Preji Soultier, District three male (17)

Life isn't fair to some people. No matter what I did other people always got in my way. Before I was even born my older brother was taking up all my parents' attention and then I got two little sisters that took up all the time they had left. I spent all my time watching them until I got old enough to work at the factory. I was good at my job but the managers always had to give me trouble. They hounded me every second- always accusing me of getting into trouble or not making quota when I was already almost at it. It got to where I started messing up wires just so at least I was actually doing what everyone said I was. I never did it bad enough to get anyone killed. I just liked watching the productivity reports come in and seeing how many units were damaged or unusable.

It wasn't like any of this mattered anyway. Nothing matters in life but dumb luck and the connections that come with it. If you work twice as hard someone will just knock you down twice as far. Everyone's out to get each other and honest people get steamrolled in their path. Three might have been one of the wealthier Districts in Panem but that was just because of how poor the outer Districts were. Nobody was wealthy in Panem except the Capitolites. The rest of us had to fight over crumbs and brag over who gathered up the most.

I stood alone in line when I got to the Reaping. I never had many friends. I tried a few times but the others just picked on me. I could tell they didn't want me hanging around with them anyway. So I jostled past the other children as some of them glared and others roughly moved out of my way. I was almost directly in front of the middle of the stage when I finally found room to stand.

Reaping Day made me more angry than anything else. Funny enough, I was never really scared of getting picked. With my luck it seemed inevitable but there were just so many other kids out there who had their names in the bowl so many more times, especially since my family never had to take tesserae. It just made me furious that we had to go through the stupid senseless ritual every year for a war decades ago that was right in the first place. The Capitol wanted to prove we should work together by holding the Games every year? Yeah, right. They just wanted to keep us in line.

Lazuli always seemed like an alien when I saw her. Capitolites wore weird clothing in ugly bright colors and they all talked like they hadn't learned English quite right. It was like watching some exotic bird with rainbow feathers try to imitate what its owner said.

"Helloooo everyone!" Lazuli chirped as she walked onto stage wearing a purple dress with a white top and half a dozen gold necklaces. "I hope you're all as excited as I am!"

We certainly are not, I thought. It was hot and muggy and boys were crowding all around me and we were all waiting to see which of us would be hauled up to stage and dragged off to be killed.

"Let's have a boy, shall we?" Lazuli asked. She reached into the bowl and her hand moved around as she fished for a paper.

"Prayji Soultier!" Lazuli called.

That's not even how it's pronounced, I thought angrily. Then it sunk it that it was my name and I'd been reaped for the Hunger Games. I stood in shock for a second, unable to even move.

"That's not fair!" I screamed. I jabbed my finger at Lazuli and the words started pouring out. "Everyone always picks on me! I've gone through so much in life and I don't deserve this. No! Pick someone else!"

Three peacekeepers walked down from the stage as children started to scatter away from me to give them a path. I waved my finger at them as they came closer.

"It's not fair! It's not! My parents always make me do all the chores. Everyone at school picks on me. I have to work in a stupid factory all day and I don't get paid enough. None of this is fair! Everyone is always targeting me!"

Two of the Peacekeepers picked me up and hauled me to the stage thrown over one's back. I kept yelling until they dropped me onto the stage. One of them held me back so I couldn't take the mic and yell louder.

That's not going to stop me, I thought. You can keep me away from the mic but that still won't make this right.

Cheyenne "Shay" Taylor, District three female (17)

There were so many memories in our old family photos. I was putting together a scrapbook for my father and I flipped through piles and piles of old photos we kept in a box in my mom's closet. There was a photo of me getting a bronze medal on my school's track team. My sister Ann dressed in our mother's wedding dress when she was five years old. My dad holding the circuit board he helped me put together for our science fair. We had old keepsakes in there, too, like the group photo of my wrestling team. We never made it to the championships but I thought we were a pretty good bunch. It was funny how I'd never taken to academics like most people in Three. I just really liked being active. At least in Three there were never more applicants than openings on the sports teams.

I opened a brown paper envelope and found a stack of baby photos of me. I smiled, since I needed baby photos for the scrapbook. I slid the photos out onto the floor and spread them out to look through them. There was me in a tub. That one I pushed away- no naked pictures of me, no matter how cute Mom thought they were. There was a picture of me wearing a carrot costume for a school play. That one I picked, even though it was also a little embarrassing.

Hmm, what's this one? I picked up a photo of me when I must have been just a little infant. I looked like I'd only been born for a few days. A woman I didn't recognize was holding me. She had a sad, faraway look in her eyes.

Wonder who that is… I'll save that one for later. I set the picture aside. Less than a minute later I saw another picture with the same lady. A sinking feeling came over me when I looked at it. The woman was in a hospital bed wearing a gown. I was in her arms. My parents were nowhere in the picture. I would have thought it was some other baby if I hadn't looked closer to see my own light gray eyes and the little freckle I had on my left eyebrow.

It was four hours before my mother came home from work. I spent the time pacing around and trying to find some explanation for what was going on. I could only think of one but it was too crazy to believe.

I jumped up from the chair I was sitting in when the front door rattled. Mom came in and I tried to look normal.

"Hi honey, how was your day?" Mom asked as she set a cup of coffee on the dining room table. She set her bags down on the floor and turned to smile at me.

"It was okay. I have something to ask you about, though," I said.

"Is everything all right?" Mom asked, hearing the worry in my voice.

"It's okay, just…" I took out the photo and set it on the table before I could think better of it. "Who's this?'

My mother looked down at the photo and her face went pale. She left it sitting on the table for a minute before she gently picked it up and scanned it again.

"I didn't know when was the right time to tell you," Mom said, her voice hoarse. She looked up at me almost forlornly.

"I'm adopted." I said it rather than asking it. In the four hours before Mom came home I'd had time to think it over. I knew adoption existed, of course. I'd always thought it was really no different than biological children. It only mattered that the family loved each other. It was a big surprise to learn I was adopted but it wasn't really a bad thing. More than anything else I just felt a curiosity about a part of my story I hadn't even known about.

"But you're still my daughter. I love you," Mom said. She held out her arms to me, holding back tears.

"I know," I said, half-laughing to keep from crying. "It's just a big thing to find out, I guess. What happened?" I couldn't imagine what the story might be about the woman who gave birth to me but gave me away. I didn't see a man in the picture. Was she abandoned? Was the pregnancy accidental? Was she just not in a good place to start a family? All sorts of things could have happened. I wanted to see her and ask her but I didn't know if there would ever be any chance of that.

"We don't know much. It was a closed adoption. The woman left a few photos and that was it. I know she was from Ten, though."

So that's why I hate school and love sports, I thought. Not that it was really that simple. Not everyone from Three is science-y and not everyone from Ten is outdoorsy. It was just kind of funny how it worked out. It was funny to think that maybe somewhere out in Ten there was some kid adopted from Three wondering why she was so good at coding and so bad at… I don't know, milking cows or something.