Gwendolyn Gingham, 17, District Eight
She tries to ignore the camera flashes. None of them are snapping pictures of her anyway. They're all focused on Mom as she struts down the sidewalk like it's a runway. A few grab pictures of Elara and Daphne, but she's just the backdrop. With the ratty clothes she has on compared to the glamorous outfit her mom wears, she wouldn't be surprised if they cropped her out of the photos entirely.
The photographers don't stick around for long. They all have more celebrities to find pictures of for their magazine covers. Maris Gingham may be one of the bigger stars in the district, but she isn't the only one, or even the biggest.
She walks in silence behind the rest of her family. Elara and Daphne are chatting away about something or another, and she doesn't bother butting in. She doesn't have anything to add and knows that they'll much prefer talking to one another anyway. They've made that clear already, and so if her hanging in the background is what made them happy, that's what she would do.
Mom stops at one of the fashion shops and waves the three of them off. "I've got business to attend to, darlings. Go on, I'll see each of you at the square before the Reapings."
None of them need to be told twice. Elara and Daphne run off to explore more of the shops and stores. Gwen nods her head at her mother and turns, unsure where to go herself. Going home would be the easiest option, but it's a long walk, and so she stays put.
There's a nice little antique shop across the street, and she wanders inside. She doesn't have any money to buy anything, but it's something to pass the time. She spends a few minutes inside, walking through the handful of isles. She doesn't want to be a bother to the shopkeeper, though, who's already starting to watch her curiously. Before she can leave, the bell dings and a group of familiar kids walk into the shop.
Gwen smiles at them and waves meekly. "Hi!"
Paige is at the front of her small group of classmates, and she's the one who responds, looking at Gwen as if she were an alien. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm just looking around!" she says pleasantly. "You all look so nice today! Especially you, Paige, I really love your dress."
Paige rolls her eyes, and a few of the other kids do the same thing. Somebody whispers something that makes all of them giggle. "Yeah, whatever," Paige says. "Thanks. "If you really wanna be nice though, this shop is really getting crowded, so why don't you go find somewhere else?"
A few of the kids snicker at that, but she doesn't pay that any mind. She just nods her head and flashes a big smile. "Sure! Yeah! I mean, it really is crowded in here, and I was just about to leave anyway, so it's no problem at all! Have fun! And good luck at the Reaping!"
She pushes through the door, and even though she tries not to, it's impossible to overhear their whispers as she leaves.
"Gosh, she's such a suck-up."
"It's so desperate and pathetic."
It isn't the first time she's overheard those words about her. At least they were nice enough to not say it to her face. Not everybody is so kind. It doesn't make any sense. There's something wrong with her that she must not be able to see, because no matter how hard she tries to make people like her, it just seems to do the opposite.
But she'll just have to keep on trying. After all, what else can she do?
The town square is packed. It's enough to make her stomach swim and her heart race. People are pressing in on her from all sides, just a big blob of kids all waiting for this to be over. She ended up going to the town square early, but even then the crowd was massive, and she couldn't find Mom or her sisters, no matter how hard she looked. Eventually, she just decided to check-in and get through it on her own.
The one good thing about the Reaping is that the district is so massive, there's no chance of her running into anybody she knows. The crowd is filled to the brim, mostly with kids from the slums. While she may look like them on the outside, and not eat as well as the rich kids from the city, she's still a step higher on the ladder than most of them. Some of the kids look like they haven't showered for months, oil and coal staining their clothes and hair. Others clearly just got done working at the factory.
Regardless, the fact that she doesn't have to speak with anybody is a relief. She isn't sure what it is, maybe it's fear about the Reaping or the experience this morning, but she feels drained. Putting on that act, smiling and nodding and trying her hardest to make everybody pleased, it's exhausting. She isn't sure if she has the energy to do it right now.
The mayor starts his speech. She can't see on stage—she's always been smaller than everybody else her age, most people would guess that she was closer to 14 or 15 than 17—but she knows that she isn't missing much. The Treaty of Treason is the same as it is every year. The Districts rebelled. They lost. Now the Hunger Games is the punishment. It didn't seem fair to her, but she does her best to not think about it. The Hunger Games are so terrifying and dreadful, there's no point dwelling on it.
After the speech, the escort comes out on stage. Gwen pokes her head up for a peek and sees that the longtime District Eight escort is dressed in her usual getup. Her dress is a patchwork monstrosity, made up of all sorts of different cloths and materials stitched together.
