Finnick and Annie

The Beginning

I remember the first time I saw Annie... we had just moved to a house about a block away from hers because ours had been destroyed by a storm. I was ten years old. I was playing outside, the house was on the beach and I was building a sand castle, alone.

I remember it was cloudy, and the waves were very strong. I loved the sound they made as they crashed against the walls of a small cliff that stood about 50 yards away. I was finishing a moat around my castle when I heard a voice behind me. I turned around, startled because I hadn't heard her approaching before she spoke.

"Can I play with you?" she asked. It was a girl, she looked a bout a year or two younger than me. She was quite small, and pale, which was strange for someone living in District Four. Her hair was black and her eyes were a startling shade of green.

"Of course," I said, motioning her forward. "The castle's already done, but I need to finish the moat and then we can decorate it." She just nodded and helped me dig a hole in the sand. We were done ten minutes later and she stood up and walked closer to the water.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Getting shells. You want to decorate it, right?" she asked without looking at me.

"Oh... right. Well, I'm not very good with that, you can do it," I said. I lay on my back with my arms behind my head and looked up at the cloudy sky. It was going to rain soon, the breeze was getting stronger and the water looked very dark.

"We should probably get back home...um..."

"Annie," she answered as she placed shells on the towers of my castle.

"Right, Annie. I think it's going to rain soon. You don't want to get wet do you?" She shrugged and continued placing shells on the wet sand without looking up at me.

"I don't mind."

"Well, won't your parents be worried about you?" I asked, standing up and dusting the sand off my body.

"Probably not." She answered. I found this odd, but I didn't think much of it at the time.

"Well, I'm going to get in a lot of trouble if I don't get back soon, so I'm going to go... but you do whatever you want," I told her, rolling my eyes and walking away.

"Hey!" she called. I turned around and looked at her.

"What?"

"You didn't tell me your name," she said.

"Finnick Odair."

"We should do this again sometime, Finnick," she said shyly. I laughed softly and rolled my eyes.

"Sure thing," I answered. Annie was not very talkative, and she was younger than me. I'd be laughed at in school if me friend knew I was hanging out with her. We had built one sand castle together; that didn't make us friends!