The Hunger Games

The predators ignore us on a day when easier, tastier prey abounds.

The anguish I always feel when she’s in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face.

They ran an apothecary shop in the nicer part of District 12.

My mother’s parents were part of the small merchant class that caters to officials, Peacekeepers, and the occasional Seam customer.

The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive.

The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I’m feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me.

Concealed by a clump of bushes, I flatten out on my belly and slide under a two-foot stretch that’s been loose for years.

The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food.

And the entries are cumulative.

In theory, it’s supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that live in the woods—packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears—that used to threaten our streets.

The mayor looks distressed.

He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.

Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails.

I pull on trousers, a shirt, tuck my long dark braid up into a cap, and grab my forage bag.

He’s good-looking, he’s strong enough to handle the work in the mines, and he can hunt.

In the fall, a few brave souls sneak into the woods to harvest apples.

To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others.

Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sunken faces.

The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland.

My father could have made good money selling them, but if the officials found out he would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion.

So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.

From this place, we are invisible but have a clear view of the valley, which is teeming with summer life, greens to gather, roots to dig, fish iridescent in the sunlight.

“But you do,” I say, irritated.

Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of grain and oil for one person.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.

Suddenly he falls into a Capitol accent as he mimics Effie Trinket, the maniacally upbeat woman who arrives once a year to read out the names at the reaping.

They murmur to each other and then look with concern at the empty seat.

I can feel the muscles in my face relaxing, my pace quickening as I climb the hills to our place, a rock ledge overlooking a valley.

The camera crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect.

Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another’s hands.

It holds three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls.

The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well.

The idea is so preposterous.

She goes on a bit about what an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows she’s just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation.

It’s real bakery bread, not the flat, dense loaves we make from our grain rations.

This is the day of the reaping.

How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.

The anguish I always feel when she’s in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face.

“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,” intones the mayor.

And even though the rules were set up by the Capitol, not the districts, certainly not Madge’s family, it’s hard not to resent those who don’t have to sign up for tesserae.

Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas.

The food’s wonderful, with the cheese seeping into the warm bread and the berries bursting in our mouths.

Think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning,” says Gale.

As soon as I’m in the trees, I retrieve a bow and sheath of arrows from a hollow log.

As we walk, I glance over at Gale’s face, still smoldering underneath his stony expression.

Supple leather that has molded to my feet.

He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.

From this place, we are invisible but have a clear view of the valley, which is teeming with summer life, greens to gather, roots to dig, fish iridescent in the sunlight.

We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the

In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate.

Haymitch Abernathy, a paunchy, middle-aged man, who at this moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage, and falls into the third chair.

Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol.

I finish with equal verve.

Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors.