Xenophone Cupress

"I thought the whole thing was bullshit."

The fifteen year old boy with peanut butter brown hair and green eyes sat on the worn log with a small black book in his lap. Circling his thumbs over the paperback, he shifted his head towards the girl next to him who had her eyes closed. She rested her head on her hand, letting the soft buzz of the crickets and chirping of birds muffle the sound of Xenophone's whining.

"It's pretty obvious it was covered up. Did you see the shimmer around the arena? That's the force field that kept everything in. They turned it off to let in all that space junk. I guess that girl was smart enough to know the window of opportunity."

"So they didn't explode." Monica said in a flat tone.

Xenophone scoffed. "It's a long way down from space. Even if they blew past the force field, which they did, there are so many things that would go wrong. Their ashes are probably blowing around the clouds right now."

"Great image."

"Sadly, there isn't much at the library on the mechanics of spaceships and outer space and whatever the hell else. So, it was computers to the rescue again. And guess what?"

Monica stayed silent.

"Are you listening?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Anyway, the computer didn't have anything either. I can't catch a break, can I?"

"I guess not."

"You're just filled with ethereal insight today, aren't you?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What does 'ethereal' mean?"

"Forget it. The big thing I need to tell you is that...remember that girl at the interviews last year? The one with the writing fetish?"

"I guess."

"Well, she was talking about this author named Ernest Hemingway. People got really curious about him. Now, they're trying to squash that bug as fast as they can."

"Who?"

"The Capitol. Point is, you can't mention the guy without being dragged away and offed by some sort of weapon. That being said, there was a restricted place in the library I've been scouting out. Being the unadventurous person I am, I decided to get somebody to run in there and do some shopping."

"Did you ask nicely?"

"Money is the most powerful drug. So, he brought back some Hemingway and a biography. And guess what? The guy wrote fucking novels. Novels. I guess I could find something of historical value, but otherwise, I don't want it."

"Why not?"

"I just want the facts. I don't need some drunk guy's ramblings about existential dread bouncing around my head. It distracts me from the real stuff that happened. So I saw the biography instead. Now, I'll spare you the details about this guy and his private life with some kids and a wife and drowning his liver with alcohol. Instead, I read about this war that he went through. He drove an ambulance during something called the First World War. Imagine that. The whole world in a war. And we thought Panem was bad. But that leads to another thing. What world? We know shit about the globe, and even less about what's right beneath our feet. Who walked here hundreds of years ago? How did the world get in a war? For that matter, how did that space debris get up there to begin with? There has to be some point in the past where other humans went into space."

"Yup."

"And what about that Bible I found a few weeks ago? Where does that fit in?"

"Yup."

"I get some of the things from way in the past, but I can't find a correlation to how we got to this point. No turn of the tide, no warning signs, no nothing. Unless it was the First World War that caused it. But then why is it called the First World War? There had to be another one, right?

"Yup."

"You're not getting a word, are you?"

"Yup."

Xenophone sighed. "It's okay. I barely understand either. I wouldn't expect you to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I'm not saying you're stupid. I'm just saying that no one else really thinks about this."

"You've been doing this since the day I met you. Can you just admit that this place is a shithole and leave it at that?"

"No! There is so much more! Don't you get why that's important?"

"Not really."

Xenephone looked around. "Regardless, if Hemingway's biography survived, there has to be more. Right now that's the best picture of pre-Panem life so far. Other than that Bible."

"Isn't that a weird word? Bible?"

Xenophone shook his head. "So after that whole discussion about it yesterday, that's all you took from it?"

"I guess I don't like talking about things that will get me killed."

"Speaking of getting killed, what're you doing after the reapings?"

"Whatever you are, I guess."

Larissa Savoy

Larissa realized her efforts for the paper crane were in vain. Despite priding herself on the crumpled up drawings and writings hidden from the world in her desk drawer, she could not master the art of folding paper. It ticked her to no end, and it was moments like these, bunched up throughout the day, that made her squeeze her fists and pound on the desk.

When her parents called her down to the dining room, she gasped. Looking back at the mangled paper, she shoved them into the top drawer and slammed it shut.

She walked down the dingy steps into the cramped dining room. At a long table, a few plates were resting in front of a group of family members. Her aunt, uncle, and grandparents all moved in after the unfortunate circumstances of their newfound poverty. With the grey walls enclosing them in the small space, the frosted windows obscured the view outside into the lower middle class neighborhood.

She sat down at the wooden table. The family members room their seats in shaky wooden chairs.

Larissa's mother stirred the steaming scrambled eggs on her plate. "You have your clothes ready?"

