Living in the Seam of district 12 was never meant to be easy.
Hunger.Fear.Death
These words plagued the people living there
But (Y/N) Hawthorne managed to overcome this by hunting food with his elder brother Gale and best friend Katniss Everdeen .A...
We spend a hour discussing casual stuff and mocking Effie Trinket's Capital accent.
"What do you want guys want to do?" I ask. We can hunt, fish or gather. "Let's fish at the lake. We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight," Gale says.
Tonight. After the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate. And a lot of people do, out of relief that their children have been spared for another year. But at least two families will pull their shutters, lock their doors, and try to figure out how they will survive the painful weeks to come.
After finishing our work in the woods we go to the back door of the mayor's house to sell half the strawberries, knowing he has a particular fondness for them and can afford our price. The mayor's daughter, Madge, opens the door. She's in my year at school. Being the mayor's daughter, you'd expect her to be a snob, but she's all right. She just keeps to herself. Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends,me Katniss and her seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at assemblies. It's weird spending your school days with girls but they rarely talk, which suits me just fine.
Gale attempts to take a jab at her for having only five entries whereas he had six when he was just twelve.
We walk back toward the Seam in silence. I don't like that Gale took a dig at Madge, but he's right, of course. The reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it.Say you are poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae.
So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping 14 times.Katniss who is 16 either helping or single-handedly feeding her family will have her name for name in twenty times.And Gale would have his for 24 times.You can see why someone like Madge, who has never been at risk of needing a tessera, can set him off. The chance of her name being drawn is very slim compared to those of us who live in the Seam. Not impossible, but slim.
We divide our spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each. "See you both in the square,"Katniss says "Wear something pretty," I say flatly.
At home I see that my mother and brothers are ready to go with little Posy pretending to brush her hair.
A tub of warm water waits for me. I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods."Planning to spend the whole day in there?"I hear Gale say outside mockingly ."If I could yes".I say
To my surprise my mother has laid out one of my father's old reaping cloths."Are you sure" I ask I know how much precious my father's belongings are to her "Yes, dress up now we might run late. " After my father's death she did all she could working extra shifts as maid in the richer households in the District.Even that was sadly not enough which led to me and Gale having to look into the woods to feed our family.
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It's a bit formal but looks better than the clothes I usually wear.
At one o'clock, we head for the square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death's door. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you'll be imprisoned.
I find myself standing in a clump of sixteens from the Seam. We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls. I stare at the paper slips in the boys' ball.
Twenty of them (Y/N) Hawthorne written on them in careful handwriting.
"It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks," intones the mayor.
Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one
is still alive. Haymitch Abernathy, who at this moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage, and falls into the third chair. He's drunk. Very. The crowd responds with its token applause, but he's confused and tries to give Effie Trinket a big hug, which she barely manages to fend off.
The mayor looks distressed. Since all of this is being televised, right now District 12 is the laughingstock of
Panem, and he knows it. He quickly tries to pull the attention back to the reaping by introducing Effie Trinket.
Bright and bubbly as ever, Effie Trinket trots to the podium and gives her signature, "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!"
Just a few rows ahead I spot Katniss looking back at me. Since we met in the woods 5 years ago we have been inseparable .Its only around her that I could really be myself. Suddenly I am thinking about Katniss and her twenty entries and how the odds are not in her favor. Maybe she is thinking the same about me "but there are a thousand slips" I wish I could tell her
It's time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always does, "Ladies first!"and crosses to the glass ball with the girls' names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling anxious and so desperately hoping that it's not Katniss , that it's not Katniss, that it's not Katniss.
Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not Katniss .
