"Peeta Mellark!"
When my name is called, my stomach drops out and the dread that lurks in the back of my mind blooms forward, fully realized.
Caine stiffens beside me and I glance at him. Wondering, briefly, if he would ever even think to volunteer to take my place, just like Katniss just had done for her little sister. He moves away with the rest of the crowd, unwilling to breathe the same air as me now that my breaths are numbered. I hear the boots of the Peacekeepers coming to gather me. I don't feel anything as I take a step forward, but the shock of a deep voice hits me like ice water.
"I volunteer."
My head snaps to the right, along with hundreds of others. Gale Hawthorne, tall, proud, defiant, steps forward. I glance to the stage just as Katniss Everdeen, the girl he loved so clearly, nearly falls over, gone pale. She mouths the word no, or she probably says it, but I am too far away to hear.
"I volunteer as tribute," Gale says, pushing past those as stunned as me. Heads whip towards me again, but I don't move, don't think.
It's funny in a way, Gale beating me again to the punch when it comes to the pretty girl with the long braid and the deep frown. I've carried a torch for her for years, the flame nearly extinguished by my shame and our stations in life, and it burns still, a small ember deep inside of me. I'd thought about talking to her for years, asking her to the Valley dance at school, but ever since that moment with the bread, I couldn't let myself look in her eyes.
If only I hadn't been a coward. If only I had walked across the yard and handed her the food she desperately needed, not caring about the consequences my mother would hand out, brave enough to touch her hand and tell her everything I wanted to.
And, now, I won't get the chance. More than likely, I will watch this girl I don't know, but desperately want to, die live on television with the rest of the nation. And she will die alongside the only person outside of her family she seems to care for.
It's for the best.
"TWO volunteers!" Effie Trinket trills, doing a poor job of hiding her surprise. We've never even had one before, 12 isn't one of those districts where dying is a privilege.
"Come, come." She says to Gale, manhandling him with some difficulty as he climbs the stairs. One of my feet is still forward, the step unfinished. The crowd falls back into place around me; I'm nameless again, a piece of paper in the bowl, waiting for next year, old news before I'd even gotten started.
I should be happy; it'll take me a long time to realize why I'm not.
"Tell me, Gale," Effie says breathlessly. "Were you inspired by Katniss?"
Hawthorne looks at the microphone and then over to Katniss, who is surprisingly stoic. I wonder if she's even able to process what's unfolding in front of us.
"I-" He clears his throat. His voice is deep, deeper than mine. He's broad, a body built for mining, working, and hunting. We might have a victor after all.
"I couldn't let you do it alone," he says, his voice catching slightly, his eyes never leaving Katniss's solid face. "I love you too much."
There are murmurs from the crowd, the cameras fly in closer to the pair of them. This is the good stuff, every few years there's some sort of tragic love story, and it looks like we've just found one of the main plots for the 74th games.
That is, if they manage to stay alive.
Effie announces them as our Tributes, holding their hands aloft. When they come down, Gale takes Katniss's hand, and I watch her knuckles turn white as she grips back, tight.
They're whisked away, the crowd in the square dissipates around me. I still haven't moved.
My oldest brother, Dyllon, checks me with his shoulder as he passes. I stumble backward, my dress shoes kicking up dust.
"Come on, bitch boy," he says, "We've got bread to bake."
Three days later, I'm decorating a cake for the viewing of the opening ceremony in the back of our bakery. I hear the low rumble of my mother and the two sons she wanted talking up front.
They'd only tried again because she wanted a girl, as she tells me that every time she drinks, which is often. My father left when I was five - supposedly to go seek work in 7, but one of the old-timers at the Hob asked me last year if I'd ever met his new wife. When I'd said no, he launched into a tangent about her breasts and said he could understand why someone would leave my mother in general, but he could really understand given who my father left her for. I never asked my mother for the truth, because I was sure all I would receive in reply would be lies wrapped up in promises to make my mouth shut permanently.
I wonder sometimes who she used to be, before my father and this place wore out whatever goodness she might've contained. I can conjure a fuzzy image of my mother when I was younger, her hair was really red, not dyed with the stuff I get for her at the Hob, her face was less lined, but her scowl was still there.
Maybe she was always like this, but you can only be told something is your fault so many times before you start to believe it.
"Peeta."
A demand from the front. I finish the last of the pine trees on the sheet cake and put down the frosting, wiping my hands on my apron. Caine is at the oven and Dyllon is nowhere to be found, presumably off to go bother one of the women he's trying to marry. My brother, the one 18 months older than me, the only thing I have resembling an ally, won't look at me. I can see his eye blackening, the redness of the strike heightened by the flames from the hearth. My mother steps between us, blocking my view of him, blocking me from fully walking into the space behind the counter.
I linger in the doorway, set my jaw, and hold myself up as high as I can - I am sixteen and still smaller than my mother in every way.
"People don't want to come here any longer," my mother says simply, staring me down, the disdain in her eyes somehow colder than it ever has been. "Because you let that Hawthorne boy take your place."
I think, for a moment, of pointing out he volunteered, but I stay silent, waiting for the actual strike.
"Saying that we think we're better, above them, that you didn't even think twice about a boy from the Seam doing the dirty work for you."
