Finally done with the Reapings! Samantha's form said to really go crazy so I did a little research and made her a maladaptive daydreamer!

Marty Sonym, District Twelve male (17)

There was really no reason to be alive.

It wasn't just me. I didn't think there was much reason for anyone in Twelve to be alive. What was there to live for? If you made it to adulthood, you spent your life crawling through dark dusty tunnels. We died of black lung or mining accidents if we didn't freeze to death in the winter.

Mining accidents… There were so many of them. How could I think our lives were worth something when we weren't even worth basic safety measures? I hardly knew anyone who hadn't lost at least one person to the mines. If you didn't die in an explosion you lived long enough to cough your lungs out.

There was the sound of an explosion coming from the mine. People came running out, as fire started to spread near the surrounding houses. The wooden houses went up like straws, the fire spreading down the road- closer and closer to my house.

I was walking home when it happened. At the sound of the explosion I ran home, to where Dusty was home alone- our parents both worked in the mine. I didn't know when they'd get out. IF they'd get out.

The door was so hot. I heard Dusty screaming as I ran to our house. I tried to open the door but

He'd locked it

Of course he'd locked it. Dusty was home alone and he was only six years old. He wasn't supposed to let anyone in. I banged on the door, my fingers singeing as I screamed for Dusty to come out. He was stuck somewhere. Maybe in his room, hiding under the bed or in the closet. I never found out where he was. I just knew when he stopped screaming for me.

So what reason was there to be alive? My parents died in the explosion. Dusty died in our house. I lost two fingers and spent months at the local healer's house as my scorched body slowly knitted together into something that looked a little like skin again. I had no job, no family, and no way to support myself. Sometimes I slept on doorsteps or behind garbage cans. Other nights I crept out to the graveyard just to get closer to my family. And winter was coming. In Twelve the Peacekeepers didn't clear out street children. In Twelve the street-sweepers cleared them out.

It sometimes didn't even seem like I WAS alive. Ever since the fire it felt like my life had leaked out of me. I wasn't SAD all the time so much as I just felt NOTHING. I was like a ghost drifting through my own life. Sometimes the only way I knew I wasn't a ghost was that I still felt cold and hungry sometimes. Not very badly, though. Just a vague knowledge that I still had a body and still lived in this world. I slept a lot. In tunnels or alleyways or anywhere I could find, I slept a lot. Sleeping was the closest thing I could get to not being alive. That was what I wanted. I didn't want to die. I wanted to have never been alive.

I;m not going to make it through the winter. I'm already half-dead and I don't have the energy to even try to stay alive. I might as well just lie down right here in this alley and never give up. Just keep sleeping until I stay asleep, and wake up with Mom and Dad and Dusty. I might as well volunteer for the Games and get it all over with.

Samantha von Hindenburg, District Twelve female (13)

Math class was so boring. My LIFE was so boring. School was just a joke anyway. I wasn't trying to be all edgy, it was just that none of us were going to get to use anything we were learning. We would all go work in the coal mines and we'd just fill carts and swing hammers all day. It didn't matter if I could multiply or find a square root. It would be cool to know all that stuff but it wouldn't matter.

I wasn't really paying attention to what Miss Wormwood was saying. Her voice got quieter and quieter in my head as my thoughts slipped away to something more exciting. The real world was boring, but I had my own world. A big, exciting world where anything could happen. Where I could be anyone. Even DOCTOR HINDENBURG, the brilliant scientist. The brilliant TIME-TRAVEL scientist.

What are all these strange things? I thought as I looked around the… what had they called it… the CLASSROOM? This new world was so strange. There was a map of something labeled "Panem" on the wall. There was no Panem where I came from. I was from far-off, exotic Germany. And it wasn't whatever year the calendar said- I didn't recognize the dating format. It was the 1940s and I was a brilliant scientist.

I have to blend in, I told myself. If the others found out who I really was they'd want to send me back. I didn't want to go back. There was war back there. Scientists like me were in high demand, and if they got caught, you never know what someone would make them do. I was a peaceful scientist. I was trying to perfect time travel so I could travel forward in time until there were no wars anymore and everyone lived at peace.

I went over all the details in my head, like I had a million times before. How I lived in my laboratory with all the crazy mad scientist machines and blinking lights and things. How I scribbled in my notebooks day and night and then one night I finally figured out the final piece. How I was working to get all the kinks out but then I heard the police at my door!

No! It's too early! I narrated to myself, squirming in my seat- it felt so weird to wear a dress instead of a lab coat. It's not ready yet! But if I didn't activate it right now they'd take me away and it would be too late. I pressed the button and-

I didn't just fly forward in time. I flew into a whole new body. Some girl's body. Instead of a distinguished German scientist I was a girl in "Panem"- in "District Twelve", it seemed like. "Panem" was very strange. Everyone was divided into "districts" and they each had their own jobs. I was in the coal-mining District. Everyone here was very poor. Luckily when I went through the machine I also learned the language, since Panemians spoke English. There were a lot of new words I dind't understand, though. New inventions, too. I was particularly intrigued by the "computers". There weren't many of them in Twelve but I'd heard there was another District- Three, I thought- that was just FULL of them. Perhaps someday I could go there. They seemed to like scientists.

"Samantha, are you having trouble?" Miss Wormwood asked.

Oh right, this girl's name is Samantha. I looked up after a moment and tried to act normal.

"What? No," I asked.

"Is there a word you don't understand?" Miss Wormwood pointed at my book. "You looked like you were trying to sound something out."

"No, she just does that when she's zoning out," the boy beside me said.

Hmm, "zoning out". I wrote it down in my notebook to learn what it meant. And I made a mental note reminding myself that I sometimes made funny faces or whispered things without thinking about it when I was daydreaming. Or at least what the others THOUGHT was a daydream.