Kendall Delancy, 18- District One male

"I like guys."

What a silly thing to be dramatic about. It was like dramatically looking your twin in the eye and saying "I like cake more than ice cream". It was just… we weren't just any family. The Delanceys were some of the oldest money in One, which was the oldest-money District in Panem. Even then it shouldn't have made a difference- being gay was old news since before the Dark Days. Really it had nothing to do with old money at all, or with being "upper-class". It was just our really weird parents. They weren't exactly hateful… well, I guess what else do you call someone who would be horrified to find out their kid was gay? But it wasn't that they hated gay people. They just thought they were embarrassing. Yes, that made it so much better. I did know they'd still love me. They'd just delicately skirt the topic and get all flustered if I brought it up, like if their kid collected ceramic ponies or something.

"Me, too," Ametrine said, her face not even changing.

"Am'!" I said in that wavering voice you use to draw out your sibling's name when you're annoyed at them, so more like 'AaaAaAaAammm!'

"What, like I'm supposed to be surprised?" Ametrine said. "We're twins. I have psychedelic powers."

I put my head in my hands. "They're gonna make such a fuss." I was more worried about that than about any changes in our relationship. Sometimes I wondered if I was born into the wrong family. I supposed everyone thought that, though. Not that I minded the super rich part, but I wasn't sure being "old money" was for me. Couldn't we be new money? New money people acted like normal people, just with money. They bought dumb stuff and talked normal and didn't have all these rituals and rules you had to follow so everyone would think you were "classy". I didn't care if I was "classy". I was satisfied being super rich.

"That's their problem," Ametrine shrugged, waving a hand over her shoulder.

I hesitated. "That's kind of not all," I said.

Ametrine gave me a cautious stare. "I swear if you tell me you're a furry, too…"

"But you're a furry!" I said.

She held up a finger. "I am a monsterlover. I don't care if they do or don't have fur."

"Well it's not a monster," I said. "It's Slate."

Ametrine considered. "Not my type, but you could do worse." It was good to know Ametrine cared more about me being a furry than me being gay or in love with my best friend.

"He coming to see you?" Ametrine reached for her cane in case she had to clear out of the room. It always made my heart tug a little to see it. We both knew it should have been her volunteering, not me. I'd never understood how we could share so much DNA- almost everything but that single Y chromosome- but she got cursed and I didn't. Thank god at least MS wasn't a death sentence anymore. It was just a life sentence.

"I hope so," I said. I couldn't blame him if he didn't. Takes a real character to tell someone you love them and then break up with them because your family is embarrassed by the two of you.

"Why wouldn't he? He's not in the closet," Ametrine said.

"I dumped him." I got it out all at once.

"What, had to get all your bad decisions out in one day?" Ametrine had to say it, even though she supported me volunteering. It was twin duty to roast your twin whenever a chance came up.

"Maybe I can play it off that I was worried I'd die and he'd be sad," I'd gone through the plans in my head a dozen times already, everything from the "I just panicked! I shouldn't have done it!" to "You're such a good guy. You'll find somebody else". Honestly I was really banking on him being a really, really forgiving guy.

"You gonna tell them if you win?" Ametrine asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I think they'll be distracted enough to go with it."

"Well good luck, for equality's sake," Ametrine said. "And I guess because you're my brother."

"Delancy?"

A Peacekeeper poked his head into the room. It was always weird to see them without their helmets on. Guess they didn't think I was a threat- ominous, maybe. "You have another visitor."

"OooOOOOOoooOooOoOoOoh!" Ametrine hooted. "I better get out of here for the mush!"

Kallik, 18- District One female

"And for the ladies…" Painted nails scrabbled around in the bowl blown up on the giant screen. I could see how baby-smooth the woman's skin was. She pulled out a slightly-torn piece of paper.

"Kallik…" her eyes skipped a little as she looked for the last name she could clearly see wasn't there. There wasn't much left of people like me in Panem but the Inuit had fared just a little better. Due to living somewhere with literally nothing the government could possibly want to take from us, they'd largely left our reservations untouched, and we'd managed to cling to just a little bit of our culture. My last people hadn't had last names until someone else had given them to us. It hadn't gone well for us and we weren't eager to do it again.

Ijolite gave up and smiled. "Oh, well! Who's the volunteer?"

Hearing my name had jarred me enough that my heart was fluttering a little, but I knew there was nothing to be worried about. I didn't even run in Academy circles but I'd heard one girl after another bragging about how they were sure they'd be picked.

"Come on, Tiffany!"

I turned to see a cluster of girls prodding at a pale, shivering girl in the middle of their group. The one who'd just spoken was holding her hand.

"I'm gonna," she almost whispered. "Give me a minute."

"She's not gonna," I didn't know the dark-haired girl standing beside her. "Guess I get to."

"We can't break rank," another girl whispered back. "You know what will happen."

"She's not gonna," the dark-haired girl said again. She open her mouth to-

"No volunteers this time, I guess!" Ijolite's confused but composed voice broke in. Tiffany gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth. The girls around her were split between gawking and glaring. The dark-haired girl shot Tiffany a murderous look.

"Wait!" Tiffany yelled. "I volunteer!"

"Toooooo laaaate!" Ijolite wiggled her finger.

Oh. I guess it's… me.

I wasn't even supposed to be here. I never should have done it. I'd loved life on the reservation, even if it was hard. I'd loved the land we'd lived on for a thousand years, the ones who dwell in the sky dancing in the winter, knowing the berries I ate were fresh from a bush and the seal I butchered had been swimming only an hour earlier. I even loved its flaws. Its remoteness and harsh location meant the Capitol barely gave us any trouble. I thought the isolation was a fair price to pay for the failing schools and crumbling infrastructure. My parents thought different. When my school counselor said I'd been accepted into the Panem Gifted Exchange program, I'd never seen them so happy. Go, they said. Learn. Learn what they teach and bring it here to lift us all up. Then they learned my selected exchange was One and I couldn't bear to refuse them. They wanted a better life for me. Even if I didn't think it was, I would try it for them.

Would it still have happened if I'd been back home?

Did fate work like that- across all you choices it would still be ready for you? My reservation was on Seven land. Somewhere out there was a crowd of Seven children in front of a Seven bowl. Would it still have been my name? Who would it have been from One, then? Who was it in Seven?

I don't think I can do this.

There was so much I didn't know. I could throw a harpoon, sure. But my opponents weren't whales. I knew how to track a ptarmigan or a caribou. What if the Arena was a jungle? I knew how to stay warm. I knew how to keep myself alive. I didn't know how to keep someone from killing me.

My parents are watching. I hadn't seen them for four years, since I'd joined the programs. We video-chatted, sure, but I hadn't seen them. Now they were seeing me on that giant screen. All I could think was that I didn't want them to be afraid. I tried to keep myself steady as I walked to the stage.

"Let's hear it for this year's District One Tributes: Kendall Delancy and-" she hesitated- "Kallik!"

I didn't look at her as she held my hand up. I was looking out past everyone. My favorite thing about One, ever since the first moment I saw it, was its mountains. I couldn't say what it was about them. How high they were. How harsh they were. How imposing and wild and beckoning and warning. I was leaving now. There was so much I'd miss. I would miss Seven and I would miss the place I came from. I would miss my parents and I would miss my friends. And I would miss the mountains of One.