There are no cameras in the square.
It was announced a week ago that there would be none; President Snow is a man with a murderous gleam in his eyes. He gets off on our shock and misery. He said it was to surprise all of the sponsors at the first ceremony. Lila and I knew from the beginning he wanted to watch every heart in every district break today.
We filed in, sorted through, and took our places in the flock. Minute by minute crowding closer and closer to one another, until no longer can I see Lila's bun above the crowd. She is swallowed. My heart hurts and feels as if it is dying whenever I can't see her… but I will see her after.
People file into the shops with windows, into side streets and whatever ally way they can find. I'm toward the back middle of the boys section, two more years until I'm in the back row. Three more years until I'm hiding from this madness in an ally, or clawing for a window to keep my eyes on Kale.
This has always been Lila's worst part. The constant throng of people filing in, surrounding her. She fainted one year when we were fourteen. She's struggled with claustrophobia since her first year in the reaping.
Two more years and Lila will be safe, and I will marry her.
I stare at the sea of heads before me. I'm not short, but I'm no giant either. I guess it's a good thing they file in youngest to oldest. Youngest in the front, oldest in the back. It's awful. You think it's bad your first year, standing in the very front, watching as your role models step up to the stage. Siblings, cousins, friends, neighbors… And you watch them cry. Front row. You hear their breathing stagger.
But it gets worse.
Every year, you move back, and you get to watch everyone in front of you. How they react. Every year, you're exposed to more and more and more. And every year you're more likely to watch someone walk the entire length of the aisle to the stage.
You watch them die.
When you're from District 12, you don't die in the arena. I mean, you do, but you die before that. It's in the way you walk, the way you carry yourself. Last year… last year I watched a boy I grew up with, a year older than me, step out into the aisle, every step heavier than the last. He was destroyed before he even reached the steps.
A few months ago, my mom opened up about the first quarter quell and how each district voted in their tributes. She was ten. Her older brothers were fifteen and seventeen, and her older sister was thirteen, all eligible for the quell and to vote. She never spoke of who the girl was, but the boy was a nightmare. He was eighteen. And though he was the only one to ever win the games, I'd never heard of him before. I almost didn't believe her when she said we'd had a victor in District 12.
I mean, we're District 12.
We starve in peace or we mine ourselves to death if we survive the darker years.
I asked her about who he was. Why he was a nightmare. But she never said. Only that as soon as the victor tour was over, he was dead on his first night in the victor village. No one spoke of him since. No one ever confessed to the murder. And District 12 went back to peaceful starvation.
There's a tapping over the speakers, the mayor testing the microphone. His dark hair is combed back, his coal grey, padded suit pressed neat and snug against his bony, starving form. He starves himself by choice, though. He likes looking that way. His eyebrows are greased into swirls at the end. He's trying too hard to be elite.
"Attention, everybody, quiet down, quiet down." Silence washes over the crowd as the peacekeepers arm themselves in front of the stage. They stand in two staggered rows in front of the stage, as well as staggered on either sides of the aisle. I can only imagine what an awful job that must be. I can't imagine surviving these years, only to turn around to be handed a weapon and expected to kill as a living.
It had to be a washed up careers career.
And then the anthem began to play.
"We welcome you, to our fiftieth anniversary of the Hunger Games! And that means ours second Quarter Quell! Without further adieu, ladies and gentlemen, visiting us all the way from the capitol, President Snow!" You can see him imagining the applause in his head, he wasn't fit for government. I almost felt sorry for the man. He was more of an entertainment guy. Lila joked on several occasions how he'd be a fabulous designer with the way he carried himself.
President Snow takes the stage, followed by a boy in a white suit. The boy is holding a small wooden box. And as the anthem ends, President Snow begins to speak.
It's kind of weird seeing him here in his Capitol suit. He's a fat man. I imagine if he fell, that he could bounce right back up. I looked at the boy next to me, you could feel how on edge he was, and thought about sharing my thoughts for a laugh… but didn't want to risk being caught. Silence and respect was mandatory on a normal reaping day and you'd be whipped afterward if you broke it. On a Quarter Quell…
I turn my attention back to the stage, the Capitol hanging from the Justice Building. Two chairs, the podium, the two large globes that hold us all captive… I think that maybe if I stare hard enough, I can picture myself in a life where this doesn't exist. Where Lila and I aren't living in a nightmare, where we don't live in fear.
