Weeks go by, and eventually I stop thinking constantly about these new Hunger Games. I'm busy enough with my daily life: School wastes half of my day, Sam recently taught me how to set a snare, and Grandma has developed a bad cough. The days go by pretty much normally.
But one morning, I wake up before Sam, which is definitely not normal. He's the early bird, able to wake himself up at 4 o'clock in the morning without an alarm clock, and I usually need to be shaken awake. Today's Thursday, a school day, but we still have to go to the woods if we want any meals. I poke Sam until he stirs.
"Ha! Woke up before you!"
"Doesn't matter," he mumbles, "day off, today."
"Why?" I ask, confused.
"Today's the reaping," Sam answers. "They announced it at school yesterday. Don't you even listen to your teacher?"
"No."
"Of course not," he says, and pulls the blanket over his ears.
The reaping. I remember now that on this day exactly, one year ago, the Capitol declared its supreme leadership over the districts again. Today's the day two of my friends or maybe even myself will be hauled off to the Capitol to kill others and possibly die ourselves. There is no way I'm going back to sleep for the couple minutes I still have.
Eventually, Sam and our grandparents wake up, and we eat breakfast—which consists of boiled acorn mush and pine needle tea. Afterwards, I change into my only formal dress—plainly sewn out of deep red velvet—because I feel like this event calls for something nice.
"Let's go," says Sam when I'm finished changing. We live in the Seam, but District Twelve is so small that we can easily walk to town. Grandma and Grandpa hug us goodbye as we start out the door.
"Good luck, little black bear," Grandpa says to me. That's my nickname—little black bear, or sometimes just black bear or little bear. Grandpa came up with it after an incident when I was about seven years old. Wild animals are very common in the woods around the district, and sometimes they wander into the streets, not scared by the people.
One day, when I was walking home from school alone—Sam was sick that day—a giant black bear had strayed out of the woods. It was standing directly in between me and my house. I literally had ten more meters to go and I would have been safe inside the door, but the bear was blocking me. I was scared stiff, and just stared at the bear without doing anything, while it stared back at me. This went on for about five minutes, which seemed like eternity, until the bear looked away and slowly lumbered off.
Then I unfroze, walked to the door, and tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge. Frightened that the bear would come back, I struggled with the door harder. Finally, Grandpa opened the door, took a look at me, and laughed heartily. "Well here's our little black bear!" he exclaimed. It had turned out that my whole family had thought that I was the bear trying to get into the house!
Eight years later, everybody still uses that nickname. In fact, ever since the end of the rebellion, it's all Grandpa ever calls me. Perhaps the name Freia has too much of a connection with the freedom we almost had.
Please review: tell me if you like the story so far, or if I can improve it in any ways.
