Okay, so it took a while, but here is the first chapter! Yay! It did take a while because school did start (gross) and I'm not quite sure with my writing on this chapter. I know where I want this story to go, but getting there is hard, you know? Well, I hope y'all like it!

Mikey Jacquez: I am very glad you love it! This chapter took forever to write! I hope it turned out halfway decent.

Peace Love Hunger games: Oh me too! I'm glad you like it! Thanks a ton!

Alexandra Jackson rocks Hades: Very glad you're enjoying it! Here is the next chapter!

MiaBelles: Lol it's great! I'm very glad for the 500! I hope you enjoy this story.

MeaganOneDirection: Oh I love Romeo and Juliet! (As you could probably tell...) I'm very glad you like it!

Sarag7821: Awesome! I hope you enjoy :D

FallenPetals712: I am such a dark person (As you know... mwahahahaha)

Chapter 1- Playing Pretend

Annie

One year later I sit in my bed in the loft I share with my three sisters. There is a steel bunk bed Katniss shares with Prim against one wall, where Prim gets the bottom bunk because she tends to sleepwalk, and an addition two beds for Johanna and I. We have one television and one chair as well as a bathroom we all share. We have a bedside table between the beds Jo and I claim and a single closet for the four of us to store our clothes. It is a small bedroom for four girls, but we have made it work for six months. There is no reason to stop now. At least we have a balcony.

Our room is completely separate from the rest of the house. We have to walk out of the back door, and up creaky wooden stairs to reach the loft. It is difficult to do when it rains. We finally convinced Stepfather to buy a rail to put on the stairs. It is a cheap plastic one, but it works. I cannot complain. He is probably still upset of when mother died. It was a month after their Honeymoon we were helping in the kitchen, helping our new stepdad make a dinner when the phone call came. Someone had burned our mother alive right in front of the police station, as if they were trying to be caught. Everyone could hear mother's screams, but there was a ten foot high wall of flames around the area and water users are hard to come by, so there was nothing to douse the flames until the fire department arrived.

We were all there by that point. I wanted to help, to scream at them I could control water, let me help but they refused to let me. I can still smell her burning flesh and can hear the sudden silence, a thud on the concrete, the smell of more burning hair and cotton until nothing remained of her but a pile of gray ash.

I ran. I didn't know how to take it. Women of high class never die. I run until I see a flower shop and I remembered the boy who gave me the flowers at my mother's wedding. I still had the flower in my hair. I get in there and collapse on the floor, crying my eyes out and disturbing customers, yet they all give my sympathetic looks. "What could have happened to her to make her so upset?" "Why does she smell like smoke?" "What is the gray dust covering her?"

I let my tears fall and shiver at the thought of what is in the dust. It is the ashes of my mother, covering my dark hair, making it gray. I cannot stomach the thought. Finally, someone calls an employee to come check me out. I recognize who it is, and recognition sparks in his eyes too. It is Finnick.

"Annie, is that you?" I nod, crying and letting myself hold onto him. He doesn't hesitate to wrap his arms around me. Eventually, he picks me up like a doll and carries me behind the counter and up the stairs to a small room with mattresses on the floor with homemade quilts for sleeping, a small closet for clothes, propped open and filled with clean polo's of different colors and a small fireplace for warmth in the winter. I suddenly know what class he is in, the lowest, but that doesn't matter. I never saw the point of the classes. It keeps the rich, rich but doesn't let the poor gain anything. It isn't a disease that can be passed around.

I cry until hiccups escape my lips and tears no longer poor out of my eyes. Finnick still holds me close to him, but quietly asks, "What happened, Annie?"

I look up at him and start to shiver at the memory. Finnick pulls a quilt over my shoulders and looks at me once again. "My mother died." He opens his mouth to apologize, but I keep talking before he can say anything else. "Someone burned her alive until she turned to ashes. Through the flames we could see the skin start to bubble and blister and melt off of her. It was painful to watch and I cannot imagine how she felt."

