Author's Note: Thank you to all of my friends who reviewed; you guys are awesome.

A brief note that I didn't remember to add last chapter: this will go strictly along with HG canon. Even if I won't sometimes like it, since there are some characters that, so far in writing this, I've really come to like and will hate to have to kill off-but it's a fact of life in Panem, so I'll give my best shot to writing this.

(And by the way, yes, Vale's youngest sister Hazelle is that Hazelle, the future mother of Gale. But that's not really an important part of the story, just a random fact. XD)

Enough rambling: here we go. :)

"I protect Prim every way I can, but I'm powerless against the reaping." –Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games

The reaping. Those two simple words seemed chilling enough to freeze not only Vale Whitaker and her siblings but the entire district completely solid. Like an army of ice-cold, dead-eyed, trembling zombie popsicles marching toward the same fatal destination.

As she walked, with Laurel clutching one hand and her mother clutching the other, Vale recalled with a certain dread precisely why she feared the reaping so much.

Briony. She still remembered her best school friend's face so clearly: long, wavy, beautiful blonde hair, bright blue eyes, a perpetually chipper smile. Too pretty to belong in a gritty, desolate place like District Twelve. Briony hadn't been from the Seam like the Whitakers; she had lived with her parents in the better part of town. But that hadn't stopped her and Vale from becoming fast friends when they met in kindergarten.

Friends, that is, until the reaping. It had been the girls' first. They had only been twelve years old and completely terrified, clutching each other's hands as tightly as Laurel clutched hers now. She could still remember the moment when Lavinia Gilden, District Twelve's overly bubbly escort to the Games, had called out Briony's name…. The look of sheer horror on her friend's pale face… The way she had kicked and screamed and sobbed as they hauled her roughly onstage…

Even now, Vale thought she could hear Briony whimpering as she was taken away toward the cruel 40th Hunger Games, where she was thrust out along with twenty-three others into a harsh, icy wilderness and quickly slaughtered in the initial bloodbath. Vale had had nightmares for months.

There came that awful whimper again. How could she hear it so clearly?...

Then, she turned and saw that it was little Laurel, her face twisted uncomfortably. "Ouch, Vale," she said. "You're hurting my hand."

Vale quickly loosened her grip on her twelve-year-old sister's tiny hand. She hadn't realized that her fist had been clenched so tightly around Laurel's delicate fingers. "Sorry. I was just… nervous, that's all."

"Hey, remember what Av told us," Maybelle said confidently from Laurel's other side. "Probability is, out of so many kids, none of us will even get called. So don't worry."

"Yeah," Averill called back. He was walking up ahead with a group of other boys that included his best friend, Kit Littleby, a tiny barely-twelve-year-old with dirty blonde, messy hair and wide blue eyes, and Kit's two older brothers, ages fifteen and eighteen. He switched into a rather accurate imitation of the Capitol citizens' ridiculous accents. "And may the odds be ever in your favor!" He returned then to his own voice, which could currently be classified as an alto. "Because they are."

Vale thought this was a terrible thing to say. Being happy that another two children were being condemned to almost certain death, just because they themselves would be safe. Awful.

But she didn't say anything. She wasn't sure that her tongue would work properly.

"Yeah," added Kit Littleby with confidence in Averill's words.

And Laurel put in, "Really, Kit?" with just as much faith.

Vale wished she still had faith. But the male tribute from District One had brutally stabbed that pretty blonde faith in the chest four years ago.

They soon came to the area where all of the twelve- to eighteen-year-olds of the district were to assemble. There was already a sizeable throng growing in front of the fateful stage.

The farewells were fond but fleeting. The four oldest siblings hugged their parents and little Hazelle tightly, then joined the swelling mob of youths dreading their fates. Maybelle went off with some of the other fifteen-year-old girls, Averill and his friend Kit each joined the boys around their own ages, and Laurel, pale and tremulous, fell in with the youngest girls whose faces emanated the same barely stifled panic.

Vale went to stand with the other girls of about sixteen. She recognized many of them from school, some Seam girls like her and others from the merchant neighborhoods, most of which she had known since early childhood. Now, despite their varying situations, all of them were in the same boat, and they all knew it; most of them glanced around at the crowd around them in weighty silence, the question clear in their minds and on their faces.

Which one of us will it be?

A few were murmuring quietly to their friends, all saying the same thing: "Oh, I hope it's not me. I don't know what I'd do if it's me."

