Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far! You're support and comments are really encouraging and your characters are great to work with! Hopefully I can finish the Reapings over the weekend, but no promises. I still have like nine more to go. Here's District 3!

Lindy Waterson

"Happy Hunger Games! Let's have the gentlemen first, shall we?" Our escort, Vanilla has stepped up to take the podium now, but she gets right down to business. All the guys around me tense up, probably praying that they won't be selected. I fold my arms and wait. I hate this. That they can just rope us off and pick us like animals, send us in to die. We're all just the Capitol's puppets. My friend, Camielle has a similar blank expression on her face, but anger burns in her eyes as well. I search the crowd briefly while Vanilla is reaching in through the boys' names. I spot my brother Calvin. He's only two years younger than me and has a completely different look on his face. Nervous, eager. I wonder if he'd volunteer. Probably not—as much as our mother urges us to enjoy the Hunger Games and compete in them, Calvin knows that there are kids four times his size who knows fifty different ways to kill you just with their hands alone. My mom won the Hunger Games at age seventeen. She treats Calvin, my sister Kiana and I like we're careers. We're not.

"Crawford Reed!" Vanilla reads the name and almost at once a boy moves up to the stage from the group of fourteen year olds. He looks as if he's about to burst into tears. Vanilla asks for volunteers, but only gets a silent crowd in return. Calvin fidgets nervously but does not raise his hand. Once Crawford realizes that it's hopeless and no one is going to step in for him, tears begin to role down his cheeks and he hangs his head in shame. Vanilla doesn't know what to do and frowns, cringing away from the boy. " . . . Well, ah, I guess we have our male tribute then—let's move on—"

I curl my hands into tight fists. I hate her. I pity the boy, who is only a year younger than me, knowing that he'll probably be one of the first to go in the games. I'll watch him die on T.V.

I know my anger at Vanilla is misdirected. She's a dopey middle-aged woman with swirly yellow and white hair whose voice is so squeaky it could shatter windows. It's the Capitol I hate. I just want this day to be over, but I know it will never be over. It's repeated year after year after year. As long as the Capitol lives, so do the games. It's as simple as that.

Vanilla has picked up a tribute's name and strides back to the podium gleefully, probably hoping that the girl tribute will NOT begin weeping profusely the moment she steps on stage. But there's something else, some sort of recognition in her eyes. Some sort of thrill. I know what's going to happen right before it does.

"Lindy Waterson!" Vanilla announces, way overenthusiastic. "Daughter of past victor, Sandra Waterson—imagine that folks!" She claps her hands together. Kids who know of me turn to stare. I smooth my green dress and keep the same, emotionless expression on my face as I make my way to the stage. I did not expect this, but I refuse to give the Capitol any surprise or any emotion at all.

Crawford Reed

I actually wanted to do something with myself, you know? Not like I had my whole life planned out, but I had ideas of stuff I wanted to accomplish. They didn't include dying at age fourteen, getting stabbed to death by a nasty career or dying of hunger or falling in a dark hole. Believe me, I can keep coming up with more.

I wanted to be a chef when I got older. Electronics had never really appealed to me. I started work just this year. At least I get out of that early, huh? I'm okay at working with electronics and setting up television sets, but I'm really, really good at cooking. I thought maybe I'd even get so good I'd be working at a high-end restaurant in the Capitol. Or at least somewhere—away from District 3. Maybe I'd find the courage to ask out Leesi Wilders, a pretty girl whom I went to school with. Maybe I'd have a family, and give my family a better life and maybe I'd be a person, a real person, not just Shorty, or Curly Cue or Little Asshole.

None of those things are going to happen now. I'm going to die—going to be murdered, actually, to be perfectly blunt—at age fourteen. I will die Curly Cue and I will die painfully alone. In the 23rd Hunger Games, I will die.

I will die.

I'm gonna die.