Dreamers Live to Die Chapter 1
I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
Published 2019.12.23
Hazelle Hawthorne squeezed her husband's hand so hard her fingers felt the slightest bit numb from the pressure. This pain, of course, was nothing compared to what the birthing process happening down below.
"It's crowning! The baby's crowning!" The head healer exclaimed. A midwife gasped and ran to the side of the room to collect the final materials for the birth.
The soon to be mother screamed and writhed from the pain, and her husband, Blaise Hawthorne, did his best to soothe his wife by whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Deep down in the Seam, there were no prolific painkillers offered in the ramshackle hut Mrs. Everdeen, the head healer, had assigned to be the area's hospital.
"Is - ah, ahhh! - is it almost over...?!" Hazelle cried out, seemingly squeezing her husband's hand even tighter, if that were possible.
A baby's muted cries pounded in the musty room, suddenly making all of the effort behind child bearing worth it. The midwife, some gangly teenage girl whose name Hazelle had forgotten in the haze of emotion, cleaned off the baby with a clean towel and gently handed it into the mother's outstretched arms.
"It's a boy," the midwife added. "Just as you predicted."
Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne gazed lovingly into the newborn's squishy red face, his name at the tip of their tongues.
"Gale," the father whispered. "He'll be our little Gale Hawthorne."
A sharp contraction kicked through Hazelle - only this time, more painful than before. She screamed in pain, allowing her husband to pick the baby off her chest to look down at the growing puddle of blood where the head healer just cleaned.
Mrs. Everdeen raced back to the birthing station, gasping in surprise with one word: "Twins!"
The new parents blinked dumbly when another contraction hit and another baby started crowning. Six minutes later, a second baby was nestled in the parents' arms.
The twins each had a mop of fluffy black hair, pudgy pinkish skin, and lungs made of steel. The healer and the midwife left the room, arms full of bloodied cloths, for the new parents to spend time with their newborn twins.
"I didn't know that twins ran through your gene pool," Blaise whispered in awe, running a hand through his wife's sweaty hair. "What should we name her?"
Hazelle gave a simple smile. "Her name will be Blaire. Gale and Blaire Hawthorne, our children."
I worried my parents a lot while growing up as a baby up till the end of my toddler years because of all the denial I was in during that time period. Living in Panem. Twin sister to freaking Gale Hawthorne. District Twelve. The Seam. Of course I was in denial - who'd even dream up this type of rebirth? I barely spoke, didn't defer to adults because I couldn't find the connection between kids respecting adults because my mind was that of an adult, and never whined about smaller portions at the dinner table when our parents' work was slow.
When Rory and Vick, another pair of twins, were born, however, I began to wonder how on earth mom and dad were going to support four children. Dad, a coal miner, and mom, a vendor at the Hob who mainly sold carved squirrel bones, had barely enough to support the household. Especially considering how much time mom spent taking care of two five year olds and newborn twin boys. It was then that I wizened up, shook out of my stupor, and put effort into supporting my new family.
Wisps of memories from my past life seeped into the new one, where, once I enrolled into school, shocked the teacher with the way I could already read the most difficult books and helped the older kids do their maths. Instead of getting bullied for the display of intelligence, students and the teacher respected me. In District Twelve, having a set foundation for future work represented how successful you could become, possibly even finding work in the merchant section or with the local government with the Mayor or in the Justice Building. I sat through classes with my twin, helping him learn to read and write and helped him memorize the funny local songs the children liked to sing. Instead of thinking Gale as my twin, though, he was more of a younger brother than anything. Physically, I knew he was older (by six whole minutes!), but even our parents accepted the fact that I'd be the one looking out for him.
While our parents were out at work, it was up to us to look after our baby brothers. Rory and Vick never stopped crying, making me concerned that at least one of them had a form of colic, but it wasn't like Healer Everdeen had the supplies to officially diagnose something as common as "irrational crying," considering their ages.
