The Games #1(The Hunger games in Peeta's POV)

CHAPTER 1

When I wake up, the usual scent of baking bread is missing.

I sit up, alarmed, before remembering what day it is.

The reaping day.

My alarm doesn't go away even as I get out of my bed, and wander towards our bakery's front area, where I usually see my dad in the morning. He always stocks the cakes that I decorated behind the glass, that the poor kids from the seam stare at as they pass by.

The streets are quiet today, no miners on their way to work. They might as well sleep it off, if they can.

I don't realize when my legs have carried me to the back, where the pen for the pig is, where the dustbin where I'd found her that day sits.

But instead, I find my father speaking to someone through the crack in the door.

"I know that you like my squirrels, sir." Says the voice at the other end of the door.

I freeze. It's him. Gale Hawthorne. The boy who has everything that I want.

My father shakes his head. "No, my boy. I like hers better, but yours will do." He jokes.

Gale doesn't laugh, or as far as I can guess, smile. "If you could give me my payment..."

"Right." Says my father, handing him a loaf of bread, freshly bakes the night before.

"Thank you" Says Gale, turning to leave.

"Gale!" yells my father from a bit afar. I guess Gale turned around, because he said "Good luck."

I didn't hear him after that.

When my father sees me standing by the doorway, he doesn't look surprised. "Don't tell your mother." He warns, eyes light.

I nod.

"Keep those sacks back there? Mice might get them." He said.

"Fine." I say, as I haul the sack into my arms with ease.

"Today is the reaping."

I whipped my head around to where my brother, Triticum, stood.

"Seems like it." I said with a grunt as I put the sack down.

"Are you scared?" He asks.

I look at him. He doesn't look mocking, only curious. But I wasn't going to give him a reason to chide me.

"No."

"Well, you should." And with that, he left.

I had no time to puzzle over that, as my mother came in just then.

"Go take a bath." She orders me. "We need to look presentable today."

I comply without any argument.

Soon, the time for the reaping has arrived, and we are leaving. In our family, Brusk - my bother - and I are the only ones who can be reaped out, the rest are too old. But even then, no words are exchanged as we march towards the square.

The square, surrounded with shops, has bright banners hanging from the buildings. Three chairs and a microphone stands in the center. The camera crews glare down at the scene below from them through the cameras. The podium has two glass bowls with the paper slips with the names of tributes, one for girls and one for boys. My eyes latch themselves onto the one with the boys' names. Five of them have my name on them.

Finally, my family and me exchange nods, and then we sign in. It is done to keep tabs on the population in the districts. Then, I head to where the sixteen year olds stand.

Against my better judgement, my eyes find her.

She looks beautiful. She wears a blue dress, and her hair is done in an intricate braid. She looks determined, ruthless. Someone who is capable of winning the Games.

I will my eyes away from her.

Two of the chairs get occupied by Mayor Undersee and Effie Trinket - The escort of District Twelve. She looks as flamboyant as she does every year, her grin blinding, her hair pink and her body clad in a spring green suit.

They murmur to each other, and look with concern at the third chair.

As the clock strikes two, the mayor steps up into the podium in front of the microphone, and reads the story of Panem.

He reads the same thing every year. The history of Panem, the country that rose out of the ashes from a place once called North America. He reads about the droughts, storms, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem: a country with a shining capitol at its center ringed by thirteen districts. Then he read of the dark days, of the uprising of the districts against the capitol. The twelve were defeated, and the thirteenth was obliterated. The Treaty of Treason was drafted, and as a reminder that the dark days must not be repeated, the Hunger Games were born.

Each year, a boy and a girl is reaped out of the twelve districts as punishment for the uprising. The twenty-four tributes must fight to death in the arena-a vast outdoor area that could be anything from a burning wasteland to a freezing Jungle. Over the next few weeks, the tributes must fight to death, and the last the live is chosen as the victor.

We are required to treat The Games as festivities. The victor is given a life of ease back home at the victor's village, and their district will be showered with prizes-mostly food-for the rest of the year.

He then reads the list of our victors. We have had exactly two. One is dead, and the other- Haymitch Abernathy-is a middle aged man who is a hopeless drunk. Who is missing from the third chair.

The victors of each district mentor the tributes to come each year.

Just then, Haymitch appears. He's drunk, very much so. He falls into the third chair, and tries to give Effie Trinket a hug, which she fends off. The crowd bursts into applause.

I look up subconsciously at the cameras. The district must be the laughingstock of Panem by now.

Effie trots to the podium, as bright as ever, in her pointy heels. Judging by the way she is fixing her hair, it must be a wig. She gives the people her signature "Happy hunger games!", and then says something about "what an honor it is", although everyone knows she wants a different district.

She then crosses to the glass bowl containing the girl's names.

"Ladies first!" She says, dipping her hand in the bowl.

She shuffles around for a bit, then pulls out a slip. She straightens it as she trots back to the microphone.

I just have enough time to hope that it's not her, it's not her.

And it's not her.

It's Primrose Everdeen.