3 – Odds

"Ladies and gentlemen." The microphone is too loud, and her voice echoes off the harsh stone around us until I am shuddering at the hiss of the Capitol. Despite everything, I can't help but look wryly at Gale from across the square, remembering our well-rehearsed mimic of the Capitol accent. He catches my gaze for a moment, then flicks his eyes back to the front, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. I catch sight of the clear bowls with their slips of paper and feel a dull weight in my chest, my amusement vaporising. "The time has come for us to select one courageous young man and woman for the-" Effie Trinket pauses for a moment, searching for words that best fit the enormity of the occasion, "-honour of representing District Twelve in the 74th annual Hunger Games".

She smiles around at us all, her eyes squinted against the sun. It seems more rehearsed than last year. Perhaps she is bored with representing this worn, weary District. Perhaps she has realised that there is no hope for anyone who is selected. An image flashes before my eyes, and I recognise it from my nightmare. Prim, in the arena, standing alone as twenty three tributes charge at her. A few years ago there was a tribute from 7 who was barely twelve. When the countdown clock stopped, I couldn't help but keep pace in my head. She lasted fourteen seconds. The victor that year had a penchant for decapitation. She was his first victim. Despite the frequent injuries that my mother tended at our kitchen table, I hadn't known that there could be so much blood in a creature so small.

"Ladies first."

My heart begins to thud against my chest, feeling bile rise in my throat. Oil has found its way into the small puddles on the floor, reflecting the sun with a choking sheen. Effie's green nails have found their prey. She pulls a slip of paper carefully out of the bowl. In less than ten seconds, I think, it will all be over. Twelve months until the next reaping. Her white lips begin to form a word and I stop breathing. They purse, her skin wrinkling beneath a layer of powder as she trills each syllable. A shower of stars blurs my vision. I realise I have stumbled, feeling another wave of nausea.

Prim.

I am back in the meadow. The fresh air hits the back of my neck and I can breathe again. I'm running towards the flower as quickly as I can, but I know I can't run fast enough. It shudders in the wind, wavering beneath the power of something stronger and more terrible than my even my nightmares could have seen. I'm leaden, my legs weak as I try to run. Someone is shouting. Two peacekeepers are restraining me.

It's my voice, and I'm shouting something.

I volunteer. Everyone's eyes on me. Never in the history of District 12 has there been a volunteer. I'm ensuring my death. I think about the birthmark on my wrist, my ragged nails. My unkempt dark hair, olive skin, blue eyes characteristic of the seam. In two weeks that will all be gone. I wish I could speak to my father. Ask him what it feels like. I volunteer as tribute, I am affirming, more controlled this time, looking squarely at Effie Trinket.

Effie recovers herself. The peacekeepers are marching Prim away, her small frame lifted off the floor by their white-suited arms.

"Don't touch her!" I scream, and one of them looks squarely at me. His eyes are glazed, not with indifference. They are hazel. He is human too. I can't look at Prim.

I feel as though my legs are about to give way. Effie Trinket is beckoning from far above me, mystified. I do not know how I reached the top of the stairs, facing the row that I had been standing in, thinking about the worst-case scenario. I would give my life this instant to be back there for just one more minute, to taste that ignorance again.

"What's your name, dear?" Effie is asking me. I turn to look at her. Her hands are shaking slightly, her eyes darting wildly around as she tries to regain composure.

"Katniss Everdeen." For a moment our eyes meet. We will never comprehend each other, but we try. We search each others' faces for a trace of understanding, but can find none, no acceptance of the situation we are in. The situation the Capitol has put us in. Her façade returns. "Well I bet my buttons that was your sister!"

She is desperate, scanning my face for something, anything. Forgiveness? I give no reply, my face turned resolutely forward. She does not have my forgiveness.

Gale is taking his place back in the line. His jaw is clenched.

"And now the male tribute," Effie reaches shakily into the bowl. Everybody in the crowd is avoiding my gaze. Her fingers tremble so that the piece of paper she has managed to grasp drops back into the mass. I wonder who was so whimsically saved. She has a hold on another slip now, and draws it out of the bowl.

"Our male tribute…"

I am barely listening. I don't want to know who my opponent will be. I only register who it is when they are halfway up the steps. Woodsmoke, the forest. I feel my stomach churn at the familiar smells. I do not need to see him to feel his presence beside me. Usually he is the only thing that can reassure me. Now he is the only thing that can make me despair.

"Well let's have a warm round of applause for our brave tributes. And may the odds be ever in your favour!"

Silence. One movement from the crowd, a ripple, and something deeper shifts. Three fingers, kissed, raised to the air. To District 12. To the Capitol for what it has done. To Gale and me.