Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Mystery - Perry

"Go flat!" I order, but it continues to stick up. So it'll have to do. Mother never cares what my hair looks like on reaping days anyway. She says that she just cares that I come home safe (and don't fall over in front of everybody). So I decide that I am perfectly presentable and go to see her.

Mother and Father are in the little kitchen behind the bakery shop, talking to each other. I stop straight away, with one hand on the door, as soon as I hear them talking. I've been told not to walk into a room if Mother and Father are talking without knocking. I guess they must be talking about me.

Mother is the one who is talking, and it sounds like she's facing away, looking out into the shop, which is all boarded up because unlike the factory workers, we don't have to work on reaping day. Still, I know her voice better than anybody's and she sounds worried. She must be talking about me. So I press my ear to the slightly open door so I can listen.

"...I don't know, Flenn. It sounds dangerous..."

"More dangerous than leaving Perry here? You know if the Peacekeepers..."

I clap a hand to my mouth. They're leaving? But they can't go. And they can't go without me.

"He's only got two more reapings left..." Mother continues.

"If we do anything that indicates we're guilty, he'll be reaped, I can guarantee it, love. Getting out, all three of us, that's the safest way. We could probably get to Thirteen; the workers are saying that they're still taking refugees, no questions asked..."

"Thirteen!"

"It'd be a roof over our heads. We'd never survive out in the wilderness alone."

Wilderness? Survive? Despite the hand clapped to my mouth, I can't help a small squeaking noise filtering out. This sounds...exciting! A bit dirty, but exciting. And what are Mother and Father guilty of? They're good people. They don't even make the Peacekeepers pay extra for their bread like some of the other merchants do for their goods. Mother sometimes makes me tidy up but I don't think that makes her a bad person. She laughs when I fall over.

Wherever they go, they can't go without me.

Mother sighs and her voice is muffled. I can still hear what she's saying, though, and it makes my tummy feel like there's a stone in it. "Oh, Flenn. I wish we'd never got involved."

"Me too, love. But we've got to go. For Perry."

I knew they wouldn't go anywhere without me. But what are they talking about? I want to know...

"Perhaps if we carry on as normal...if we run away, that surely makes us look guilty...they'll look for us."

She sounds sad, like she might be about to cry. I don't want her to cry. If she cries I'll feel sad. So I knock on the door, even though my curiosity feels like a little mouse scampering around inside my head. Three times, my knock. There's a slight pause.

"Come in, Perry," Mother calls, her voice totally back to normal, "And try not to fall over."

Too late.

The other children stand as far away from me as possible. They're all the same age as me but they're a lot skinnier, and they look at my clothes warily. I give them a big smile because they all look so worried, but they don't return it. They look...jealous. And that's not my fault.

I turn around to look for Mother and Father. They're stood as close to the pens as they can, Father with his arm around Mother's shoulder. Among all the other adults, tall and lanky and grimy, they look like they shine and my heart feels all warm and fuzzy to look at them. I wonder if I look more like Mother or Father. Nobody has ever told me before.

"Peregrine, isn't it?" The voice makes me jump. It comes from a boy stood closest to me. The other boys are all looking at him with something like respect, like how some of our customers look at Father. His voice sounds rough and scratchy and despite looking like his bones are about to pop out of his skin, his face is round and even smiling a little. It makes me grin a lot wider. Though I don't like being called Peregrine.

"Perry," I tell him. He sticks his hand out. It's obvious that he's tried to clean it, but there's slivers of dirt under his fingernails and he even still has cotton fluff in his hair, which is shaved short and bristly.

"The bakers' boy?"

"That's me!" I declare proudly. The other boys are starting to look the other way, where the woman is up on the stage with her massive hat flopping down over her face, even though it's grey and raining. The boy nods and drops his hand back by his side, his cheeks going slightly red. He looks at the floor. Something about how he looks is odd but I can't work it out.

"Just...say thanks to your dad from mine, yeah?" he asks. My instinct bursts into action; this must be something to do with what Mother and Father were talking about earlier, about being guilty and maybe leaving. I nod, and quickly hiss (because he's looking around like he doesn't want to be heard), "Why? What has Father done?"

"Shush," he spits back, "The speech is about to start, and the Peacekeepers..."

I see what he means. The Peacekeepers are stood around the pens, waiting to find somebody to punish. But I need to at least have a way to track this boy down later, when he can talk again. He might be dirty and grubby but he knows something I don't.

"Your name?" I ask, facing the front so that it doesn't look like I'm talking. The woman is twittering away like a bird, prancing from one side of the stage to the other. She's the only person who looks happy to be here.

"Jersey," he replies under his breath, "Connor Jersey."

"Nice to meet you, Con -"

"Shut up."

So I do.

The rest of the reaping flies by while I try and work out what Mother and Father were talking about, and what Connor and Mr Jersey have got to do with it. People shuffle and cry when the girl gets called up but she looks cold and sad and that's nothing different. What is different is her hair; it's blonde like mine. And it isn't dirty either. She's younger than me and she stands so that her hair falls in front of her eyes.

I think she looks pretty.

But she is going to die and so I turn myself back to what my parents could have done. I haven't seen or heard of them doing anything bad before today.

The woman is calling cheerfully, smiling down on us with very shiny purple lips that can't be normal. She's got a slip of paper in her hands.

"And your District Eight male tribute is..."

And I fall over on the stairs on my way to the stage.