The Capitol's Lies || Annie Cresta's Story

Chapter 1: The Beginning

I wake up panting and sweating from another nightmare. They come as relentlessly as the tide on the shore, and are impossible to ward off. I pull on a grey t-shirt that smells of the sea, and slip on jeans over my shorts. I quickly eat an apple and down some water as my meager breakfast. I carelessly brush back my strawberry blonde hair, it will fly behind me when I swim later anyways. I grab my worn leather boots and carefully put the small wooden circle my brother had so intricately carved into the shape and texture of a shell into my pocket. I grasped tightly to it as I walked out the door and on my way to the ocean for another day as the Capitol's slave.

On my walk to work, I notice the fear and anxiety hiding behind the eyes of everyone, it seems I'm not the only one worried. The Reaping is coming all too soon, and everyone is worried for themselves and their family. That's one thing I don't need to worry about. When I was really young, my dad was a fisherman. He went out to the ocean everyday and came back each night with meager pay and some smuggled fish. Then one day, he didn't come back.

My mother was devastated. She went around, saying more than she should've, talking about how my dad didn't really get lost at sea and badmouthing the Capitol. Then one day, she disappeared too. None of my family is left. It's hard, living each day in the harsh conditions of Panem, without anyone to love or hold on to. But I guess you have to live with what you get.