Chapter Text
One time, when I was hiding in a tree, waiting motionless for prey to wander by, I dozed off and fell three meters to the ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.
That's how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as the name of my sister bounces around the inside of my skull. Someone is gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he caught me.
There must have been some mistake. This can't be happening. My sister was one slip of paper in a bowl of thousands! Her chances of being chosen were so remote that I'd not even bothered to worry about her being picked. Hadn't I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands of slips. The odds had been entirely in her favour. But it hadn't mattered.
Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily, as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen, because no one thinks this is fair. And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched into fists at her sides, walking with stiff and small steps up towards the stage, passing me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It's this detail, the untucked blouse forming a duck's tail, that brings me back to myself.
"No!" The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to move again. "No!" I repeat, my voice more clear and strong now. I don't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately, allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach my sister just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.
"I volunteer!" I said, my voice slightly panicked and breathless from running to get to my sister. "I volunteer as tribute." I stated, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to be more calm when saying it this time.
There's some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn't had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute's name has been pulled from the ball, another eligible person make take their place if they are of the same gender. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honour, people are eager to risk their lives, and the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.
"Lovely!" Effie Trinket says, smiling widely. "But I believe there's a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um . . ." She trails off, unsure of the protocol herself.
"What does it matter?" The mayor asks, clearly frowning. He's looking at me with this pained expression on his face. He doesn't know me really, but there's a faint recognition there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter goes to school with. The girl who's mother was publicly executed when she was young. "What does it matter?" He repeated gruffly. "Let her come forward." He requested.
My sister is crying hysterically behind me. She's wrapped her arms around me like a vice. "No, Y/n! No! You can't go!" She cries, pleading with me.
I turn and kneel to her level. "You have to let go." I state, wiping her tears with my thumb. "Go find dad. I'll be fine. But you need to go. I won't let you be a part of the games." I informed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Go." I repeated, turning to walk up the steps.
When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my reaction. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of watching me cry. I have no desire to be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will not be pushed aside. If I have to be a part of the games, I'm going to be the best part. I'm going to be the tribute that comes out alive.
"Well, bravo!" Effie gushes, clapping her hands excitedly. "That's the spirit of the games!" She states proudly, clearly pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. "What's your name, dear?" She asked me.
I swallow hard. "Y/n L/n." I say, trying to keep my voice steady. "I bet my buttons that was your sister." Effie said confidently. "Don't want her to steal all the glory, do we?" She asked. "Come on, everybody! Let's give a big round of applause to our newest tribute!" Effie encouraged.
To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my mother, or have worked alongside my father in the mines. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.
Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take my sister's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means goodbye to someone you love.
Haymitch chooses this time to come staggering across the stage to congratulate me. "Look at her. Look at this one!" He hollered, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He's surprisingly strong for such a wreck. "I like her!" He states, his breath reeking of liquor and it's clearly been a long time since he bathed. "Lots of . . ." He started to say, trailing off as he struggles to come up with the word. "Spunk!" He finally says, grinning triumphantly. "More than you!" He hollered, stalking to the front of the stage. "More than you!" He shouts, pointing directly into a camera.
Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? I'll never know because just as he's opening his mouth to continue, Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.
He's disgusting, but I'm grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on him, I have just enough time to release a small, choked sound in my throat and compose myself off screen. I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance. I can see the hills I climbed this morning. For a moment, I yearn for something . . . freedom, I think.
Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Effie is trying to get the ball rolling again. "What an exciting day!" She says, clearly trying to make things better than they seem while she simultaneously attempts to straighten her wig, which has listed severely to the right. "But there is more excitement to come! It's time for us to choose our boy tribute!" Effie stated, clearly hoping to contain her tenuous hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that contains the boys' names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to the podium, and I don't even have time to blink before she's reading the name chosen. "Nathan Coleman." Effie announced.
I don't recognize the name. The boy that steps forward is a boy who is obviously from the Seam. He's not someone I've ever met before and it's not hard to see why. He's severely malnourished. He looks sickly, pale and shaky. He's skinny, too skinny. It looks like he hasn't eaten in a long time. His face and hands are covered with coal dust and his eyes have this far away haunted look, depression and dreadful acceptance. It's clear this boy has given up on life already, long before his name was drawn just now. And I know, in the depths of my mind, he will be one of the first to die in the Hunger Games.
Effie happily asks if anyone would like to volunteer for him, but no one steps forward. This is standard. People don't tend to volunteer for others. Even volunteering in the place of family, like I did, is uncommon. Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What I did was a radical thing.
The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year at this point - it's required - but I'm not listening to a word. I'm thinking about my mother again, wondering how she would have reacted to all of this if she was still alive. My mother died in January the year I turned eight. By this time that year, the numbness of her loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over and racking my body with sobs. For a long time afterwards, I would cry with questions. Where are you? Where have you gone? How could you do this to me? Of course, there was never any answer.
After he death, my father had been forced to take double the amount of shifts he normally worked in the mines in order to make up for the money we would have been earning for my mother working as well. But with her death, the job of working for money fell entirely onto my father. This caused him to work seven days a week in the mines. He was only ever home late at night or on holidays. For months after mom died, my father would cry himself to sleep every night. He never did find the strength to clean out her closet and sell her belongings. He claimed they held her spirit close. So he kept them, a choice that helped him heal. But someone would have to take care of the house, food, and at the time, my four-year-old little sister.
At only eight years old, I took over as head of the family. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market and cooked it as best as I could and tried to keep my sister and I looking presentable. I took over hunting and gathering, cleaning the house, and raising my sister. Because who else would have if it wasn't me? My father couldn't possibly do it all by himself, not while he worked from dawn to dusk every single day of the year except for the government holidays.
Maybe that was why I'd felt compelled to volunteer for my sister. My relationship with her was more than just the average sibling bond, it was more of a parental bond. After all, I was the closest thing to a mother she ever had. She doesn't remember our mother at all, not a single thing. Maybe the fact that I see her as this fragile and innocent being that I have to protect is why I sacrificed myself to take her place. She's too kind for this world, too gentle. She would never be able to live with herself if she was forced to hurt someone in the games. She would be crushed like a pretty flower by the Capitol, and I couldn't let that happen.
I glance over at my district partner, the male tribute of District 12. His sunken face and nearly nonexistent stomach and body fat reminded me of a time when my family was starving. Starvation isn't an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn't seen the victims? Older people who can't work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the mines. All roaming through the streets, bodies ruined and eyes vacant of hope. And one day, you come across them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, you hear the wails from family members that have lost their loved one to such a cruel fate, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the bodies. Starvation is never the cause of death officially, though everyone knows that the bodies collected most definitely starved to death. The government always claims it's the flu, or exposure to the elements, or pneumonia. But that fools no one.
The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Nathan and me to shake hands. Nathan's grip is weak and his hand is ice cold and clammy. He looks right at me but it's like he's looking through me. I'd like to think it's just because he's nervous but I know it's likely because he isn't all there mentally anymore. I hear that if you've been starving for a long time and are close to death, your mind starts to space out and it becomes increasingly hard to form coherent thoughts.
We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays. I can't help but feel bad for the boy standing beside me. Oh, well. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I have to. Of course, the odds have not been very dependable as of late.