Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
I could point out that Ampert will never see his father again, but I’ve already exceeded my meanness quota for the day. It’s kinder to humor him. I take a safety pin from my overalls and hold it out. “Try that, buddy.”
His face lights up like he just got a new toy. He pops open the pin and begins to wiggle the point in a cuff lock. “They don’t really teach us this in school. They focus on the technology we use in the factories. But my mother taught me. She’s the mechanical one. I know lots of things that should be useful in an arena. If you’d like to be my ally.”
So that’s it. His fellow district tributes have rejected him, and he’s on the hunt for someone more pathetic than he is. A District 12 coal miner seems a likely candidate.
I tell him, “I had an ally, and she’s already dead.”
“I’m sorry. I thought she was just knocked out. Louella McCoy, right? She’s the one you made President Snow own?”
Well, I’ll say this for Ampert – he doesn’t miss a beat. “The thing is, Ampert, I don’t know that I’m really ally material. I think you can do better. Why don’t you go back and ask your district tributes to team up with you?”
“Oh, they already have. But I’m trying to build an alliance to counter the Careers. I’ve got all of Seven and Eight on board, and Eleven’s thinking it over.” He gives a final twist and the left cuff falls off his wrist. He holds up the pin in triumph. “Told you!”
“Whoa!” I exclaim. “How’d you do that?”
“I’d teach you if we had more time.” Ampert pops the cuff back on before anyone else notices and pockets the safety pin. “If you change your mind, I’ll be around.” He scampers off, and I can see him reporting back to the other District 3 tributes, who crane their necks to check me out.
I don’t know what that kid needs me for. Not my brain. Maybe, like Hattie, he thinks I’d make a good mule. But my ally days began and ended with Louella.
When I’m the last tribute left, a Peacekeeper orders me inside the van. She chains up me, Maysilee, and Wyatt, then looks around and frowns. “Where’s your escort and your stylist? Your mentors?”
None of us answer. We don’t know, and why should we?
Another Peacekeeper speaks up. “Drusilla took a powder after the crash. Magno Stift never showed.” She consults a clipboard. “And I don’t even see a mentor listed for Twelve.”
“What are we supposed to do with them?” asks the first. “I’m off-duty in ten. There’s an after-party for my squad, and I’m the only one who can make a good rum punch.”
“Can’t leave them here. Take them to their quarters, I guess. Let them figure it out.”
The door closes and the engine rumbles to life. In the pitch black of the van, I lean my head back against the wall. All the miseries of the last two days can no longer be denied: the throbbing headache from the rifle butt at the reaping, the terror of the tasing, the heartbreak of my loved ones’ good-byes, the toxic shower, the humiliating parade before Panem, the chariot crash, and worst of all, the horror of being soaked in Louella’s blood. Everything hurts, inside and out.
We’re unloaded on a street lined with candy-colored apartment buildings. The disgruntled Peacekeeper leads us past armed guards into a lobby with fake wood paneling and onto an elevator that smells like old socks and cheap perfume. She turns a key in the slot marked 12 and uncuffs us on the ride up. “We’ve been told your mentors are waiting for you here. They said no cuffs, but there are Peacekeepers a buzzer away and there are cameras everywhere.” She nods to one in the corner of the elevator. No attempt has been made to conceal it. They want you to know they’re watching. Or think they’re watching, even if no one is.
“No Peacekeepers, no peace,” I mutter.
The Peacekeeper gives a sharp nod. “Exactly.”
When the doors open, she pushes us out into an entryway. A framed painting of a white poodle in a tuxedo hangs over a small table holding a bowl of wax oranges. “They’re all yours!” she shouts, and the elevator doors close.
We stand abandoned, under the poodle’s critical eye, waiting for the next round of abuse. In the quiet, I become aware of a familiar scent. It’s the bean and ham hock soup my ma makes when someone dies. It can’t be, of course. But still, with Louella’s loss so new, something begins to unravel inside me. The tears I’ve been saving up since the reaping fill my eyes. This infuriates me, and I blink hard to hold them back.
Soft footfalls approach and a small young woman appears. I recognize her immediately. The black-haired girl from District 3 who won last year’s Hunger Games. “Hello, I’m Wiress. One of your mentors.”
It was an arena full of shiny surfaces. Lakes that reflected the sky, clouds that returned the favor, and everywhere, boulders and caves and cliffs overlaid with mirrors. When the tributes were lifted into the arena, they couldn’t get their bearings. Every which way they turned, tributes in shimmering tunics stared back at them.