President Snow is droning on and on about the wonderful history of these awful games. How the Hunger Games were born from the Dark Days. But District 12, the dark days are every day.
"When the laws for the Games were created, it was dictated that every twenty-five years, the anniversary will be marked by a Quarter Quell. It will call for a glorified version of our Games, to make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts' rebellion!" President Snow's voice makes me want to vomit. You can hear his hatred, his anger, his contempt for life. I cannot imagine being related to him. To think that he has a wife and kids… I wonder what he would do if they were ever called into the reaping.
"On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it."
His crooked smile deepened. I wonder if he was in awe of District 12's win on that year. And maybe, he is even more pleased that we killed our only victor.
"And now we honor our second Quarter Quell," his voice booms over the square and the boy steps up to him, his small arms outstretched with the box settled firmly on his upturned palms. He was dressed in white from head to toes. Shoes, pants, shirt, bracelet, even his hair was platinum. He's the picture of innocence, standing next to the devil himself.
Snow turns to him.
The box is filled with envelopes. The tips of them peeking out at the audience. It's unrealistic how many there are. He carries the envelope marked with a big dark 50 and holds it facing us. Smiling over us. I glare back.
The crisp opening of the envelope snaps over the speakers and the envelope flutters to the stage floor.
His smile turns into a grin. He chuckles.
"On the fiftieth anniversary, as a reminder to all that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district will send in twice the tributes. Two girls, two boys!" The excitement in his voice makes my stomach churn even more.
Twice as many.
Not only is my name in extra, but now I have two chances to be called.
What about Lila? I can't see Lila. I have to find Lila.
I have to stay right here. I can't move.
I have to stay right here. Or they might hurt Lila.
"And what an honor it is to be here on this anniversary reaping to your tributes to the stage! And tonight we shall depart for the Capitol! As always… ladies first. I will only be calling the first tribute, and she shall call the next, and so on." He walked over to the girl's glass globe, his fat hand plunging into the names, pulling a slip out from the middle. He saunters back to the podium, unfolds the slip, and condemns the first girl.
"Maysilee Donner!"
I knew her. Not well, she was two years younger than me. But she sings in the choir, and so does Lila. With her friend Ivy who hangs around the Everdeen boys. I know she has a twin. She works in her family's sweet shop.
You could feel the death in the air.
Everyone turned slowly to face Maysilee, as if she were a magnetic force drawing us all in… You could see the numbness on her face, in her limp, dying march toward the stairs.
She stops, but President Snow waves her toward the bowl her name was just drawn from.
She's shaking. She puts one hand to her mouth and reaches in with the other. Snow directs her to the podium.
She unfolds the paper.
"Blye… Redpath." She choked the name and my heart sunk. And jumped at the same time. Blye lived just outside of the Seam, she didn't starve, never would have had to enter for tesserae… I didn't know much about her family, she has two brother, she laughs a lot, everyone loved her…
It was her first year in the reaping.
A boy behind me was sobbing.
She turned twelve last week.
A peacekeeper shoved his way into his row. I didn't turn around.
She always made everyone smile.
But… she wasn't my Lile.
I had to focus on that. My Lile was safe this year. She just had to make it through one more reaping now, no more worrying. Lila was safe. She'd be fine. Everything was working out fine. I'll find her and I will soothe her and we'll survive another year together.
Blye was already up to the stage. Maysilee held her hand as she walked up the stairs.
She wasn't even as tall as the globes. But she was still smiling in her small pink dress, even though you could see the streaks that were clean from the dust that marked her face. She was crying. But she was smiling. She stood on her tip toes, her armpit against the side of the sphere to pull a name out quickly.
She mouthed the words, I'm sorry, before unfolding the slip.
Her smile fell and words escaped her as she threw the slip away from her. She screamed.
The peacekeepers all turned to face her with their guns, but President Snow waved them off, walked over to her, and whispered into her ear.
You could hear his words sneak into the microphone.
"You better say the name or so help me I will…" He looked up, and stopped as she was standing back at the podium again.
"Briar Redpath."
Every head suddenly turned my way, and then to the aisle.
The boy behind me was her brother. They were both going to die.
He all but ran to the stage and grabbed his sister. This was wrong. This was so wrong.
He was in the first row of seventeen year olds. He was in his last reaping.
Her first and his last.
None of us are safe.
He walks over to the bowl, plucks a name out and marches back to the podium, and without hesitation, he unfolds the slip.
"Haymitch Abernathy."