"Hello, District Eight! It is I, Costella Liage, gracing your district with my presence for yet another year. I have a good feeling that this will be the year for District Eight! So, let's see who the lucky two boys and girls will be that will represent their district this fine year!"
Gwen drops down off her tippy-toes. She doesn't need the suspense of watching her dig around in the name bowl. Every year she takes her time doing it, sometimes for as long as an entire minute. Her first year, when Gwen was still too little to even be in the Reapings, she took her time with the female bowl but then was rushed by the mayor to quickly choose the boy. The girl was Cecelia, District Eight's first victor in a long, long time. After that, she's insisted on it being good luck. Never mind the fact that 14 straight kids since then have been chosen by her without winning.
"And our male tribute is. . . Claude Sagathy!" She announces excitedly.
This time she doesn't even bother trying to catch a glimpse of the boy who's been reaped. Everybody around her is already stretching up, trying to poke their heads up to see, and Gwen doesn't feel the energy to try to fight for a look.
The two exchange a few words, and then Costella is back to her dramatic selecting ceremony. A minute passes before she taps the microphone, and Gwen sucks in her breath and crosses her fingers. A nasty couple of thoughts pass through her mind, names she hopes to be picked, and she pushes them away as soon as she can.
"And our second tribute will be. . . Gwendolyn Gingham!"
No. No, no, no, no. Pick a different name. Any other name, just not that one. She can feel her heart pounding against her chest, and for a moment she forgets how to breathe. She can't go into the Hunger Games. Not her. She's too small, too weak, she doesn't know how to survive. In the arena, she'll just be another kid from the slums of District Eight. Another dead tribute. That can't be her.
Tears begin to form in her eyes, but she quickly blinks them away. No. She can't do that. She can't break down. Even with her mind racing, the word death screaming out at her over and over again, she puts a smile on her face, then begins to walk toward the stage.
The escort gives her a hand up the stage, and she thanks her quietly, and then with the microphone shoved in her face, thanks her again.
"Thank you," she says a third time. The words feel garbled and hard to scramble out of her mouth, but when she hears herself she almost sounds calm and collected. "I'm so lucky to be chosen, this is an amazing opportunity. I'll miss District Eight, but I'll represent them well in the Capitol."
The words are all fake, and they sound fake to her ears. She just hopes that it isn't so obvious to everyone else.
Leona Wertwil, 12, District Seven
The streets are empty. A few stalls are on the side of the pavement, but most of them are closed down. The storefronts have their blinds closed and the small nearby park is silent aside from a few stray dogs and cats wandering, looking for scraps. Almost everybody is home, being with family and passing the time before the Reaping together.
But not her. It's not that she doesn't have a home to go to, or a family to be with. Her dad and brother are both there right now. Dad had asked her to stay and have breakfast with them, together as a family, but Leona shook her head and mumbled that she wanted to go out. He knew by now not to push it any further, so he just sighed and nodded his head okay.
A couple walks down the street, hand in hand as they giggle at each other's jokes. They make an easy mark, and Leona thinks about trying to see if she can slide the man's wallet out of his pocket with him noticing, but decides against it. The streets are so dead that if he noticed there wouldn't be anywhere to run away to. Besides, even if it took him a few minutes to notice, he'd know it was her.
She stays put instead, her back against the brick walls of the closed-down shops, her knees tucked up to her chest. Usually, when the streets are more crowded she'll get mistaken for an orphan or beggar more than once. That mostly just gets her chased off to another street corner, but sometimes somebody generous will toss her a coin. She never bothers to correct them.
After all, she might as well be. Her mom's gone, and no matter how much she wanted to be close with Dad and Rean. . . something inside of her just pulled her away every time. It wasn't that she wanted to be sitting alone in the street while them two laughed and told stories at the breakfast table. She just had something inside of her that made it so no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't force herself to let them in.
It all came back to the same image. Every time she thought about getting close to them, letting herself know that she actually cared about and loved them, she'd imagine walking home one day and finding them the same way she had found her mom. A branch impaling them, mangling their body until it's barely recognizable anymore.
A few years back Dad had to work and asked for her to watch after Rean. He went off playing by himself and came back a few minutes later, crying as he held his finger, a chip of wood stuck in his skin. It was only a splinter, and he ended up getting over it soon enough. But Leona was a different story. All she could see was her mom's corpse, but this time with Rean being the one dead.
