Your games, Our Lives

Chapter.1 Tomorrow-Carmella

The reaping is tomorrow.

The reaping is tomorrow.

The reaping is tomorrow.

The reaping is tomorrow—

"Oi!"

My eyes shot up; somebody was talking to me again; somebody wanted my attention; somebody was interrupting my thoughts. But then again, that was something that I needed, something that I wanted, because if nobody interrupted my thoughts, I would be droning on and on about what was happening tomorrow, which was the reaping of the 72nd Hunger Games. This one would be the same, just like the one before that, the one before that, and the one before that. All of them are really the same, except with different arenas and different winners. After all, as long as the capital gets its victor, there's nothing much to say. They needed a victor. That much was clear. They wanted to show us something—a message that I didn't want to see and that nobody really wanted to see.

The only people who really enjoyed the games were the people watching them, the people who spent their money betting on tributes every year, and the people who sponsored such tributes just to get bragging rights if the one they sponsored won. But I wouldn't be going this year; hopefully, the odds were stacked in my favor after all. I never had to apply for the dreaded tesserae, the thing that would be the downfall of many tributes. The tesserae was a sort of system where if you needed food for you and your family, you could apply to get it, but the price was that you had to enter your name in the reaping bowl, and that meant it doubled or even tripled your chances of going to the games.

I know many families who applied for it, the tesserae; I mean, plenty of children who I sometimes see at school have to apply for it, and then their names are reaped each year and they are sent off to fight for to death, and then they never come back because usually the ones from districts 1 and 2 win, and sometimes four, but it's never District 11; well, I can't say, sometimes we win.

But me, carmella harvest? The one who never had to apply for a tesserae? There's no way I will be picked this year; my name is only in there four times, four little bits of paper with my name on them are in that big glass bowl, compared to the dozens or hundreds of other people who have applied for the tesserae. But I'll let you in on a secret: occasionally, when my uncle and my father get together, they like to talk about the system that we live under and question things they shouldn't be questioning. Sometimes they'll sit right there in the front of the store when nobody is around and talk about things they shouldn't, and one time I heard my father call the tesserae, "Billet de décès," the devil's ticket.

Sometimes I repeat these things to myself. I know French, so I knew what it meant from the first time I heard it, but I never said it aloud. I don't have the guts to say it. I'm not stupid, and besides, I don't want a peacekeeper to wander in and ask me what I'm talking about, and then I'll have to tell them, and then I'll get myself killed, or my father or my uncle, somebody I love.

And what will I say when my father is carried away by the peacekeepers, whipped, and killed? How will I tell my dear momma? My dear grandma, my dear uncle, our dear family friend? Nothing, because I'm sure I'd die right there in front of District 11. I'd die from shame and anger. I'd die from the unbearable grief and pain. Or maybe I'm being dramatic. Yes, maybe I'm dramatic, but I can't help but feel this way. I'm dramatic; my whole family is dramatic, and it's just the way we are.

We're never too dramatic, though, because if we were, we would all be dead, and here I am now looking up at the peacekeeper standing in front of the counter. He's in front of it, and I'm behind it. That's how things usually are. This peacekeeper is an older one who's been coming here ever since he's been deployed, and we have to treat him with respect, not just because he's a valued customer but because of the power he holds.