Reaping Day.


Selena swears like a dockworker as the town square falls ringingly silent, and Misty can't blame her. She grips the ribbon around her waist with stiff fingers. You idiot, she wants to shout, you impulsive child, what do you think you've done? A friend should've held him back. Whatever was going through his head should have been locked inside. But those two words can't be unsaid now.

Looking blindsided, District Five's first Volunteer in decades steps out of the fifteen year olds' section, the middle area. He walks pigeon-toed. His shoes are too small, even unlaced, but his shirt is well-mended and hangs soft with years of washing. He's got a mother who cares for him. Why would he go and give up a thing like that?

The broad teenager with the blocky fists doesn't waste his reprieve. He takes a few uncertain steps before he bolts from the stairs, barrelling for his section again, bursting into the arms of a wide-hipped, sobbing girl, scooping her right up into the air. Technically, he's got permission to return all the way to his family in the back rows, but the cameras are soaking this up. It is honestly better television than the patched-up dud still shuffling through the dirt.

"That was a contender. What the hell is this?" Selena grinds through her teeth. "Is he brain-damaged? If he thinks he's going to enjoy a week of ice cream just to step off the pedestal before it gets hard, I'll break his neck myself. I can't run around for sponsors to indulge a death wish."

"There could be another reason. Maybe there's something up his sleeve," Misty whispers, with the vain hope of a slum kid on Winter's Day. Selena is unimpressed.

"You think so? You feel like switching?"

Misty's girl was Reaped with no fanfare. A sweet-faced, limber teen with dark almond eyes and straight bangs. Maharajah, the escort, called her Ling. Her dress is real silk, and Misty can easily imagine her being from one of the creches, privately-tutored technicians' children who play with video cubes for their birthdays and never take tesserae, because their daddies get sent to engineer the arenas nine months out of every year. It is hard not to hold a grudge against them where Misty comes from. When the bigger boy was climbing up to the stage, she would have said yes. A switch out of jealousy.

But she shakes her head now, and Selena smirks bitterly, confronting the reality of the young boy who has just knocked Five down several pegs for the heck of it.

He says his name is Newel. He has to repeat it for the microphone to pick it up. With prompting, he raises his hand into the air with Ling's. There is only the typical dull rumble of applause. Maharajah hurries them off the stage without much ceremony, and Misty can guess why.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.


"You're a fucking blockhead. No offense." Selena bites the end off a string of red liquorice, and digs into the candy jar for a packet of sugar dust. "Please, lay it on me. You felt really bad for his girl back home? You've got a thing for his girl? Maybe stepping up is gonna enlighten her to your nascent charms? Have you got a sick sister? Dad's injured, out of work? Those are classic. I don't know how effective, but they've got appeal." The dust pours neatly down the hollow liquorice tube, and she stops it up with a sour candy nugget. She crosses past Newel on her way to douse the whole thing in the caramel fountain. "Are you terminally ill? It's noble, but there's not a sentimental goon in the Capitol who'd drop sponsor money on that. So let me have it. I want to know if I have a chance at getting you home."

"My mom-" he says, and pauses to watch her expanding log of sugar. She twirls it while the caramel dries, and rolls it in one bowl of crushed nuts and one of chocolate shavings. "I didn't...mean to Volunteer. I was thinking 'what if it happened,' and it jumped out of my mouth before I could-"

"I figured that much." Her eyes are hard chips of blue ice, but not unkind. Maybe she knew enough at this age to not unzip her lips until well on the way home from town square; still, the stress of the Reaping is otherworldly, and she remembers her brother retching from nerves before the escort was even on stage. It's her sixth year out now. She's got to roll with the punches. Newel, for instance. Newel is a bit of a kidney-punch. "So you wanted to save your mom? I know some maternal sponsors on my roll. I guess you could play this young, humble hero. Vulnerable, which gives them something to hook you with, and very grateful. I know it's a lot of bull, but they go crazy over this stuff."

"I didn't do it to save my mom." The boy is still matter-of-fact, but a distant, painful sense of purpose drills through his gaze straight into Selena's skull. "I wanted to get away from her. I want to put her in jail for the rest of her life."

He rolls up his soft, mended sleeve, and all of Selena Elian's plans make a violent swerve to the right.


Ling is polite to a fault. That's what she has going for her so far. Her table manners impress even Maharajah, who has existed in a perpetually blasé opiate haze for longer than Misty can remember going to the Reapings, and while she has been crying, she's apologized repeatedly, muffling the damp noises in her own linen handkerchief. Who gives their daughter a handkerchief for a token? Creche people, apparently. Misty had been right about that. Imagine engineering the power grid for an arena your child ends up Reaped into, while under pain of death or Avoxing for the whole extended family if you slip any pertinent details.

It's hard to feel bad for a girl who's never wanted for anything, but it's getting easier now. Misty strokes her hair while she cries on the end of the bed. Cries, apologizes, wipes her eyes.

