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People always wondered at us being friends. He was a coal miner’s son from the Seam, and I was a merchant’s daughter. My mother had taken over running the tailoring business when my father had died of illness. The shop has been in my father’s family for generations. My sister has worked as a seamstress since she was able to sew a straight line, a talent that I was sorely lacking in. My job was mainly running the shop front when I was not busy with school.
When I wasn’t needed at the shop, I usually spent most of my free time with Adam Lambert. He was my best friend in the whole world, despite our two-year age difference. Adam was quite tall with the typical black hair, grey eyes, and olive skin that are a trademark of the Seam here in District 12. We were very close – unlike his younger brother and me… he and I were both sixteen and in the same class at school, yet we’d barely spent much time together. It’s not that I didn’t like Neil. On the contrary, we got along quite well when we did take time to talk. But from the moment I met Adam the two of us just clicked. I’d never met a person in all of District 12 that I’d truly gotten along with until that one faithful day at school when some bigger kids were picking on me. He was the only one who’d had the courage to break through the small group of bullies and defend me. From that day we’d been inseparable.
Until the Reaping…
He was eighteen. While his family wasn’t completely starving, like all families in the Seam, they were just barely able to scrape by and, unless they were careful, they could go for days – weeks when things were bad, and his father was too sick to work – at a time completely without food. At times like this I helped as often as he would let me. Mostly it was a loaf of bread or two left on their doorstep, so he didn’t have the opportunity to refuse. When he turned twelve and was old enough for his name to be entered for the Reaping in the Games, he signed up for tesserae (a meagre year’s rations for each member of his family). There were four people in his family: he, his brother, and their mother and father.
When I turned twelve and was desperate to be able to help him and his family more, I suggested signing up for tesserae. That was the first time I’d ever seen him angry. Truly angry. He forbade me from doing so and wouldn’t even let his brother take any. He made us swear that under no circumstances whatsoever were we to ever sign up for tesserae.
So that year Adam’s name had been entered thirty-five times, and both Neil and I only five.
A seventeen-year-old girl from the Seam named Pia Tuscano was drawn first.[1] I’d let out the breath I’d been holding a bit. It wasn’t me. As soon as the woman from the Capitol turned to the glass ball that contained possible male tributes, my breath caught once more. I watched, as if in slow motion, as she pulled out a slip of paper, smoothed it out, and read the name…
My stomach dropped out of existence, and I felt faint. I felt someone’s arms around me and watched with tears stinging my eyes as Adam, my best friend in the entire world, approached the stage from where he stood with the other eighteen-year-olds and took his place beside Pia. My lips trembled. And when the two were escorted into the Justice Building, I wept. I turned in the warm arms still around me and buried my head in the person’s chest. When I finally pulled myself together enough to look up, I was met with Neil’s saddened eyes.
When the Games began, I’d watched, with both of my hands clutched onto one of Neil’s, as Adam was raised into the arena. Watched as he fought his way through the initial battle, as he survived through the first three weeks… but, in the end, he couldn’t escape the cloud that flash froze everything in its’ path.
It’s been two years. My name hadn’t been called again this year. Instead, it was the butcher’s daughter, Haley Reinhart. The boy tribute had been a seventeen-year-old Seam kid named James Durbin.[2]
I sat with Neil in our small house in the Seam watching this year’s games begin. My son played with a few blocks on the floor in front of us. As I looked at him, I thought back to the day before the Reaping two years ago. Adam was my best friend in the whole world. We knew everything about each other. One of the things I knew about him that no one else did was that Adam liked boys instead of girls. But the day before the Reaping, the last one we spent together, it was like we knew something bad was going to happen. Like we knew this is it. We let curiosity get the best of us that day. It was like we’d never get another chance… As it turned out, he didn’t.
Neil and I had gotten closer, watching Adam participate in the Hunger Games together. And when, a month after Adam had died, my mother threw me out and I cried on Neil’s shoulder, confiding in him that I was pregnant with his brother’s child, he offered to claim it was his. Two months later, we were married and his parents, who knew the truth without being told, had taken me in. When Neil had turned eighteen, we’d moved into a small house of our own.
I watch my son playing happily on the floor. My little Adam. He’s only fifteen months old and there’s already so much of his father in him.
I leaned back into my husband’s embrace. His hand ghosting along my still flat stomach where the child we made together grew. I wondered if this one would be a girl. Adam giggled as his stack of blocks came tumbling down and I smiled softly. I laced my fingers with Neil’s and glanced back at the small black and white television screen.
As this year’s tributes were raised into the arena, I allowed myself once more to remember my friend.
—30—