I'm SO SORRY! I didn't mean to not write for so long... Life gets in the way. I'll try to write quicker next time. But here you are :)

Tanaly "Tana" Valban:

It's unfair. Ferra has curves, and she actually looks fifteen.

Ferra is my twin sister, but she doesn't look it. Her brown hair is straight, and always perfectly in place, rather than frizzy and wavy like mine, she has green eyes while I have boring brown, and she never gets mistaken for a twelve or thirteen-year-old. Plus, she can see colour out of both eyes. I'm colour blind in my left eye.

She was born only seventeen minutes before I, but everything about her looks and body is better than me. She is always perfectly healthy and I get sick all the time. She has never had lice, but I get them nearly every year. And then there's our personalities. She's a perfectionist, and I am naturally sloppy. I am a klutz, and I lose things all the time, while she never slips up and has never lost or forgotten anything pretty much in her entire life. She never gets angry, and I explode at the smallest things. How can we be so different?

You could say I'm the unfortunate twin. Well, really, I am the unfortunate twin. But even still, Ferra and I are best friends. I try not to be too jealous of her, because she doesn't mean to be better than me. She's too sweet to purposely try to be better than anyone. And she and I have a responsibility to be the "mothers" to our little brother, Arro.

You see, our father died several years ago from an unknown illness that killed many in our district. Some think it was a cruel trick of the war: the Capitol sending a super disease to kill off an eighth of the people here. But whatever it was, it had a great impact. Many people are permanently insane because they had it, but survived.

But what about our mother? Well, she got the disease before he did, but only mildly. She healed before he was even sick, but she wasn't right in the head. And when he died, she sank into a state of depression, somehow got her hands on a gun, and shot herself.

I don't sound very upset about that, do I? Well, I really can't be. If I dwell on it, I'll think of nothing else, and Ferra and I won't be able to support Arro.

But we don't live alone. We live with our grandmother, who has a disease called Alzheimer's that is slowly forcing her memories out of her. Soon, she won't even recognize me. I don't know what we'll do then.

During the day, Ferra, Arro and I all work in a clothing factory that makes expensive vintage clothing. We make whatever is in fashion in the Capitol. One of the items that always comes back is called "blue jeans." Blue jeans are extremely old fashioned. In history class, I learned that once they were the longest running clothing style ever. They stayed in style for over five-hundred years! Now they come in and out of style whenever vintage clothing does. But the indigo dye that is used to make them is really expensive, making jeans only available for the richest of the Capitol. You see, because jeans were in style for so long, the plant that the dye comes from almost became extinct. Well, when they were first invented they used the plant's dye, then they used synthetic dye, but when the synthetic dye became too expensive, they went back to the plant. And then it became endangered.

But even though the clothing we make is so expensive, we get payed as little as the people who work in factories that produce clothing for regular people. It's awful, really. But we also get a little money from our friend, Kaylin, who's family is middle class. She is wealthy compared to us.

Our friend Finch, on the other hand, is far more poor than we are. His family is made up of twelve members, and they own a repair shop, but they don't get much business because of the larger repair shop a few blocks away from theirs.

Finch and Kaylin are at the door now, calling to us. It is time to go to the reaping.

Fear fills me. Ferra and I have an agreement: if one of us is reaped, we cannot volunteer. But it would spell disaster if either of us were to die in the Games.

When we reach the square, I see a familiar face. Damask, a girl who works in the same factory as me, waves through the crowd. She gets sick often from the poor working conditions, so she is often stuck at home. And no matter how hard she tries, she cannot hide the fact that she is nearly nine months pregnant.

Ferra and I are the only ones who know the true story. Before the Capitol obliterated Thirteen and made it a law that commoners couldn't travel outside their district without a viable reason, a young man was constantly visiting her from District Six. It was a secret, but Ferra and I saw him a few times, and she couldn't lie to us about it. We had already seen him. Anyways, every time he was around, she was constantly smiling. And then came the day the Capitol won. All she did was cry, for days. And that was when she told us what they had done.

He's been trying to get her to District Six for a long time. He's been sending her coded letters. Plotting. But none of their plans have been successful thus far.

As she lines up along with other seventeen-year-old girls, Ferra and I are herded to the fourteen-year-old section. Ferra grips my hand tightly. We whisper to each other until a hush falls over the crowd and we realize that it is time for the girl tribute to be reaped.

