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September 21 - September 27, 2025
Well, half for the dead girl called Lenore in this old poem and half for a shade of gray, which I found out the day I met her.
Clerk Carmine and her other uncle, Tam Amber, have raised her since her ma died in childbirth, seeing her pa’s always been something of a mystery. They’re not blood kin, her being a Baird, but the Covey look out for their own.
That’s when she revealed that he’d been together some thirty years with the fellow in town who replaces busted windows. They have to keep it quiet because loving differently can get you harassed by the Peacekeepers, fired from jobs, arrested even.
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 4th, 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.
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,
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“Shut up,” says Maysilee. “Listen, Louella, if you let them treat you like an animal, they will. So don’t let them.”
In fifty years, we’ve only had one victor, and that was a long time ago. A girl who no one seems to know anything about. Back then, barely anyone in 12 had a television, so the Games were mostly hearsay. I’ve never seen her in the clips of the old shows, but then those early efforts are rarely featured, as they are said to be badly filmed and lacking in spectacle. My parents weren’t born yet, and even Mamaw couldn’t tell me much about the girl. I brought our victor up with Lenore Dove a few times, but she never wanted to discuss her.
I’m entirely the Capitol’s plaything. They will use me for their entertainment and then kill me, and the truth will have no say in it.
His head dips slightly and a lacquered silvery blond curl falls onto his forehead. Our eyes meet, and a smile plays on his lips. No anger, no outrage, and certainly no fear. I have not impressed him with my performance. The reckless mountain boy with the dead girl in his arms seems foolish, a trifle amusing, and nothing more.
“Boy, that was mean, even by my standards,” Maysilee says to me. “You can’t choose your parents.” “You could reject their business,” I point out. “I couldn’t,” says Maysilee. “I was going to spend the rest of my life behind that candy counter, no matter how much I hated it. And I’m guessing you’d have been wearing miner’s overalls to your grave. We never, none of us, had any choices.”
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.”
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.
Like the face-eating weasels or, in Wiress’s arena, the shiny silver beetles that swarmed the tributes, suffocating them. My brain fixates on the latter.
“Yeah, if I’m going, I want to go fast,” says Wyatt. “I don’t want people who bet on my death being drawn out to make money on it.” It’s a shocking thought. “Would your family take bets on that?” I ask. Wyatt shrugs. “Somebody would. I’m sure somebody already has. On yours, too. That’s how it works.” “I don’t want to beg,” says Maysilee. “Or plead for my life. I want to go out with my head up.” After a pause, Mags asks, “All right. Anything else?”
First avoid the slaughter, Get weapons, look for water. Find food and where to sleep, Fire and friends can keep.
The more I think it over, the more my dismay grows. Every year we let them herd us into their killing machine. Every year they pay no price for the slaughter. They just throw a big party and box up our bodies like presents for our families to open back home.
At the mention of our oddsmaker, we both fall silent. Thirty-eight of us dead. Thirty-nine if you count Lou Lou. Forty if you count Woodbine. Just a smattering of us left. It doesn’t seem real. Nothing here is real.
After the Games comes the fallout from the Games. Spreading out like ripples in a pond when you toss in a rock. Concentric circles of damage, washing over the dead tributes’ families, their friends, their neighbors, to the ends of the district. Those in closest get hit the worst. White liquor and depression, broken families and violence and suicide. We never really recover, just move on the best we can.
I ditch my pack in a patch of katniss and we take off toward the disturbance.
The camera in the corner reminds me my every move’s being watched or at least recorded. No, at this point, definitely watched. Eyes on me, 24/7. I will not be allowed to die. I will be resurrected by the Capitol for their entertainment. Perhaps, I am even being broadcast live now. Perhaps, as a victor, I will never be off camera again. . . .
I soak for hours and hours, replenishing the hot water, watching my fingers and toes get pruney as bits of dead flesh float off my scar. Images of the arena consume me. Death upon death. Ones I didn’t witness, like the bloodbath, I imagine. I try to recall the other forty-seven tributes plus Lou Lou. Using Maysilee’s color system helps a bit, but about half elude me. District 5, District 8. All but forgotten.
The reaping, she said? Must be. Why else would a Covey girl be in the Capitol? Could this girl be District 12’s one and only victor? Suddenly, I’m sure she is. No wonder Lenore Dove never wants to talk about her. She knows the story, but it’s too secret, or perhaps too painful, to share even with me.
“Like she’s delightful to look at, swishes around in bright colors, and sings like a mockingjay. You love her. And oh, how she seems to love you. Except sometimes you wonder because her plans don’t seem to include you at all.”
Somewhere in the last few weeks, my nails have turned to claws, my hair to fur. I’ve killed multiple times and preserved no life but my own. I left a simple district piglet and returned as the murderous beast that they always suspected lay in wait.
“I won’t hurt you,” I mutter. “I know that,” she says. “I’ve known who you are ever since you helped with my makeup box. And I know your position could not have been easy.” It’s surprisingly touching. “Thanks, Effie.” “But they really are for a greater good. The Hunger Games.” And now she’s lost me.
Freed of my shackles, I’m held in place on my plate until it begins to rise. What did the audience see during the Hunger Games? Will they boo or applaud for me? And who am I supposed to be? Is it possible I’m still a beloved rascal? Or are they salivating to see the murderous monster from District 12? Effie Trinket, the only one I might ask, has melted into the shadows.
The Careers have been edited to appear smarter, the Newcomers less unified.
The camera pulls back slowly as they carry me away, for the first time revealing the arena as a whole. It looks like a giant eye. The Cornucopia marks the pupil. The wide circle of spring-green meadow makes up the iris. On either side, the darker green of the forest and mountain terrain narrows to points, forming the whites of the eye. Well, the symbolism has been lost on no one. Even the little kids in the Seam know the Capitol powers are watching us.
