PART I "THE TRIBUTES" Pt3

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.”

To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle starvation.

“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,” intones the mayor.

Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventyfour years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still alive.

Lee Soonkyu, a paunchy, middle-aged man, who at this moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage, and falls into the third chair. He’s drunk. Very.

The crowd responds with its token applause, but he’s confused and tries to give Im YoonA a big hug, which she barely manages to fend off. The mayor looks distressed. Since all of this is being televised, right now District 12 is the laughingstock of Panem, and he knows it.

He quickly tries to pull the attention back to the reaping by introducing Im YoonA. Bright and bubbly as ever, Im YoonA trots to the podium and gives her signature,

“Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!” Her pink hair must be a wig because her curls have shifted slightly off-center since her encounter with Soonkyu.

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 victors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation. Through the crowd, I spot Yuri 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 Yuri and his forty-two names in that big glass ball and how the odds 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. Im YoonA 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 nauseous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me. Im YoonA 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 Seohyun Hwang.