Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
She hates us to be at odds, so all I say is, “I’m definitely growing on him.” That gets her to laugh enough to break the mood. “I can come by after. Got some chores, but I should be done about three. We’ll go to the woods, okay?”
“We’ll go to the woods.” She confirms it with a kiss.
Back home, I take a cold-water bucket bath and pull on the pants my pa got married in and a shirt my ma pieced together from handkerchiefs from the Capitol store where the miners shop. You have to at least try to look dressed up for the reaping. Turn up in raggedy clothes and the Peacekeepers hit you or arrest your parents because that’s not how you show respect for the Capitol war dead. Never mind that we had plenty of war dead of our own.
Ma gives me my birthday presents: a year’s supply of flour sack underwear and a brand-new pocketknife, with strict instructions that the latter’s not to be used for mumblety-peg or any other knife games. Sid presents me with a piece of flint rock wrapped in a grubby bit of brown paper, saying, “I found it in the gravel road by the Peacekeepers’ base. Lenore Dove said you’d want it.” I pull out my flint striker and try it out, making some beautiful sparks in the process. And though Ma isn’t sold on Lenore Dove, given that she’s a distraction, she likes the striker enough to thread a leather bootlace through the metal rings and tie it around my neck.
“It’s an awful fine striker,” says Sid, touching the bird wistfully.
“How about tonight I teach you how to use it?” I suggest.
He lights up at the promise of doing grown-up stuff combined with the promise that I’m not going anywhere. “Yeah?”
“Yeah!” I ruffle his mop of hair so his curls go every which way.
“Quit!” Sid laughs and bats my hand away. “Now I’ve got to comb it again!”
“Better get on it!” I tell him. He runs off and I drop the striker down my collar, not ready to share it with the world, not on reaping day.
I’ve got a few minutes to spare, so I head into town to trade. The air’s turned heavy and still, promising a storm. My stomach clenches at the sight of the square, plastered with posters and crawling with heavily armed Peacekeepers in their white uniforms. Lately the theme has been “No Peace” and the slogans bombard you from every side.
NO PEACE, NO BREAD! NO PEACE, NO SECURITY!
And, of course,
NO PEACEKEEPERS, NO PEACE! NO CAPITOL, NO PEACE! Hanging behind the temporary stage in front of the Justice Building is a huge banner of President Snow’s face with the words
PANEM’S #1 PEACEKEEPER.
At the back of the square, Peacekeepers check in the reaping participants. As the line’s still short, I go ahead and get that over with. The woman won’t meet my eye, so I guess she’s still capable of shame. Or maybe it’s just indifference.
The apothecary shop has a flag of Panem in the window, which pisses me off. Still, this is where I’ll get the best deal on my white liquor. Inside, the sharp odor of chemicals makes my nose twitch. In contrast, a faint, sweet scent comes from a bunch of chamomile flowers resting in a jar, waiting to become tea and medicine. I know Burdock collected these in the woods. Of late, he’s added wildcrafting to his game business.
The place is deserted except for my classmate Asterid March, who’s arranging tiny bottles on a shelf behind the counter. A long blond braid falls down her back, but the damp heat has brought out tendrils of hair that frame her perfect face. Asterid’s the town beauty and rich by District 12 standards. I used to hold that against her, but she showed up one night in the Seam, alone, to treat a neighbor woman who’d been whipped for back-talking a Peacekeeper. She brought some ointment she’d concocted herself, then slipped away, never mentioning payment. Since then, she’s who people turn to for help when a loved one goes under the lash. I guess Asterid has more substance than her pack of snooty town friends suggests. Besides, Burdock’s nuts about her, so I try to be nice even though he’s got about as much chance with her as a mockingjay with a swan. Town girls don’t marry Seam boys, not unless something really goes haywire.
“Hey. You got any use for this?” I place the white liquor on the counter. “For cough syrup or some such?”