Watching back in 12, Sid had whispered, “I can’t hardly look at this. Makes my eyes cross.”
If it was disorienting to view from the outside, it was incomprehensible within. A giant silver Cornucopia held a bounty of supplies, but even navigating a path to it proved treacherous. A tribute would reach for a weapon and get a handful of air, leap into a clearing and smack into a wall, or dodge an attacker only to run straight onto their sword.
Most of the tributes went nuts, but not Wiress. She took it all in, then carefully maneuvered away from the Cornucopia, somehow finding packs of supplies where none appeared to be. Eventually, a clumsy bloodbath ensued, but she was long gone at that point, exploring the arena bit by bit, until she settled on a rock jutting out over a lake, in full view of her competitors. Except . . . they never were able to see her. She’d found a blind spot, and although they’d come raging within a few feet of her, she avoided detection. She just sat there, quiet as a mouse, eating, drinking from the lake, and sleeping curled up in a ball.
The funny thing, if anything can be called funny in a Hunger Games, was watching the Gamemakers attempting to deliver her sponsor gifts, which they repeatedly failed to do. They were as blind to her spot as the tributes. And while they joked about it, you could see they were embarrassed to have a girl from District 3 understand their arena better than they did.
When the field cleared, it was down to Wiress and a boy from District 6. Wiress finally stood up, revealing herself, and the boy leaped for what he thought was her, cracked his head, and drowned in the lake. The victor’s hovercraft flew around for about an hour trying to locate her before she walked back to the Cornucopia for a ride. Later, when asked how she’d figured out her strategy, she replied, “I followed the light beams.” More than that, she could not, or would not, say. You wanted to cheer for her, given that she’d outsmarted the Gamemakers, but she was just too unnerving.
So, of course, they gave her to us. We always get the leftovers. Filthy costumes, broken-down nags, and now her. I try to roll with it, but it pisses me off. I don’t want Wiress for a mentor. She’s just another bizarre person to deal with when I’m already scraped raw. How can a girl who follows light beams help me anyway? How can a girl who left the arena without a scratch teach me how to protect myself? How can a girl who has fought no one, killed no one, mentored no one, mentor me? She can’t, that’s all.
I’m fixing to say as much when a second woman arrives. It takes a moment to place her. She’s older, probably near Hattie’s age. Then I remember a Games from when I was little, and a hysterical boy dressed in a suit made of seashells, who’d just been crowned in front of the entire nation of Panem. The hysteria had triggered when they’d played the recap of the Games, showing all twenty-three of his competitors’ deaths. And this woman had held the boy and done her best as his mentor to shield him from the cameras, which were devouring every awful bit of it.
It’s Mags, a victor from District 4. She looks at me sadly, knowingly, and then opens up her arms and says, “I’m so sorry about Louella, Haymitch.”
For a moment, I teeter between anger and grief. But the dam finally breaks. I step into her embrace, drop my head on her shoulder, and begin to cry.
I don’t cry much in general. Only when people die, and then I cry hard and fast and ugly, which is what I do now. Because Louella is dead and I was supposed to look out for her and I didn’t. And while Lenore Dove will forever be my true love, Louella is my one and only sweetheart.
Mags just holds me while sobs rack my body and tears and snot drip onto her shoulder. Wiress takes Maysilee and Wyatt farther into the apartment, giving us a moment. “I’m sorry,” I choke out. But Mags shakes her head and just keeps patting my back.
When I calm down some, she leads me through the apartment to a bathroom where a tub of steaming water awaits. She hands me a bag, saying, “Put your costume in here. Magno wants it back. Then bathe and join us.”
When Mags goes, closing the door behind her, I throw a towel over the camera for some privacy, not caring at all if they punish me for it. Then I strip off the vile costume and shove it into the bag. Hot baths are a Sunday ritual in my house, cold water buckets doing for the rest of the week since it takes a lot of pumping and heating to fill our tin washtub. This deep porcelain version, nearly full to the brim, the creamy bar of soap, and the liquid shampoo are undreamed-of luxuries. I sink down into the tub, letting the heat envelop my body, as plumes of Louella’s blood tint the pristine water pink.
I shut my eyes and try to empty my mind, so there is only warmth, and the murmur of distant voices, and the smell of soup mingled with the light flowery scent of the soap. This is all the world is. Nothing more. I must lie like that for a long time, because the water’s cool and my fingertips wrinkly when I open my eyes again. I drain the tub and have a good scrub under the shower, cleansing myself of the insecticide, the road dirt, and the last traces of Louella’s life.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
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