When Dad came back a while later and found her still crying inconsolably about it, he stopped asking her to watch after Rean. That was when she started drifting. She was never as close to her dad or Rean as she was to Mom, but that gap only seemed to get wider and wider every day.
She wishes that she could just push past all of it. She wants so badly to just forget about what happened and try to live a happy, normal life. Her mom told her that her name meant lion and that she was named after a brave one that saved its entire pride. But that isn't her. She wants to be brave and strong for her mom, but if she was really both of those things then her mom never would have died in the first place.
If she was really Leona, lion, then she would have done the same thing that lion did in all the bedtime stories her mom used to tell her. She would have saved her pride.
The town square fills up quickly around her. It was only a short walk from her spot on the street, and so she made her way there extra early. The stage wasn't even set up completely when she got there, and she ended up having to wait for a half-hour before the sign-in table was ready, but it isn't like she missed out on anything.
She was the very first one checked in, and from there she got to wait in the empty section as people steadily trickled in. It gave her plenty of time to take in her surroundings. The town square is a familiar place, but it looks almost unrecognizable now. There are giant red banners hanging from the rooftops of all the nearby buildings, each with the Panem seal proudly displayed on it. The stage is entirely makeshift, thrown up in front of the Justice building. There are the two large glass bowls of names, and then a handful of chairs. Two are for the mentor and escort, and then the rest are for the victors, a trio of old men who won before Leona was even born.
All three of the victors arrive late, only stumbling up on stage and over to their seats once the entire district is in the town square, waiting for them. The mayor looks annoyed but waits for them to start her speech anyway. Leona swears that she can see a couple of them start to doze off while he speaks. She can't blame them; she'd do the same if her fear wasn't so good at keeping her awake.
Once the mayor's done she hands over the microphone to the escort, a grouchy-looking man who looks way too old to be an escort. He must be forty or fifty years old, is bald, and is wearing a black leather jacket and ripped jeans. He doesn't look happy to be here.
"The name's Richard May, let's get this show on the road already, huh?" he says in a gruff and impatient voice.
He moves too fast for her to even take a moment to worry, because before she knows it he's got a slip in his hand and he's called out the name. She's almost glad that it's over though, it allows her to let out a deep breath. The Reaping is over for her, she's safe until next year.
A few moments pass, and nobody moves. The escort looks even more upset now. "I said, Leona Wertwil! Come on, get up here. Make it snappy!"
Still nothing. Someone beside her from her class nudges her on the shoulder and gives her an odd look. Then another kid does the same, and a third, and it isn't until that movement draws the eyes of the entire district on her that it sets in.
Leona Wertwil, that's me. That's my name.
It still doesn't feel real, everything has this weird quality to it like she's in a dream. She wonders if she should pinch herself, or try falling off a chair, something to wake her up from this nightmare. Finally, a kid gives her a shove that sends her feet moving, and she starts making her way up the stage.
It apparently isn't fast enough, because a Peacekeeper grabs her by the arm and starts half-dragging her up the stairs. All the while, she keeps on shaking her head, waiting for everything to go away. Because it can't be real. If it's real, then that means. . . well, she doesn't want to think about that. So it can't be real.
Richard looks at her and sighs, shaking his head. "I sure hope you're deaf, otherwise you're going to have to explain why you kept me waiting all that time for nothing. My time's precious, you know!"
Leona doesn't know what to say to that. Her mouth hangs open for a moment, but then she shuts it, and squeezes her eyes shut, hoping that when she opens them she'll be back home in bed.
Back where this isn't happening. Back where her mom is still there to tell her bedtime stories. Back where she's still able to laugh and smile and stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night, imagining herself a lion.
Hi again! So I had a loong car trip yesterday and I wrote this chapter on my phone, and so I don't know if it's any good. I had fun writing it either way, and I'll do my best to keep on doing better next time! Thank you so much to infinitelydisappointing and Draph for Gwen and Leona! Right now I have a lot of reserved spots from people, so I don't know if I'll be able to write another chapter tomorrow, but I'll make sure to get it written as soon as I have the characters! Thank you to everyone who's sent their awesome characters to me! I am so overwhelmed with how many I've gotten, and all of them are amazing! See you soon!
-Avery