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Click. Click. Click. I snap back to reality and drag in the dry, splintered air. Liviana Price, District 7’s shrill escort, teeters towards the glass bowl, her smile painted on like gloss over cracked timber. She slips her hand inside and stirs the names, the paper whispering together like restless leaves before a storm. My heart hammers against my ribs, frantic and uneven, but my face stays still – smooth as polished wood. Her voice, sharp as a saw blade, slices through the square.<
“Johanna Mason!” The name falls heavy as an axe, and the world spins beneath my feet.
A bang that broke the air and sounded like lightning, along with a small, sad scream. The little girl falls to the ground and folds in on herself like a paper doll in the rain.
“Back to work!” the head Peacekeeper yelled. There was nothing wrong with her. She was sick. Starving. Too weak to lift an axe, but she was expected to carry the weight of a world that lives on the flesh of children. My feet are stuck to the ground, the sweat that runs down my back, and stick to my shaking hands.
"Why are you still here? Get!" he yells. But I can't move, talk, or look away. The anger inside me is thick and hot, like lava. He’s getting closer, and the sickly-sweet smell of his breath filled the air.
"Well?" he spat.
"They're just kids!" I say in a quiet, small voice. "Poor kids!" My voice breaks, shatters, then shouts. "Forced to work until they die, all for some spoiled—"
My cheek hurts a lot. His hand hits my face, and I fall hard on the sunburnt ground, tasting blood and dirt. The world spins around me, but I don't stop. Like a wire pulled too
tight, something inside me has broken. I stand up and swing my fist. My hand barely touches him before metal flashes. He pulls out a gun. Time doesn't move. I'm watching from a distance as he presses the cold metal of his gun against my head. The world around me fades away. Only steel and air matter.
"Please! Don't kill her!" The cry pierces through my daze. Mum. “I’ll do anything,” she begs from the side street. “I’ve already lost so many.”
"She won't do it again," Mom begs, and her eyes glaze over with fear, like new paint.
"Oh, she won't?" He gives a sneer. "Do you want to know why?" Silence is as thin as a wire.
"She's going to the Games. Punishment in public.” He chuckles at my widening eyes. "She won't come back weak and needy like she is." A single tear runs down my face, making a quiet path through fear and dust.
A rigid spring bites into my spine and I jolt awake. The window frames a bruised sky, the moon distant and cold. Sleep won’t return. Tomorrow hums in my skull. He never bluffs. The mattress groans as I stare at the thin walls— then it clicks. The frightened tributes aren’t first to fall. They’re overlooked. So, I won’t be brave. I’ll be small. Harmless. Invisible. In the hush of that dark room, I make a promise: I will come home.
“Johanna Mason.” Lavinia repeats.
The seventeen-year-olds part, carving a hollow path through the crowd. My name hangs there, waiting for another voice to claim it. None comes. No hand rises. No brave shout cuts through the silence. I let my breath hitch. Let tears spill freely now. My shoulders shake as I climb the steps, small, fractured sobs breaking from me. As I stumble to the stage The square watches. The cameras drink it in. At the top, beside Lavinia, her painted smile tightens—too bright, too brittle. For a flicker of a second, something colder slips through.
“Congratulations,” she sings.
The word rings false. I keep my head bowed. My knees quiver convincingly. My hands twist in the fabric of my dress like I might unravel with it. A fragile thing. Easy prey. But beneath lowered lashes, my gaze sharpens. I look at the stage. At the Peacekeepers. At Lavinia. Slowly. Carefully. As if committing every detail to memory. They may have forced my name from that glass bowl. But they have not seen the last of me.