The Hunger Games: Never Safe From Danger

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Alsa’s POV

Things aren’t the same without Torrin. After the goodbyes, I just crash on the bed and cry. He’s gone. He’s really gone. He’s gone off to the Capitol on a fancy train, where he will be dressed up and treated as a show animal until they force him to kill other kids or die himself.

Rosaliss follows me in and lies beside me, crying uncontrollably. I just put my arm around her, hoping she’ll calm down, so that I can calm down too. But she doesn’t, and I know I wouldn’t have a hope of calming down even if she did. This is damaging to our lives.

At school the next day, they show the recaps of the reapings, again and again and again. I get a few sympathetic glances, but I just glare back at them, right into their eyes. They think they know how I feel, but they don’t. They will never know what it’s like to have such a huge element of your life just wrenched away from you.

I can’t eat at lunchtime. They seem to be tailoring their television timetable especially for me. As soon as I take out my dry sandwich, Torrin’s name is called on the little screen. There are shots of him walking up, and shots of my family crying. I am sad. I am angry. I can’t eat anything right now. My appetite is gone.

I’m clinging onto memories of Torr in everything I do- we are multiplying in maths, and I remember the time that he taught me some basic times tables when I was eight. How he had told me which teachers to avoid and which were a little gentler. He was the one who taught me everything, who moulded my life into what it is.

The bell rings in the afternoon and I walk back home with Rosaliss. Our parents are still out at work. I freeze up in the doorway. We have been home alone before, but not without Torr. It’s different. There is no sense of life or fun with him gone. All I want to do is cry.

It’s just so unfair. I think of the thousands of people who have thought the same things before me- so many tributes have went to the arena, and each one would have had a family. And every year, twenty-three families would be distraught, while one revelled in relief. My heart goes out to the other twenty-three families this year. Only, it’s twenty-two, because District Ten has sent siblings. My muscles tense. At least I didn’t lose two family members. I think about how Rosie and my parents would react if both me and Torr were sent to the Games. Losing one child is miserable, but at least you can hold onto that last thread of hope that they might win. Lose two and at least one of them has to die.

I decide to take a different approach at life from now on. I will root for Torrin. I will be the person grasping at the hope that he will return home victorious. If disappointment comes it will hit twice as hard, but I might be able to swim out of this depression for a while. I won’t weigh out the competition. I won’t imagine what would happen in a fight between my brother and a huge career. That will only make me feel it’s all futile, and I can’t afford to do that. I need to take a positive outlook on everything, because that way, even though nothing’s positive, I can make it seem slightly less terrible in my head.

When my mum and dad are done with their shifts, they open their doors to find two girls in a heap on the bed, crying. My mother is entirely devoid of emotion and just silently sits down beside us. My father’s eyes flash with concern, then sadness, then anger. I know it’s not at us- he’s thinking of the Capitol. The Capitol who took away his precious son.