I was eight years old when I first met the Girl on Fire. Mom gave me a single coin and sent me off to find a healer to purchase medicine off of for Rory's burning fever. It was only by miracle that Vick hadn't also been infected with whatever ailed his identical twin. I knocked on the Everdeens' door for the first time, a wave of unease at being sent alone for this errand. The Seam wasn't the safest place for weak little children, especially after Peacekeepers had found out about the crazy old couple who lived just a few doors down from us, the Hawthornes, who picked off little children during play hours to cannibalize on them. Hunger did strange things to people.
When a haggard young woman answered the door, she ushered me inside, commenting something about my age and gender.
"Rory's got a fever so bad that he can't stop crying," I explained to the blonde woman, watching as she lead me to her living room, where a wobbly shelf of mason jars were all stocked with different types of herbs and medicinal pastes. "Is this enough to pay for some medicine?"
A six year old girl with black hair that matched mine, greyish blue eyes, and skin the slightest bit paler than the usual olive complexion, peeked her head from out the hallway with peeling wallpaper. "Mom? Who's she?"
Katniss Everdeen didn't look any different than the average six year old from District Twelve, which was more surprising than seeing her so differently than from how she was portrayed in the books and movies. She wasn't old enough to establish herself with her famous bow and arrows, didn't have her elegant and lithe hunter body yet, and was just a simple little girl in a power hungry world. The savior of Panem still spoke with a lisp and appeared constantly on the verge of tears, and I felt sicker than I had before the denial had set in all those years ago. She was expected to carry the weight of the nation on her shoulders as the rebellion's figurehead and victor of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games. How would her mother react if I told her that her daughter was going to be in games for her sixteenth year?
Mrs. Everdeen snatched up the single coin with her bony fingers and replaced my open palms with a small glass vial filled to the brim with greenish brown paste. "I want the vial back by tomorrow," she responded, locking her pale blue eyes with my own grey ones. She turned her head to wave Katniss away, and I darted back home.
That wasn't the first interaction with the Everdeens, however. Later on that year, Katniss enrolled into the dilapidated three room building we called school. She sat alone in the back row, chewing at the end of her pencil in concentration while reading through water damaged books the Capitol deemed okay for the districts to teach their kids with. Most of them were district issued textbooks that hadn't been replaced in a few dozen years that spoke propaganda every other page, but it wasn't like the children knew any better. Gale nudged his elbows into my ribs whenever Katniss passed by us during recess time, telling me a horrifyingly gushy new tale about how she picked her nose during morning announcements or wore a pretty ribbon in her hair that day or whatever. His schoolboy crushes weren't something to be shocked about, as I knew he'd choose a new girl to gush over in a week. In the future, I knew that he was supposed to be apart of a love triangle with the baker's son, Peeta Mellark, but that kind of drama seemed so unlikely given everything I knew about my brother.
Over by the crooked iron merry-go-round were the blond haired blue eyed kids from the merchant section, the unsaid rich kids. Maybe Peeta was one of the loud boys spinning round and round in circles, but it wasn't like I really paid attention during first day assembly and could match names to each chubby face.
That was a telling sign of my laziness more than anything, as there were only forty kids per class. It wasn't like it could be too hard to memorize all their distinct features.
"I thought you didn't like 'ring around the rosie,'" I shoved Gale's ribs back. He responded with a quiet oomph noise.
He rubbed at his side angrily. "Yeah, 'cause the song sucks! Why?"
With a smirk, I pointed my finger at Katniss' current location - singing 'ring around the rosie' with a bunch of other girls by the hopscotch section.
Sure enough, he began crushing on some other classmate the next week.
The next year, Gale decided to skip school for a mysterious project he refused to tell anybody about. Anybody but me, of course. He wanted to go out to the border and throw rocks at the twenty foot electric fence to "vent out some anger" from his irritations for Peacekeepers. Apparently, a fight had broken out by the Hob the day prior, resulting in Peacekeepers taking action way too far and shooting both aggressors. Because I knew the electric fence, according to the story of 'The Hunger Games' from my previous life, was barely on, I let him go without a hassle. The teacher didn't even notice his absence, too busy teaching addition and subtraction to rowdy kids.