"Do you think there's any chance I could join the Career alliance?" she asks, lifting a splotchy red face. Misty tries to think of the most tactical categorical 'no.'

"I managed to do it because I was smaller than any of them, and they needed someone to go quickly through the pipes and find supplies. They let me live at the bloodbath after I killed a boy for his backpack and almost got away. I was good at something they needed." The young woman tilts her head, tinny sheets of earrings clinking together behind her soft hair. "Do you have a feat you're talented in? Remember, the arena is always something new. You could find yourself excelling in a lot of different ways."

"I don't know a lot about nature, or survival, ma'am. I do well in school, but-"

Misty almost laughs. "Please, I don't think we'll need the 'ma'am.' You're making me feel old. You would've been eleven when I won."

It seems to unnerve Ling to be reminded how new Five's mentors are. Well, that's the breaks. Vito Purnell walked out as Five's first Victor in the Twenty-First, and hung on for over three decades, alone. The 50s saw fit to give him two girls in a row. Before Misty could wash the blood and scorched skin from her palms, he was already signing his retirement papers. He'd always wanted to live out his time in some hammock on the coast. Which left Selena, sharp and inflammatory with memories of gnawing rats and canned food swollen with botulism, and Misty, the gentle-voiced district traitor. If they ever agreed on anything, the pundits joke, it must've been on accident.

Ling is waiting on her every phrase like she's got the keys to the castle, the sword in the stone. Misty isn't sure how to tell her that if it took Vito the longest part of his life to save one, Five might be bang out of luck for quite a few years onward.

"Something we might be able to do is play with your father's influence," she considers, and her tribute clings to the words. "He's loyal, proud of his duties. He feels honored that his daughter has the privilege to compete in one of his own pieces of work, and you're honored as well. You're respectful, dazzling, and eager to showcase the brains of our district. You've always been interested in the Games because of him, right? Give me a sound bite: which of the old arenas have you wished you could visit since you were a little girl?"


It takes another coat of caramel and a topper of fudge before Selena settles down. She is going to be nibbling her confection all the way to the Capitol. Misty sometimes tactfully suggests the salad platter, or a dish of buttered peas, or at least some artichoke hearts. Fuck that, Selena returns. If the only thing between you and toxic paralysis for two and a half weeks is the grass growing through the concrete in stiff tufts, you'd get over all the appeal of vegetable fiber too.

Anyway, if Newel doesn't get home to personally send his mom to the darkest hole under the Justice Building, Selena is going to kill her herself. The boy took visible comfort in that. A breath of relief, like Panem had been lifted off his back. He was ready to listen. If it came to it, ready to die.

Coriolanus wept.

"We're going to handle this carefully," she says, scraping the caramel prong with her teeth. "We don't play you as the abused boy from the start. It would look weak, and they have to know it's something you can overcome. So I'll be firm with your prep team- we're covering up those arms for the chariot rides."

He nods. He's already replaced those fine mended sleeves over his patchwork of dot burns and finger bruises. "When do we show them?"

"I want to say interview night. That's the biggest punch, with a huge audience, and Flickerman can make it the tragedy of the year. But I don't want it to feel like we pulled it out of our asses. I'm thinking we can allude to it earlier than that. When I'm making the first rounds with the sponsors, I'll give them a hint of this dark secret that drove you to Volunteer. They'll be chomping to know more." She chips the hardened candy between her molars. "This is going to be a trickier part. Somewhere in the tribute building, you need to get someone to grab your arm, or push you. Some kind of provocation. Whatever you do, don't touch first. Once they do it, deck them."

Newel's eyebrows are perched in fascination. "Fighting with other tributes isn't allowed before the Games."

"So it's tricky. But what are they really going to do? There are cameras all over the building, and something like this will get leaked to the publications. You make sure it's self-defense. They get to see you know how to take care of yourself, and you don't like people touching you. If it gets big enough, Flickerman might even bring it up first. It'll be the perfect opportunity."

"How do you know I can take care of myself?" he asks quietly. "What if I can't even deck them? And if I can't do that part- in the Games there's no way I'll make it through the bloodbath."

"Get up, then."

Selena stows her candy in her mug of chocolate milk and brushes off her hands. Newel rises from the opposite couch with apprehension.

"Think about the way she talks to you. Think about her getting smug when she knows you won't tell on her. Think about cigarette smell. All the times you could've knocked her down before."

She isn't a wordsmith. Misty might've gone on with more encouragement, or couched it in softer things, avoided hurting him. The way his face pinches is enough. If he wins, he'll get his therapy for the rest of his life. But there's that little thing that needs to come first.

"That's me," she says. "That's all of them. They won't be sorry if you die. They won't even care. Hit me. Do it now."

She raises the back of her hand to him, and Newel snaps out and hits her in the face.


(More than halfway through the introductions. I would very much appreciate your feedback!)