R.J MacCready, District Six male (16)
There was no one to blame. That was what made it so difficult. So many people were complicit in my predicament but there was no one person to blame. I couldn't blame Felisha. I'd wanted to when I first heard my name from her lips but it really wasn't her fault. She didn't put my name in the bowl. She wasn't the one that made the stage and set the bowl there. She was just another face in a long line going all across Panem, years and years back until sometime we hit whoever it was that first had the idea for the Games. Whoever it was, they were long lost to time now. There was hardly any chance that the first person to have the idea was the one who caused it to be put into place. No one to blame. No one for me to hate. Just me sitting in the Justice Hall knowing someone had killed me.
The world didn't have to be like this. It wouldn't have discouraged me so much that humans could be so horrible if I wasn't so certain they all had it in them to do so much good. I'd always been interested in history and philosophy books. They made me feel like the latest link in a chain going back thousands of years, of so many people all devoting their lives to trying to find the way that would let us get past this. We'd made so much progress in thousands of years. Women's suffrage, racial equality, abolitionism… we'd come so far. We'd come so far but it was like we hadn't even moved. There was still slavery in Panem. There were still children hungry in the streets. Someone fixed an old injustice and someone else invented a new one. Like someone once said, there was nothing new under the sun.
Dad wasn't with Mom when she came in. She had that smile she put on when she wanted people to think everyone was okay. It worked with the patients that came into our clinic but it didn't fool someone who knew her as well as I did. She looked like she was about to tell a gutshot man that he had a chance. She took a second to steel herself and because of that I knew what she was going to say next.
"Dad's not here, baby," she said softly. She sat by me and laid a hand on my hair. "A little boy came in with appendicitis. Your father says he loves you."
"It's okay. Tell him I'm glad he stayed," I said. Another thing that wasn't anyone's fault. Some kid didn't deserve his body falling apart inside him. My father didn't have to be a surgeon. He chose to spend most of his life healing other people and saving lives. I was proud of him. I was proud that my loss meant new life for someone else. I was even happy that I got Reaped, a little bit. I was scared and angry and wished it could be someone else but I was happy it wasn't some twelve-year-old. I wondered what the boy who didn't get Reaped because I did would do with his life.
"I brought this," Mom said. She took my little book out from her pocket and handed it to me. It sat on my leg as I looked down at the cover. To most people my book would look like random letters. You might say it would be all Greek to them. Pretty close, but it was Latin. It was a tiny copy of The Twelve Caesars, full of stories of men so long ago, some who helped invent democracy and some who did their best to erase it. I guess it's been that way ever since. Humans can do anything. The only thing holding us back is ourselves.
Porsche Romeo, District Six female (17)
I liked fighting. That wasn't nearly as arrogant as it sounded, though. I liked fighting. No one said anything about winning. Same thing as poker. I liked poker. No one said anything about me being good at poker. Luckily I'd managed to turn that into a perfect combination.
Jimmy the Bull wasn't very fast. His name wasn't really Jimmy the Bull. I just liked to give my regular loan sharks nicknames. Since I still thought things from 200 years ago were hip I named them all cool gangster names. Jimmy the Bull wasn't very fast but unfortunately I wasn't either. Mostly that was because after Jimmy the Bull finally caught me one time he broke my leg and my parents couldn't afford a proper cast. When I ran from loan sharks it was really more that I waddled from loan sharks.
It didn't make any difference to run anyway. They always caught me eventually. Most of them even knew where I lived. I wasn't sure if they passed the information around out of professional courtesy or if I'd just pissed off that many loan sharks. I was probably just pissing them off more by always running. Someday it was bound to get me killed. I would have cared more about that except I was too young and honestly too stupid to understand my own mortality. And running gave it all more thrill. The suspense, the chase, the inevitable violent meeting. I didn't even mind that part either. Eventually they were going to start to suspect the truth: some people pay extra for that.
I sprinted, by my definition of sprinting, down the alley. It seemed really stupid and cliche to run down an alley but actually I did it because if we came together in public it would be messy and there would be a lot of witnesses and they might just cut their losses and headshot me. I threw down a garbage can behind me just like in the ancient movies and just like I'd always thought would happen if someone did that in real life, Jimmy the Bull swerved a little and continued without slowing.
My lungs were already burning and I knew it was about that time. I felt a hand on my coat and I was roughly thrown into a pile of garbage. Which, unlike the movies, wasn't full of nothing but cardboard boxes and old mattresses. A shard of broken bottle scraped my back and I added tetanus to the list of my worries.
"Okay, okay," I said, holding up my hands in surrender. "Just one thing, huh?"
Jimmy the Bull paused. He was one of the more good-humored of the loan sharks. "What, kid?" he asked, his meaty fists lowering a little.
"Can you aim mostly for the stomach? My boss says I'm not presentable when I'm all bruised and if I get fired I definitely won't be able to pay my debts," I asked.
"You're not the brightest, are you?" Jimmy the Bull asked, smiling despite himself.
"I'm really not," I said. But he had mercy. He aimed for the stomach.
In this chapter: one dump stat of luck and one dump stat of wisdom.
