Companion track: Evacuating London, Chronicles of Narnia

I'm sitting on my bed and twisting my long brown hair into a braid when Annie wakes up. It's probably five in the morning, but that's the time we love best. The time when the Peacekeepers don't care if we're just screwing around in the ocean, even if it is a Sunday.

"Here, let me," Annie sits down next to me and finishes the somewhat sloppy braid. I smile at her, because who couldn't love my little sister? She ties off the end with a strip of blue-gray cloth. "That should stay while we're swimming."

Silently, the two of us change into our swim suits, pulling on oversized shirts and cutoff pants. We don't want to wake our father before he has to get up and open the cafe. Just before we leave, I sling my homemade bag over my shoulder, and Annie and I walk barefoot along the worn cobblestone street.

This is what we do every Sunday. Annie and I meet up with our friends, Toby and Finnick, and we spend the day swimming and playing in the water. We're not the only kids who do this, but we're the ones who go out the farthest. Papa always calls us a bunch of dolphins.

Halfway to the beach, I spot two figures in the distance. Toby and Finnick. Toby is in my year at school, and Finnick and Annie are two years apart. We spend all our free time together, and more than once Papa has joked that we'll pair off and get married someday.

"Good morning, Crestas," Toby grins when we draw even with them. He takes the bag off my shoulder. "We got one of the better boats," he says. "One of the double-hulls."

"Great," Annie says. She grins mischievously at me, and suddenly all four of us are off and racing to the beach. Our boat, rented for the day, is tied to the dock with a new peacekeeper standing by. I can tell he's new because of the way he's standing away from the edge of the dock, worried about falling in. The new ones also have the same look on their face, their noses wrinkled because they aren't yet used to the smell of fish in everything. It's really quite funny.

We toss our things onto the center platform of the boat and push off, eager to be out on the water by sunrise. Toby, Annie, and I make the leap onto the deck, but Finnick jumps a bit short and has to swim after us. Laughing, Toby lowers the rudder to Finnick while Annie and I unfurl the sails. In just a few short minutes, we're well on our way out to sea.

Looking over the things the boys brought, I can see that we'll be doing some fishing as well. Among other essential supplies, Finnick has brought half-a-dozen tridents and a medium sized net. Toby has a basket of bread and oyster meat that he'd shelled only this morning while waiting for the peacekeepers to open the docks. I add a pack of smoked tuna to the mix and we have quite a good breakfast. Anything else we want to eat out on the water we'll have to catch, the peacekeeper reminds us as we're pulling away. As if it will be a challenge.

This is my definition of a perfect day. None of us opted to be trained in the Academy, and likewise we don't favor the company of the kids training there. It's not as if they've not got seawater in their veins like the rest of us, they just have more of a blood lust. Finnick and Toby prefer fishing and swimming, Annie is too kindhearted and, well, they wouldn't accept me even if I wanted to get in.

You can enter the Academy when you turn ten, which takes place of your regular schooling and leisure activities. Only when you pass some final test are you allowed to volunteer as a tribute for the Games. A lot of people in the district expected me to join, not only because I'm talented with a blade, but because I'm the oldest child in the family. I was going to, too. Just to stop them talking bad about my family.

But when I was nine, I went fishing with my father. He was teaching me how to reel in some of the bigger fish that venture into the bay. Everything was going well, and we'd been tracking a ten-foot marlin that, according to Papa, would be fantastic in soup. The beast already had one tow harpoon in him, and we just needed one more to bring him in. I shot it, keeping hold of the rope as Papa began tying it down. But before the knots could be secured, the line jerked and I was pulled in.

I thought the marlin was trying to make his escape, but under the water I could see a massive tiger shark. And apparently it saw me as a better snack than the half-dead marlin suspended by the harpoons. The shark clamped down over my right arm and onto my shoulder, shaking me and tearing huge chunks out of my flesh with its razor sharp teeth. I must have blacked out while I was still in the water, because the next thing I was conscious of was lying on a medical bed at the apothecary. Missing my right arm completely.

I healed alright, but I had to re-learn a lot of things. Swimming, getting dressed, tying nets, fishing... it seemed every time I mastered something new there was another task that I had to learn. But I'm a quick learner and, even though I was mostly independent by the time I turned ten, I couldn't join the other kids at the Academy.

I was bothered by it at first, but then Toby and Finnick invited me and Annie to join them on their fishing days. Then again. And again. Eventually it became a tradition of ours, a sort of release that kept us sane. Even now, we never miss a week. Nothing really keeps us apart for long.

We spend all day on the water, filling our bellies and talking about everything and nothing. There are only a few clouds in the sky, but we don't burn easily; we just tan and, in Annie's case, freckle. Come sundown, we all sit warm and propped up against the mast and turned to the west, watching the ocean change from blue to gold to red to black. Days like this seem to last forever, and sometimes I wish they would. Especially today.

Because tomorrow is reaping day.