Sunrise On

The Reapin

“Happy birthday, Haymitch!”

The upside of being born on reaping day is that you can sleep late on

your birthday. It’s pretty much downhill from there. A day off school hardly

compensates for the terror of the name drawing. Even if you survive that,

nobody feels like having cake after watching two kids being hauled off to

the Capitol for slaughter. I roll over and pull the sheet over my head.

“Happy birthday!” My ten-year-old brother, Sid, gives my shoulder a

shake. “You said be your rooster. You said you wanted to get to the woods

at daylight.”

It’s true. I’m hoping to finish my work before the ceremony so I can

devote the afternoon to the two things I love best — wasting time and being

with my girl, Lenore Dove. My ma makes indulging in either of these a

challenge, since she regularly announces that no job is too hard or dirty or

tricky for me, and even the poorest people can scrape up a few pennies to

dump their misery on somebody else. But given the dual occasions of the

day, I think she’ll allow for a bit of freedom as long as my work is done. It’s

the Gamemakers who might ruin my plans.

“Haymitch!” wails Sid. “The sun’s coming up!”

“All right, all right. I’m up, too.” I roll straight off the mattress onto

the floor and pull on a pair of shorts made from a government- issued flour

sack. The words COURTESY OF THE CAPITOL end up stamped across my butt.

My ma wastes nothing. Widowed young when my pa died in a coal mine

fire, she’s raised Sid and me by taking in laundry and making every bit of

anything count. The hardwood ashes in the fire pit are saved for lye soap.

Eggshells get ground up to fertilize the garden. Someday these shorts will

be torn into strips and woven into a rug.

I finish dressing and toss Sid back in his bed, where he burrows right

down in the patchwork quilt. In the kitchen, I grab a piece of corn bread, an

upgrade for my birthday instead of the gritty, dark stuff made from the

Capitol flour. Out back, my ma’s already stirring a steaming kettle of

clothes with a stick, her muscles straining as she flips a pair of miner’s

overalls. She’s only thirty-five, but life’s sorrows have already cut lines into

her face, like they do.

Sunrise On The Reaping