Hunger Games is Suzanne Collins'. Vampire Academy belongs to Richelle Mead.
Ch.1 DPOV
When I wake up, both sides of the bed are cold. Karolina's and Sonya's empty side could be explained easily - they must have started the day early gathering the herbs Mama needed to take care of her patients in the forest. But Viktoria... Did she follow them?
She might have had a nightmare and gone to sleep next to our mother. Sure enough, when I roll over and peer at the mattress next to my sisters' and mine, Vika is curled up against her. Sitting over her, in fact in her arms, guarding her, is probably the world's ugliest feline. A mashed-in nose, eyes the color of rotten cabbages, a flea-bitten nose, his fur color a dirty yellow, he hisses at me as I stretch. He probably remembers the time I tried to drown him the day Vika brought him home. Animals don't like me. The feeling is mutual. Those eyes of his follow me as I throw on my hunting clothes.
Today is the day of the Reaping, so I better start collecting food for tonight. The Capitol requires the twelve districts to treat the Hunger Games like a festivity, and most people do - relieved that their children had been spared another year. But at least two families from our district will lock their doors and bolt their windows and try to figure how they will survive the long, arduous weeks to come as their children take part in the Hunger Games.
Losing means certain death. Winning - the process of emerging as one of the two people last in the Games - means you have to marry the other victor if you are a boy and the other victor is a girl, and vice versa, and being able to live richly for the rest of your life.
Before I slip out the door, I notice the upside-down bowl on top of the dining table. I smile, knowing it was my sisters' gift to me on reaping day. I lift the bowl, pulling out the goat cheese wrapped in basil leaves.
I put the cheese into my pocket, emerging to the cool air of the coal-dusted streets. The part where my family and I live in is part of the Seam, where the coal miners live. Since our house was on the edge of the Seam, it's one of the closest to the Meadow. Separating the scruffy field from the woods, is a barbed wire that, in theory, is supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day to keep the predators from the woods from infiltrating our streets.
That was the part of the history they taught us at school. The history of the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once was called North America. They tell us of the endless droughts, floods, and wars that result in Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.
The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide two girls and two boys, called tributes, to participate. They are chosen in an event called the Reaping. The forty-eight tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last two tributes standing wins. Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.
At first, they tell us, before the Capitol installed the barbed wire, packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears used to threaten our streets. They tell us it's for our protection, but I also think it was to prevent people people from escaping from District 12.
But since we're lucky to get a few hours of electricity in the evenings, the fence is most usually just a fence. Even so, I pause for a few seconds to listen for the hum that means the fence is live. Right now, the only things I hear are the chirping of the birds in the woods.
I slide under one of the weak points in the fence. I knew more ways to get into the woods, but since this was the closest way to our home, I almost always used this entrance.
Waiting in the woods, stands the only person I can rant about the Capitol with. Tasha turns around when she hears me approaching.
"Hey Dimka," she says.
"Tasha," I reply.
"Look what I shot," she holds up a loaf of bread, speared through with an arrow. I choke out a laugh when she waggles her eyebrows. "Pretty good, huh?" she asks.
I take the loaf from her and inhale the scent of fresh bread. It's bakery bread, still warm from the oven. "What did it cost you?" I ask her.
She shrugs. "Just a squirrel."
"Vika left us a cheese," I tell her.
Vika - and my sisters for that matter - didn't really like Tasha, but they attempted to be civil to her for me. I appreciated it, but since Tasha didn't really like my sisters either, it was an uphill battle for both parties.
"Thank you, Viktoria," she says. She brightens as I pull out the small piece of cheese. She then plucks a blueberry from the bushes surrounding us. "Now we can have a feast."
She throws it at me, and I catch it. "I forgot to say, happy Hunger Games!"
That last part has a bite of sarcasm in it, not enough to be entirely noticeable but enough to notice if you listen to it hard enough.
We sit down onto the cool grass as Tasha spreads the cheese onto the bread.
Halfway through our meal, she speaks up. "We could leave, you know."
Leave? I've been here my entire life, the idea of leaving makes me feel uneasy. "But who would look after the kids?" I asked. Technically, they weren't our kids, but they seemed like ours. There was Tasha's young nephew, Christian, his cousin, my sisters, and my mother.
She's silent for a moment. "We could ask around, say that it's in preparation for the Reaping if we get picked."
"Where would we go, Tasha? Who would get the tessarae for them?Who would be there to protect them from not being chosen? No, it's better we stayed until they're of age."
She glares, but not at me.
To most people, the reaping system is unfair.
You became eligible for the reaping the day you turned twelve. That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on until you reached the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name went into the pool seven times. That was true for every citizen in all twelve districts.
But there's always a catch. Say you were poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name in more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year's supply of grain and oil for one person. You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered six times. Once, because I had to, and five times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, Vika, Sonya, Karolina and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of eighteen, my name will be in the reaping forty-nine times. Tasha, who is also eighteen, and has been feeding Christian and his cousin single-handedly since both of them couldn't work yet, has had her name in twenty-eight times.
