Chapter 2

One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless

for game(猎物）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 happening.

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, refused

to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands.

The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.

Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily

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

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 allowing

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 volunteering

is complicated. But in District 12, where the word

tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers

are all but extinct.

“Lovely!” says Effie Trinket. “But I believe there’s a small

matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for

volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um . . .” she

trails off, unsure herself.

“What does it matter?” says the mayor. He’s looking at me

with a pained expression on his face. He doesn’t know me really,

but there’s a faint recognition there. I am the girl who

brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have spoken 

of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled

with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest

child, with a medal of valor. A medal for her father, vaporized

in the mines. Does he remember that? “What does it matter?”

he repeats gruffly. “Let her come forward.”

Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She’s wrapped

her skinny arms around me like a vice. “No, Katniss! No! You

can’t go!”

“Prim, let go,” I say harshly, because this is upsetting me

and I don’t want to cry. When they televise the replay of the

reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I’ll

be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no one

that satisfaction. “Let go!”

I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see

Gale has lifted Prim off the ground and she’s thrashing in his

arms. “Up you go, Catnip,” he says, in a voice he’s fighting to

keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my mother. I

steel myself and climb the steps.