Happy 125th Hunger Games!

Not again… I groan to myself, and shift under the thin covers on a somewhat creaky bed. Why does she have to yell every single morning? Yes, Lisa, I get it. Your hair is falling flat. No, I do not care. Neither does the rest of the household.
I tug the covers up to cover my head, then feeling foolish, move them aside, swing my legs over and rest them on the floor. I look down at them, then at my hands, noting the shade difference and then run my feet back and forth along the grainy wood floors. They were dark brown, slightly lighter than my skin, mingling with undertones of black and lighter colours. I liked my wood floors, better than the fabric flooring the rest of the house had. Wood felt… safe and natural. Not too soft, not too rough. I continued to absentmindedly run the soles of my feet back and forth across it, looking around the room I knew all too well.
“Ray!” My sister pops into sight, bringing me back to my senses and almost startling me if it wasn’t something I had grown used to over the years, her overly energetic smile and slightly crazy eyes peeking around my door frame. What does she want now; I can’t focus with her screeching across the house every five seconds.
“Today is Reaping Day, right, and you know how there’s going to be tonnsssss of cameras and stuff, and there’s going to be people from the Capitollllll , and I just want to look super good, you know? Of course you know, when do I ever not look good, am I right? But anyways, as I was saying, I can’t choose between this adorable red dress and-- but maybe that’s too mean… like oh people are dying, like yay bloodshed, and I don’t want to be THAT girl, but then again, I want to stand out, if I’m in the background of what people see on the screens that would be so cool, like I want other girls to be like, wow she is so pretty, I love her outfit, I really wish I looked like here.. What if someone from our district wins and like, they see me in the background and they’ll be like oh gosh, that girl looks really nice, maybe she should have gone in and gotten the fancy stylists, not that I need them of course, and the clothes, but what if she had died, that would be really sad, what a tragic beauty lost. Oh no, then all of these people would be sad, and they would send flowers in my honor, and we just don’t have room for flowers in this house you know, like, would you want to take care of the flowers they sent for my funeral?” She pauses for a breath; I’m amazed she got through all of that without stopping to inhale. If I wasn’t so annoyed, I would be impressed. She starts tapping her foot, impatiently waiting for my response.

I just look at her for a moment, and then turn away.

“How am I supposed to pick your clothes? In case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t even dressed myself yet.” I gesture down at my pajama-clad body with a scowl. “Worry with your own stuff, I’m busy; let me get ready, go talk to mom or something.” I mutter harshly, not bothering to look at her and instead focusing on the task at hand.

“Wow, you are just no help, why do I even bother?” she snaps at me, clearly annoyed at my lack of interest and care about her hypothetical death and funeral flowers situation. How unfortunate. She turns on her heel and storms out of the room, making her exit more dramatic by throwing me an angry glance over her shoulder and then continuing off to go (hopefully) pester someone that isn’t me.
I looked over the contents of my closet, not really very interested... I usually wear the same thing to every reaping, although it’s starting to not really fit. I hadn’t tried on these clothes in over a year, and when I pulled them on, I noticed they were not what someone would call… hmm…the correct size, the hem skimming my mid ankle. I heave a frustrated sighed and yank them off, throwing them on the bed and deciding on my regular black pants I wear on a day to day basis. They’re fancy enough… if by fancy, you mean, barely lacking holes and tears in them. Plenty fancy. It’s not like there’s a real reason to dress up anyways, unless you get chosen... and even then, what’s the point? So you look nice the last time your friends see you in person before you are sent off to die? Awesome.
I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts and start getting ready, because even though I don’t care about the Games, I sure as hell don’t want to be late. The Peacekeepers in our district aren’t exactly … friendly. There are always a lot of new Peacekeepers, so on the odd chance that we do end up with a few that aren’t completely insane, they will be taken to other districts, or go back to district 2. I’m not sure why so many of them come here…all they do is get their clothing from us, but it’s become sort of a Peacekeeper hive… A bustling hive of agitated bees, seemingly decent and calm at first, but one wrong move and thing’s take a turn for the worse. Lately, they are so quick to judge. Given their first ounce of power they are eager to strike. Just last week, two guys in town were playing some sort of game and got into an argument about it. It was nothing serious, but one of these new hotshot Peacekeepers decided to come barging in and firing his gun into the air, and wouldn’t you know it, he couldn’t handle it properly, and he actually shot some woman in the arm. Now security is even higher... Protecting the people from Peacekeepers obviously requires more Peacekeepers…Makes complete sense.
I realize that I’ve been angrily musing about the lousy state of our district for far too long, and hurriedly change into my lackluster pants and increasingly ragged dress shirt. I absentmindedly rub the back of my head as I make my way through the hallway to the living room and plop myself down on one of the chairs. The cushion on the seat was sunken in and uncomfortable, but that was near the bottom of the list of priorities for my parents. They had several other things to worry about, like which of them could yell the loudest.