He returned late at night, when our parents were worried half to death at his apparent status as a missing person.
"It worked!" He burst out, climbing through our bedroom window and most definitely scaring me awake. Rory and Vick slept in our parents' room, while Gale and I were crammed in our own little bedroom upstairs. Well. It was what used to be the attic, but the less amount of people in one room, the better. I had always found myself needing more solitude than most.
I rose from bed, slamming a hand over his mouth. "Shhh! Don't wake Rory and Vick! And what worked?"
He grinned sheepishly at his outburst, but still remained extremely eager when he handed me a stinky pile of sticky fur. "A rabbit. A rabbit! Apparently, the fences aren't actually electric or maybe they are but don't turn on, so I went past the border and found a really sharp stick and then this rabbit appeared by my feet so I stabbed it really quick because I was afraid that it'd run away and - !"
The door slammed open. "Gale!" Mom cried out. "My goodness, when we heard your voice... you're here!"
Downstairs, Rory and Vick woke up, as noticed by the subsequent crying. I scooted away from her blabbering to check on the twins downstairs.
In the end, the Gale decided to lie about his adventures and why he was carrying around a dead animal. What went unsaid was that if our parents knew about him venturing beyond the district's borders and illegally hunting, they'd be shot dead to make a statement. If they remained in the dark... well, then it'd just be us two getting shot in the head. Or brutally whipped and therefore permanently scarred.
I went with him the next day, a pulse of fear pounding through my heart as we through the wire spurred fence in the mountains. Since District Twelve was set throughout what had been called Appalachia in my previous life (or was this the future? Had Suzanne Collins effectively retold the world events of the future? Had I been reborn five hundred years ahead?), I remembered there to be copperheads, porcupines, black bears, and brown recluses roaming through the nature. All the danger created a nerve wracking thrill through my blood, knowing that it was a fine line to walk between rebellious against the Capitol and just plain stupid while in the wild.
We challenged each other to climb trees faster, dodge through anthills with resounding agility exercises, and track down prey without making a sound. Soon enough, we missed school at least once a week in exchange for teaching ourselves how to hunt, run, and hide from all manners of predator and prey. Our parents never asked about why we returned home with cuts and bruises and dirt coating underneath our fingernails, but they shared a knowing look. We never talked about how we were able to come home every Friday (Friday was our school skip day) with bound up game hidden underneath our shirts, but Rory and Vick's eagerness for high-calorie meats more than made up their furtive and worried glances.
It was a glorious day in the late autumn that year when we discovered a river winding up to a small lake up high in the mountains. The water was shockingly cold, but temperature was ignored in favor of Gale dunking me straight off a mossy ledge and into the lake. For a split second, while surrounded by icy waters, a fear washed over me that I'd never be able to resurface and that Gale would have to somehow explain to mom and dad and Rory and Vick how we ventured beyond the borders and how I met my untimely death underneath the surface and - !
I pumped my legs upwards, emerging from my thoughts of drowning. Of course I could swim, having been on a high school swim team in my previous life (and the damned book club, where I fell in love with the all too familiar words of 'The Hunger Games,' and isn't it interesting to look at me now?). "Come on loser, jump in! It's nice and cold!"
Gale, though, did not know how to swim. I had forgotten that little fact in the haze of the moment, until my brother hadn't resurfaced from his crashing dive. After a moment's panic, I inhaled a gut breaking breath and went under, noting that opening my eyes under water didn't hurt in mountain freshwater. Near the bottom of the lake, tangled amidst waving black lake plants, was my twin brother. He opened his mouth to screech 'Help!' but only bubbles exited. Of course I understood his message and made him grab on to my waist so I could tug him back to the riverbank.
