Chapter 1: Enlist with our Sisters

We are the poorest family in all of District 12. Which means we just might be the poorest family in all of Panem.

It's a hard thing to have to admit, when my mother and sister have a Healing business that, while by no means successful, is at least continuous. But most of our patients pay for Mother and Prim's services in compensation other than money, and those that do pay in cash can only give up so much themselves.

I am not a Healer. To be a Healer is to be gentle and caring, even possess an almost sexual tenderness in your work. To be a Healer is to be feminine, and to thus share the desires of most women: to get married, to keep a house, to make love with a man who is one's husband. To have his babies.

That isn't me. I like to think of myself as fiercely independent, unable to be tamed. Some might call me a shrew, a bitch. That's just fine by me. Meanwhile, I will be busy feeding my family the only way I know how: hunting.

I hunt rabbits. Squirrels. Deer. All of these I sell in the Hob for money, and whatever I have left feeds my family. But the seasons have been growing longer and harsher. Longer, colder winters. Longer, hotter summers. Which means that less and less in the way of game is there for the taking.

My family and I have only had soup to eat for the past two weeks now. No meat. And this lack of nutrition has shown in our feminine bodies. My ribs are beginning to show. So are Mother's, accentuating her aging breasts that once nursed two babies in their prime.

Even in the hardest moments after my father died in a mining accident when I was eleven, Mother has been detached. Drained of all energy. But nothing has been as bad as it is now. And somehow, the gravity of our situation has started to make my mother rouse herself for the first time in a good five years. She wants to find an answer, help me find an answer - if not necessarily for our own sakes, then for Primrose, who is only twelve years old.

Unfortunately, there are no answers left in which we can still maintain our dignity. And right now, we are both beginning to see that the only answers left are the ones that require us to make very tough decisions. And tough sacrifices. Even if one of those things sacrificed upon the altar is our own dignity.

There is a lucrative prostitution ring in District 12. A monopoly on the business is held by our Head Peacekeeper, Cray, and even run out of the Peacekeeper barracks. Most of these soldiers who discipline 12 come from foreign districts, and their militarized lifestyle leaves them little time in the way of sex, romance or courtship. Which means that if they see something sweet, they better grab it quick. And through contrived circumstances. If presented with it only as an option and not as a necessity, no respectable woman in District 12 would freely lie down in bed with a Peacekeeper. Rape is not an uncommon occurrence. But many of these soldiers are able to get their fix through the sex trade a largely unsupervised Cray has set up in this backwater of a district. And they do so with women and young girls that, though desperate and poor, are still far better off than Mother, Primrose and I.

Which only makes me wonder how Mother and I have avoided this inevitability for as long as we have.

I am 16. Old enough for the age of consent. And I learned more than I would ever want to about sex in our Family Planning classes in school. There are girls my age who are already married, or are at least getting married. Within a few years, they will have children of their own. It sounds awfully young, but Mother was 19 when she Toasted the bread and married Daddy. And though they struggled with fertility problems early on in their marriage, they eventually had me, and then, Prim.

Mother is only 40. Not quite at the end of her childbearing years, but the mark is not far off. She was born a Merchant, and is, with her blonde hair and blue eyes customary of that status, still pretty.

Primrose will not be involved in this. Not for a long time and possibly not ever, if we can help it. With any luck, she will come of age and marry a nice man with some standing so as to at least get economic security for herself. Mother won't remarry; she considers herself too old. And I have vowed to never wed. The only Everdeen daughter who will ever wear our mother's bridal gown is Prim. Though Mother has, on more than one occasion, tried to gently encourage me to find a husband to marry. If not for love, then for economic advantage - Mother knows my views on men. I detest almost all men.

Which is why I feel utterly repulsed that I have to do what must be done to feed my family.

Mother and I stand, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the Head Peacekeeper's house. I would rather be anywhere but here. But if I have to be, at least I'll have a friend with me. Even if that friend is my mother. I will my fist to connect with the door's wood.

Upon answering, Head Peacekeeper Cray seems surprised to see me, least of all daughter AND mother. He and I have spied each other in the Hob often enough, and Cray has been unusually eager in offering to let him accept my trades with unconventional forms of payment. Or for him to accept my technically illegal dealings with unconventional forms of payment. Bribery of the highest order. And my stubborn pride had always compelled me to refuse his advances.

Until now.

"And what can I do for you, huntress?" he growls.

"I am sure you could do a lot for my mother and me," I say in my best seductive voice.

Cray seems genuinely surprised that the both of us are enlisting our services as prostitutes, which makes me wonder if he has an aversion to older women like Mother, and also makes me question the man's intelligence. But he makes the best of it by looking positively delighted that at least I am here.

"It's nice to hear you're so... open to suggestions," he purrs. He ushers Mother and I inside and walks around us once to inspect us.

"You'll both do. Come by the barracks tonight at midnight to begin your services. Look pretty. Wear the nicest clothes you own."