Nothing Personal

District Three Reaping

The weather in District Three was that brisk kind of weather which bites at your cheeks and makes you want to go outside and do something. On any other day it would have been obeyed, the factory workers lounging on the walls and taking in the sunshine during their brief breaks, but today several people stayed resolutely indoors. Families of straight-faced children pushed them into line with a few strict orders to behave, and by and large these orders were followed. A few of the older children hung over the fences between pens, the boys flirting hopelessly with the girls, the girls teasing them back. The children facing their first reaping were crammed in, sucking their fingers where their blood had been taken. Many were pale faced. Somehow, District Three managed to reap more twelve year olds than any other district. Even their best scientists - of whom there were plenty - were unable to work out why.

Some people said it was a curse. 

The square was too big for the thin and gawky people of District Three, and they milled about in the space, shifting constantly like liquid particles. In a desperate attempt to steal some of the party from the other districts, two young people just past reaping age had gone around hanging fairy lights on the awnings of the cramped buildings and around some of the window frames. They had forgotten that it was morning and the sun was shining, and the lights didn't show well. Still, they were there, and in the minds of the people of Three this showed that they had at least tried, which, in the end, was all that mattered. They performed well in their jobs; trying was all that could be expected of them in the Games.

However, District Three hadn't seen a winner in more than twenty years and people were starting to feel the same kind of hopelessness that existed in the bigger, poorer, agricultural districts. Nobody here went to congratulate the families of the reaped. Instead, they avoided them like the plague, not wanting to have to give comfort while they were secretly celebrating that their own child was safe for another year. 

The Peacekeepers were given the orders to fetch the people from their homes.

One woman was busy giving birth, so they left her to it.

There was actually very little they could do about the people living out in the far reaches of the crowded district, away from the constant hum of electricity and machines, but this didn't matter so much because the people there were usually only there because they couldn't or didn't need to work any more. Besides, somehow a rumour had flown around that any child who missed a reaping was certain to be caught and reaped the next, so it was rare for people to try and skip, except some of the more daring eighteen year olds who wouldn't be in the bowl the next year. 

There had been a couple of complaints about the bowl itself; many thought that in the spirit of the district the reaping should be done electronically, and someone had gone as far as devising a prototype chip for it. It had been turned down, for reasons that were never fully explained. The people didn't chase it up. The Games was the Capitol's business, not theirs, and they only had to do as they were told.

As usual, the Mayor started off proceedings by making a speech. He was a nervous man who preferred to do  his job behind a screen and had a kind of fluttering twitch in his left eye, but he felt that it was his duty to address his people on reaping days. The speech changed every year, mostly because he had never got around to writing it down. He was stick-thin, and his glasses slipped down his nose every time he tried to glance down at the crowd.

"A-and I am very...I am, um, very pleased...to see s-such capable and, erm, yes, capable young p-people standing in f-f-front of me," he stuttered, looking out to the market shop with the colourful blue and red awnings at the back of the square.

People shifted restlessly, occasionally rubbing their hands together against the brisk cold. Someone in the pens whooped appreciatively, but it was quickly stifled. A few twelve year olds sniffed. They didn't look capable; they looked like easy prey for the Careers. The Mayor tried to tell himself that what they lacked in strength, they made up for in intelligence, but if that was true how come it was always the Careers that won? There was no official intelligence test or way of comparing with the other districts - the Games was the only way you could do that - but he was certain that his children were the cleverest.