Chapter Text
My pa told me that a man’s life flashes before his eyes the moment before he dies. I never argued because, sure, that sounds probable.
But I doubted the odds. After all, how would he know? Him still being alive and all.
Now, in what is to be my last moment of life, I would put all my money on that bet.
My life, short and uneventful as it was, plays across my mind like a propos reel.
Reminding me that the odds were definitely NOT in my favor.
Even though they should have been.
I woke up with the knowledge that this would be my last Reaping. And, as the youngest of the Callow boys, I’ve never had to put my name in for tesserae so there are only seven slips of paper with my name on them. My birthday is just two months from now so it’s the last time I’ll have to wake up on this day with dread.
Some of my friends have forty or fifty slips of paper with their names in that bowl. My mind is exhausted from trying to nail down the odds over the last few weeks. Especially with that element of chance that always seems to factor itself in without my permission.
“Wyatt?” My mother calls through my door and when I don’t answer, she follows it up with, “You awake in there? Your dad wants to go over the numbers one more time before he heads out.”
Of course he does. Wants all the odds all lined up so he can start the early betting before the train with its kidnapped children even leaves the station.
Huffing, I call back, “Yup, gimme a minute and I’ll be out.” Because if I don’t, pa will just come in here and make me go over numbers right here in my bed.
I put on my only nice pair of pants. A hand-me-down that has been handed down through all five of my brothers so the hems are long since patched with another material and both knees have a big rectangular patch that makes them look like it’s done up on purpose. My shirt is soft from years of washing. I don’t bother with my jacket yet, though it’s elbows sport the same style of patches. Ma says it makes me look distinguished. Like anyone in the Seam could ever actually look distinguished.
She says some nice girl from the Seam is eventually going to notice how nice I look with my hair neatly combed.
I hope not.
I’ve never really noticed a girl that I cared to notice me back.
In the kitchen, pa’s at the table with his softbound notebook open. Notebooks ain't cheap so pa takes some of the flyers and posters that the Capitol sticks up around the district, cuts them to size and ma binds them into a book of scrap pages for him. She’s real good at it. Reusing string or thread to tie it all together in the fold. When a notebook is all filled up with numbers and ready to be destroyed, she soaks the old pages in water, crumbles ‘em up, mashes ‘em together and lays ‘em out flat to make the bind for the next book.
She told me once that it tickles her to use Capitol flyers to hide illegal activity. And then to use the last book of illicit information to bind the new one. The rest of the town thinks ma has it rough, married to a bookie who’s setting bets for and against their own people but mama’s always been a rebel in my eyes. Both my parents do what they do to keep us all from borrowing against the tesserae. It might not be nice in everyone’s eyes but it’s kept us fed and out of the arena.
I do hate it though.
And I hate that I somehow developed whatever it is that makes me able to see all the probabilities. I’m not often wrong. Even if what I’m doing is wrong.
“Son, I just want you to look over the numbers again. Mable, who works the tesserae records confirmed you had everyone’s slip numbers right,” Pa’s finger graces the column of numbers. Most of the youngest in the Reaping have only one but a few have as many as five. Seven years I’ve been waking up to this and I’ve only got seven slips. How must it feel to wake up and know that your chances are greater than most everyone else’s?
I think maybe Pa is nervous. It's my last reaping and while the math should mean that the kid with 100 slips gets pulled before the kid with one, we all know it doesn't work like that. There have been for too many twelve year olds in the arena for that to be true.
“Pa, they’re as close as we can call, some things are just up to chance,” I tell him for the fourth or fifth time. Every year there is a margin of error that goes to chance for the Reaping. For the last day, people have been betting on which kids will get reaped. It's horrible thing to bet on but it I think it helps them keep the reality and the horror of it at arm's length. “And I can’t give you the odds on every single district 12 kid in the arena. Not without at least seeing what happens in the other districts.” He knows this. I know it. Ma knows it. “After the Reaping today, when there are only forty-eight kids, we’ll watch the tribute video and I’ll calculate everyone’s odds for ya.”