Because he was a stupid big brother, he forced himself to go back in the lake just minutes after his near-drowning spell. Apparently it wasn't "manly" to not know how to swim, even though basically no one in the district could, anyway.
Our jaunts in the forbidden woods led us to discover our natural skills. Gale became skilled with a bow and arrow carved from broken off twigs - weaponry I had carved. While woodworking wasn't an option of a profession in the Seam or the merchants section, it was in the Hob. While the Hob was indeed a black market, it also served a secondary purpose for finding items at cheaper costs when merchants or business owners wanted to save on money. Gale gave mom extra squirrels, frogs, and bunches of huckleberries, while I offered her knick knacks of carved wooden toy animals, bits of easy to make household items like cups and utensils, and bunches of rope. It wasn't as sturdy as store bought rope, but tightly weaving together flattened strings of bark and ivy branches held similar strength and flexibility to regular rope. Again, she never questioned where we managed to get ahold of these supplies, only thanking us very quietly when our meals grew longer and bigger than before from our hunting and her increased sales.
The odd thought of being selected for the Hunger Games did pass through my mind at one point, but I dismissed it before it had fully formed. After all, future-Gale hadn't been picked in his full six years with his forty two future tesserae, so why would I? The brutal games would be disbanded and the rule of the capitol would be completely disbanded by the time Gale and I became adults, anyway, so it didn't really seem to matter all that much to me.
Perhaps it was cruel to just casually dismiss the blood sports, but I knew the future, and it looked bright enough. The Girl on Fire killing President Snow and Coin, resulting in District Eight's rebellion leader to take the mantle for the country - I distinctly remembered that leader to be a courageous middle-aged black lady who had her head screwed on right - so any movements I made had the possibility of changing that bright future. Gale hadn't had a twin sister in the future I knew of, so hopefully nothing majorly different was going to happen to the second uprising.
The next year, a tiny autumn haired girl enrolled into school. Her name was Primrose Everdeen and was a student in the class I had become a Teacher's Assistant for. In the same classroom were also Rory and Vick, whose mischievous and spritely little faces became known as the Terrible Twins. I suspected ADHD from how awful their attention spans were, but the class teacher, Miss Milligan, and I were able to knock back their childish pranks and outbursts into line.
Primrose, or "Prim," was a sweet darling with more brains than most. I could see why Katniss treasured her precious sister so much. A whole rebellion was sparked from this puny child, and here I was helping her with her science homework.
The science coursework wasn't in depth enough for people to suddenly invent nuclear weapons to bomb the Capitol, of course, but it still was extremely dumbed down, even for the poorest district like ours. Thousands of scientific and mathematics trivia flew through my mind, but I'd never be able to put it to use, except for maybe bomb-making for the coal mines. Except I was pretty sure that the Capitol supplied the explosives, not that the citizens made them.
With that in mind, I wondered how on earth Mrs. Everdeen was able to become the Head Healer, then decided I probably didn't want to know.
Because of the new teaching position (unpaid, sadly enough, but definitely assured that I'd acquire the position of a teacher by the time I became of age and take the elderly Miss Milligan's spot), I wasn't able to hunt with Gale on our skip day anymore. He didn't get mad, but his mood noticeably soured as the weeks passed by.
And everything soured when a good majority of the men from the Seam died in a huge explosion when Gale and I turned eleven. Our father, Blaise Hawthorne, being among the men who risked their lives for the nation's coal. The stress induced mom to start a premature birthing, as she had been around eight months pregnant with her fifth child. I didn't remember Gale mentioning anymore siblings besides Rory and Vick in the movies, so perhaps it was a new development from my presence or something I had missed in the books. Either way, the new baby was going to add stress to our lives.
Mrs. Everdeen was too pre-occupied mourning the loss of her husband, so Gale, a midwife I didn't know the name of, and I helped mom for the birth. It was a miracle that she was able to recover and stand back on her feet just moments after the birthing was done and a cleaned up baby girl cried in my arms, but our family needed the money now that dad was gone.
