Chapter Text
When I wake, it’s still dark.
If the lights aren’t on, that means I’m supposed to be asleep. But really, how do they expect anyone to sleep today?
A camera buzzes faintly outside. I’m not going to be able to slip back into dreams.
Six months. Six months of the new structure, the new routine, with curfew and lights-out and cameras in every hall. Six months of no schedule printed on my arm.
I’m still not used to it. I don’t think I ever will be.
For some reason, when they abolished most of my district’s perfectly synchronised routines and customs, they let us keep the calendars. I can’t tell whether that’s a small mercy, or a slightly bigger threat.
And today? Today is July fourth. I read in one of my textbooks that it used to be a day of celebration. That, a little over a century ago, the sky would be filled with colours right about now.
That’s the Capitol’s idea of a joke, I think. Holding the reaping on an old festival. A sick joke, a cruel one, but a joke all the same.
And, here’s that train of thought again. The one that never leads to anything good.
Five months. Five months since the Mockingjay was executed on live television. Five months since I was herded into a room with every other child in this district and made to watch the bullets tear through her flesh.
I’d seen her around before she left, never to return. Watched her dance arm-in-arm with her sister at a wedding not a week before her execution.
The same sister who, now, lives a ghost. She watched Katniss almost die in the arena, twice. Had her back for a few, precious months. Then watched her actually die.
It would be enough to break me, too.
Four months. Four months since the announcement – the Games will go on. Four months since Snow decided that nothing ever happened. Four months since our wonderful president decided that we in Thirteen, too, would be part of the reaping.
And three months – three months since the reading of the card.
The Seventy-Sixth games should not be a Quell. They aren’t a Quell, Snow admitted that himself in that smooth, oily voice I’ve spent fifteen years of life learning to hate.
But, he used a Quell card anyway. The one that was supposed to be used for the Centennial Games, as he dubbed it.
Three boys. Three girls. Three times my chance of being chosen in my first-ever reaping.
That’s just my luck, isn’t it? One mandatory slip. Five tesserae. Six in all, not the best odds, even on a regular year. But now – eighteen. Eighteen in a few thousand. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s more than most.
And if I survive this year, I keep my six slips and add on six more.
This is why we rebelled. But the rebellion was crushed, and now all I can do is pray.
I shake my head to clear it of this disjointed mess of thoughts. Before our president was imprisoned, she would sometimes visit our classes, and she would tell us that a clear mind was a happy one.
An organized one, maybe. But today, I don’t think it’s possible to be happy.
I slide myself out from between my bedsheets as quietly as I can. Before I pull the curtains around my allocated changing area, I cast a glance over to my mother’s bed.
My little brother is curled up in her arms, burrowed into her side like a suckling kitten into its mother. Her blond hair puddles above his head. They both look so happy, so peaceful. Normally the first to wake in our family wakes the others too, but they need this. Ezron will not be part of the reaping this year. The only thing he has to worry about is me.
I shake that thought from my head, too, and pull the cleanest blouse and skirt I can find from my drawer.
–
My brother clings to my skirt, shaking and crying as he buries his face in the fabric.
“You can’t go,” he chokes.
I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Ez, the reaping’s not for hours,” I manage.
“But– but it’s still happening,” Ez sobs. “You could go. They might take you away–”
“Ez.” I shove him gently off of my skirt and kneel down to look him in the eyes. “There are thousands of people here who could go, and only six who will. I can’t promise anything, but I really hope I’m not one of them, too.”
My mother stands nearby, eyes locked on the floor, not saying a word. But when the loudspeaker blares, announcing that it’s time to go, I pull her into a hug anyway.
She wraps her arms around me, and something wet falls into my hair.
“Sorry,” she sniffles.
Ez sniffles too, and lets go for what I hope won’t be the final time. “I love you, Lil,” he gets out between sniffs.
I ruffle his hair with the biggest smile I can force without it coming off looking unhinged. “I love you too, Ez.”
–
The district assembles in the atrium at one o’clock in the afternoon.
I know from Primrose Everdeen that this is when they used to hold the reapings in Twelve. Being the small district, the one poor as the coal they mined, the last numerically, their reaping took place last in the day.
As I sign in and begin to weave through the throng of silent teens, I spot my mother and brother in the crowd. Ez looks terrified. My mother just looks numb.
I take my place in the crowd of fifteen-year-olds in the middle of the girls’ pen. People mumble greetings and shift to make room for me.
Slightly in front of me, I spot Primrose’s blond hair and slight frame. I send a silent prayer to whatever god controls the reaping, that she will not be selected this year. She has had enough trouble in her life with slips of paper contained in glass balls.
A bell tolls. Silence falls, broken only by the buzzing of a broken ventilation shaft.
Thirteen does not have a mayor. Before she was imprisoned, it was President Coin who would address the district in any way. In her place, one of the countless masked Peacekeepers steps up to an altar on the makeshift stage. I allow my mind to drift slightly as she begins to speak, droning on about dark times both recent and old.
My eyes fixate on the chairs behind her. Six of them. In ten minutes’ time, I could be sitting on one.
The Peacekeeper clears her throat, snapping my attention back onto her as she dips her hand into the girls’ reaping ball. District Thirteen does not get the luxury of an escort. Our tributes will probably be lucky if they get a prep team.
“The first female tribute,” the Peacekeeper intones as she unfolds the paper slip, “Rosa Thread.”
The crowd to the front of the stage parts, breaking out in whispers as a blank area of space forms around the unlucky chosen one.
Despite myself, the knot in my chest loosens slightly.
I’ve seen Rosa in classes before. A small, frail thing, though nobody in this district is underfed. We’ve never really spoken much. I think I lent her a pencil once, but that’s the extent of our interactions.
Now, though, as I watch her walk to the stage, as I see how her face crumples and her knee bounces when she sits, I feel a pang. She cannot be more than fourteen, though I doubt she has seen that many years.
Just a child, like the rest of us. I doubt I will ever lend her my pencil again.
The Peacekeeper reaches into the ball again, swirling her hand around before picking a slip from the very bottom.
I tuck my hands behind my back and cross my fingers. The reaping, now that one of us is on the stage, suddenly seems more real.
The Peacekeeper unfolds the paper. I squeeze my eyes shut.
It’s not me.
“Primrose Everdeen.”
–
Who is Primrose?
I’m in a dream. The world is fuzzy as I watch her make her way to the stage.
Black spots dance at the corners of my vision. No. No, this isn’t happening. The Mockingjay’s sister has had enough trouble with slips of paper contained within glass reaping balls.
I don’t have to shove anyone. The crowd parts for me. Primrose looks back, shock evident on her face, one foot on the hastily erected stairs.
My voice comes out sounding ten times braver than I feel.
“I volunteer as tribute.”
I look back once as I ascend the stairs. Primrose’s lips are slightly parted, as though words hang off them, words she will never get to say. A tear trickles from her eye, before she turns and runs.
I don't blame her.
“Name?” the Peacekeeper says gruffly, paper still in her hand. I can’t fully decipher the cursive writing from this angle, but something tells me that the name Primrose Everdeen was never written on this slip.
I draw myself up to my full height. This feels more impressive than it really is – I’m a head shorter than most in my class – but I’m trying.
My voice does not waver once, and I’ve never been more proud of my own ability to keep cool.
“Liora Crest.”