My least favorite part. I don’t make up the odds. It’s simple math. Well, complex math that’s simple for me. There’s nothing I can do to change any of it, even if I wanted to. So it shouldn’t matter who does it, or how I feel about it. Because it’s just numbers. No empathy or sympathy. Just the odds.
When my father finally closes up his book and heads out, my ma puts a plate in front of me, staying close with her hand on my neck, “I’ve waited for this day since you were born,” she says, kissing my temple, “the last Reaping Day for my last baby.” I hear her whisper a prayer under her breath, though to who, I’ve no idea.
It’s only by concentrating on the odds that I’m able to eat my breakfast. I clear my mind of everything else, the day, the people, my parents, and just watch the numbers in my mind as they group together and build and fall.
There’s enough time before the Reaping to do a few things - if I had things to do. I don’t, though. Instead I wander around, watching other people do the things they have to do before the Reaping. Most everyone seems to be either in a hurry or no hurry at all.
At the sweet shop, Merilee and Maysilee are working, smiling at customers like this won’t be the last day in the district for four of their kids. Between the two of them, twins have just ten slips in the bowl. No tesserae for either of them and they’re just sixteen. Most of the merchant kids have one slip per year. Doesn’t mean they never get pulled though. Just last year a fifteen year old merchant’s son was Reaped. I gave him 20 to 1 odds. He died the first day.
Neither of the twins has very good odds if they get Reaped. I’d reevaluate after the training but even without looking at the other tributes, I’d put them both at 36 to 1 odds.
After watching the shop bustle for a few minutes, I dip inside. I don’t much like sweets but I’ll get a peppermint stick for my ma. Tucking it into my breast pocket, I nod my thanks to the twin working the counter. Pretty sure that one is Merilee. She purses her lips but nods back. The Reaping tends to even out the ground for all of us - at least on the morning before.
After a little while longer of people watching, I meander down to where we check in.
Every year is the same, front row is the twelve year olds. Probably to get their innocent little faces in the propos of the stage activity. Get their shock and fear. Their tears. Though all of our parents try to teach us to hide it - don’t let the Capitol use you like that. Don’t show emotion. That’s what my pa taught me and my brothers at least. Used to be there was one of us in every section. Being stair steppers like we are, each about a year apart. Now it’s just me, in the back, watching as the rows fill up, girls on one side, boys on the other. Everyone in their Reaping Day best.
Peacekeepers line the stage and line the sides of what is very much a holding pen, reminding us that there is nowhere to run. That we must walk to our fate with whatever dignity we can muster. I imagine that the shock of hearing your name is enough to move you through the motions.
Drusilla takes the stage, she is somehow still alive even though she continues to look like someone stretched skin over a skeleton and pushed it onto the train each year. This year she’s in a hideous yellow military getup. Her voice grates on my ears but I hear the first name clear as day, Louella McCoy. I don’t know her personally. But I know her odds. Thirteen, small, from the Seam so her nutrition isn’t great, probably never even swung something small as a hammer in her whole life.
I watch, detached, as the girl steps out of her row, drawing herself up and pushing her shoulders back, chin up as she marches to her certain death. Her name was in the bowl on six slips of paper. Less than .005% chance of getting Reaped. Odd don’t matter in a fishbowl though.
She takes her place next to Drusilla and stares at the ground. Whatever fight she’d had going up seems to have deflated.
Drusilla reaches into the girls' bowl again with her claw-like hand. Two girls and two boys from every district this time. Forty-eight children. Whatever odds we all had of going home instead of to the Capitol today, were cut in half by this development.
Drusilla lifts up the slip - Maysilee Donner. One of the twins from the sweet shop. She and her sister and another girl crush together in a hug, their blond heads dipping together as they hold tight one last time. When they pull apart I see the third girl is the March girl, Astrid. All three had the same odds. One less slip of paper than Louella McCoy, too. And Louella had one less slip of paper than me.
