Chapter One- the Beginning
The sun glared in through the window. My eyes squinted as I opened them. I rolled over to the dark side of the room. My hand stretched out for the warmth of Kitty. It was cold and empty. Kitty had a habit of falling out of the bed. Or more accurately, I had a habit of pushing Kitty out of the bed as I slept. I forced myself into the light. There was Kitty's long brown hair spilled all over Rose's bed. Rose was up and was getting dressed. She was like an older Kitty, with her long brown hair and brown eyes. All the girls in my family had brown hair and brown eyes and all the boys had blonde hair and blue eyes. I was the different one. Long blonde hair, sparkly blue eyes, and apparently brilliant at everything. My mother says that I am like her sister, Prim, but can hunt and is not as shy. I roll reluctantly roll out of bed and hit the floor with a small crash, waking Kitty up. "Athena! SHHH!" Giggled Kitty, seeing me on a heap on the floor. I am not exactly graceful but I am more elegant than everyone else. Well, that is what Effie Trinket says when she comes over to our house to see Haymitch or update Katniss on the President Paylor from District 8. I don't live in a district as ours was blown up nearly 15 years ago. It is just our family and Haymitch's family. And that is the way I like it. I slowly get changed, taking time to waken up my senses. I am only walking down the stairs when I realise why I am feeling different and more nervous than usual. Not that I am nervous. It is the announcement day.
The day when they say how the very last Hunger Games shall go. It will be the first and last Hunger Games I shall see. From what I hear it is horrible. Mother and father have been in it twice. Most people who go in never make it out alive. I see that everyone is already up. Even Kitty has beat me to the table. She sticks her tongue out at me as she dramatically and slowly lowered her bottom onto the chair. I stand and eat a piece of toast. The air is tense this morning. No laughing or joking, no joking about how the Capitol is so big that one person has an enormous house to themselves when all seven of us are all crowded into a three bedroom house. With me, Kitty and Rose in one bedroom, Mother and Father in the master bedroom and my brothers, Peter, James and Fionn. Haymitch's family all have a bedroom to themselves but I think that would be pretty lonely. "What time is the announcement at?" asked Kitty. She is the youngest out of all of us and can sometimes not very tactical. Mother sighed. "Noon. Effie is coming down as well." She said. Kitty clapped her hands excitedly. "Yay! I love when Effie comes!" It's a pity no one else does, I think to myself. Effie is very nice but can be a little... naive. No, that is too simple. As my mother would say, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. "What time is it now?" I ask wanting to draw the conversation away. "Half ten." Said Mother. "Plenty of time for hunting." And I leave the house. I see Conor walking out of his house. If you put me and Conor beside each other, we would have been thought be twins. Same sparkly blue eyes, same blonde hair, we even enjoyed the same things. He was the only person in the world I felt tongue-tied with.
Maybe it is his looks. Kitty never shuts up about him being the hottest guy on the planet and how she will marry him when she is older and how they will live in a big mansion, surrounded by the Capitol's most finest riches. Rose and I quickly pushed that idea out of her featherheaded brain years ago, reminding her that most of the rich and powerful Capitol citizens were now some of the poorest in all of Panem. She had gone running to Mother as she was a tattletale but Mother hadn't denied it, in fact she agreed with us! I had laughed at her after and she had slapped me. We got into a fight and I don't think she will ever hit me ever again. Conor and I were at the fence when he said, "Today is the announcement. What do you think will happen?" I looked at him. It had caught me off guard. "Sending all the children in. We talked about this ages ago." I said as I ducked under the fence. "Yes, but what if they do something different." There is panic in his voice that made me turn around. "Like what?" I asked. "Our parents. The victors. They were... they were the celebrates during the rebellion. And they said they would 'Put in the celebrates and their children into the arena as the last Hunger Games.' Or something like that. Isn't that us?