That morning, we harvest strawberries, fish and caught a few creatures unlucky enough to wander our way. We made our usual trades, before we split up to get back to our houses.
Back at home, my sisters were waiting for me. My mother was sitting at the table, her fingers weaving braids into Vika's hair. My older sisters were too old to be caught on camera, but there was still a chance Vika would be chosen, in my mother's mind. In mine? Not a chance. Tasha and I had made a deal when Christian had turned twelve. If Christian is reaped, I will volunteer to take his place. If Vika is reaped, Tasha will volunteer. And if Tasha is reaped and I wasn't, I was to take in Christian and feed and care for him and his cousin as best as I could. Vice versa.
My sisters usher me into the bathroom we have, with the small tub I barely fit in. I find warm water waiting there. "Bath," Karo tells me before she lays an outfit for me. It was a pair of my most presentable jeans and shirt. But over that, Sonya adds one of the last things we had of our father - a denim jacket that actually fit me.
I'll thank them later.
The warm water washes out the dust and dirt in my hair and the mud over my body accumulated during the time I spent with Tasha.
When I am done, I run my hand through my hair and marvel at the softness of it. I put on the jeans and shirt and head out into the dining room. "Oh, you look so handsome," my mother says, clasping her hands in front of her.
We head out, Vika hiding behind me. It's her fifth Reaping. Before I'd came of age, it had been Karo who had gotten tessarae for us. When the time came for my first Reaping, I'd forbidden her to do more than enter her name once. I wouldn't risk her like that.
Viktoria had wanted to get tessarae for us all too. I forbade her to do so. As despicable as the thought of Karo entering her name more times into the Reaping, the thought of Vika doing so was abominable.
The Reaping provides the Capitol a chance to see our population in each of our districts, since to get into the Reaping we have to write down our names. They always use the town square, one of the places in Twelve that I'd actually call pretty. Anywhere else, coal dust littered the streets and covered everything.
It's a shame they taint the town square with as dark an event as the Reaping, but I kind of get why they chose this venue. It was big enough, first of all, and all the important families lived close to it. It also had a big screen so that everyone could see the tributes.
The children of Twelve were lined up according to their ages. The twelve-year-olds are closest to the stage, so I was in the eighteen-year-old group, the farthest from the stage.
The mayor starts with the Treaty of Treason, droning in about the history of Panem, how the Capitol surrounded by the thirteen districts came to be. Then he talks about the Revolution, when Thirteen rebelled against the Capitol. How Twelve joined them. His the Capitol destroyed Thirteen, how they forced Twelve into submission. In punishment for rebelling, the Capitol imposed the Hunger Games on us. Four tributes, two girls and two boys, from each district chosen to compete with each other in a series of killings. Two tributes who survived to the end to marry each other.
I zone out at that part, which was repeated every year before they chose the tributes.
Finally, Effie Trinket, the upbeat woman from the Capitol who always comes to call out the names at the Reaping, takes center stage. She talks about how good an honor it is to be here in Twelve picking the tributes, though everyone knows she's dying to get a better district to represent.
"Ladies first," she calls, crossing the stage to the glass bowls standing at the side.
Not Vika, please not Vika...
She smooths the slip of paper in her hand. "Vasilisa Dragomir." She intones.
Vasilisa Dragomir? The daughter of the mayor? I look over at the mayor, who has his hands clenched into fists.
Effie Trinket holds up another piece of paper. "Viktoria Belikova."
For a moment, I was shocked so much that I almost collapsed. How was this possible? Had I not done enough to protect her? I felt Tasha's hand against my back, telling me that I needn't to worry. However, before Tasha could volunteer, someone steps out from the group of sixteen-year-olds. A redhead. She yells, " I volunteer as tribute for Viktoria Belikova." I will forever be grateful for this little girl.
Effie Trinket nods. "Name?"
"Meredith."
She's from the Seam, one of Vika's friends.
Effie Trinket welcomes her on stage. "Time for the gentlemen," she proclaims.
Tasha stiffens next to me. I whisper to her, "But there are lots of other names."
"Dimitri Belikov," Effie calls out. I'd expected it. I have the most slips of paper in that bowl.
I make my way onto the stage as I join Vasilisa Dragomir and Meredith. I dreaded the next piece of paper. If it was Christian, Tasha would be crushed. She loved her nephew, and he was sweet, albeit snarky and sometimes cranky.
"Christian Ozera."
My first instinct was to look for Tasha. Her eyes are wide, and then, she looked like someone had killed her nephew.
The Peacekeepers led us four away, towards the Justice Building. We would stay there until the train to the Capitol arrived.
I had a bad feeling about this Hunger Games.
Where's Rose? Where's our Russian god's Roza? Oh, she'll pop in next chapter.
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