Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Bacon - Massey

Massey

The smell of bacon and raw meat drifts up through the stairs. For a fuzzy moment I think I'm in Ten again, but it passes as soon as I open my eyes and find myself staring not at the pipes and chains of the cramped engineer quarters, but at the smooth grey of my ceiling back home.

The room is no less cramped, though, and the pictures on my walls are the same as they were yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. All mine, so the perspectives are wonky and the faces are blurred because I can't draw noses. But still, they're more to remind me of memories than be faithful representations. I only need to glance at the skinny trees to remember the vast, dried orchards of Eleven, hotter than I could have ever imagined. A soft grey sky and peaked mountains immediately brings to mind the brisk wind of Two, the kind that gets into every layer and prods your bones, and the chilly glares of the inhabitants who never seem to smile. Just catching a glimpse of the columns of smoke scribbled onto a grubby sheet is enough to make my throat itch and for the constant chunter of machinery to start up inside my ears.

"Massey! You coming?"

This is followed by Eddie's footsteps bounding down the hall, which is in turn followed by Mom's familiar yelling. "Eddie! How many times I got to tell you not to run in the house?" As usual, he pays no attention, and the next second he's sprawled across the foot of my bed.

He's obviously just come in for a stint in the factory because he reeks of machinery. His overalls are undone to just above his waist because, even at fifteen years old, Eddie is as arrogant about his appearance as it's possible to be when you spend half of your time working. I wrinkle my nose and kick at him but he doesn't even move.

"I don't know why you're looking so happy," I growl - this is my space and he knows it is, hence his smug little grin - "You're in the pot too."

"Not as much as you!" he exclaims, tugging the sheet away so a blast of cold air hits me. I lunge at him, but he slips through my grasp and runs down the hall, laughing.

"Massey, breakfast!" Mom's voice comes from the kitchen, the origin of the bacon smell that woke me up. We only ever get bacon on reaping mornings. Most of the time we have to sell it onwards, with first cuts to the Peacekeepers, of course.

I'm glad I'll never be a butcher, that I've got my green overalls and a lifetime squashing myself into tiny comparments to fix tracks and trains, the ground clacking away under my feet.

In the dim light filtering through the blinds I roll out of bed and start pulling on yesterday's overalls. Yesterday was the first day I'd worn them so they're cleaner than everything else I've got. Only the best for a reaping, especially a Quell.

It's worrying that they haven't announced the Quell yet. Maybe they're announcing it at the reaping, in which case District One at least will already know it. Maybe some of the others, too. Everybody has been wondering about it ever since the Capitol announcement - when they should have been announcing the Quell - that they'd reveal it closer to the time. Everybody has been on a knife-edge, waiting. And every day there  was silence and the betting got more fierce, and now the whole district is tense, waiting for the next new way that our tributes will have to suffer.

Perhaps it would be better to die in the bloodbath. That way you don't have to hope.

And perhaps I've thought about this too much.

The Hub has been full of makeshift bookies every time I've been back. The most popular concept seems to be reaping two children from the same family; that could be devastating here in Six, where most families have at least two children. I'm not sure how they'd manage it with the Careers; one thing I've noticed in my brief visits to One and Two is that families seem to be very small. But maybe the Careers will volunteer anyway.