I admired her strength, her will to trudge on for her family. Because of this, Gale started skipping more and more school to hunt and gather more food, while I brought Posy to class with me so mom could continue her search for better paying work while unhindered.
Mom eventually found work as a washer for the richer merchants, cleaning their linens and scrubbing their homes clean. Stress lines built onto her beautiful face, and her hands became mottled with cuts and bruises from her heavy handed job, but it kept the family afloat until Gale learned how to hunt bigger game.
The day he lugged back home an entire white spotted fawn was the night before our first Hunger Games. We tried to keep a normal conversation throughout dinner, not wanting to even talk about the haunting topic.
"You cooked the deer very well," I complimented mom. "Since when did we have salt?"
She laughed off the question, continuing the false peace of the night to let our little siblings have one last happy memory if we were to be picked for that year.
Gale ended up revealing that he made a new friend, later in our room.
"Her name's Katniss, and she also uses a bow and arrow," he whispered across the distance of our rickety beds. "I thought her name was 'Catnip' at first because she kinda mumbled her introduction when we ran into each other."
What went unsaid was that he had replaced me as his hunting partner. It hurt a lot more than expected, as I knew that teaching was a better suited profession to me. Perhaps I was just childishly jealous over Gale making a new friend when I had been his friend since birth. We were twins and had never been separated for any reason for more than a day.
"I'm glad," I instead chose to say, swallowing away my jealousy. "It's good that she also knows how to hunt. Hey, I betcha she's waaay better at a bow than you are."
"Hey!"
The skies were clear and unnaturally blue in District Twelve on the sixty-eighth annual Hunger Games, not quite reflecting the spirit of the people. The day of the reaping was always set on the fourth of July, which the date held more cultural significance in the country's past than it did now. In America, it had been a day of celebration. In Panem, it became a day of mourning. Our family hadn't had to attend the reaping day ceremony as no one of our family was of age, but now mom had to stand in the back of the guarded groups of children in front of the Justince Building square. My skin was scrubbed till it was unnaturally shiny and clean, showing my tanned olive skin and the splash of freckles running from cheek to cheek. Braids were customary among women, but I liked to keep mine short and just below my jawline, despite mom's protests. She did try her best to flatten it down and smear it down with water, but I bet that by the end of the ceremony, it'd mess itself up somehow.
"I forgot about today," Vick murmured into my ear when I picked him up into my arms. The seven year old boy hugged my midsection tight and I kissed his mess of curly black hair. The more rambunctious twin, Rory, rammed himself straight into my side and began sniffling.
"You're going to get snot all over her new dress," Gale reminded, gently leading the twins away to mom, who smiled bitterly by the door, Posy wrapped in a long scarf to her chest. For the first time in forever, she remained quiet on the solemn walk to the Justice Building, only slightly babbling and drooling against mom's chest.
I held Vick's hand while walking while Gale took Rory's. When we had to separate into our age and gender sections, I kissed each of the twins' cheeks, Posy's soft forehead, and gave mom and jerky hug. There were tears in everybody's eyes except for innocent baby Posy, gently giggling at her pudgy fingers.
"See ya later," I nodded at Gale, who held less assurance than I did about the day's events. He nodded back in our secret twin language, now relaxed. If I was confident neither of us were getting picked, then we weren't. It was that simple.
A willowy woman wearing a bright pink dress covered in plastic bubbles and a large wig the shape of a smooth magenta sphere bounced up on stage - Effie Trinket. And then came my first introduction to Haymitch Abernathy, the only living victor of District Twelve and the sole resident of the Victor's Village. He had won the second Quarter Quell, the fiftieth Hunger Games, at the age of sixteen. While the reruns playing around the merchants section avoided talking about his game as much as possible, I knew the truth of what had happened. He had used the arena field to his advantage and gotten his entire family killed off for it. Now, he lived as an infamous drunkard, the main source of income for Ripper back at the Hob, who supplied all the illegal types of alcohol. I wasn't sure how Ripper got his hands on alcohol made in other districts, but I suspected the man had a distiller in his backyard that the Peacekeepers kept a blind eye to.