Larissa nodded. "Mmmhmm." She hummed through the food she was gouging into her mouth.

"Yes, those colored rags. Are they ready?" Her Grandmother said with a chuckle.

"Mom, it's the reapings. Please stop." Larissa's mom said.

The old lady scoffed. "You wouldn't be so nervous if it wasn't for the tesserae."

"You know we had to do that."

"I guess running companies into the ground would do that, wouldn't it?" She said.

Larissa's head grew light. She always grew queasy during confrontations, but her family issues always exaggerated those feelings.

Larissa's dad stroked his wife's long brown hair. "Calm down, honey. We're fine today. We don't need fighting."

"We didn't need tesserae either."

"Yes we did, mom. Stop it. Larissa," her mom turned to a surprised Larissa. "How's the food?"

She smiled. "It's great. It reminds me of that New Years party a few years ago."

"Back when we could actually have parties?" Grandma asked with a sneer.

Her mom got up and took her plate. "I'll get your clothes ready."

After eating in cold silence, Larissa got dressed in her best pink blouse and straightened her hair. With a few hugs to go around to the family inside, she departed with a cringe on her face. Her shoulders were hunched up, and her head was kept down from the peering sight of the less fortunate surrounding her new home. Larissa walked down the cobblestone street. A smaller girl joined her in the middle of the road.

Vee. Her only friend. The girl with black hair patted her on the shoulder.

"How's everything?" She asked.

Larissa nodded and drew a thin smile. "Fine."

"We both know that's not true."

Larissa's face fell. "It's that obvious?"

Vee nodded.

Larissa sighed. "They were fighting about money again."

"It's no big deal. They didn't break anything this time, did they?"

Larissa shook her head. "I guess it's a good day when they're not throwing things in anger at each other."

They continued to pace down the trampled street in the sweltering noon sun blanketed by the moist air. With the large crowd funneling into the town square, Larissa started to feel her heart jitter with nerves. The rumbling of feet on the ground vibrated up her legs, causing a metronome effect to cling onto her insides. Soon, she made it to the line. She neared the end. With every step, the thumping grew harder, and it caused her head to grow lighter in fear. When she got to the entrance, a brown haired lady with a nasally voice barked out at her to reach out her hand. The sun stabbed at her eyes as the needle entered her finger.

A quick gasp.

The lady gave Larissa a curt nod, and the teenager proceeded into the reaping area. Larissa walked to her age section, careful not to touch any of the shoulders around her. The last thing she wanted in this unnerving cemetery was unwanted human contact.

She kept herself to the edge of the large pen with the intent of a hasty escape the moment the two Tributes vanished from the wooden stage.

However, there was a smaller splatter of excitement at this years Reapings. A few people were talking and joking around. Some excited whispers raced around the people huddled together. With the decent result of last year's Games, along with Seven trying to reinvent itself as a formidable Games opponent, the teenagers in the District were less subdued at the Reapings. In fact, a few boys were even tapping their feet and fidgeting around in anticipation or impatience. For some reason, this made Larissa feel a dearth in her stomach. Surely, people here didn't get excited over this whole affair?

A large man with bald hair and a handlebar moustache graced the stage with a twirl and bowed at the mute crowd. A few people smirked at the man, and somebody even whistled in jest. The man let out a high-pitched squeal of a laugh.

"Come one, come all, to this year's annual Hunger Games. I'm glad to see that this crowd is a little more festive than the ones in previous years. I guess that new training center finally got people to live a little."

A few snickers escaped into the air.

"Now, for my favorite movie of the year, let's roll the video the Capitol has graciously lent us." The man snickered.

A couple of groans ringed through the thick air as the traditional Games video. Larissa felt _

The man guffawed. "Without further ado, let us get to the main event. Ladies first, as always."

He reached over towards the glass bowl shining in the glow of the clear sky. Taking his stubby fingers, her grips a slip of paper and holds it out to his face.

"And our female tribute this year is Larissa Savoy."

"Our male tribute is Mister Zane Cu-."

"I volunteer."

A slender young man stared up at the stage with a stony expression of deaf contemplation. It was as if he didn't yet hear himself volunteer. After the loud murmurings and slanted stares, he got the message that it was him that would have to walk up to the stage.

"And your name is?"

The boy turned to the crowd. "I'm Xenephone Cupress."

The man nodded before taking Larissa by the shoulder. He pushed the two closer to the point that their sides bumped into the other. "I humbly present this years tributes for the Hunger Games."

"When you get there, please don't go on about your theories."

