I am up before the sun rises. Pale light falls through the ragged curtains and carefully illuminates the sleeping bodies of twenty-two other girls. Some are young and tiny, others are a little older and bigger. One little girl, Maeve, is sucking on her thumb. I can tell without seeing her face. She's only three years old and can barely talk. Her mother died in an accident in the factory and her father hung himself a week after that. At least that's what I heard. But Maeve is just the latest addition to our macabre club of lonely kids. There's twenty-three girls (including myself) and around twenty-nine boys who are sleeping in the other room, living in this community home. Although using the word community to describe this place is pretty far-fetched if you ask me.
I sit up and stretch quietly. Judging by the light it is around half past five. There is no school or work at the factory today but we still have to do our chores. Therefore, my guess is that I have around an hour before we're being awoken by Mrs Acosta's hostility so I get up and try to walk out of the room without making a sound. Once outside I quietly rush down the hallway, past the boys' dormitory until I reach the door in the very back of the house. It's an old door that I open as carefully as possible, knowing that its hinges are prone to making a nasty little squeak that could give away my plans. I manage to keep the noise as low as possible by opening it slowly with the handle pushed up. Repeating the same procedure as I'm closing the door behind me I find myself standing at the bottom of a winding staircase. The air is moist and heavy but my spirits are lifted immediately. I walk up the stairs in complete darkness until I reach another door. Passing through it I finally find myself in the attic of the community home and I am surrounded by old books, boxes and furniture. It smells mouldy up here and the heat of the preceding weeks is trapped in the small area but this is my safe space from all the verbal abuse and beating in this house and the reality that is this day. The day of the reaping. The day that decides who will be sent to play in the Hunger Games.
I've been part of the reaping for six years now and I've never been worried about becoming a tribute but today feels different. There's a nervousness crawling up and down my spine and the worst part about it is it's not at all terrifying. I have had a dark thought lingering in the far back of my mind for a few weeks but I kept pushing it farther back and still do. So I grab one of the old books and instead make my way through the obstacle course of long forgotten items until I reach the area underneath the biggest hole in the roof that lets in the first rays of sunshine. I sit down and start reading "The Heirs of Time", a book that lists various poisons as well as remedies found in nature.
My home, District 8 is almost exclusively made out of concrete. There's no fields, no trees and barely any weed at all. We're factory workers after all, we produce textiles for all of Panem, ranging from plain linen to expensive velour and we even produce the uniforms for the Peacekeepers. We don't need greenery, we wouldn't have the time to enjoy it and with all the fumes that come out of the factory I doubt anything could grow around here anyways.
I usually work a six-hour shift in one of the factories after school is over but to honour this wonderful day the doors to the manufactories remain closed for once. I think the fact that I am from District 8 might be the reason why I have such strong interest in nature. Who is not interested in the unfamiliar? That or maybe it's because these are the only book within my reach. Either way, I focus on the book and get lost between the words and delicate pictures.
I jerk my head up a while later. Outside people are talking in the streets and I feel the heat rising with the sun. I shut my book immediately and get up on my feet, making my way back through the maze of cheap antiques, then I take a deep breath and rush down the stairs. I carefully open and close the door at the bottom of the stairs but as I turn around a rush of adrenaline heaps through my body as I see a little boy standing in the middle of the hallway, starring right at me. He knows what I just did is not allowed, he knows it all too well, judging by the black eye he sports. I place my index finger on my lips and look at him pleadingly. He nods carefully and mirrors my gesture. I think his name is Faiz but I'm not sure. We hear footsteps at the bottom of the main stairs and immediately Faiz rushes back into his dormitory. I try to run back into mine as quietly as I can but as I get to the door I hear the voice of Mrs Acosta behind me: "Mallory, what the hell do you think you're doing out here?".
I turn around slowly, trying to come up with an excuse that might just get me out of this mess but when I come to face her she's already holding up the black stick. I know exactly what that means. She's not in a talking kind of mood today so I don't even try.
"Take off your gown", she says and I do, standing in front of her with nothing on me other than my undergarment. I know to turn back around without her telling me to. She strikes my bare back with the stick fifteen times while I ram my fingernails into my palm and bite my lip until I taste blood. Once she's done I put my gown back on, knowing that she made sure I don't bleed from any of the wounds she caused. Today was not a day for serious injury.
"Now go wake the girls, breakfast is ready."