Standing on the Edge (That Goat Will Probably Eat You)

Surprise Surprise

We have to take the tram to get to the square. District Five is a big district, and even though I live in the Slums - the ring of wooden houses that seperates the people who live in town from the endless industry - it's still a two hour walk. For some of the turbine and nuclear workers, only just visible on the horizon past the maze of pylons, it can be more than a day. And that's just people in our township; there's others who lives much further out in tiny townships of their own, places I've never even glimpsed no matter how far away I've had to work. Luckily the trams are free.

The trams are the blood vessels of our district; it would be impossible to get anywhere otherwise. Unfortunately, they're in a bad way and need constant maintenance, so there's always someone from Six on every one, just in case. Usually it's a young person, but not today. Today it's an old man, old enough to have grandkids in the pot, dressed in wrinkled green overalls and twiddling his thumbs. Occasionally someone tries to speak to him but he ignores us. Today his thoughts are with his own district.

After this year I'll have to spend a month a year out of district, doing maintenance for the pylon links stretching over Panem and to the Capitol. The thought makes me dizzy. District Five is only just big enough for my imagination.

There's a spare seat; we must be running very late, coming in with the early shift workers. It's my fault, I guess. Ma pushes me into it and Tara sits on my knee. Usually women or old people get the spare seats, but not today. The mood is sombre as the tram begins to rattle through the Slums, the usually hectic streets eerily empty. Apart from me there's only two other kids of reaping age in our carriage; brothers, by the look of them, one probably around thirteen and the other sixteen. Both are silent, biting their thumbs. Slummers, they've got the dark hair and the eyes, deep brown and harrowed. They're in suits like mine but I know they're pylon workers. Pylon work is for the cheap labour, the kids and the Slummers. The top brass work nuclear, out on the horizon, living miles from town or in neat red brick houses in the Centre, near the square. Everyone else - Mids, we call them in the Slums - is hydro-elec or turbines, commuting through the Slums every morning and then back to their stable concrete rows. These two have to be pylon boys, probably in manufacturing rather than maintenance like me; they seem strong. Their faces are drawn and I'd bet they haven't been eating. Would they volunteer for each other?

"Last year is it, lad?" asks the man sat next to me. I eye him suspiciously. He looks about thirty, though I'm a rubbish judge of age for anyone over twenty. He's wearing overalls with a pylon stitched into the chest pocket, although below it is a wind turbine. Nothing creepy about him, though I tighten my grip on Tara. She's silent, looking out of the window at the wooden houses rattling past, one hand clutching Ma's skirt. "Yes, sir," I respond obediently. The youngest boy shoots me an envious look.

"What's your name, son?" he asks. He sounds just curious, looking for a way to lighten the tension. Still, if he was my age I'd tell him to get lost.

"Faraday Wilson, sir." As soon as I've said this I know why I'm uneasy about him. He's ex-Slummer, a guy who got out. He reeks of it. That's what the turbine is all about; he either didn't have the spare money for a new set of overalls or didn't have the heart to abandon his roots. And he's got that expression, trying to look caring but not managing to hide his relieved expression; he doesn't have to live in these rotting shacks anymore. But the dark, almost black, eyes are the big giveaway. He's shaved off his chestnut hair but he can't change his eyes.

And I am so jealous.

Soon. After today I'll be earning and then we'll get out. Unless...

"You're looking smart, young Faraday."

"Thank you, sir." Another thing I can do after today; drop the 'sir' and 'miss'.

"It is a shame," he sighs, but quietly. Nobody has ever seen or even heard of a Capitol spy before, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. If anything, it makes it more likely.