It's dangerous out there.

We are safe. We have healthcare and school and jobs. We have sports and boys to kiss and knee socks with bows.

Outside the fences it is not safe. There are prisoners out there. Wild people. We're civilized and don't believe in capital punishment, but sometimes I think - if they're what's out there because we didn't execute their ancestors, why did we have to choose this path?

We still send people outside, into the districts, if their crime is bad enough. Sometimes me and the girls sneak out to look past the fence into the night to see if we can see one of them. We giggle and eventually retreat.

We're all looking for the same thing - glinting gimlet animal eyes in scarred roughened faces, the villains from movies outside the line of wire that protects us. We are safe. This is where we were meant to be.

Sometimes I think we are all afraid of what we might see.

Someone like us, on the wrong side of the wire.

They say the games are punishment. I don't know which side that's supposed to go for.

In the reaping the children look so sad, sometimes. But there's something different about them, unlike the kids I know. They don't seem like they know how to laugh or smile or moon after a crush.

Their faces are blank, the features sharp. I can't read them, can't see anger or joy or fear.

Some people say they are animals. That the games are to punish us, to remind us that Capitol people are soft - these children from the districts are at each others' throats with the barest provocation, all teeth and claws and rending hands.

What could we do, the districts ask, if we chose to send more than children to your doorstep?

The games open on a windy fall morning, a blue sky and rolling sands. The settings are somewhere in the desert, near the southern districts.

My mother is next to me on the couch, eyes trained on the screen, wrinkles printed around her eyes where she smiles. "Looks chilly out there."

"You think they have jackets?"

She says the same thing every year. I wonder if she really thinks they're cold, or if it's just a thing she says.

"We give them clothing, dear," she says, and tucks the blanket in under her feet.

"I know, mom."

A bright-eyed girl quivers on her plate, the picture of energy restrained. She's all wiry muscle twined around bone, eager as a sighthound after a lure.

The gong sounds and she's off, running from the cornucopia, feet raising plumes of dust that glitter in the sun, arms pumping by her sides.

I can't help but think she looks familiar.