"You know what's worse than coal dust under your nails?" Lily loudly asked her cronies. "Dried pig's blood like Anthea Galloway!"

Her friends snickered loudly as they walked past me, Lily leading them with a hand tossing her golden blonde waves over her shoulder. They continued into the school building, commenting about me and what family I'm from – I am the daughter of the butcher.

"Only a priss like you could afford a leg of a pig," I muttered darkly. Yeah, for a whole pig, you had to be filthy rich like the Capitol clowns who could afford to waste their lives on nonsense. Besides, we didn't have tons of pigs in District 12 – goats, wild turkeys, chickens, and wild dogs, yes. Sheep, cows, those were either cooked up in some fancy Capitol dish or raised in the pastures of District 10. Honestly, did stupid Lily Kilburne realize that?

As I walked up the steps, I heard a voice in my ear say, "Just because she's the candy shop's third daughter doesn't mean she's any bright."

My head snapped to the side to see it was Cia, a younger girl who was my friend. Then my other friend Kern brushed past me and pinched his face to mimic Lily's.

"Oh look at me! I'm Lily and I'm special because I work in Mommy's sweets shop. That's why my head's so big and must be filled with fluff!"

Cia giggled and I snorted at Kern's terrible impression. But I had to hand it to him and Cia for trying to lighten the mood. As we headed into the hallway, Kern and I continued further into the building and bid Cia goodbye as her classroom was toward the front of the school.

"Another day, another lecture about coal," Kern groaned as he headed for his classroom.

"Or about Panem and the Capitol again," I reminded him.

Kern scrunched his nose up and looked up at the ceiling. "Don't remind me about that – it only reminds me about the Hunger Games and the reaping next week."

The Hunger Games. Those three words struck fear and concern in the hearts of all the citizens in District 12. Heck, every other district, save for 1, 2, and 4, feared the Games because it meant another year of watching young kids who were either your friends or neighbors fight against others in a controlled arena until one was left standing. All of this began after the original 13 districts decided to rise up and rebel against the Capitol. However, the Capitol put down the rebellion and destroyed District 13 as an example to remaining 12. Thus they implemented the Hunger Games as a punishment to the districts to remind them of the rebellion and how the Capitol was able to use their power to control the innocent kids of the districts. Typically Districts 1, 2, and 4 produced fighting machines that won every Hunger Games, with an occasional victor from another district. Except for us – District 12 continues to have tributes who are clueless and hapless with weapons and usually end up dead on the first day of the Games. Mining coal and blasting really doesn't train anyone for the games like District 4, which specializes in fishing.

"Let's just get to class," I mumbled. "We can talk later."

Kern bid me goodbye as I reached my classroom and I took a seat in the middle of the room. As I waited for our teacher arrive, all I could think about was the reaping and everyone I knew.

"What did your class talk about today?" Kern asked as we exited the schoolyard.

I was about to answer when Cia ran up to us and answered Kern first. "Sorry I'm late!" she huffed. "But my teacher accidentally let it slip that she knows what District 11 is like."

Kern snorted in disgust. "Uh Cia, everyone knows what District 11 does for the Capitol – agriculture. That's not news to us."

I elbowed Kern and glared at him for being rude. "Continue Cia," I prompted.

Cia waited until we were far away from the schoolyard and by the backdoor of her home, the district's bakery. She double checked to make sure that no one was spying on us and began.

"Apparently she visited a distant relative from a long ago marriage some years before the rebellion," she said in a hushed tone. "Even then, the people in that district were under brutal conditions. We're talking fences that are always electrified, Peacekeepers watching everybody as they worked in the fields, and oh, the fields are massive! She said they run for, gosh miles, I guess!"

Kern and I looked at each other. I wasn't surprised about District 11 being big, since it is their job to supply crops for the Capitol. Kern asked Cia if her teacher said more and she continued.

"Punishments are harsher there too," she said, "if you don't produce enough crops or pick enough to reach a certain quota per day, you are whipped publicly in the square and everyone has to watch. It's horrible, don't you think? They really don't get to eat the crops they produce because its all for the Capitol and some of the better districts."

"Hmmm," Kern mused. "Guess living in this miserable slice of Hell isn't so bad compared to being watched by vultures raised as the Capitol lapdogs. But even we have whipping as a punishment, so that doesn't surprise me."

"I'm more concerned about your teacher Cia," I said. "If kids start talking to their parents and everyone else about life outside District 12, she could be in danger of being...forced out from her job and maybe the district."

Cia paled at those words and she begged us to keep the matter between the three of us. "She's a sweet lady and she didn't know any better! I guess she was just trying to make class more interesting and put it into perspective that our lives here aren't so bad as we think they are."

Kern nodded as he crossed his arms over his chest. I promised I would keep my mouth closed too. Cia's shoulders relaxed and she put her hands into her skirt pockets. Kern cleared his throat and transitioned into talk about the upcoming reaping and the games.

"How many times is your name in Anthea?" Kern asked.

"30," I muttered. "I wish that we didn't have that rough year with meat sales, otherwise it would have been just 6 this year."

Cia piqued up that she too was affected that miserable year I mentioned and had been forced to take tesserae as well.

One "benefit" of the Hunger Games is the offer of entering your name more than once in exchange for extra grain and oil. This is known as tesserae and while it may be an incredibly small amount that can barely last a family a year, every little bit helps. You can enter your name as many times as the number of family members you have. However, the entries from tessera accumulate like your standard entries into the games as you grow older.

