Chapter Two
The heat was sweltering.
My breaths were strained and laced with weight. Rivulets of sweat stuck to my forehead, plastering my hair to my skin.
The stifling humidity slid over my flesh and the metal buckets I was carrying slammed against my knobby knees with a metallic rattle with each step I took.
Water sloshed over the rims and fell onto my dusty, worn out boots as I lugged the buckets toward the fence that kept the cows penned in.
I stepped up onto the bottom rail and leaned over to pour the water into the empty trough below.
I jumped down and took a step back, wiping my clammy hands off on my shorts.
Most of the people in my district had the day off with the reaping being held today, but while everyone else was sleeping in, my family had to rise early to take care of the animals.
I could see Kota in the distance, muttering a string a curses at a flock of sheep as he struggled to get them to cooperate.
After abandoning the empty buckets near the rundown shed behind my family's house, I jumped up onto the side of the fence that held in the sheep, that Kota was so desperately trying to get to cooperate as he fought shoo them away so he could fix a loose board of wood in the fence.
I propped my elbows up on the top plank of the wooden fence.
"I have to say," I called out. "I've always admired your work ethic."
He glanced up and scowled. "It was working great, actually. Until you got here, I had everything under control."
I made a big show of nodding. "Naturally."
"This is a stupid job," He finally concluded as finished securing it and got to his feet, sticking his hands in his pockets and kicking a rock around with his feet.
"Well, we're pretty much going to be doing this forever," I said. "You might as well get used to it."
He frowned. "I don't want to do this forever. You know that."
"What else are you going to do?" I asked. "District 10 isn't exactly overflowing with opportunities."
He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I don't even want to live in District 10."
"Where do you want to live?"
We'd had the conversation a dozen times before, where we both dwelled on the impossible, but in the end we would accept the inevitable truth that we were bound to spend the rest of our lives working on a ranch in the searing heat of District 10.
"Who knows?" The pebble he was kicking skidded under the fence, out of reach. He stared at it for a few seconds before ripping his gaze away. "Somewhere with more than one season, for a start."
"I want to see snow," I added with a wistful sigh. "Real snow, I mean. Not the light stuff we sometimes get."
"What does it matter, anyway?" He said suddenly with a dramatic sigh, leaning against the fence next to me. "We're going to suffocate here for the rest of our lives."
I scoffed, leaning over to pinch his cheek. "That's nonsense. You'll have me to brighten up your day."
He shuddered. "I know. The thought is enough to give anyone nightmares."
"Shut up," I said, lightly shoving his shoulder, but I couldn't fight the faint smile that had worked its way onto my face. "Race you to the house?"
And without waiting for a reply, I took off, slipping through the fence and launching into a sprint before he could respond.
He shouted after me and I could hear his footsteps behind me, thundering across the dry earth toward me.
I had nearly reached the back door when he slammed into me from behind, sending me hurtling toward the ground.
But before I could get up, he was already leaning against the door frame with an air of nonchalance.
"Cheaters never win," He said, pretending to examine his nails.
I reached for the nearest object - an empty bucket - and hurled it at him.
He ducked and there was a resounding echo as the aluminum bucket slammed into the door.
The sound must have been louder than I'd thought, because a few seconds later the door swung open and Cassia was there, with wide eyes and her sleeves pushed up to her elbows, revealing flour covered arms.
"What are you doing-,"
But before she could finish her sentence, Kota grabbed her arm and pulled her forward.
She stumbled out the door and Kota slipped inside, grinning triumphantly.
Something I grudgingly had to admire about Kota was that even on days like today, he could make everyone a bit more relaxed with how light-hearted he was.
"I win. You both lose," He taunted.
"What?" Cassia roared, her tiny arms flying into the air. "I wasn't even playing!"
"It's alright," Kota said with a shrug, disappearing inside, and then sang over his shoulder, "wouldn't have mattered if you were." Then, to someone else inside, "Is there any food?"
My younger sister's face twisted into one of anger as she raced in after him. "Take that back, you thick-headed -,"
But her words were drowned out as she chased him out of the room.
