odair

Chapter One - Finnigan

It's the morning of the Reaping and my mom reaches into the giant fishbowl and does a weird swirl of her wrist before taking out a piece of paper. There must be a hundred slips but the one she pulls out says,

"Finnick Odair."

She looks around frantically, and I can see a tear gleaming in her eye. "No," I gasp. She can't loose him again.

I ran out into the middle of the gathering of children aged 12 to 18 and shout, "I volunteer!" A Peacekeeper, dressed all in white, tries to hold me back, but I push him away and say in a calmer voice, "I volunteer as Tribute."

Mom drops the piece of paper holding Dad's name back into the bowl and comes over to give me a hug. "I love you, Finn," she whispers. "Wake up, Finn."

I sit up straight and look around. Mom is there, with her hand on my shoulder and a smile of her face.

"It's a big day today, Finnie."

The Reaping? was my first thought, and luckily I didn't say it out loud. It wasn't the Reaping. The Games had been ended by the District 13 Rebellion, and the Mockingjay, a girl named Katniss Everdeen, who I'd heard of but never met. Mom wanted to keep me as far away from her past as she could, but even I knew that she'd had something to do with the Games and the Rebellion, too.

But if it wasn't the Reaping, what was it?

Then it hit me. "The first day of school," I said. It was the first day of my 9th grade year, high school. I didn't know if I should be excited or nervous, but at least it was better than my dream.

Mom smiled at me. "You have to get ready, Finn, you've slept in too late as it is. Breakfast is ready downstairs, so get dressed and come on down." She gave me a little wave and backed out of my door, closing it behind her.

I got dressed and headed downstairs, where a large breakfast was set out on the mahogany table.

After eating, I swung my backpack over my shoulder and gave Mom a kiss on the cheek before walking out the front door. I'm 14, and some people might think it was a babyish thing to do, but she'd been through a lot. She needed more love than your average mother. Her husband was killed, either by the Capitol or some kind of Mutt, shortly before I was born. That's hard, you know? And I don't blame her for keeping things from me. It's more to protect her than me. I can't imagine what being in the games would do to be, so I'd say my mom's doing pretty good for herself, a single mother suffering from PTSD from her time in and after the Games, living in District 4 with a teenage son.

I don't blame her one bit.

When you've been through what she has, you can't blame anyone for anything without knowing what's going on in their heads.

I don't feel bad for her, though, either, because I know she doesn't want that. What happened to her happened to her, that's just a fact. She can't change it. No body can. You can't change the past, you can only learn from it and hope it makes you stronger in the future. That's what she always says.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

So maybe what didn't kill her made her stronger, but she had to live through a lot of death. And all the people who were killed, they aren't stronger now.

The Mockingjay's sister. Her stylist. Her friend and Ally in her first Games. All people I've heard of but never met. All people who were killed, either inside or out of the games. My Dad. Killed for what he belived in, fighting for my freedom.

I'll forever be in his debt and I've never even met him. And I never will.

Because he's dead.

As I was thinking all this, I had been walking through the District on the way to the school, and by now I'd arrived. It had been rebuilt after the war and was bigger now, only for the high schoolers, with a mural on the outside wall of an ocean and a beach and people, smiling and happy, as if they hadn't a care in the world. As if no one in their lives were dead. On the bottom right corner was a scribbled name. Peeta Mallark. Katniss's husband, one person in her life who didn't die. Before they got married, he'd gone on a tour (like a Victory Tour, like the winners of the Games used to do after they won) of all the districts and painted murals for them all. It was beautiful, but I didn't understand how he, who'd lost so much, as well, could paint something so happy.

I took a deep breath and entered the school. I needed to stop thinking about the past, and people I'd never met, and instead think about where I needed to be going. I didn't even know where my first class was.

I looked at the crumpled piece of paper in my hand, a map of the school, and headed right to English class. Hopefully the book we were going to read wouldn't have too much death in it.