Panem's Favourite Fairytale

1.2- Theo

49ADD. Reaping Day.

At the age of 15, I had finally grown into my reaping suit, although it probably would be a little tight by next year. That was fine though: by then, Jason wouldn't need his anymore. Then I could take his.
Straightening my jacket, I turned to look in the full length mirror at the other end of the room. I groaned in dismay: there was a strand of hair that always fell just over my eyes that I could never get to stay. Mum would notice. She'd get some water and try to brush it in place but all that would do would be to get water all over me. I didn't want to walk into the reaping ceremony sopping wet. Again.
I tried to brush it back in with the rest of my hair, but it wouldn't budge. Why hadn't I just cut it off like Ari had suggested. Because then it would look awful, I reminded myself: the strand was right in the middle of my head and any attempt to cut it would stick out like a sore thumb.
Giving up, I wandered downstairs to the kitchen, where Jason was already sitting. He looked solemn. I knew why. On the one hand, he was nearly through with reapings: he only had two more. But on the other hand, your slips were cumulative. The older you were, the higher the chance of you being picked. At least we had never had to take out any tesserae.
Not that that had helped Hope.
She had been only 12 and from the merchant's district. Her name had only been in there once. I still thought about her, and my first reaping, more often than I cared to admit.
If Hope hadn't been reaped, she would be 15 too now. The same age as Blaise had when he had been reaped. I remembered thinking that he seemed so much older. So much more deserving to go to the games.
But that was me now.
I wasn't hungry but I had long since learned not to waste food. Not when there were so many who lived without. I had nearly finished forcing down all my porridge by the time Mum got down.
She didn't look like she'd slept much. She never did before reaping days. I sometimes forgot that even though Dad expressed his grief far more than she did, she had also lost a son to the reaping.
I hadn't even been born when Harry had been reaped for the 33rd games. She had been pregnant with me at the time and apparently nearly miscarried from the trauma of it. But I had survived and been born in the January of the following year.
Because of that, we shared a special sort of bond. But that didn't remove the fact that she had always seen me as a replacement for the son she had already lost. She'd never quite seen me as my own person. She'd been so protective of me that I had never really known who I was. I was still figuring it out.
But I had time. After all, I was only fifteen.
The odds of me going in were slim: I was young, had never taken tesserae, had already had a brother reaped and had no younger siblings to protect.
I never would've thought about that as an option until last year: an eighteen year old girl volunteered for her thirteen year old sister. She hadn't made it.
I wondered if Jason would volunteer for me if I was reaped. I had asked him about it once, before my second reaping, and he had promised that he would. I wanted to take him at that. I hoped we would never have to find out if that was true.
"Are you going to go see Ari before the reaping?" Mum asked me. I nodded. It had become our little tradition: I would walk over to her house and pick her up so we could walk together.
Mum crossed to me as I rose to my feet and gave me a hug,
"I'll see you at dinner."
"I love you Mum." And then, with a quick wave to Jason, I set out through the front door.

I made it all the way to the mayor's house before I remembered that she didn't live there anymore. Two years since her father had died and still I forgot that she had a new home: the Thread.
It was a much longer walk from my house: that was for sure. And a much more dangerous one. But no-one was desperate enough to commit a crime on reaping day. Or heartless enough.
The seam was as colourless as the rest of the district, but somehow it seemed to make even the regular greyscale of district 8's merchant district seem bright and jovial in comparison. It was probably the perpetual smog pouring from the many chimneys of the textiles manufacturing plant. The plant where so many had lost limbs and Ari would probably have to work in the future.
The colourful fabrics eight exported to the Capitol were probably the only colour in this place, but even they didn't stay long.
When we were young, Ari and I used to sneak through the rooves of the factories and peek in at the bright fabrics as they dried. That was, until we got caught. We weren't very sneaky; I think the giggling from behind the walls might've been what tipped the peacekeepers off.
They had taken us back to our parents with some strong words of warning, but if we had been from the Thread, the conversation likely would've gone very differently. It might've even ended at the gallows. The peacekeepers here liked to take any excuse for an execution: apparently the Capitol took clothes very seriously.
Although, I couldn't imagine how seriously considering the stuff the escorts wore every year.