Xenephone lay with his hands resting behind his head on a pearl white couch in a bright room. The only other furniture inside was a leather love seat and a brown coffee table complete with lavender-scented candles fuming on the edge. The sunlight was half obscured by the purple curtain shrouding the window, leaving a dark wall of shadow draping half of Xenephone's face, with the other half of his head in the sunlight. His eyebrows were furrowed, and he traced his thumbs on the edge of the couch.

"What theories?" He asked.

"About things that aren't true." His mom said. Xenephone's parents and brother were standing by the doorway of the room, incensed from his brash decision. In fact, it seemed that the bust of President Kirkland was separating them from nearing him.

"You two are ridiculous. I can't be the only person in the world that cares about the world."

"Everybody! Just stop." Zane said. His outburst immediately silenced the terse room. "Why did you fucking do that?"

Xenephone sat up on the couch. "Do what?"

"Volunteer. For me. You knew I had to do this."

"Don't act so sad about it. You've all been waiting for an excuse to get rid of me for years. Well, here you go." Xenephone threw his hands up.

His dad's face fell from it's stern uplift to a more melancholy state. "Xenophone, we didn't want you to go into the Games."

"Stop acting sad, dad. You love this."

"You did this so you could get away from us?" His mom asked.

"I don't want to talk about it."

A knocking on the door interrupted the family. The door opened. Monica walked inside.

"I guess we should leave you two. Good luck, boy." His dad said.

"Be smart." His mom walked over and gave him a loose hug.

Zane stood by the door, shaking his head at Xenephone. He turned and walked away in front of his parents, who held their heads down. What would the people at the training center say?

Xenephone stood up as Monica walked closer.

"Aren't you supposed to be smart or something?"

Xenephone sighed. "You know, things like that don't make me feel any better."

"It's not like there's much else that will."

The boy looked at Monica. "I'm not a huge fan of...you know. Emotions. But I think I should say something."

"Like what?"

"About us."

"Okay, time out. There is no 'us'. We never did anything that could make us 'us'."

"No. I know that. I mean, just about us. But not in that way."

"What is it?"

Xenophone took a step towards Monica. Then, he reached his hand out and gripped the back of her head. In the flicker of the light dimming from a cloud outside, Xenephone kissed Monica. Her eyes widen in shock, but she stayed in his arms. He wasn't sure if it was from shock, relief, or a cocktail of the two feelings. It was a warm, blurred sensation, almost like drunken stupor, but not entirely unpleasant.

When he pulled back, Monica stepped backwards and stammered. "What the hell was that?"

Xenephone wiped his mouth. "You could have at least closed your mouth all the way. I think I kissed your teeth."

"Why did you kiss me?"

Xenephone stared at Monica for a few tense seconds. The soft rumblings of the crowd reverberated around the silent, sun infused room.

Xenephone coughed. "Well, I'm not stupid. I know the odds in that place. And you're the only person that really heared what I said, even if you never listened. And...I never kissed a girl before. So there."

Monica moved a little closer to Xenephone. "You know, you're not bad looking. If you weren't a lunatic, maybe we could have gone out."

"Or at least have sex?"

"Fuck you. Anyway, you can make it out. Just don't be you in there, alright?"

Xenephone sighed. "Very well. I think I have to go. Wish me luck."

"Bye."

"See you, baby. Don't forget where you are from."

"I'm so scared."

"I know you are. I am, too. But I promise that you can use that energy of fear into something amazing. That's how I married your mom, after all."

Larissa smiled through her tears. "Thank you. I'll do my best."

Larissa loved her family to death. Even if they caused her much frustration and fear. Fear of rejection, sadness, betrayal, and even the superficial elements of living a less-glamorous lifestyle that they had been used to. At the end of the day, Larissa wanted to be anybody except herself. It was an odd inclination to rip herself out of her skin and be a different person. One without these social issues or worries of her splintering home life.

The Games were a solution. One that she didn't want, but a solution regardless.

I find it funny how I did not factor in real life as a reason for not updating. However, writing is real life to an extent. It is all art, correct?

Thank you for joining in on this first reaping. I am still accepting applications as we speak. I am much more selective this time around, so if your tribute does not appear on the list, I either rejected him/her, forgot, or am still considering the Tribute.

Story Spotlight for sponsor points! Please review the story Sniper by Alfonso Ling. It is in the Haruhi Suzimiya section. However, previous knowledge of the canon is not required for enjoyment. It is just off-the-wall insanity, and it is great. In fact, do anything by Alfonso Ling. The author is criminally underrated.

Also, if you missed chapter 3, please go back to it. I noticed a massive drop in reviews percentage wise for that chapter. I think there was a glitch for a second, so either it was looked over, or people hated it.

Spread word of the story. Get everyone you can involved. The more submissions, the faster this can go. Good luck!