I stare back at her, waiting.
"Well?" she says. "Do you?"
"Do I what, ma'am?" I ask, knowing what she means but knowing that she wants me to ask, to draw this out. In a different District, my mother's sense for the dramatics might've landed her in an even higher station than the disgraced wife of a merchant.
"Do you think you're better than him?" she demands.
I shake my head. "No, ma'am. Not at all."
She makes a sound that could be a laugh, if she had humor. "Well, at least you're not delusional. You think you'd last five minutes in that arena? They'd eat you alive."
My fists tighten and I swallow hard. I want to protest - I'd have a chance, I want to say, I'm not completely useless, but she'd disagree.
And, besides, I have no proof. No reason to pretend like the Games were where I wanted to or could prove myself.
"You finally could've been something," she continues, shaking her head. "You had a shot to prove yourself, die nobly, represent us for the rest of Panem, and you let it slip through your fingers-"
"I can go off myself in the hog pen if that would make you feel better about all of this."
I have no idea where the boldness comes from, it slips through my lips before the words even form in my brain. My mother looks stunned, and I hear Caine gasp.
"What?" I say, surprised my voice doesn't tremble. Something takes hold of my feet, and I step forward. "Not noble enough?"
My mother raises her hand to strike me, but I catch her wrist. Her eyes widen with surprise and…fear. I realize then that she has no idea of my physical strength, no idea of who I am.
As I hold her wrist and think, briefly, about breaking it, I wonder who I am too. I release her and she spits at my feet - but I see her shaking, just slightly.
"Leave!" she sputters, rage pouring off of her, filling the shop, the smell of her sweat mixing with the smell of bread.
"Way ahead of you," I say.
My brother is silent and still won't look at me. I turn on my heel. We live above the bakery, but I don't make for the stairs. There's nothing in the tiny room they gave me that I need. Instead, I move the giant bag of flour out from the storage cupboard and find the bundle I hide from all of them. I grab three of the long-forgotten work shirts off of their pegs and tie them quickly into a makeshift pack with my apron and am out the back door before I can register what exactly my mother is screaming at me beyond "Thief!"
I let the door slam. The pigs grunt at me as I pass, hungry. I think about releasing them, but they would fare worse than I would on their own.
On my own.
It hits me - she's finally done it, after years of threatening it. The reaping had given her a viable excuse. I have no idea where to go, what to do. I feel my lip tremble, but I force myself to stop. I close my eyes.
Think. Think.
I head off towards the Hob, a path I used to watch a pretty girl with a long braid take home from school every day. I do not look back.
Townies, what they call us, are rarely welcome here, but for some reason I've always been an exception. Along with not being very physically imposing, I've always been polite. Kind. It makes the old men suspicious of me, but certain that they can kick my ass. Over the years, it's led several of the older women to propose to me, and I still am not sure if they're kidding. A back-up option, at the very least.
I should feel more than this, I think to myself as I walk up the path, ignoring the stares and whispers. Leaving my home, my mother, my brothers, I should feel something other than the numbness that has overtaken me since Gale Hawthorne took my place, but I don't. The waver I had by the pigs was the closest thing I'd had to a feeling for three days.
I dully wonder if I'll ever really feel anything properly again.
A second chance at life, at the expense of someone else. Someone whose whole family depends on him, according to interviews with his mother and little siblings. Someone who provides, who has actually meant something to people, who has made a mark that matters.
Someone who is worth more than pine trees on sheet cake, someone who is worth more than what I am made up of.
Maybe, just maybe, if I prove to the people that he took himself away from, that I am at least a somewhat decent consolation prize, Gale's inevitable sacrifice will be worth it. Even as I think it, I doubt it myself. But I've got nothing left other than trying.
The Capitol presence has left by now, so there's a little foot traffic going in; making up for lost time, lost wages, in order to keep their collective secret. I keep my head down, so I don't see right away the owner of the hand that lands hard on my chest, stopping me in my tracks.
"What are you doing here, Tribute?"
I recognize the wiry man - a boy really, as one of Gale Hawthorne's older cousins. He's half-covered in soot and looks ready to kill.
"I've got business," I say, trying to use the same tone I'd just used with my mother, but the kid laughs.
"Can't you get someone to volunteer to do it for you?"
I don't say anything. One of my hands clenches around my bundle, the other into a fist. He steps towards me, leering, and I step back, hitting a tree behind me.
"You're not welcome here."
"I don't think it's up to you."
He's on me so fast, I don't even see him pull the knife. I feel it, though, as he stabs it into my side, and I cry out with shock. My fist flails wildly and makes contact with the bottom of his chin, forcing him back a step, but he laughs, coming at me again, punching he hard in the side of my head.
Is it noble, I wonder, to die against a tree, clutching a makeshift bag of art supplies?
The knife digs into the flesh of my thigh as we grapple for it, and blackness appears around the corners of my sight.
"That's enough!"
The old voice is sharp, serious-but it doesn't deter my attacker. The knife sinks deeper and, even through the buzz of adrenaline, all I feel is pain.
The last thing I feel is the knife being yanked out of me before my body hits the ground and everything goes black.