My mother and father’s voices were escalating in their room, and I heard what sounded like pottery crashing on the floor and a pained wail following shortly after. My dad strides out of the room, closing the door carefully behind him and walks into the kitchen, not finding anything suitable to eat and settling on tea to drink. The murky brown water that passed for tea in our house, anyways. He sat quietly, looking out of the small dusty window above the sink and sipped his tea, grimacing a little and biting back the acidic taste. I don’t know why they drink the stuff, it tastes awful.

I get up and join him in the kitchen in an effort to make some friendly human contact that doesn’t seem to happen very often. He looks over at me once and then continues on, unperturbed.
“So uh, did something break in there?” I ask quietly, twisting my fingers together on top of the table, sort of a nervous habit, although I really only did it because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with my hands.
“Oh yeah, you heard that eh, it was just your clumsy mother, knocked over the one vase of flowers in this god forsaken house. Lousy luck, huh?” He remarks, calmly, with the obvious ‘hint’ of resentment towards my mother. I sigh audibly, to which he turns his head towards me and I automatically look down at my hands.
“Yeah, that is pretty unlucky. Maybe you can get her another one for her birthday?” I ask, trying to pretend that they cared about petty things like birthdays or getting along.
“Yeah, uh, maybe.” He replies, glancing out of the window again and drinking more of his tea. The silence was uneasy and when my sister came into the room I was actually kind of glad for the distraction.

“Hi daddy! Oh, hello, Ray.” She looks at me with cold, unforgiving eyes and I give her the fakest smile I can muster up, squinting my eyes a little at her and watch as she quickly changes back again for my father, beaming at him and rushing over to kiss him on the forehead. He smirked at her characteristically upbeat behavior, even on a day like this and reached his arm out to give her a hug.

“Hi sweetheart, you look lovely today, celebrating the first year in... well ... a long time that you won’t have to worry about being reaped?” He asks warmly, releasing her from his hug and watching expectantly as she sits down across the table, next to me.

“Of course! It’s too crowded up there, and the cameras can’t really see me because the tall girls always end up standing right in front of me, and if I stand on my toes they start to hurt and I feel like it will mess up my shoes and we don’t really have enough money to get me new shoes, I mean seriously though, if we did, I saw these shoes in the store that were soooooooooo cute, and I would really reallyyyyyy like them, my shoes are getting old, but anyways, so this time.. I can stand out, and I’ll have to stand next to ugly people so that people at home really notice me for the beauty I am, and I will just look flawless next to the rest of these people. I mean... They… Look nice.. For normal people... But I look nice for Capitol people, so I’m actually really excited this year.” She grins and gets a cup of tea, bumping into me on purpose with her chair as she gets up, and I angrily shove my chair back in hopes of hitting her as she passes behind me, to no avail. My father watches this with little emotion and remains in his own little tea-sipping repressed-anger world. I decide that it’s time for me to go, I’m tired of this house, and quite frankly, I’d rather be at the reaping than here.
I stand up and walk into my parents’ room to find my mother sitting on the floor crying, holding broken pieces of the vase I must have heard shatter earlier.
“What happened?” It’s not like I didn’t already know what happened, but I figured I would give her a chance to tell me the truth, or fabricate some story in which my father is not guilty, and it is all her fault. As I suspected, she chooses the latter.

“Oh nothing,” she sniffs, wiping her tears and composing herself quickly. “I just tripped and knocked this silly old thing onto the floor. I wanted to clean it up so your father wouldn’t cut himself on any of the shards when he comes back this evening.” She looks up at me then glances back down to get the last of the pieces put in her bedside drawer. I look at her questioningly.

“Oh, I might make some sort of art with them, you know, put them to use, the print is pretty...and maybe when your father finds a new job I will have some time to myself.” She nods, reassuring herself and stands up on her own, ignoring my hand offering to help her.