The victor had stringy blond hair and storm colored eyes (so he followed the descriptions from the film? But Gale looked nothing like a younger Liam Hemsworth), and drunkenly swaggered on stage beside Effie, hunched over and a glazed look in his eyes. I felt a brief flash of pity for the man, but diverted my attention to the screen hologrammed to the front of the Justice Building starting to play the annual reaping day ceremony film. It began with the classic war propaganda obviously written by the war's winners and ending with a short sequence of last year's games. Mom had forbidden us all to watch any of the gruesome Hunger Games films, but Gale and I, naturally, sneaked over to a hide in the alley facing the front of a technology applications shop, where they showed each game in a cycle day and night. Last year, according to rumors spread by Madge, the mayor's daughter in the year below us, the victor of the sixty-seventh Hunger Games had been a real hunk. Augustus Braun from district one. The name rang a bell in my head, but he didn't ultimately seem to be important to the future events.
"And now, it's time to pick out this year's female tribute!" Effie exclaimed. I shook myself out of my stupor, now needing to pay attention. While it wasn't like I was about to be picked, I thought to remember every tribute's names in my upcoming years to pay them respect.
The Capitol woman delicately picked out a flimsy piece of paper and the tension in the air seemed to thicken. No one wanted to be picked. No one wanted to be subjected to blood sports. No one wanted that for themselves, their children, their friends, their family.
"Annemarie Hatters!" Effie shouted, wearing a vibrant smile.
I breathed out a sigh of relief alongside all the other girls who didn't get picked. Annemarie, however, a medium height and wiry blonde girl from the seventeens section, trembled on the walk towards the stage. Her coloring and well tailored clothes shouted merchants section, but the expression on her face shouted the terror of death that most people in the Seam wore during the lean winter months, in the imminent threat of starvation. She, however, would not being starving to death. No, with her timid walk and demure stature, she'd be apart of the first blood bath at the Cornucopia.
The crowd of boys stood stock still as Effie reached her hand into the male's section. "Samandriel Hatters!"
Oh god, siblings. While it wasn't the first games featuring siblings as the district's male and female duo, it was always terrible for the parents.
As expected, a woman shrieked in the back section, screaming about how it was unfair both of her kids had been selected. I turned my head to catch Gale looking straight at the ground, fists clenched. In odd twin synchronization, he looked up to meet my eyes. 'Told you,' I mouthed, offering a half-shrug.
Once the reaping ceremony was over, Gale and I walked home, holding Rory and Vick's clammy hands. "One in hundreds," I reminded Gale. "We're not going to get picked. The odds will forever be in our favor," I mimicked a Capitol accent with that catchmark phrase, elbowing his ribs.
He smiled.
Now that we were of age, mom didn't have an excuse to stay at home during the nation wide broadcasts of the games. Parents could take the option to not watch the games if she had children below twelve, but now she was required to turn on our shaky old television set whenever a Peacekeeper knocked on the doors to check all homes that people were watching. If someone's television screen was not on, or if they didn't have one, they'd be escorted to the main town square to watch on the displays. Throughout the first week of the Capitol tour for the tributes, watching was only mandatory for a few hours, as televised training periods and interviews weren't as interesting as being glued to the screen for the actual arena time. Luckily, there was an old woman who stayed in the school building and looked after young children that shouldn't be inside watching the games. The Peacekeepers tolerated this to happen because the old lady probably wasn't in the right mind in the first place to watch the games, being over ninety years old.
One week later, the games began at exactly ten a.m. sharp. Schools were out, careers were optional to go to, and everyone stayed in front of a screen by order of the Peacekeepers and government to watch the "enthralling" blood sports. The sixty-eighth Hunger Game's arena was set in a savanna, where large rocks and grossly twisted trees and large puffs of long yellow grasses. And then - Gale and I leaned closer into the television while mom leaned back, covering Posy's ignorant ears - a loud explosion billowed from a middle sector girl.