The only thought that ran across Vale's mind was, I hope it's not Maybelle, or Averill, or Laurel. Please, don't pick them. Please. Even though it was cruel to whomever would be chosen, she thought, Anyone but one of them.

These imploring, unspoken words flitted to the forefront of her mind again and again, almost to perpetuity. A steadfast, almost insane mantra, repeated soundlessly over and over again, as if she truly believed that doing so could save her siblings' souls.

Perhaps she did, in some stupid, impractical district of her mind. Averill did frequently call her wild imaginings—tales of shining kingdoms, brave and handsome heroes, and princesses with pretty faces and no worries about surviving the day—"impractical."

It wasn't very long until the moment arrived, which every child in the crowd and parent and sibling in its outskirts had been anticipating with bated breath. Long nose jutting up into the stale, hot air, Lavinia Gilden assumed the stage.

Lavinia's heavily made-up face was familiar to every one of the District Twelve onlookers. She was the escort who called out the names of the condemned; the fate of every family in the entire district rested in her manicured hands. There was a collective drawing of breath.

Today, Lavinia Gilden wore a long dress of varying shades of purple. After all her years of serving as the district's escort, she had to be in at least her late thirties, but she looked not a day over twenty; they chalked it up to the "magic" of the Capitol. Her unnaturally violet hair hung in long, swaying ringlets down to her pinched waist. She was already a rather tall woman, but in her six-inch heels, she looked positively statuesque. Slender, but surely with more meat on her bones than most of the impoverished citizens of the district she was in charge of.

With a definitively exaggerated slowness, she stepped up to the podium. Then, she began her little speech, the same words as always. Vale didn't really listen; it was difficult to hear anything over the noise of her own galloping pulse hammering away in her ears.

It wasn't until Lavinia announced that she was now going to draw the name of District Twelve's female tribute that Vale snapped back to rigid attention. Her heartbeat quickened to what had to be near heart attack level; she found herself actually thinking, irrationally, that it might be better if she keeled over in cardiac arrest right now so she wouldn't have to watch this. Irrationally, her mind whispered, Surely one of them will get picked. Surely she'll call Laurel, or Maybelle...

Her gaze flitted over first to nearby Maybelle, who was whispering something sarcastic to one of her friends about Lavinia Gilden's ridiculous blue-tinted makeup. She was trying to maintain her typical confident front, but the cracks in her façade were obvious to her older sister, who knew her so well: the faint nervous twitch in her right eyebrow, the way she bit down hard on her lip, and how tightly she clasped her hands behind her back.

Please, don't draw Maybelle's name….

Lavinia reached into the first clear sphere and pulled out a tiny slip of white paper. Still moving far too leisurely, she began to unfold it.

Then, Vale's darting blue-gray eyes fell on Laurel, who looked even younger than her twelve years in her sheer terror. She was visibly trembling and appeared to be already on the brink of tears. Her small hands clenched the hem of her best yellow dress so hard her knuckles were white.

Please, please, not Laurel…

The woman's dainty hands, their nails painted with stripes of lavender and vivid pink, unfurled the paper excruciatingly slowly. Her heavily mascaraed eyes unhurriedly swept over the name inscribed therein. And at a pace that would have made a one-legged tortoise look swift, her ruby lips parted.

"Please," Vale whispered aloud in nearly inaudible prayer, to whom exactly she wasn't quite sure, since no one up there in the Capitol heard or cared. But nonetheless, the word escaped her thin, dry lips again. "Please…"

And when Lavinia Gilden called out the name, she first felt a massive spurt of glorious relief. It wasn't Maybelle or Laurel. It wasn't her sisters. They were safe.

She noticed that the girls around her were gasping and shrinking away from her, their eyes wide with shock and alarm. It was only then that she actually heard the name that Lavinia Gilden had called out.

"Vale Whitaker!"

"A tricky thing, as yesterday, we were just children, playing soldiers, just pretending, dreaming dreams with happy endings, in backyards, winning battles with our wooden swords. But now, we've stepped into a cruel world where everybody stands to keep score. Keep your eyes open…." –Taylor Swift, "Eyes Open"

Author's Note: Yup, we all saw that coming from the summary, of course. Vale really should have been careful what she wished for-saying she'd be happy as long as it wasn't one of her siblings really jinxed it for her.

So, I hope you're enjoying my story so far. Next chapter, we'll find out how Vale and her family will react to the news, as well as who District Twelve's male tribute will be. Thanks for reading; you guys are awesome! :)

~Lily