第4章

  now it’s gale’s turn to be confused. does she mean it? or is
  she messing with him? i’m guessing the second.
  “you won’t be going to the capitol,” says gale coolly. his
  eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns her dress. real
  gold. beautifully crafted. it could keep a family in bread for
  months. “what can you have? five entries? i had six when i
  was just twelve years old.”
  “that’s not her fault,” i say.
  “no, it’s no one’s fault. just the way it is,” says gale. madge’s
  face has become closed off. she puts the money for the berries
  in my hand. “good luck, katniss.” “you, too,” i say, and the
  door closes.
  we walk toward the seam in silence. i don’t like that gale
  took a dig at madge, but he’s right, of course. the reaping sys-
  tem is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. you be-
  come eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve. that
  year, your name is entered once. at thirteen, twice. and so on
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  and so on until you reach the age of eighteen, the final year of
  eligibility, when your name goes into the pool seven times.
  that’s true for every citizen in all twelve districts in the entire
  country of panem.
  but here’s the catch. say you are poor and starving as we
  were. you can opt to add your name more times in exchange
  for tesserae. each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of
  grain and oil for one person. you may do this for each of your
  family members as well. so, at the age of twelve, i had my
  name entered four times. once, because i had to, and three
  times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, prim, and my
  mother. in fact, every year i have needed to do this. and the
  entries are cumulative. so now, at the age of sixteen, my name
  will be in the reaping twenty times. gale, who is eighteen and
  has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of
  five for seven years, will have his name in forty-two times.
  you can see why someone like madge, who has never been
  at risk of needing a tessera, can set him off. the chance of her
  name being drawn is very slim compared to those of us who
  live in the seam. not impossible, but slim. and even though
  the rules were set up by the capitol, not the districts, certainly
  not madge’s family, it’s hard not to resent those who don’t
  have to sign up for tesserae.
  gale knows his anger at madge is misdirected. on other
  days, deep in the woods, i’ve listened to him rant about how
  the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our dis-
  trict. a way to plant hatred between the starving workers of
  the seam and those who can generally count on supper and
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  thereby ensure we will never trust one another. “it’s to the
  capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he
  might say if there were no ears to hear but mine. if it wasn’t
  reaping day. if a girl with a gold pin and no tesserae had not
  made what i’m sure she thought was a harmless comment.
  as we walk, i glance over at gale’s face, still smoldering un-
  derneath his stony expression. his rages seem pointless to me,
  although i never say so. it’s not that i don’t agree with him. i
  do. but what good is yelling about the capitol in the middle of
  the woods? it doesn’t change anything. it doesn’t make things
  fair. it doesn’t fill our stomachs. in fact, it scares off the nearby
  game. i let him yell though. better he does it in the woods than
  in the district.
  gale and i divide our spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of
  loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, pa-
  raffin, and a bit of money for each.
  “see you in the square,” i say.
  “wear something pretty,” he says flatly.
  at home, i find my mother and sister are ready to go. my
  mother wears a fine dress from her apothecary days. prim is
  in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. it’s a bit
  big on her, but my mother has made it stay with pins. even so,
  she’s having trouble keeping the blouse tucked in at the back.
  a tub of warm water waits for me. i scrub off the dirt and
  sweat from the woods and even wash my hair. to my surprise,
  my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me.
  a soft blue thing with matching shoes.
  15
  “are you sure?”