When I followed them inside, entering the kitchen, I could see that Cassia had been kneading dough on the counter.
I finished for her and set it aside as I began to clean up the mess of flour on the counter, floor and basically everywhere.
With our mom so sick, Cassia had been trying to do a lot around the ranch lately but she was a bit, well, new at all of it. Also, too short to properly reach the counter.
Kota came back into the room, with Cassia, slung over his shoulder, giggling.
He dropped her lightly on the counter and reached for a bit of flour, swiping it across her face and she squeezed her eyes shut and squealed. "Now, we need to roll out all of the lumps before baking -,"
She twisted and turned to get away from Kota who had begun tickling her, until my father came in, raised his eyebrows and abruptly walked out.
Kota glanced at me and grinned before jogging out after my father and coming back with his arms slung over his shoulders.
"So, anyway," He said. "I was thinking that to, you know, spice up with the place, we'll put a portrait of me on that wall and a life-size sculpture against that window and -,"
"Yeah, we'll definitely, uh, look into that," My father said, casting a glance in my direction that told me that no, he would very much not be looking into that.
It was hard to share Kota's energetic attitude, given today. I knew it was all for the rest of us, mostly Cass and Ollie, but if he was as solemn and dejected as I generally was about today, I wouldn't be sure that I could get through it without bursting into tears.
We'd made it a rule that, after so many years of being miserable on the day on the reaping, we'd try to be as light-hearted and happy as we could because if it was ever going to be our last day together, we didn't want it full of brooding and sobbing.
Of course, it was hard not to get succumb to the toll of the reaping but we managed as best we could.
Kota, at seventeen, was eligible for the reaping and at nearly fifteen, so was I.
Cassia was seven and Ollie eleven, therefore both were safe, at least for now and we would never let them apply for tesserae.
Kota had applied twice, when my mother first got sick and there were fewer races and we couldn't afford the medicine and food. Using a cow or chicken from our farm would have made us dangerously close to failing to meet our livestock quota and my parents would've gotten imprisoned.
We'd begged him not to but he'd done it anyway and maybe he'd saved us with that but he'd also potentially condemned himself.
I knew that twice, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't a lot considering most kids in District 10 applied so many more times than that but it still made me sick with panic.
If Astrella were still alive, she'd have been nineteen by now and too old for the reaping. I'd only been eleven when she was hung, but I could still remember her set jaw and tense muscles as she stared straight ahead while they tightened the noose around her neck, resigned to die with dignity.
Ollie came into the room then and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week, with dark circles under his eyes and blonde hair sticking up every which way from tossing and turning all night.
He was generally very scared the night before a reaping and maybe because this was his last one before he'd be entered too, it made him more restless than usual.
My father, Kota and I had woken earlier than usual so Cassia and Ollie could sleep in but they'd risen early anyway.
"Hey, Ollie," Kota said softly, his casual, energetic demeanor slipping off of him in an instant. "Are you feeling alright?"
Ollie nodded, yawning. "Just tired, s'all."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Kota said. "Cass and Rowan snore so loud that I can hear it from our room, too. It's a miracle that anyone in this house gets a wink of sleep with those two."
"Kota!" Cassia whined, sitting up on the counter, as Ollie allowed himself a small laugh.
"Ha ha," I said dryly. "You're so funny."
"You were speaking about me?" My mother inquired as she rolled herself inside the kitchen in her wheelchair.
She was terribly pale with sunken-in cheeks and dark circles under her eyes but still managed to retain a semblance of normalcy about herself.
She'd been doing better lately, well enough to move about on her own and I had managed to convince myself that she must be getting better but this had happened a lot before, small moments of respite before her health suddenly plummeted, to a worse state than before.
"Ma chére!" My father cried out, crossing the room to kiss her cheek.
I knew it was some affectionate term but didn't exactly know where it came from and neither did my father. It was from a language spoken in my family dating back centuries, but it'd dwindled out and we'd only retained a few phrases from it.
