She was a very honest girl, so there's only one real thing she never told anybody: She loved to dance. To spin around on the balls of her feet on the old linoleum of the kitchen in her favorite pair of pink socks - the pair her mother made her when she still was sane.

She loved arabesques, too - one time in Twelve Square, they showed a Capitol concert of girls her age doing spins and leaps and beautiful poses and they were so flexible. She spun around and leapt and took her hair down and just danced. Danced because she could, danced because it took her mind off of everything that wasn't right. Nothing was ever right, was it? That's why Primrose loved to dance.

Secretly she loved her name but Katniss didn't - Katniss hated the girliness of it all. Katniss hated everything, but Prim loved her dearly, because she was really the only thing she had left in the world. Her mother was not a mother - she was more useless than Buttercup. Katniss had managed to get her a goat, Katniss bought her old dresses from the Hob (they were covered in coal dust but somehow Katniss could tell what cuts would end up with the prettiest spins - Prim never knew how she did it), and Katniss brought dinner home almost every night. That was something she could only respect.

And maybe Prim didn't really love Katniss but she loved her dedication and how much Katniss loved her. It was a little bit unfair, but at the age of nine, it didn't really matter to her. Katniss was thirteen and did more than her mother had ever done. Not as much as their father, who had exploded (this wasn't how Prim remembered it, but how the boys at school liked to tease her whenever the students were ever asked about their parents) two years ago, but more than their mother. Which wasn't much, still, but Katniss was the best sister she ever could ask for.

Sometimes Katniss yelled at her, but she didn't mind because it was always when she'd done something wrong, like forget to milk Lady or something really wrong, like 'forget' to go to school (she was the only person who knew that the reason she ever left the door after eight-thirty was because she wanted to stay back and spin around in the kitchen without Katniss, who would tell her a Seam girl couldn't make a career out of dance. It was true. A merchant girl couldn't do it so a Seam girl sure as hell could not).

Sometimes she wished she had the classic deep brown hair of the Seam (she liked her blue eyes, though - she didn't need to change her eyes) to fit in better, to not have to wash it ever.

She also loved fire, but this Katniss knew. She didn't like to mention it because it was embarrassing, but she just loved the way it crackled and licked at the air, begging for more oxygen to grow and the way it glowed through the room and gave everything an orangish tinge. She loved setting things on fire, too, but when flames singed the ends of her fingertips or burnt strands of her hair, she put out the fire immediately.

She hated being hurt, hated being damaged. She thought - and Katniss thought - she was a fragile little thing until she was thirteen.

At thirteen, Primrose Everdeen was plunged into the hardest thing she'd ever had to deal with.

She stared at the screen in terror, totally unable to look away. She wished she was in her safe place, in Katniss's arms - but Katniss was in the Games and maybe she would never return. She wasn't stronger or smarter than these people. Maybe Finnick would win. He was strong and he seemed smart. And he would get so many sponsors - he was pretty damned handsome. The girls at school fawned over him, but it was different for Prim.

She, personally, didn't understand why more girls weren't staring at Rory Hawthorne. Rory had been through a lot of tough stuff - more than her, probably. Almost definitely - they'd lost their fathers on the same day but there were four Hawthorne children. But Hazelle hadn't given up on it all, hadn't given up on her children.

The screen went to static then dark. It was nearly midnight and it was a new moon, so panic fled throughout the square. Shots rang out and soon she found Peacekeeper gloves shoving at her. A voice (Cray's, she assumed) called, "Citizens of District Twelve, get back to your houses. There will be no more showing of the Third Quarter Quell. Anyone still in the square by midnight will be shot on sight."

Prim turned and ran, pushing past people only walking. There was whistling above so everybody looked up to see the lights of planes - tens of them. More whistling, but no more planes. She looked around wildly and saw flames. Flames at the outer reaches of the District, in the Merchants' Quarter. The meadow and the woods and all past the fence seemed untouched.

She tripped and flinched, bracing for impact, but she only felt a body in front of her. She could barely make out Gale's face. "Gale," she breathed.

"Prim," he said back, grabbing her hand. Posy was clutching his leg and walking as fast as she good alongside him. Vick and Rory were walking right alongside each other and Prim knew Hazelle was somehwere near but she couldn't see her. "Where's your mother?"

She shook her head. "She wasn't standing with me."

Then she heard her own name. Someone was shouting it. She instantly recognized the voice. "Mother!" she pushed backwards through the crowd and took her mother's hand. Gale led them all out of the square together.

"They're bombing the place," he said loudly. "In about two hours, everything will be up in flames."

Prim whimpered a little. Her home. All of it, gone. Scorched until it was all unrecognizable. "I'm so scared," Vick said, wrapping his arm around a short, plump woman. Hazelle had been with them the whole time.

She asked what no one else dared to. "What are we going to do?"

"Leave," Gale said. He was heading towards their houses.

"How?" Rory asked, fear plain on his face.

"Through the meadow," he said. He sounded so determined. "People of District Twelve! The District is going up in flames. If you want to get out alive, come to the meadow behind the Seam!" he called, but Prim got the feeling only a few people heard him.

Only eight hundred people came to the meadow. Eight hundred in a crowd of twelve thousand.

They ran away from the burning District, leaving everything they knew behind.

In the meadow, while they were watching their District burn, Prim was spinning around and trying to feel okay.