The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

Prim’s face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.

“District Twelve. Where you can starve to death in safety,” I

“It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,”

He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.”

is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,”

So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 12 was in a region known as Appalachia. Even hundreds of years ago, they mined coal here. Which is why our miners have to dig so deep.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.

At least, the sky has shown we’re both alive.

But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece of time we call today.

We both know they have to have a victor.

She gives me a nod, and as she slips a spoon into my hand, I feel the pressure of friendship.