THE MAN IN THE HANGING TREE | Gale Hawthorne

ONE - The Reaping

YOUR POINT OF VIEW

I smooth out the skirt of my dress, hem fluttering down to kiss my knees. Its forest green material is soft to the touch, velvet I think. The sleeves are long, hugging my arms to my wrists. The neckline gracefully slopes downward, revealing a tasteful amount of my chest.

If we had purchased it in town brand new, it would have cost a small fortune-- not that we'd ever be able to find such a well made dress in Twelve. No, this dress in particular was shipped in from District One years ago. An article my mother's family possessed for years, dating all the way back to the Dark Days.

It is well preserved even after all this time, either from it's fine quality or the gentle hands who have harbored it. Regardless, my mother had worn it at her own reaping when she was seventeen, and now I wear it at the same unfortunate age.

I pull the slightly worn gold zipper up at the back, until I can reach no more. I'll have to get help with that later, but for now I will deal with the rest of my appearance.

I put my hair into loose curls that tumble around my shoulders, simple, but a step up from my previous bedhead.

I posses no makeup to conceal my blemished face, not because I don't like it, but rather because it is hard to come by in the district I call home. The only resemblance of makeup I do own is a tube of the rosiest lipstick, my father always brings me home one when he goes to the Capitol for his yearly mayoral meetings.

It's just me in the forest green dress staring back at myself in the mirror, a child in her mothers clothes. Hair curled to look like all the other girls in town, a fraud in her own neighborhood. Blood red lips to make me look beautiful, like lipstick on a pig.

I turn from the mirror, the silver pane that seems to taunt me, like it knows that I truly don't belong. Why? I still don't even know.

Topping the whole ensemble off, I attach my aunt's mockingjay pin to the left side of my dress, over my heart-- the gold pin had been her district token when she was reaped so many years ago.

Maysilee Donner, my mother's sister, was reaped in the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell. They reaped twice as many tributes that year, ended twice as many innocent lives. She teamed up with Haymitch Abernathy, but fell to the careers late in the games.

At least someone from Twelve won that year though, just not my aunt, and never a child from Twelve again.

The Capitol returned my aunt's pin to my mother, as if taunting her of her sister's fate, my mother then passed it on to me before my first reaping. For good luck, she had said when I was freshly twelve, though I wasn't so sure a pin with that sort of fate attached to it was good luck at all.

The pin means so much more to me than a good luck token now that I'm older and a little bit wiser. To me it represents my aunt, and her fight though the games. To me it represents a spark.

A spark of leadership.

A spark of rebellion.

A spark of hope.

I wear her pin now with hopes of a future free from the Capitol, a future where we can exist without destruction and fear, a future where we can all be happy. Though, at this point, my dream looks like it will never come true.

The pin has proved to be a good luck token as well, in my mother's defense, I haven't been reaped yet in my five years in the reaping ball.

There's always a first time, though chances are slim to none.

This year, my name is only in there six times. Compared to others in the district, that's nothing. I don't need to sign up for a tesserae, as my father is the mayor of district Twelve. We are better off then all of the people in the Seam, but we are still under the tightly gripped hand of the Capitol.