And suddenly, my world is changed forever.

Peri Wilcox:

Being reaped is a horrible thing.

Imagine, right before your name is called, your heart is as loud as thunder, your fingers crossed, holding your breath. It's so quiet you could hear a pin drop. You dig your nails into your palm until you're sure you've drawn blood. And when your name is called, everyone around you turns to look at you. You have to be nudged by the person beside you in order to wake you up and get you to move towards the stage. People part like the Red Sea to let you pass, never taking their eyes off you. That's the worst part—thousands of pairs of eyes watch your every move, turning their heads as one to follow you as if they were programmed robots or clones. Then, after what seems like a million long steps, after your legs have turned to jelly, and your knees threaten to fail you, you reach the stage and climb the steep steps to join President Shingle.

Everyone is still staring.

President Shingle grabs my hand before I can stop him, and he gives it a firm shake. I pull my hand back as if it was burned. And then I count the long seconds until I'm allowed to leave the stage. One . . . Two . . . Four . . . Eight . . . Twenty . . . Sixty . . . One-hundred . . . Two-hundred . . .

I've lost count.

Finally, the president seems to have finished speaking, and I am led away by a couple Peacekeepers.

"Hey," says the girl beside me, the female tribute from my district that I hadn't even noticed until now.

"Hey," I reply, and look away. I'm not in the mood to make any conversation.

A long section of time passes that I am unaware of because I was lost in my thoughts. The next thing I know, I am in a room by myself, and my mother is being ushered in, carrying her new baby in her arms. I used to be an only child, until she came along. She was born last week. My father comes in behind her.

I hold out my arms to take the tiny little thing. She is wrapped in a pink blanket, and she cannot be more than a foot in length. I trace the creases of her tiny pink face with my index finger as my father begins to speak.

"Well, son . . . Go get 'em."

"What?" I ask, confused.

"Go get 'em," he repeats.

"You mean . . . Kill them?" I ask.

"Well, that's the only way you can come home, right?" my mother puts in.

"Come on, Peri, I know you can do it," says my dad.

"What, kill that little girl who was reaped? Kill other children? I'm going to be one of the oldest there! How can I kill anyone younger than me? It's not right!"

"It's not like any of them will be innocent. Everyone will be killing each other, even the twelve-year-olds!" puts in my mother.

"Maybe, but that doesn't give them the right to. And it doesn't give me the right to, either."

"This conversation is over. You will kill, and you will win because of it."

I shut up, then. If I knew one thing, I knew that it was a bad idea to reopen a conversation once my dad had closed it. A very bad idea.

I plant a quick kiss on my baby sister's forehead before everyone is taken away.

Several other friends come in, but I am too preoccupied to remember much of their visits. How could my life go from being good, with the birth of a brand-new sister, to bad, with the huge chance of my death?

Tana:

Ferra and Arro lead Grandma in. They each give me a hug, and Ferra begins to cry. I wipe away her tears with my sleeve and tell her to stop. It's not yet time for tears.

"Arro, you be good for Ferra and Grandma, okay?" I say. He nods, and hugs me again. And then the four of us talk a little about what I want them to do if I don't come back, because I know that there's a big chance that I won't make it.

Soon enough, they are taken out, and someone else enters. It's Damask. And she's crying.

"Tana . . . I just heard. They gave an updated list of who has been reaped so far. And Carbon . . ." She starts crying even harder.

"Carbon . . . Carbon has been reaped?" I ask, my eyes widening. She nods through tears. "I'm so sorry, Damask! That's horrible!" I let her cry into my shoulder.

We sit like that for a long time. My shoulder is soaked with her tears. I stroke her back soothingly.

"I'll talk to him for you," I say as she cries. "I'll tell him I know you. Anything you want me to tell him." She looks up.

"Tell him . . . Tell him I love him. Tell him I'm doing fine, and the baby is fine, and I miss him. Tell him to come back!" I don't even care that she wants him to come back more than she wants me to. She loves him so much. Even I would tell him to kill me so he could go back to her, if only for the baby.

"I'll tell him," I say. Then she is removed from the room, and I am left alone with only the horrible sinking feeling in my stomach that has been brought on by the thoughts of what awaits me.