“I’m sure I can find one.” Asterid gives me a fair price and throws in a sprig of chamomile. “For today. They say it’s good luck.”
I slide the stem into a buttonhole. “Who says? Burdock?”
She blushes a bit, and I wonder if I’m wrong about his chances. “Maybe it was him. I can’t recall.”
“Well, we could all use a little luck today.” I glance at the flag in the window.
Asterid drops her voice. “We didn’t want it there. The Peacekeepers insisted.”
Or they’d what? Arrest the Marches? Bust up their shop? Close them down for good? I feel bad I judged them earlier.
“No choice, then.” I nod to the chamomile. “You wear some, too, okay?” She gives me a sad smile and nods.
I go next door to the Donners’ sweetshop and buy a little white paper bag of multicolored gumdrops – Lenore Dove’s favorite – for us to share later. She calls them rainbow gumdrops and swears she can tell the flavors apart, although they all taste exactly the same. Merrilee Donner, who’s in my class, waits on me in a crisp pink dress and matching ribbons in her sandy hair. No one’s going to arrest the Donners for looking shabby. Fortunately, Asterid paid me in cash, because the Donners won’t take scrip, which is what the Capitol pays the miners with. It’s technically only good in the Capitol store, but a lot of the merchants in town take it and my ma gets plenty of it in the laundry business.
When I step outside, I smile for a second at the Donners’ pretty candy label, thinking of meeting Lenore Dove in the woods. Then I see that it’s time. The giant screens flanking the stage have lit up with the waving flag in honor of the Hunger Games. Fifty-some years ago, the districts rose up against our Capitol’s oppression, kicking off a bloody civil war in Panem. We lost, and in punishment every July 4
th, each of the districts routinely has to send two tributes, one girl and one boy between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to fight to the death in an arena. The last kid standing gets crowned as the victor.
The reaping is where they draw our names for the Hunger Games. Two pens, one for the girls and one for the boys, have been clearly marked out with orange ropes. Traditionally, the twelve-year-olds gather in the front and the kids get older until you reach the eighteen-year-olds in the back. Attendance for the entire population is mandatory, but I know my ma will keep Sid at home until the last possible minute, so I don’t bother looking for them. Since Lenore Dove’s nowhere to be seen, I head to the section designated for fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old boys, thinking about my odds.
Today I have twenty slips of paper with my name in the reaping. Every kid automatically gets one each year, but I have an additional three because I always take on three tesserae to feed myself and my family members. A tessera gets you a ration of tinned oil and a sack of flour marked courtesy of the capitol for one person, collectible each month at the Justice Building. In exchange, you have to put your name in the reaping an extra time for each tessera that year. Those entries stick with you and add up. Four slips a year times five years – that’s how I have twenty. But to make things worse, since this year’s the second Quarter Quell, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Hunger Games, each district has to send twice the usual number of kids. I figure, for me, it’s like having forty slips on a regular year. And I don’t like those odds.
The crowd thickens but I can see one of the twelve-year-olds up front trying to hide that he’s crying. In two years, Sid will be there. I wonder whether it’ll be me or Ma who sits him down beforehand and explains about his role in the reaping. How he has to look nice and keep his mouth shut and not cause any trouble. Even if the unthinkable happens and his name gets drawn, he’s got to suck it up, put on the bravest face he can muster,and climb onto that stage because resistance is not an option. The Peacekeepers will drag him up there kicking and screaming if they have to, so he should try to go with some dignity. And always remember, whatever happens, his family will love him and be proud of him forever.
And if Sid should ask, “But why do I have to do this?”
We can only say, “Because this is the way things are.”
Lenore Dove would hate that last bit. But it’s the truth.
“Happy birthday.” Someone bumps my shoulder and there’s Burdock, in a frayed suit, and our friend Blair, who’s inherited a dress shirt three sizes too big from his older brother.
Blair smacks a pack of roasted peanuts from the Capitol store against my chest. “And may all your wishes come true.”
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