I slam my bedroom door so loudly that the windows rattle and one of them even cracks; this will annoy both mother and a father, a thought that makes me smile.
Flicking on the wallscreen, I tune into a recap of the reapings just in time to re-watch tiny Rue tremble as she slowly walks up the reaping stage, to be followed by Thresh, the human mountain. It is then that the sooty, crumbling buildings of District 12 flash up on the screen, and the vacuous Effie Trinket calls the name 'Primrose Everdeen' with great relish. As the crowd parts to allow the tiny Primrose access to the stage, her fierce, dark-haired sister leaps in front of her and volunteers to take her place.
Looking at this Katniss girl, I can already tell that she's not as underfed as the previous tributes of District 12. Although she's thin, she's quite wiry and muscular, with a good complexion and captivating grey eyes. She'd never pass as beautiful here in the Capitol, but there's something about her that makes me want to watch her closely.
Out of curiosity, I switch the wallscreen to NetMode and link up to PanemPedia; Panem's complete online guide to almost everything since its creation, although it does gloss over the Dark Days quite a lot. I slowly type in Katniss' name and sure enough, a page on her has already been created, although all it states is that she is the female District 12 tribute for the 74th Annual Hunger Games and that the odds of her winning currently sit at 8-1, which are actually quite good, as this means that the bookkeepers believe that based on initial appearance alone, only eight of the other tributes look stronger than she does.
After a little more searching, I find the page for Sian Pinewood and her old Games head shot, complete with district number fills the wall. I read about her – how she was the daughter of a prominent Peacekeeper, that she had two older sisters and a younger brother, that she achieved a training score of 7 and was killed by Silver Prada from District 1 by asphyxiation. It is while I am reading about Sian that old memories float through my head.
"I say mother, there is quite the resemblance between our Artemis and that brat from District 12, don't you think?"
"It's not surprising that you look like some coalminer's offspring, darling with that pale skin and uncoloured hair– if only you would just colour your hair..."
"Hey Ari – have you noticed how much the girl tribute from District 12 looks like you? It's creeeeee-pyyyy, I'll say."
"Artemis, as your father, it is for your own good and because I care about you that I've had your mother book you in at the Salon to have your hair coloured. After this year's Games are over, or even as soon as that brat from District 12 is dead, you can go back to whatever style you please. It just doesn't do to have people creating some absurd resemblance where it can't clearly exist. It's damaging to the family name and I will not have us lumped in with some coalminer's filthy bastard."
Curiosity makes me enter my father's name into the search bar. His page soon flashes up, with a stern photo of him taken outside the University of Panem in the top right hand corner and a whole page detailing his wealth, achievements and our private life. I click on my grandfather's name and so appears another page lauding the wealth and achievements of the Aurum family ; I follow this with my great-grandfather and it is here that I find something worth looking at. My great-grandfather was also a surgeon, who patented the technique for the permanent dyeing of hair and eye colours without damage to the subject or their person. Though he died before the Dark Days, I knew this already; however it is the photo displayed of him from his younger years that makes this information about him stand out with his dark hair, olive skin and grey eyes. My great-grandfather looks a great deal like me, and also quite a lot like many other citizens of Panem who don't live in the Capitol.
Almost frantic now, I try to go as far back into my family as I can, until I get as far back as 40 years prior to the Dark Days but no further. The last name I encounter is that of Odysseus Aurum, my great-great-grandfather, so I open PanemSearch and enter that name in, and after almost an hour of mindless searching, I discover an old family tree that actually stops with Zeus Aurum, my grandfather and goes back so many generations that I discover my great-great-great-and-so-on grandparents were called Jet and Lulu Statten and they lived in some strange place called New York City.
After doing some not-so-simple math calculations based on the birth and death dates of these long-dead relatives, I realise that my great-great-great-great-great grandparents, Tulip and Orion Aurum, or their son Plato Aurum and his wife Daisy were perhaps amongst the very first citizens of Panem. First, I enter Tulip and Orion into PanemSearch and discover that although the United States of America had begun to crumble when they were married, it wasn't until after their death that it became Panem.
So begins my search for Plato, and I discover that he was a doctor back in the United States of America and was offered the opportunity to be amongst the very first citizens of the Capitol due to the many accolades he had won throughout his medical education. However, although he made his home in the Capitol, it became his job to travel throughout the newly-formed districts and provide their apothecaries and healers with the most basic knowledge on how to save the sick, wounded and dying people who had suffered as the United States crumbled. Using rudimentary instruments and with limited time, he would pass on knowledge to those who would learn and move on to the next District. It turns out that when Plato reached District 12, he was training a woman named Leevy Pinewood to save lives when he met her daughter Daisy and fell in love with her. Back then, there were far less stringent restrictions on District citizens being admitted to the Capitol, and when he left District 12, he brought Daisy with him. It's not long before I discover that the old, crumpled paper photograph I found years ago is of Daisy and Plato on their wedding day.
It is only after this triumphant discovery that I realise that it is 5am and that I have spent nearly all night in search of a powerful truth; that somewhere deep in my veins, the blood of an emaciated coalminer's daughter flows. I have ties to District 12.