Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“Ampert, this is your show,” I say. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve got in mind?”
I like how even though he’s only twelve, he jumps right in. “It’s like this. A disproportionate amount of the time, the Careers win. But they’re only one quarter of the tributes. We’ve got three times their numbers. So the idea is, we get the rest of us together and, for a change, we hunt them down instead of letting them hunt us.”
“Can we do that, do you think?” asks a girl from 10.
“Why not, Lannie?” replies Ampert.
Why not? I think about how the districts outnumber the Capitol by far more than three to one.
“We don’t have to buy into their mind game, that somehow they will always defeat us,” Ampert declares. “Everyone acts like the odds aren’t in our favor, but I’m sure we can beat those odds!”
At the word odds, Wyatt seems to blink awake. “Well, we’d have to factor in their stature, training, temperament, and sponsor gifts. But even given that, if there are enough of us . . .” His eyes get a faraway look.
“Yeah, this is normal for him,” I tell the group. “He’s working out the odds of the twelve Careers against the rest of us.” Everyone waits respectfully.
“Yes, it can be done. We could do it. It’s still not a probability, but it’s a solid possibility,” reports Wyatt. “Especially if we can get all nine districts to agree.”
“If we kill all the Careers,” asks Ringina, “what do the rest of us do then?”
“Have another meeting,” says Maysilee. “At least this alliance gives us something to do besides freak out.”
“Right now, we don’t have nine districts, though,” Wyatt reminds us. “Just five.”
“I’ve asked the others, but not everybody wants to join,” says Ampert. Our attention turns to the bleachers stretching across the gym. At the far end, the Careers mirror us, having assembled for lunch. Snot green mixed with the purple of 2 and 4’s deep-sea blue. Districts 11, 9, 6, and 5 remain unattached. We watch as a few members of the Careers toss their empty lunch boxes to the gym floor, then walk down to where District 6 sits and steal a couple of the kids’ lunches. Games or no Games, if you’ve got a decent bone in your body, you hate a bully.
District 6 is composed of four puny kids whose rickety limbs suggest they’ve never seen sunlight. Victims of last night’s chariot episode, they’re bandaged in enough gauze to choke a horse. One has a twisted foot, and I remember another collapsing on the shower floor, wheezing from the insecticide. I’m tempted to write them off entirely-what could they possibly bring to the alliance except neediness? But I snag on the shade of their outfits. Dove color. Seems like a sign.
“Six said no?” I ask Ampert.
“They said they want to remain neutral so the Careers don’t target them.”
“We can see how that’s working out,” I say.
A bone-thin little girl in Lenore Dove’s color collapses on the bleachers, sobbing. I grab my untouched lunch box, scoop up Louella’s, and make my way down the bleachers. The crying girl recoils as I approach, and I hold out Louella’s lunch. “Here. We had a couple extras.” She hesitates, then takes the box with a shaking hand. The wheezing boy accepts the other. “You all managing after the accident?”
The girl nods. “We’re sorry our chariot hurt your friend.”
Frail she is, but considerate. “Not your fault. Never thought for a minute it was.”
“Thanks for not blaming us,” she says.
“Blaming you? Seems like we’re all in this together,” I say. “You know, we’ve got a pretty good alliance in the works. I understand you’re trying to stay neutral, but really that just makes you a target for everybody. Anyway, the invite’s still good.”
By the time I make it back to my gang, four broken doves are on my tail. They perch on the seats, whisper their names – Wellie, the crying girl; Miles, the asthmatic boy; Atread and Velo, the remaining boy and girl. Then they dig in to their lunches.
“Six makes six,” says Wyatt.
“We need a name,” says Ringina. “If they’re the Careers, who are we?”
People toss out ideas for names. Now that we’re allies, District 12 offers Loose Cannons, 10 comes up with Dark Horses, and 7 volunteers Invaders.
“No,” says Wellie, intensely. “Those all sound like we’re trying to be tough. But we’re not tough compared to the Careers. What we are is inexperienced, not trained from birth to win the Games.”
“Is that a good selling point?” asks Lannie.
“In a way,” says Ampert. “For one thing, it means we haven’t spent our whole lives buying into the Games as something we aspire to.”
“We’re not collaborators,” says Ringina.
“Right. But we’ll fight if we have to,” says Ampert. “We need a good name for people who are just starting something hard. A district name.”
“Like Neddie Newcomer,” I say without hesitation. The others laugh. “No, it’s a real thing. In the mines, if you’ve just started, they call you Neddie Newcomer. My pa used to call me that whenever he’d teach me something new. Like, ‘Come on, Neddie Newcomer, let’s learn to tie those boots.'”
“I like it,” says Wellie, a smile transforming her tear-stained face. “We’re the Newcomers.”
Ringina thinks it over, then grins. “And proud of it.”
Everything feels better after lunch. It’s less that I don’t have to fear half the tributes than that I don’t have to think about killing them. The latter is much worse. Now I can join my allies at the booths and know they’ve got my back as we learn to make snares, throw axes, and set a broken leg.
The four tributes from 6 stick to me like glue. My own little dove-colored flock. I hope they don’t all think I can protect them when we hit the arena, because I can’t.
Wyatt seems to have found his people. Ampert’s co-tributes from 3 have a fascination with his odds system, and he seems happy to share it with them. Number freaks find one another, I guess.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.