"Woo! Did you see that, fellow audience members?!" Came Caeser Flickerman's narration in the background. The screen flickered to his face, where this year he had opted to die it a set of blue and purple stripes, and his tumultuous laugh. "Avril Avergotch from district seven just exploded. It seems to me that her token, a rosewood toy ball, had dropped from her pocket and onto the ground. And everyone knows to not step off the platform during the first sixty seconds! Oh dear!"
The screen cut to a live audience inside a studio from the Capitol filming site, then back to the arena.
In the end, the winner was the male career tribute from district two. He was one hundred eighty pounds and over six feet tall with strong muscles all around, winning by bludgeoning his remaining district mate to death with a spiked mace. It was a brutish, gruesome death, but Gale and I couldn't seem to take our eyes off the blurry television screen that was bound to break any day now.
"Good thing that we're not going to get reaped, right? Blaire?" Gale nudged my side, a rare show of weakness in his voice.
I shook my head. "'Course not, silly."
The next day, we both put our names down to apply for tesserae.
On the morning of the sixty-ninth Hunger Games reaping ceremony, Gale and I sat in bed longer than usual, unwilling to face the rest of the day.
"We've got four tesserae to our names, now," he blurted out. "That's still a very low percentage to be picked, right?"
"Yes," I assured, washing away the uneasiness in our stomachs.
Since we both had shot up like weeds, mom was forced to tailor her and dad's old clothes for us to wear instead of buying new outfits. She gave me a faded baby pink dress that ended a little below my knees and had a scratchy high color and short sleeves. Gale wore musty brown slacks and a slightly stained cream button up shirt from dad's old stuff.
"When'd you get so tall?" I huffed, poking Gale's shoulders, where the top of my head just barely reached to.
He snorted, cracking a smile despite the current atmosphere. "When'd you get so short? I'm pretty sure Katniss, who's two years younger, is taller than you."
I playfully stuck my tongue out, then reached out to unbutton his collar a level. He looked way too stuffy in high collars.
"Blay-yuh!" Squealed out Posy, ramming straight towards my legs. "It's pink!"
"I swear, you learned to run before learning to walk," I commented, ruffling her patch of chocolate brown hair. "It's time to take a nap now, sweetie."
She resolutely did not want to go to sleep, so all mom could do now was make sure that Posy's eyes were covered throughout the entire reaping ceremony. No need to subject a toddler to that kind of stuff.
Rory and Vick didn't tear up when our family separated ourselves into our proper sections, but they did linger a bit longer than last year, almost making Peacekeepers forcibly break apart our hugs. Gale and I shared a wordless nod yet again as we divvied up. It was a look of assured calm; we were going to be fine. Hawthornes never get picked and never will be picked.
The Hunger Games would end after the third Quarter Quell, anyway. That was just six years away. Rory and Vick hadn't been picked according to the future knowledge during their brief tenure as of-age kids, anyway. We'd be fine. Everyone would be fine.
Effie appeared on stage in yet another glamorous outfit - this time, gold and diamond glittering bands clinking around her arms and legs, sapphire blue hair done in poofy curls, and a white shimmery skintight dress. Oddly enough, this had to be her most normal ensemble in her entire history of being here. She shouted nicely encouraging words that expectedly had no effect on our dull crowd, and let the reaping day film show. This time, at the end, were segments from last years games of the brutal savanna. Those games had been the "ideal" games, where everyone had seemed to be given an equal chance in terms of equipment and landscape knowledge, with fan favorite careers doing most of the bloody slaughtering. Caeser Flickerman had said something about those year's ratings being almost as high as the sixty-fifth Hunger Games featuring Finnick Odair.
"Now, ladies first!" Effie cried out in joy, teetering her way to the female's box of names. She fished out a single slip of paper.
My heart clenched in my chest.
"Blaire Hawthorne!"