There was no need for it, I supposed.
My mother waved him off with a frail hand and a pointed expression. "Well, now you've messed up my hair," She said, reaching up to smooth her perfect hair. "I look like a wreck."
"You look as lovely as the day I married you, Katarina," My father assured her.
"You're my husband," She said. "You're required to say that. I'm sick, Gabriel, not stupid."
"But with fantastic hair," He assured her.
"Well, an argument could be made for 'decent' or 'alright looking -'," Kota began to say but cut off when my mother shot him a pointed expression and raised an eyebrow.
Kota sighed heavily, albeit somewhat dramatially. "But, I suppose 'fantastic,' could work as well."
My mother was the only one of us with dark, chestnut colored hair and brown eyes.
We all got my father's light blond hair and pale green eyes so my mother stood out in our family.
"Why are you allowed to insult your hair, but I can't?" Kota complained.
I leaned against the back door for a few moments, quietly watching the exchanges between my family and hoping to mentally take a picture of it and commit it to memory in case I'd ever forget it.
My father hummed as he made breakfast, a simple meal of oats and milk and spoke of the raspberry jam he'd been saving for a month for after dinner.
It was amazing, really, how alive he became around my mother when she was moving around and not bedridden and incapable of speaking.
"We'll be going soon," My mother, who'd barely touched her plate, said in a soft voice, when we'd finished eating. "We should get ready."
And just like that, the somewhat-cheery atmosphere crumbled around us, but she was right.
"Come on, Cass," I said, lifting her off of the counter where'd she'd insisted on eating and starting to lead her upstairs. "Time to get dressed."
In our room, I opened the trunk at the foot of her bed and pulled out a blouse and shirt for her.
She complained. She wanted to wear pants, she said.
"I know," I said. "But none of your pants are quite nice enough."
That was a bit of an understatement, really. She'd gotten holes and tears in just about all of them, doing who knows what.
She didn't need to dress particularly nice because she wasn't entered in the reaping yet but it was still expected of everyone to dress reasonably well anyway.
She fidgeted in the skirt and gave up, plopping down onto her bed and swinging her legs back and forth. "Are you going to wear Astrella's dress?"
I didn't like wearing Astrella's old clothes. I felt like I didn't belong in them but they'd been passed down to me but I rarely touched them.
"I don't think so -,"
"Oh!" Cassia cried, hurrying out to the tiny closet in the hall where we kept the few, expensive pieces of clothing that we owned.
She came back with a softly colored, short-sleeved floral dress, waving it around.
"Oh, Cass," I said with a sigh. "I don't think I could -,"
But she shoved it into my hands anyway. "If I have to wear a skirt, then you have to wear this."
So I put it on, really so she'd stop fussing, but marveled at the soft feeling of the material as it brushed against my skin and fell from my waist.
It fell short on me but I was taller than Astrella had been, so I supposed it was meant to be longer.
Cassia complained when I pulled on socks and a pair of beige combat boots made of a soft fabric but I ignored her.
"You can't wear boots with a dress," She said.
I looked at my feet. The rumpled socks stuck out over the tops of the boots but I only shrugged.
Then she ran out of the room and dragged my mother back, pushing her in her wheelchair.
My mother had changed into a pretty, blue dress and looked to have been in the middle of pinning up her hair when Cassia had dragged her out.
At the sight of me, my mother smiled. "Oh, Rowan. You look beautiful."
Cassia whispered something into her ear.
"Oh, very well," My mother said with a smile, picking up the pearl necklace in her lap. "For you," She said.
I eyed it warily. It was easily my mother's most cherished possession, something she'd been given by her father.
Kota hadn't want to break her heart by selling it so he'd hid it when we tried to. We didn't want to of course, but it was better than having anyone apply for tesserae.
Not that there were so many buyers in 10, of course, considering the plague that spread through a lot of the livestock that year so it wouldn't have made much of a difference, but it would have been something.
"Don't you want to wear it?" I asked but my mother shook her head.
"You'd look so beautiful in it," She said. "And Astrella wore it with that dress. Oh, dear, you look so much like her, Rowan."