Months later I still am not recovered from the trauma of seeing an innocent woman be burned to death. I wake up with scratches on my legs, scabbed over and know I scratched at myself in my sleep, imagining the blisters that covered her covered me.

I look around and notice I am, once again, the last one awake. My alarm clock woke me up at seven in the morning, and everyone is still lounging around the room in their pajamas. Katniss is reading a book on her bunk, Johanna has ear buds in, listening to the hardest music she has because she knows I have little tolerance for it when I am awake, and Prim is on the floor, lying on her stomach, watching the television. She is the first to notice I am awake. "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

I shrug. "Sleeping Ugly is more like it. There is no way I look good this early in the morning."

Prim comes up behind me and gives me a hug. "You're always pretty Annie! I wish I looked like you." I roll my eyes and walk to the bathroom, keeping the door open since I am only running a brush through my hair and trying to decipher a way to make my side bangs stay out of my face. "I'm serious, Annie!"

"I'm sure you are Prim. I just think it's funny because I would kill to look like you." Prim gives a cheeky smile and goes back to watching her show. I pull my hair up into an elastic prison, giving it an elegant ponytail causing my naturally straight hair, long enough to go past my shoulder blades, to fall just past my shoulders. I then put lotion on my face and apply a powder foundation and a loose mineral translucent powder. I then apply a rosy pink blush to my high cheekbones, apply black eyeliner and mascara to my eyes and a clear, shiny lip gloss to my lips. I smile, thinking I actually look halfway decent for once. I then go to the closet and go to the rack deemed mine. I grab a pair of high waist skinny jeans, a black and white zig zag shirt and my white sequin sperry's.

I notice Katniss is pulling on a pair of skinny jeans, a nicer orange and white vertical striped shirt and a pair of knockoff Uggs before she pulls her hair into a side braid. "Why do we even have to go to school?" She mutters under her breath.

Johanna shrugs on a gray and black horizontal striped shirt and a pair of dark boot cut jeans, as well as a pair of black converse. "I swear, school is the worst thing ever invented."

We chuckle at the jokes we try to tell ourselves. We like to think we are going to school this morning. It's nice to pretend, isn't it? No, stepdad said we are going away. We will be back once we earn enough money to keep him happy for a long time. I let my shoulders fall. I will not be able to see Finnick until that time has come. That time will not come for a while. I grab the flower he gave to me and put it into my ponytail. He has given me other gifts, a small turtle because I think they are adorable, three necklaces with an anchor, a message in a bottle and a fish, a pair of shoes that look like they belonged to Cinderella, along with other things. I told him I wasn't going to see him until I made my stepfather happy. It was frightening to hear his response.

"You mean he is sending you away?" He asked me. I had no choice but to nod. "Do you know where you are going?" I shake my head. "You cannot leave, Annie."

"What choice do I have, Finn? If I don't he'll do something much worse. You know he hasn't been the same since my mother died." My voice is quiet, shakey.

"It means he should hold you closer! Not send you away!" His hands are fists, clenched at his side. "Wait for me Annie. I'm not going to be anything without you."

I nodded. "I know you will wait. I will come back for you."

Of course when I told Finnick this, it sounded like he knew where he was going to send us. Maybe he will go to find me. "Girls, are you ready?" Stepdad calls up to us.

Taking a look at all of us, I see we are. Prim has the circlet in her hair but I take it out and put it on her nightstand. "We don't know where we are going. I don't want you to lose it." Prim nods, blinking away tears. I feel like crying too.

Yawn yawn snore snore awful beginning! I am so sorry but it will get better, I promise! Please review and tell em what y'all think!

Special thanks to: Peace Love Hunger games, Mikey Jacquez, MiaBelles, Laura2810, Fire Kitty 12, Epicblonde52 and FallenPetals712 for adding this story to their favorites! It means a lot guys!

Thanks to me 8 epic followers as well!

-Juliet