The square is packed with my neighbors. Anxiety, stress, fear, and defeat course through the crowd in brief surges like the electricity to our house I think, but even that is a lie today, because for the next month we will have power 12 hours a day almost every day. All thanks to the "wonderful wonderful" games! In the crowd, I see Rory Hawthorne. He's always so nice to me, and for a while we were always together because his brother Gale died in the same mining accident that took Katniss and my father. I wave, and flash a sad smile in his direction, but he doesn't see me. Poor Rory has siblings to worry about today. I shudder, grateful to be the youngest. Getting selected would be bad enough, but to have to watch your siblings murdered on tv would be an even worse nightmare.
White armored PeaceKeepers herd is towards registration tables where each gives a blood sample. I am long past the days when I winced at the needle- the sight of blood hasn't bothered me in years. I press my throbbing finger to the paper, and move on. "It's okay," Katniss would say, "It only hurts a little, not a lot. "
The day is cold for a Reaping, and the sky is stained gray like coal dust. Like everything in District 12, it has been coated in the miserable color of the mines. I used to dream of flying, thinking that if I flew high enough, I could leave 12, and find a land where there was color and safety. A warm, safe meadow, where sisters didn't leave home and never return. Where fathers were always there for their children and mothers didn't shut out their daughters. In the dream, every time I tried to land there I would wake up again, rejected, and sent back to the misery of District 12.
"Hello District 12!" A woman with neon hair sweeps onto the stage, addressing us like she is a celebrity and we are her most devoted fans. Effie. I smirk. Even today I can't help but laugh at the "fashion" from the Capitol. Effie wears a short-skirted dress, coated in short white feathers. Around her neck hangs a golden medallion shaped like a bird's beak. She looks like a goose.
"Happy Hunger Games District 12!" Her shrill voice pierces our terrified atmosphere, peeling back the scab so we all have to face the pain; the Reaping has begun.
No one is safe.
Effie's greeting echoes around the square, drawing us into the surreal moment of the Reaping.
"This year," she begins, "is a very very special Games!" Every sentence ends like it's the most exciting thing she could possibly imagine. "As I'm sure you know, this is the seventy-fifth annual Hunger Games, which makes it a Quarter Quell!" She squeals with excitement, and lets her announcement sink in.
No one in the crowd is nearly as excited to hear this as Effie is. Quells are bad. Last Quarter Quell, they took twice the number of tributes from each district, and everyone in my mother's generation knew personally someone who was taken. Interestingly, a tribute from District 12 won those games, bringing wealth and surplus to our District for an entire year. Haymitch, I think his name was. I can't imagine how horrible that would be, returning as one in four, maybe he even killed one of the others from 12. No wonder he drank himself to death.
Effie is speaking again, but the blood rushing in my ears is too loud and I don't care anymore about what she has to say. My name is in that bowl too many times. I can't get picked on a quell year. I can't get picked. I. Can't. Get. Picked. It's all I can do to stay steady. Around me, I can see that others are thinking along similar lines, and the girl two people down has actually burst into tears.
"...Top secret!" Effie is shrieking. "I know you are probably just as excited as I am to find out what the special Quell will be for this year, but the President is refusing to tell anyone but the game makers!" /Why would they keep it secret? Won't it have some effect on the reaping?/ Apparently not, because now Effie is starting the same film we watch every year preceding the name drawing.
"13 prosperous Districts," the film intones, "united by a glorious Capitol." The words are very familiar, I've heard them every year of my life at the Reaping. I could mouth right along with this, but I'm in no mood to joke. My pulse increases and my breaths become shallow. I look down and realize that my knees are shaking, but I force them to stop. /Do. Not. Look. Weak. / I admonish myself. /Look around,/ I am surrounded by a few hundred of my peers. School friends, people who have come to the apothecary shop seeking help, neighbors, and people who worked with Katniss and my father. The odds of my name being drawn have to be tiny. There's no way.
Still, I am lightheaded as Effie steps over behind the bowls with all of our names. Her voice darkens, "May the odds be ever in your favor." The sobriety doesn't last, however, and her voice is as chipper as ever when she announces, "Ladies first!"
Elegantly, her hand flutters among the slips. Toying with all of our fates, knowing that we are all utterly under the control of her one idiotically fluttering hands. She pounces. One single, folded strip of white paper. A single name. It could be anyone.
The odds aren't in anyone's favor.