Suddenly, it looked like a noose.
Cassia was looking at the necklace in awe so I crouched down and clasped it around her own neck.
She looked up at me with wide-eyes. "But Ro, don't you want to wear it?"
I gave her a small, encouraging smile. "You look much lovelier in it than I ever could."
I didn't know what my mother was thinking but she looked at me for a moment before beaming brightly at Cassia as my sister spun to show the necklace off to her.
"Sit, Rowan," My mother said to me. "I'll do your hair."
So I sat on the edge of Cassia's bed as my mother braided the front sections of my hair back and pinned them in place, the rest falling down my back in soft waves.
While she did that, Cass had disappeared and she made her return them, carrying a basket of small, white flowers.
"Do mine!" She pleaded with my mother, who braided her hair back and into small bun at the nape of her neck.
My mother had only just put the last pin in place before Cassia was up and insisting that she do my mother's.
My mother obliged and as Cassia fiddled with her hair, met my gaze.
"Am I going to regret this?" She asked in a hushed voice.
Cassia lightly swatted the side of her head. "I can hear you."
"Sorry, dear," My mother said, gently reaching behind her to tap Cassia's hand in reassurance.
Cassia only huffed but when she was done, she stepped back to view her work and clapped her hands together.
It looked, very predictably, as if a seven year old had done it because that was exactly what had happened.
My mother could probably have managed to look lovely no matter what was done to her hair, so even though Cassia had simply braided random bits of it and pulled a few back, clasping them together at the back, she still looked beautiful.
Cassia, pleased with herself, rushed to get a small, handheld mirror to show her and my mother took in her reflection for a moment and then grabbed Cassia's face and showered her in kisses as Cass giggled and struggled to get away.
"I look just like those models from the Capitol, wouldn't you say?" My mother said, striking an outlandish pose, when Cassia had slipped away.
"Oh! One more thing!" Cassia said and as she ducked to pick up her basket of flowers, my mother mimed looking terrified but grinned widely as Cassia spun back around.
She put a few of the small, white flowers in my mother's hair, slipping them into the braids and then did the same to my hair before her own.
She had some left so she showered them all over my mother.
"We are a walking botanical garden," My mother said to me in mock horror when Cassia hurried out of the room, eager to show off her work with the others.
"You don't think she'll come back with a pair of shears then, do you?"
"No," My mother answered with a laugh. "But maybe a watering can."
"Or pesticide."
"Or pollinators."
"Or an army of small girls in lace blouses."
"Or -," But my mother couldn't finish her sentence because she broke off, laughing.
Just then, my father entered, being pulled along by Cassia.
"Yes, your hair does look beautiful, Cass -," He was saying but paused when he entered.
"Oh, Rowan!" He said, splaying out his arms for effect. "The sun is dull in comparison to you!"
My mother coughed.
"Yes, yes, Katarina," My father said. "You look okay too."
As my mother began to wheel out of the room, my father laughed and pulled her back, kissing her as Cassia scrunched up her face in disgust.
"I'm only teasing," My father said, clearly trying not to smile. "I think Kota is truly the prettiest."
My mother laughed, reaching for my father's hand as he promised to meet us downstairs and they slipped out the doorway.
I heard him helping her down the steps and turned to Cassia.
"Are you ready to go?" I asked.
She nodded, biting her lip and I could tell something was weighing down on her.
I poked her stomach. "What's wrong? You can tell me, you know."
She fussed with the hem of her blouse. "I - well - you and Kota, that lady isn't going take you away with her, is she?"
The lady she was talking about was Odessa Bray, our district escort and by getting taken away, Cassia clearly meant getting reaped.
"No," I said. "We're not going anywhere."
She seemed to consider this for a moment before holding out her pinky. "Promise?"
I paused for only a moment before interlocking my pinky with hers and shaking it. "Now, come on. We don't want to be late."
Because District 10 was so big and spaced out, it was difficult to get to the town square, where the reaping was held every year.