"Hang on Cia, I thought you and your family were doing well with the bakery," Kern said. "You're the first case I've heard of a merchant, save for Anthea here, that needed tessera."

"The wheat production was poor," Cia whispered. "Dad had to scrape together whatever he had left in the bags and that wasn't enough to make enough bread to sell. We couldn't make cakes since sugar was low and I was the right age to take out tesserae. None of my two sisters could do it since they were too old to be in the games any more."

Kern let out a huge breath of air he had been holding in and asked Cia to tell him how many times her name was in.

"18," she said.

"Kern, you shouldn't be complaining," I said. "It's your last year to be eligible for the games."

"Yeah but I'm not exactly free if I manage to not get picked this year," Kern snapped. "I still have to go right to work in the coal mines to produce coal to keep those stupid Capitol people warm all the time while we sit and freeze!"

"But you're only in 7 times Kern!" I shot back. "Your dad and mom tried to keep you from having to sign up for tesserae! That's lucky in itself. I couldn't because its hard to have meat come through the door in the first place!"

Kern shook his head and kicked a pebble nearby. He shoved his hands into his pockets and grumbled that he was going home. Before Cia and I could say anything, he turned his back to us and began striding back toward the Seam, an area where the miners and their families lived.

Cia turned back towards me and asked why he was so upset.

"Even though he didn't take out tesserae, his family has an unlucky streak of being reaped into the games and coming home in boxes," I said. "His uncle was in the 1st games and died at the Cornucopia. Then his cousin was reaped for the 5th Hunger Games and she died of a snake bite."

Cia lowered her head and stared at the ground. "I get it now," she sighed. "I don't see why he seems so surprised about me having to take out tesserae. We may have different classes in District 12 but even the merchant class isn't as well off as, say the people in the Capitol. Sugar is expensive and decorating costs more since it takes time and energy to make pretty designs. Speaking of which..." She reached into her bag and withdrew a small packet of beautifully decorated sugar cookies frosted to look like daisies. She offered them to me before digging around and producing a second small packet from her bag.

"This one was for Kern," she said, "but he did walk off in a huff. Maybe you could give him these once he calms down?"

"Sure thing," I said as I pocketed Kern's packet. I tore open mine and bit into the cookie. Crumbly, sugary, and yet so good in a time like this.

"Great job again with these Cia," I said. "I keep wishing that maybe one of those rich fools in the Capitol could see your work and just hire you to do their fancy cakes and sweets. ...Hang on, how much are these in the shop any ways? I don't want your family to lose money that could be on the table."

Cia shook her head and refused to tell me. "They were from a test batch," she explained. "Elsie cooked these too long and I volunteered to take them to do a test frosting on them. The customers who can afford the cookies prefer them to be soft and chewy instead of crunchy all around."

I swallowed and put away the remaining cookies into my bag. "I prefer crunchy instead of soft anyways, so this is perfect," I told her. "Tell Elsie if she overcooks any more of them, I'll take them in a heartbeat."

Cia giggled and promised that she would. She glanced over at the bakery and said that she had to get back to work. "Tell your dad I said hi," she said as she began heading up the steps to the bakery.

"Yeah, yeah I will," I said as I began walking toward town. As I finished my cookie from Cia, I took a closer look at my nails. They were short and cut a bit crookedly, since I borrowed my mom's clippers and cut them in a hurry before preparing a chicken for sale. And yes, they did have some dirt and dried blood under them. The dirt probably came from when I was trying to catch the chicken that a customer brought to me to prepare for his dinner. He was dumb enough to leave the door open and let the chicken escape into the muddy side of the shop. I was forced to catch it and looked like a fool trying to grab it for 15 minutes, before I caught a leg and carried it inside.

"Whatever," I grumbled to myself as I approached the front door of the butcher shop. It wasn't a beauty pageant and I could care less about what stupid Lily had to say about my nails. Not everyone got to have candy dust under their nails like hers.

"Hiya kiddo," Dad greeted me brightly as I entered through the door. "How was school?"

"Same old, same old," I grunted as I dropped my bag onto a chair.

Then Mom appeared from washing one of Dad's nicer shirts and scolded me about leaving my bag out on a chair. I sighed and picked it up, telling her that I'd put it away in my room if she preferred. She gave a sharp nod of her head and I mumbled an apology before trudging upstairs to my room. I ran into my older sister Marigold who was darning a pair of socks for a neighbor.

"Mom gave you the whole 'Put your bag in its rightful place' lecture again?" she guessed.

"Yup."

Marigold shook her head at me and said that she was going downstairs to keep Mom company and out of my hair. I thanked her before nudging the door to our room open and dumping my bag onto my bed. I caught a glance of my appearance in the mirror and snorted like a horse.

If my nails weren't bad enough, so was my hair. I had let Mom put ribbons in it so I would look a little nicer for school than my standard low loop I wore for butcher work. They looked too girly and more appropriate for Marigold's silken tresses of ebony. Mine were black-brown and scraggly, thanks to forgoing a haircut for a long time. I untied the ribbons from my hair and left them for Marigold on her bed. Then I removed a plain-looking hair tie from my dresser and pulled my hair twice through the tie before twisting it a third time and pulling it partially through, making my hair end in a long loop.

I changed out of my clothes for school and put on a plain t-shirt, pants, and my apron colored with rusty stains that my mom tried to get out, but gave up on. Time to do what I was born to do – prepare meat for others.