第6章
and may the
odds be ever in your favor!” her pink hair must be a wig be-
cause her curls have shifted slightly off-center since her en-
counter with haymitch. she goes on a bit about what an honor
it is to be here, although everyone knows she’s just aching to
get bumped up to a better district where they have proper vic-
tors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation.
through the crowd, i spot gale looking back at me with a
ghost of a smile. as reapings go, this one at least has a slight
entertainment factor. but suddenly i am thinking of gale and
his forty-two names in that big glass ball and how the odds
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are not in his favor. not compared to a lot of the boys. and
maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me because his face
darkens and he turns away. “but there are still thousands of
slips,” i wish i could whisper to him.
it’s time for the drawing. effie trinket says as she always
does, “ladies first!” and crosses to the glass ball with the girls’
names. she reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and
pulls out a slip of paper. the crowd draws in a collective
breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and i’m feeling nau-
seous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not
me, that it’s not me.
effie trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip
of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. and it’s not
me.
it’s primrose everdeen.
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one time, when i was in a blind in a tree, waiting motion-
less for game to wander by, i dozed off and fell ten feet to the
ground, landing on my back. it was as if the impact had
knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and i lay there
struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.
that’s how i feel now, trying to remember how to breathe,
unable to speak, totally stunned as the name bounces around
the inside of my skull. someone is gripping my arm, a boy
from the seam, and i think maybe i started to fall and he
caught me.
there must have been some mistake. this can’t be hap-
pening. prim was one slip of paper in thousands! her chances
of being chosen so remote that i’d not even bothered to worry
about her. hadn’t i done everything? taken the tesserae, re-
fused to let her do the same? one slip. one slip in thousands.
the odds had been entirely in her favor. but it hadn’t mat-
tered.
somewhere far away, i can hear the crowd murmuring un-
happily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen
because no one thinks this is fair. and then i see her, the blood
drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her sides,
walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing
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me, and i see the back of her blouse has become untucked and
hangs out over her skirt. it’s this detail, the untucked blouse
forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.
“prim!” the strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my
muscles begin to move again. “prim!” i don’t need to shove
through the crowd. the other kids make way immediately al-
lowing me a straight path to the stage. i reach her just as she is
about to mount the steps. with one sweep of my arm, i push
her behind me.
“i volunteer!” i gasp. “i volunteer as tribute!”
there’s some confusion on the stage. district 12 hasn’t had
a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. the
rule is that once a tribute’s name has been pulled from the
ball, another eligible boy, if a boy’s name has been read, or
girl, if a girl’s name has been read, can step forward to take his
or her place. in some districts, in which winning the reaping is
such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the vo-
lunteering is complicated. but in district 12, where the word
tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, vo-
lunteers are all but extinct.
“lovely!”