We couldn't push my mother in wheelchair the whole way so we started up the rusted pickup truck that we kept on the side of the house, rarely used and with a tendency to break down every few miles, but it was all we had.
We'd traded some of the best livestock that we had for it so that we'd be able to get my mother to town quickly, should anything emergency come up.
She'd hated that we'd done it for her, even though we pretended we'd just randomly wanted it, but she saw right through that.
Not many people owned cars in 10 but some method of travel was necessary so we could've made a bit of money picking up others but gas was limited as it was and we needed to preserve it.
We parked on a side street about a half mile away from the square. We didn't want to drive in any closer because the stares made us comfortable.
We weren't the wealthiest in 10 but we were well enough off that we had more than most. Like the truck, for example.
As we filed in behind a large group heading for the square, my family's friendly resolve had faded and I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat.
The wheels of my mother's wheelchair rattled as they rolled over the street and I tried to focus on that rhythm to keep me calm.
I felt someone squeeze my hand and saw Ollie holding it tightly. I gave him what I thought was a reassuring smile, if not somewhat marked by nervousness, but then realized he'd been staring at the hanging tree in a shadowed corner of the square and had been frightened.
There were new bodies today and I took only a quick glance to make sure I didn't know any of them.
I recognized a boy from a class above me at school and dropped my gaze.
I couldn't stop the vivid memory from spiraling into my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut but Astrella was still there, her feet dangling in the air and her dead eyes screaming.
"Don't look," I whispered to Ollie and he nodded, jerking his head down. He'd been eight when Astrella was hung three years ago so he remembered it too and it was no doubt what he was thinking of.
I felt a fresh wave of anger wash over me. I hated that damn tree more than anything else in the world.
I glanced at Kota. We both knew it was time to leave our families behind us.
He nodded curtly, setting Cassia, who'd he'd been holding, down.
Ollie gripped my hand harder. "Please, stay."
"You know I can't," I said, smoothing down his hair and fixing the collar of his shirt. "But I'll be back. We both will. You know that."
He nodded. "Can we go riding tonight, then?"
I nodded. "We can go to White Peak," I promised. The ridge of the small mountain was beautiful at sunset and the terrain was easy to ride up.
"Okay," He said, letting go of my hand. "Don't forget."
Cassia tugged on my dress and I spun around and scooped her up in my arms, kissing her forehead and then passing her over to my father.
I kissed my parents on the cheek and then, with a last fleeting glance at my family, fell in step with Kota as we made our way to the registration table and waited in line.
The square, which was generally very big anyway, was packed to the rim with people and others were still streaming in.
Even the mudlarks who lived in the mountains showed up. Well, it was show up or go to the hanging tree and the mudlarks knew better than anyone else what would happen then.
I watched as a small mudlark girl with steaks of dirt and dust in her hair and grime on her clothing ran through the crowd and threw her arms around the leg of a boy a few people in front of me.
The mudlarks were, generally, the poorest people in 10. They'd flocked to the mountains ages ago, looking to live there but realized there were no resources there and they couldn't survive there all on their own.
They had no homes and no jobs or money or food or anything, really.
But we didn't dislike them because of their lack of money or general uncleanliness. We were all used to that, to some extent anyway.
It was because of what they did to survive and the way the Peacekeepers pretended not to notice.
The Peacekeepers, in truth, were just happy that they weren't dying in the streets or begging for food at every doorstep, although some did on occasion. So as long as they didn't have to see them, they didn't care.
But the deeper meaning behind our indifference toward them was centered aroundhowthey adapted to survive and it was hard to look at them knowing what they did.
Knowing what happened to Astrella.
The small girl sobbed and tried to hang on to who I assumed to be her brother as an older woman, who was even filthier in her drab skirt, pried her away and hurried her off.
The girl's worry was understandable. When a mudlark was reaped, it wasn't very surprising. There weren't a lot of them so it didn't happen every year but they still applied for tesserae more than anyone else.
Although, they couldn't have needed to as much as usual lately considering the surpluses of bodies from the recent increase in hangings.
