At home, I find my mother and sister are ready to go. My mother wears a fine dress from her apothecary days. And Prim is in a skirt and blouse buttoned all the way to the top. She looks older than me somehow, with her severe cheekbones and hair cascading around her face and shoulders and down her back. Angelic I think as I brush past to find A tub of warm water waiting for me. I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even wash my hair. To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own dresses for me. It's soft and blue. Though prim is my twin, I'm not the same kind of pretty. And I can tell my mother gave me this dress for a reason. Where prim is soft and petite, I am lean a muscled. The neckline is modest, but the rest of the dress clings to me like it's wet showing the curves I tend to otherwise hide. I give my mother an "I know what you're doing" look, but she shrugs her innocence. I look at Prim and find her radiating excitement. Briefly, I wonder how two sisters; twins, can be so different.
"You look beautiful," says Prim in a hushed voice.
"And nothing like myself," I say. I hug her, because somehow, I know she will be selected. How do I protect her? Our 2nd selection. Prim's only grown more beautiful and warm. I saw the picture she sent back with her selection letter; smiling like she had no idea how bad the world was. But, she has no idea, I remind myself.
When my father died, I made sure my mother and Prim never faced the hunger and pain that so many in The Seam do. For a moment, I live in my sister's ignorance, imagining that the selection isn't a poorly disguised prostitution ploy and truly a ticket to a better life in The Capitol. And then I think about Johanna Mason, from the first selection who snapped on live broadcast and stabbed her "companion" to never be seen again. I come back to my senses.
At one o'clock, we head for the square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death's door. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you'll be imprisoned. It's too bad, really, that they hold The Selection in the square — one of the few places in District 12 that can be pleasant. The square's surrounded by shops, and on public market days, especially if there's good weather, it has a holiday feel to it. But today, despite the bright banners hanging on the buildings, there's an air of grimness. The camera crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect.
People file in slowly murmuring to each other about who the prospective selected girls will be this year. A town girl named "Madge" is mentioned frequently. She's the Mayor's Daughter. A quiet girl I knew from school. Today, she's dressed in all white with charcoal lining her eyes and her hair tied up in a pink ribbon. She looks pretty, like Prim, in that soft angelic way. The Selection is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well. Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another's hands. And one by one all the eligible young women line up in front. It reminds me of when we had assembly in school. I want to laugh and the spectacle. Some girls have done their best to create attire that resembles the clothing people wear in the capitol. The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive. The square's quite large, but not enough to hold District 12's population of about eight thousand. Latecomers are directed to the adjacent streets, where they can watch the event on screens as it's televised live by the state.
Through the crowd, I spot Gale looking back at me with a ghost of a smile. As Selections go, this one at least has a slight entertainment factor. All these girls look ridiculously hopeful. I look to Prim who is gazing at the scroll sitting solemnly in the center of the table standing on the stage before us, with a blood red ribbon tied delicately around it. She looks intoxicated by the dream of a better life. And suddenly I am thinking of the meadow and what a better life would mean to me. And maybe Gale's thinking the same thing, because his face darkens and he turns away.
Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read the new story of Panem from war, to the hunger games, to the selection. An hour drones on and he ends the speech with a pained glance at his daughter Madge who, unlike Prim, looks terrified. And now, it's time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always did during the hunger games.
"Ladies first!" she chuckles and crosses to the table with the solitary scroll sitting on it. She reaches down and makes a show of slowly unrolling the parchment as she slowly walks back to the microphone and cameras. The crowd draws in a collective breath, and I'm feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not Prim, thinking of all the ways the capitol will tell us she's gone missing if she doesn't make the first cut. Effie Trinket looks into the the camera, smooths the parchment of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not Prim.
It's me.