressed in our absolute best, to maintain the lie of everything being normal, and lunch is an unusually quiet affair, broken only by the quiet sound of cutlery on plates and chairs scraping on floors as someone else leaves to take their turn washing up.

Soon it's one-thirty, and everyone is ready and fed as well as we can be when no one has an appetite. Mum dresses the best roast we can afford to keep for ourselves before we leave; when we all return home tonight, relieved and famished, it will taste out-of-this-world delicious.

As cattle ranchers, we're pretty close to the edge of the populated District; most of the land between us and the border is made up of fields where the animals graze during the warm months. It takes us over an hour to walk to the square for the Reaping.

No one else really arrives early, but it's nice to not have to wait in a long line to get checked in. Once Nye, Bryn, Griff, and I are all registered, we meet outside our age sections until three o'clock strikes. We don't talk really, we're just together, which is nice.

Griff's shirt is soaked with sweat long before three o'clock arrives. My stomach, as usual, is in knots, but I force myself to stay calm outwardly. Nye says something about Griff not needing to take a bath if he's going to go for a swim in his own sweat, and Griff smiles. His face still looks green, his hands awkwardly bunched in his pockets, but we all do better when we're laughing. Brynn cackles, too loudly, again.

"Brynn, you sound like a horse," Nye mocks her laugh with one that really does sound like a horse, and this time Griff even laughs.

I look over just in time to see District Ten's escort arrive, giving Nye a look of pure revulsion. "Rhodendra Lelless is giving you the hairy eyeball." I poke my older brother, pointing at the stage. "Your behaviour is reflecting poorly on our District."

"Ah! The Maroon Monstrosity has arrived!" He says, delighted. Rhodendra has lost a lot of weight in recent years, but sadly she has not lost the nickname Nye gave her when he was barely eight years old, before Lowri's first reaping. He looks around the square as more people are arriving. "How drunk do you think Bran will be this morning?"

"After last year, he'll only be drunk if he has a death wish. Fra has taken Haymitch Abernathy as a cautionary tale, to say the least, and Bran told me he's been threatened within an inch of his life to behave." Both Fra and Bran are District Ten Victors, and personal friends of our family. Fra was Ten's first ever, and while it's hard to imagine the mild-mannered librarian as a teenage killer, it's a lot easier when his booze-soaked protegé is misbehaving.

"Bran could take him," Nye insists.

"Not if he's drunk. You've seen Bran drunk, he just gets really chatty and then he gets all depressed."

"He was in the Hunger Games!" Brynn exclaims, alarmed at our banter.

Nye gives her a scandalized look. "He what? No one told me!"

Brynn shakes her head, and Griff laughs at her again.

"It's Clyse I'd be worried about," Griff says.

He's absolutely right. Bran has his demons, but despite their sometimes-tense relationship, Fra has helped him through the years of post-Games depression with remarkable success. They're both well-adjusted, all things considered.

Clyse, the third and youngest Victor, is another matter entirely. Alcohol is his vice of choice, like Bran, but unlike Bran, he turns into a bitter and violent drunk. He won the Games nine years ago, and in that time Fra has tried to help him find healthier ways of coping than trying to pickle his own liver, but to no avail. Clyse will almost certainly be drunk this morning.

No one has any sort of witty quip for Griff's statement. Nye just looks off at the stage, where the Victors will sit, and says "Wow Griff, way to be a downer."

In a few minutes we go our separate ways, shepherded into the appropriate sectors by some Peacekeepers. This is the worst part. Waiting, having to listen to the whole Hunger-Games bullshit story, trying not to faint or vomit while waiting for the name to be read. With my siblings I can joke and play it off, but at this point it's just waiting. Watching the Tributes walk up to the stage is my second least favourite part, but there are so many mixed emotions in that moment that it's hard to focus on just how sad it is. A boy I was kind of friends with was Reaped when we were thirteen, and that was terrible, but it's not the same as the fear and anticipation of listening for your own name, or your siblings' names, dreading hearing them.

I feel a hand slip into my own and squeeze, and I turn to see the freckled face of one of my closest friends. "Hey, Nal. How are you holding up?" Judging by her slightly red and puffy eyes, the same as every year.

She gives her best smile; wobbly as it is, it's encouraging to see. "How do you think? I've been crying since last night and I'm sure I'll be crying until tomorrow morning."

"At least it's our second last year. Soon this will all be behind us." Nallia has no younger siblings, so it's truly over for her after next year.