I knew that the mudlarks did what they could to survive and I considered the ultimatum. Food or death. But I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do what they did.
The Peacekeepers thought of them as tiny bugs that were annoying but they were too lazy to exterminate.
I just tried to not think of them all together but it was difficult for the image of the girl's sunken-in face and the outline of her bones beneath her skin to disappear from my mind.
There was a donation service set up for them, and we put what food we could spare in it sometimes - despite our feelings toward them, but because it was in the open - considering nobody was willing to bring the food directly to them - the food donated was often stolen by others who lived in town before it could reach them.
I hadn't realized I'd reached the front of the line until Kota nudged me.
"Name?" The annoyed woman sitting behind the registration table inquired.
"Rowan Casterly."
The woman marked something down and I held out my finger. There was a slight pinch as she drew a drop of my blood.
"Next," She called before I'd even moved away.
I'd nearly lost Kota in those few seconds but caught side of his blond head being ushered aside from registration.
I shouted for him and he turned around in relief.
He squeezed my shoulder when I'd caught up to him. "You okay?"
I nodded but it was hard to stay calm with that stupid, blasted tree looming in the corner of the square.
"Kota!" A voice shouted. "Rowan!"
Lark broke away from the crowd and jogged toward us, Mieka at his side in a pretty purple dress with her red curls falling down her back.
I allowed myself a moment of relief. I didn't want to have to find Mieka in the crowded sea of faces.
Everyone had begun to separate into their age groups, youngest in the back and oldest in the front and Kota sighed.
"I suppose that's our cue," He said and any trace of humor had left his eyes. He stepped forward to hug me. "See you soon."
I nodded as he stepped away, winked at Mieka and then joined Lark as they crossed over to their age section.
Mieka was looking for someone in the crowd. Her cousin who'd just turned twelve.
She must have caught her eye because she waved and tried to smile at her.
When she glanced back at me, I motioned ahead of us. "Shall we?"
Mieka was supposed to stand with the other fifteen year olds but I wouldn't be fifteen for another few weeks and we refused to separate, so we stood together silently on the edge of both.
The temporary stage constructed in front of the Justice Building held five chairs and I glanced up to see that they were filled.
The mayor, an older woman with sharp lines in her face and a distinct, punctual speech was seated in the first one, next to the district's escort, Odessa Bray.
Odessa didn't have green skin or blue hair like some of the other escorts I'd seen before. Instead, she held an uncanny resemblance to the porcelain dolls I sometimes saw in shop windows.
My father bought me one once for my birthday when I was younger and Odessa shared the same paper-white skin and dark, glassy, Asian eyes.
She was a bit terrifying, really, with over-pronounced cheekbones and pursed lips.
The only color on her face was the splash of red on her perfectly painted lips.
Her black hair was pulled away from her face and fell down her back.
She sat perfectly straight, as if there was, in fact, a doll stand holding her in place.
She looked as if she belonged in a display case, not as an escort for a district who tended to farm animals.
The remaining three chairs were filled with the last surviving victors of District 10.
Riordan Stark sat in the chair closest to Odessa Bray. He was the oldest surviving victor and was probably fifty or so by now.
Next to him, Kiva Everett sat, regarding the crowd with a cool, indifferent gaze. Before she won when she was seventeen, she'd worked with her father in her family's butchering shop. I'd only been seven during her Games, but I'd heard from kids at school about how she had hacked other tributes to death with a machete, as if they cows in a pasture waiting to be killed.
Levi Aplin sat in the fifth chair, staring calmly ahead. His mouth was set in a hard line and his expression cold but he must have caught sight of someone in the crowd, because his demeanor changed and he flashed them a brilliant, if not somewhat reassuring, grin.
The mayor rose to her feet, crossing to the podium erected in the center of the stage.
The crowd's reaction was instantaneous.
A eerie hush spread over the mass of people gathered in the square and the only sound was the heavy, nervous breathing of the kids around me.
Somewhere, a child started to cry in the distance. A baby, probably.