I breathe in and breathe out, my eyes following the steps of Maysilee Donner as she sets her jaw, squares her shoulders and mounts the steps to stand next to Louella. She does not offer comfort and the younger girl does not ask for it. Louella does follow Maysilee’s lead though and brings her eyes up, focuses them somewhere at the back over our heads. I feel a little shot of pride for her. Her odds recalculate in my head.
Drusilla steps toward the bowl with the boys’ names. There are more of them but not by much, one hundred and three more slips of paper in the boy bowl. There are more girls between the ages of 12 and 18 in the district this year but boys are more likely to be used in trade for tesserae. It baffles me, as the oddsmaker, to see that families are more cavalier with their sons’ lives than their daughters.’
The world goes silent as Drusilla pulls a single slip of paper from deep inside the bowl and then creaks out, “Wyatt Callow.”
It is true, what they say. Your body knows just what to do and propels you forward. I did not think about stepping toward the stage. I did not think about climbing the stairs. I did not think about standing where the Peacekeeper pointed. I thought only of the odds. One of the Seam boys has 108 slips of paper in the bowl and yet here I stand with only seven. Two months away from my nineteenth birthday. My mother’s last baby on his last Reaping.
There is something freeing about being sent to die. Nothing that I do from this moment on will be of consequence. I will go, I will fight, I will die. Even without seeing the other tributes, I know the odds are stacked against me. And rather than wanting to cry. I sort of want to sigh in relief. At least it’s over, right?
“Woodbine Chance!”
His name is in the bowl 48 times, .03% chance of being called. Out of all of us, the highest odds of being called. I look down at the boy section just in time to catch movement. He’s running. I’m just forming the thought of where does he think he’s going to go? When there’s a loud crack and his head snaps forward, blood splattering on everyone around him. My shock stills any reaction I might have had and then a woman is screaming, Drusilla is yelling, the Peacekeepers are shouting, and there’s a struggle as they try to stop the woman as she tugs Woodbine away from them.
His mother. Begging to see him one last time. Please. Just don’t take him.
But they need to. Drusilla is shouting about a five minute delay and to hurry up and get this mess out of here.
I just watch. Detached. I’m no longer alive. What does it matter?
A girl breaks away from the girl section, one of the Covey girls. Lenore Dove. She’s always singing those songs that get her in trouble, bringing about her own rebellion one song at a time. Ma tried to convince me to court her when she turned sixteen this year but she’s been hung up on the Abernathy kid since they were too young to know what courting was.
Plus, I just don’t see the attraction. To anyone really.
The Peacekeepers are pointing their guns at Woodbine’s mother and one of them has his hands on the girl, trying to drag her off when Drusilla yells, “Just shoot her!” And the Abernathy kid, Haymitch, suddenly comes to life, stepping out of line nearby, going to grab his girl. My brain whispers, “2 to 1 odds Drusilla decides to replace Woodbine with Haymitch.”
Sure enough. That’s what happens.
She insists that we do the entire boys' Reaping over and I am still shocked enough that I don’t even say anything, just climb back down the steps and take my place again. My face is frozen in that shocked expression which is probably just fine for the propos. Then she’s calling Haymitch’s name and he’s standing next to me, even more shocked than I am since he didn’t even get Reaped.
Everyone else starts filing out, free to go home and back to their lives and I look to where my pa, face ashen, is leading my ma to the front. She’s already crying, barely looking where she’s going, trusting pa to lead her to her last baby for his last goodbye.
We don’t get to say goodbye though. Maysilee either. Drusilla has decided she’s too angry about the mess the Peacekeepers made and she demands we leave immediately. I get one good look at my parents over my shoulder before a Peacekeeper is shoving me away from the life I’ll never get to live.