She nods. "Can't come soon enough."

We're joined then by the third member of our little crew, another girl our age named Laney. Both she and Nal are tall, though Laney is more statuesque and Nal more… lanky.

Laney gives Nal a big hug, and then gives me one. She's not usually a hugger; usually if you hug her she goes stiff as a board, just waiting for it to be over, dreading every second.

But on Reaping Day, everyone's a little off.

"Don't hug me like we're dying!" Nal scolds, wiping her eyes. "You're the worst, Laney, look at me! I had it all together!"

"She was composed for five whole seconds Laney. I hope you're pleased with yourself."

Nal gives me a withering look.

"If you can manage to make it through this whole thing with less than three cynical remarks, I'll win a bet with Dack," Laney says to me, her normal, cool composure returned. "He was sure you couldn't do it."

Dack is Nal's brother, a year older than us and a close friend to us all. I can't even pretend to be surprised; Dack pulls stuff like this all the time. "So I'm capped at three, or two?"

"You're capped at two, and no more or I have to work in the chicken barn at the Gowens' with him after school tomorrow."

"And if you win?" Nal asks.

"He has to do my history assignment."

I whistle. "I'll try my hardest."

She holds up two fingers. "You can do it. Nal is supposed to verify, because she's a terrible liar."

Nal gasps, but before she can form a reply, the history video starts to play.

One in seven hundred, I think to myself. Those are good odds.

The way probability works, Rhodendra Lelless should only draw my name once if she dipped those long, purple fingernails into the ball seven hundred times. The way reality works, she could draw my name seven hundred times out of seven hundred draws.

Life doesn't adhere to the predictability of the theories we come up with to make sense of it, which explains why, a few minutes later, those long purple fingernails pluck out one slip of paper. Only one, not seven hundred, yet Rhodendra calls out my name.

"Caerwyn Dahl!"

At first I feel only skeptical, the same as I would feel if Laney were explaining to me how she got to her solution in a maths question, when her calculations are dubious at best. That can't be right, my instincts want to tell me.

I know how probability works. But I also know how life works, and I know when I see Laney reach to catch Nal, who has fainted, and I see her turn to look at me with white showing all around the irises of her eyes, that this can be right.

I look over to the boys' section, and I find Nye's tall head quickly. He looks like he's been punched in the stomach, but he closes his mouth and gives his head the tiniest shake.

No crying.

I don't cry, I feel like I'm in a daze. I count my steps to the front of the square, ordering myself not to look for Brynn, or Griff, and especially not my Mom and Dad off to the side somewhere. I look at Rhodendra, her plastic smile, and I smile back. I see Bran and Fra on stage out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately look away from their shocked and horrified faces. Fra grew up working on my grandpa's ranch with my Dad and his siblings—I'm practically a niece to him.

I stand on the stage, my right leg starting to shake. I shift my weight so it won't, looking out at the crowd of people and finding Nye's face. He still looks a little green, but his expression is firm. I keep looking at him, like we're still little kids trying not to be the first one to blink.

I don't pay attention to the boy Tribute being called—I don't catch his name, he barely looks familiar, and all I can think when we shake hands is that I hope I don't look as terrified as he does.

I do cry when my family comes to say goodbye.

We spend all of our allotted time basically in a group hug, everybody crying, until my Mom pushes us apart and grabs my face in her hands.

She was raised a butcher's daughter, and when she married Dad they worked at the butcher's shop until my grandpa died and my dad inherited the ranch. Since then, this woman has raised six kids while splitting time between the ranch and the shop. She is not to be messed with—her hands are callused and as strong as she is.

"You do whatever it takes, you understand?" She kisses me on each cheek, like she does every morning, and this time I can definitely tell she's lingering. A tear leaks out of her eye as she pulls away, and she brushes it away and gives me a watery smile. "We'll be praying for you, baby. You're such a strong girl, and so smart. You can do this, if anyone can."

Well that certainly isn't going to help me stop crying. I practically fall into her arms, pressing my cheek to her shoulder while I can feel Dad's hand on the back of my head. "I'll do it," I whisper. "I'll do anything."

Dad says a prayer over our heads as we all come together once more, the Peacekeeper at the door shouting that we only have another minute.

"Protect her," he says, his voice surprisingly strong. I feel someone put their hand on my shoulder and squeeze. I look up and see Nye. He nods once at me, his eyes red.

I nod once back.

6101719: The song lyrics are from The Lumineers's Sleep On The Floor.