The mayor told the story of Panem, outlining its history for us, like she did every year.
As she went on to explain the uprising of the districts against the Capitol and the creation of the Hunger Games, I realized I had stopped paying attention, too caught up in my own thoughts.
It wasn't until she began to read off the names of the past District 10 victors that I realized she'd finished her speech.
District 10 had four victors, one of which who died before I was born.
Riordan was the second and gave a polite, albeit uncomfortable, nod at the mention of his name and when Kiva's name was called, she leaned over and whispered something in Levi's ear, making him look slightly annoyed and she laughed at his expression, her white teeth flashing brightly against her tanned skin.
When the mayor called Levi's name, he set his jaw and tensed, barely acknowledging it.
The obligatory, half-hearted applause that the district offered withered out until it died completely.
The mayor introduced Odessa Bray, who sat up sharply and made her way toward the podium in a dress of soft, pearlescent fabric that reminded me of the petals of a flower.
The sound of her high heels clicking against the stage echoed throughout the square.
Her fingers brushed against the wood of the podium and she tapped the thin microphone twice before speaking.
She seemed bored, really. Maybe even a bit annoyed. It had forever perplexed me how she had gotten this job. The other district escorts were bubbly and obnoxious but Odessa seemed to regard the whole thing with a cool detachment.
She didn't bother much with an introduction, only mentioned something about how it was her "honor to be announcing this year's tributes" in her clear, Capitol accent and rambled about the fortune she relieved with the opportunity.
When she was done, she smiled dryly and announced the beginning of the reaping.
I felt a squeeze of pressure on my hand and nearly jumped but when I looked down, it was only Mieka, having reached out and grabbed my hand tightly as Odessa crossed the stage and paused in front of the large, glass bowl containing the girl's names.
"And District 10's female tribute is," She called out, reaching her hand into the bowl and digging around achingly slowly, as if trying to draw it out for suspense.
I squeezed Mieka's hand so tightly I was afraid I would cut off her circulation.
Despite all the assurances that I wouldn't be chosen, despite the odds that weighed heavily on my favor and despite the improbability of it all, I found myself throwing it all away in those few, agonizingly slow moments as the possibility of my being reaped seemed to explode in front of me.
I silently pleaded that it wouldn't be me, repeating the mantra over and over in my head.
Not me, I begged. Not me or Mieka or anyone I knew.
I felt a sharp twinge of guilt in wishing a stranger to be condemned to such a fate but bit my lip and tried to push it away, because what else could I do?
Odessa's thin fingers closed around a slip of paper and she pulled it out, slowly, tentatively.
She waited until she had crossed back over to the podium until she opened the slip of paper bearing the name that condemned its unfortunate owner to their probable death.
She smoothed it out neatly in her palm and each second felt like a thousand years.
My hand had drained of its color by the pressure of Mieka's grip as Odessa leaned into the microphone and, in her impeccable accent, called out a name.
"Rowan Casterly."
The name seemed unfamiliar - foreign, even - but before I could be met with a rush of relief, I realized that Mieka's grip on my hand was gone and she was staring at me in horror.
And suddenly, the name no longer felt distant to me as the weight of it sunk in me.
It was my name.
I'd broken my promises.
Author's Note
Hey, hi, hello. So, a few things: I know Odessa probably wouldn't be described as having "Asian eyes" because that word probably wasn't in the Official Panem National Dictionary or anything but I wasn't quite sure how else to put it because I know that the generic "almond-shaped eyes" description is a bit stereotypical and I didn't want to offend anyone. I threw in the bit of French as well because I thought it was interesting to bring different countries and whatnot into it. Not sure how it all came across. Also, and I'm sorry this note is a bit long, I edited the format on the last chapter. A few names were off and some words were mushed together so nothing serious. Also (last also, I swear), I will really try to break down my chapter sizes. I just tend to get a bit carried away like I am doing right now. Sorry if you actually read this entire author's note.
Ok, i'm done now.
p.s. comments r cool and so r u (lol sorry that was really bad but i have no shame)