One Year Later
I wake up to the smell of meat cooking, drifting through the house with a tantalizing aroma. I don't feel the same desperate urge to wolf it down as I would have a year or so earlier, but it still makes my stomach rumble. I sniff without opening my eyes, breathing in the scent as though it alone can fill me up. Once I'd started bringing home enough meat to feed us all, thanks to Katniss and Gale's tutoring, my mother had shown a real talent for cooking. But even this seems special. I smell herbs I can't identify, and that means my mother must have bought them at the market. I jolt awake as I remember the date. Of course she's making something special. Today is my birthday, and the reaping.
I sit on the edge of my bed, feeling a tingle of delight mixed with a shiver of apprehension. Today I am fifteen, and I will have my name in the reaping ninteen times. Three ballets for the three years I've been eligible, and sixteen for the menager tesserae portions I've needed to keep my family alive. My younger sister, Cana, will have her name in for the first time. I glance over at the bed my sisters share. The three of them sleep there peacefully, oblivious any danger they might be in. How do they do it? How can they block out the horrors I have shooting through my brain?
I stand up, cold seeping from the worn wooden floor into my feet before settling in my bones. I tiptoe across the room to the kitchen, being careful to avoid the loose board that gives off a crack like a gunshot when even the slightest pressure was put on it. Normally, I would only too gleefully wake them up, so that I wouldn't have to do their morning chores while they slept. But today it seems cruel to wake them up to the terror that is the reaping. Best to let them sleep while they still can.
I walk into the kitchen to see my two younger brothers, River and Price, sitting at the table, playing with some scraps of wood. They look up as I enter, identical smiles lighting up their faces. They're identical twins, as if anyone looking at them couldn't tell, with their black hair falling over the green eyes that they'd inherited from my father, an oddity in the seam. "Rhia!" they both squeal, they drop the sticks and run over, hugging my legs, their faces lit up with the simple joy only five-year olds can feel. "Happy birthday!" "Thanks." I say, leaning over to ruffle their hair. "Set the table, boys." Says my mother, coming in the back door. She smiles at me, a smile that still reflects the pain of my father's death, even after nearly six years. "Happy birthday, dear." She says, her tone falsely cheery. We both know that today isn't only my birthday, and that I might not come home tonight.
There is an air of grimness as we sit down to eat our breakfast, something even my brothers pick up on, losing much of their carefree manner in responce. As soon as the dishes are clean, I slip out of the house and walk down to the woods.
As I near the fence that seperates district twelve from the woods beyond, I listen for the hum that alerts me that the fence is active. It never is. Theoreticly, it's supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day, but since we're lucky to get a few hours of electricity at night, it's usually safe to touch. I slide under the loose spot in the fencing, noting the tracks that tell me that Gale and Katniss have already passed this way. I retrieve my knives from the fork of a hollow tree, even though my favourite one is already strapped under my jacket, and proceed to our spot. I can feel myself relax as the trees close overtop of me. I may not be as closed off as Katniss, but the woods bring a sense of freedom, where I can truely be myself.
I climb up to the rocky ledge where Gale and Katniss wait, a smile coming to my face as I see them lounging on the rock. "What took you so long?" asks Gale, "We've been waiting for hours." "I never said you had to wait." Katniss rolls her eyes, saying, "Like we were going to go without you." I sit across from them, feeling some of the tension leaking out of me. "Here." Says Gale, picking up a bundle from beside him. "We saved you some of my catch." He tosses the bundle at me, and I unwrap it to find a third of a wild grouse pie. "Thanks." I say. Gale shrugs, and Katniss says "Happy Hunger Games." She mimicks the capitol accent of the maniacly upbeat woman who comes once a year to read the names at the reaping. "And may the odds," "Be ever in your favour!" Gale and I finish together. "Thanks to Effie Trinket, for that uplifting speech." I say. We joke about the Hunger games every year, because the only alternative is to go insane with worry.
We laugh. The reaping is sick, with the capitol taking kids away to fight to the death to prove how much we're at their mercy, but the part that makes it even more immoral is the fact that they make us celebrate it. The reaping is supposed to be a day of festivities, with feasts in the evenings, and most of us do celebrate, relieved that we have escaped for another year. But at least two families will board up their windows and doors and try and figure out how to survive the days to come.
We spend the morning gathering greens in the woods, catching a few fish and shooting a squirrel for the feast tonight. On our way home, we drop in at the hob, trading the squirrel for some salt, some fish for some good bread, and selling most of the greens to Greasy Sae, in exchange for some chunks of wild grouse. We could get a better price elsewhere, but we make a point to keep on the good side of Greasy Sae. She's the only one who will buy wild dog. We don't hunt wild dog, but if a pack's chasing you and you take a few out, meat is meat, and no one can tell the difference when it's in a stew.
We divide our spoils, leaving a fish, some salt and some wild grouse each. "See you in the square." I say. Gale and Katniss nod.
I head home and am at one pulled into the turmoil of getting myself and my siblings ready for the reaping. Once our hair is washed and brushed, the dirt is dug out from under our nails and we're all in our reaping outfits, we walk down to the square. Normally the square is the one place in district twelve that can look festive, but today the streamers and banners scattered on the buildings look like cobwebs, waiting to snatch their next victim. The reporters perched on top of the buildings don't help the image, looking ready to swoop down should anyone make a wrong move.
We are sorted into the pens around the square, one for male and female of each age group. I stand in a pen with the other fifteen-year olds, pushing through the line until I stand next to Katniss. She gives me a nod, tension clear in her eyes. Despite the fact that we laugh about it in the woods, there is nothing funny about the situation now. We turn to the platform set up at the front of the square as the real Effie Trinket, this year with bright blue hair, she has a different color every year, steps up. We watch as she steps up to the two large glass bowls, one for girls and one for boys, and starts to speak.