“I’m not that old yet,” she chuckles at me. “I can get up just fine on my own, thank you dear.”
I nod once, not wishing to partake in her fantasy world for any longer. I hurry out the door, nearly slamming it as I go, barely nodding to my parents as I leave. I run down the road, not just because I’m probably going to be late, but because running feels good, I can forget my family, forget the Capitol and the Peacekeepers and just focus on the road, the landscape, anything. Just to focus.
I make it to the 16s section and notice my friend Ramon casting odd glances at me. I shrug my shoulders at him, unable to discern his vague hand gestures and their secret meanings. He would do this all the time in class, knowing that I have no idea what he is trying to tell me. I’m not even sure how we became friends, it just sort of happened. Well, now that I think about it, it was because our mutual friend casually mentioned in passing that we were very similar looking. We had the same tall, lanky build, medium brown skin, dark hair and eyes. I didn’t bother to joke that she was being kind of racist, and instead we started talking, and now he is kind of what you would call my best friend.
I wipe my forehead, just in case he’s telling me I’m sweaty from running earlier, and settle in while the Treaty of Treason is read. I hold back an eye roll every time they say something painfully cheery and patriotic about the Capitol, and instead try to drown out the nails on a chalkboard voice of our mayor with my inner monologue… It didn’t quite work. Finally she gets around to the interesting part. Our new district escort, Hymn Hum, a stupid name in my opinion, although most of them are, was outfitted in some sort of white, bubble shape dress with bright turquoise shoes. Her skin was pale, although seemingly unaltered, and she had golden hair swept up into some sort of style I’m sure Lisa would know. She was quite pretty, if she wasn’t a Capitol drone. These escorts always got on my nerves with their ridiculous accent, lavish clothing and everything in… excess. They were so over the top, and of course the people of the Capitol loved the games. Blood thirsty and yet so sugary sweet, it was repulsive.
When she spoke, my mind was changed almost instantly. Her voice was like music, or a bird singing, the polite chirp, soft and pleasant; I couldn’t help but listen and cling to every word she said.
“For starters, we will choose from the boys’ reaping ball,” she gave the crowd a small smile, obviously nervous as this was her first time. It was hard not to like her, she was meek mannered and beautiful. Not as completely overstated as the rest of the Capitol citizens. But she was one of them, and I firmly planted that thought in my mind. Oh well though, I’ll only have to see her for a little while, why am I even analyzing her. Just another escort until the next one is shuffled in.
She tentatively places her hand into the reaping ball and snatches one up quickly, seemingly wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. She unfurled the slip of paper and clearly stated, “Ray Bronson, why don’t you come on up here?” She smiled a bit more and glanced around the crowd, looking for the next victim. I realize that I am Ray Bronson, that’s.. me.. and I hear what has to be my sister crying uncontrollably somewhere in the crowd, no doubt for the attention. Well, now she’ll get it. When I inevitably die, they will show the ever so sad faces of my family when they got the news. I hope she’s happy, I think with a twinge of remorse. I narrow my eyes and make my way through the section, noticing Ramon’s look of despair. He’ll get over it. Not the first time someone we know has been reaped. Only this time it’s me..
It still hasn’t quite kicked in yet when I arrive on stage, and my mind is running through and processing all of the information. What’s my angle? How do I expect to live? Will I have any allies? Why is the escort looking at me like that? I turn to face her, and she’s almost grinning up at me, then coughs a little and dims the smile, handing me the microphone daintily, as if she was handing me a flower or something of that nature. I take it in my hands, noting the soft texture of it, and then the silence that comes over the crowd, save for my sister’s sobbing somewhere in the distance. I look out at them slowly, silently, and then look straight into the camera.
“My name is Ray Bronson, District 8 tribute, and I won’t go down without a fight.” I nod as there is some cheering from the crowd then hand the microphone off to Hymn and sit down in the seat she gestures towards. It is nicer than the ones at home, not incredibly ornate, but nice. I try not to tangle my fingers or look nervous, so I decide on crossing my arms, in an attempt to look muscular. I’m not sure it’s working, so I decide to place them on the arm rests instead.
I listen as Hymn sings out the girl tributes name and then turns to look at me, before greeting the girl she called. Maybe she can help me get some sponsors… I’m pretty sure I’m going to need them, I have no idea if I’m talented at… well, okay, if I’m talented at anything. I’m distracted from my train of thought when it appears I have to shake my fellow tribute’s hand. I get up and finally notice her. She’s smaller in stature than me, but not by as much as I would have expected. Then I realize who it is. And she looks pissed.
Oh great.