Gale Chapter 101/05/2009 22:21:00

I sat for while after Katniss left, just thinking about the games. If I were picked how long would I survive? A week or two? A couple days? Or would I be slaughtered 2 minutes after the games were started like half of the participants were every year.

But, what if I won? What if I came out of the games alive? What then?

I would get a house of my own, money, food. Food. Lots of food. My siblings would never go hungry again. Heck, they would get FAT! We would have so much food we could feed a second family!

I could feed Katniss's family. Think of how happy she would be with Prim fed. They could even come live with us; there would be more than enough room in those lavish houses the capitol built.

Katniss.

Katniss and me in the same house.

Together.

I shook the thought from my head for reasons I knew I should not think about right now. Not right before the The Reaping.

But her face stayed in my head. I thought of her today, practically drooling over the bread I bought, believing that I really got it for only one squirrel. Sometimes she could be so naiive, but that was one thing I loved about her.

I mean, liked about her, not loved.

All of a sudden I realized The Reaping would start soon and I had to get Nat, Enna and Linn ready.

I got the three little ones ready in time, thank the gods. I corralled them toward Jana, an older women who would watch them while I was in the waiting with the other eighteens.

"Gale," Enna whispered, tugging at my pants.

"What is it En?" I say impatiently, knowing if I don't get to the in place soon there'll be hell to pay. I twisted around not really paying attention to her. Where was Katniss?

" Don't get picked," she said even quieter than before.

I turned back around slowly.

"Huh?"

"Don't get picked Gale. Please."

I realized her eyes were glossy with tears, her hands balled up into fists to keep from crying. She was the only one of my siblings old enough to understand that I had been signed up for tessarae for years now. Only she understood that the odds were not in my favor.

"Promise," she urged me.

I kneeled down to her height and rested a hand on her shoulder.

"I promise."

As everyone waits for the Mayor to finish up his speech, I scan the crowd. I can see Lucy and Garth from Mathematics quietly talking at the edge the group. Jak, San, and Reina from World Studies are all standing together but all are silent. Mr. Fradnum, our sciences teacher is pushing a scrawny dark haired boy into the group of twelves. Ash, Mr. Fradnums son, is looking a bit green. It's his first year and you can tell he's scared stiff.

Most people will tell you they weren't scared at al their first reaping, but don't believe a word they say. Everyone, from the kids who are scared of their own shadows, to the biggest, baddest bully on the playground, is scared on their first Reaping. Heck, everyone is scared at every reaping!

I remember on my first reaping. I was so scared of getting picked I was shaking. Back then I didn't really have any friends so I stood by myself, watching the names in the big glass orb float around like leaves in the fall. I remember watching all the other twelves chattering about nothing so that they didn't have to think about getting picked. I especially remember Effie. That year she had decided to go with a new look. Her hair was an electric blue that matched her genetically altered eyes. Her lips, her shoes, her nails were all the same shocking shade of blue. Her dark grey suit was decorated with matching swirls that sparkled and shimmered in the stage lights. I can remember wondering if all Capitol folk looked like that. Apparently other people were just as mystified by her look as I was and, thankfully, the next year she was back to plain pink hair and a plain non-shimmery suit.

I realize Effie is up on the podium, her fuzzy pink hair tilted slightly. As I try to piece together what must have been an encounter between Effie and Haymitch Abernathy, our only past winner, and town drunk, I almost miss Katniss sneaking in to take her place with the other sixteens.

Usually I have a kind of Katniss-Radar. I always know when she's around, and what she's doing. I tell myself it's because I have to protect her from predators- in and out of the woods.

She seems not to know how pretty she is. She doesn't notice how her hair sort of floats around her face, how her skin glows in the sun. I guess she doesn't see the way some of the guys at school look at her, but I have. I know she wouldn't know how to deal with those slime-balls so I always take care of them for her before it becomes a problem.

She needs me.

Or at least, that's what I tell myself.

Tonight her hair was shiny and braided into a sophisticated looking pile at the top of her head. The light blue dress swished perfectly around her calves, and nipped in right at her waist revealing a girlish figure that was never shown in her tough hunting clothes.

She looked beautiful. I feel a small smile spread on my lips, until I remember why she's dressed like that. I think of Enna praying to the gods I wouldn't get picked.

Then I pictured my little family trying to get by without me. How long would the tessarae grain last them? How would they last without the game and plants I brought in?

It hadn't really hit me until now that forty-two slips of paper with the name 'Gale' on them floated in that glass bowl. Forty-two chances that I wouldn't be coming home. Forty-Two chances I wouldn't see Enna or Linn or Nat or my mother or Katniss or Prim or anyone else from district 12 again.

That night I watched it all replaying on the telly until I couldn't handle it anymore. Leaving the kids with Jana, I headed toward the forest, hoping to unload my buzzing thoughts into the hunt.

After less than an hour I left. Instead off distracting me the forest only reminded me of things I didn't want to acknowledge.

The next day at school everyone was talking about The Reaping. It was all 'Katniss this' and 'Katniss that'. You would of thought these people could have been her friends, or at least knew her before The Reaping.

But I knew better.

The only friends she had here was Madge and me. And perhaps Lionel, a younger boy with shaggy hair that followed Katniss around during lunch.

Sure the guys stared but none would approach. None would actually consider publicly announcing their lust for the lonesome, quick-witted, silent girl. Not in front of everyone else.

It's not that people didn't like her. They just sort of ignored her. But that was how she liked it.

'No use getting to know someone well if the next moment their gone or stabbing you in the back," she would put it. Though it was bristly, it was true. The good ones died young and the others were loutish and cruel. You couldn't blame them though, that's the only way you could survive for long in the Seam. Maybe the survival instincts everyone in The Seam acquired would help her survive.