Not All of Me Shall Die

Initium (The start)

As Cass Whitlock stands in her crowded pen, she is reminded, suddenly and starkly, of cattle in line for slaughter. In District 10, the bitter irony of the reaping is not lost on its citizens, who herd the perimeter to watch the scene play out. The crowd, like the livestock the district butchers daily, knows what is coming. They are grouping together tightly, the fear across their faces is as clear as the bowls that hold their names.

Cass is wiping the heat off her brow, glancing around at her peers. She eyes each and every one of them, deciding whether or not they would last more than a minute in the Games. She eyes them the same way she sees her father stare down the cattle at the ranch, wondering if they'll survive a hot summer in District 10.

A boy is nervously kicking at the dust beneath his boots, a small cloud of earth rising with every hit. Cass notices he is pale, and thinner than most of the boys that work grueling hours under the sun in her district.

He must not work on the ranches.

She assigns him a death at the Cornucopia; he would be easily picked off in the first few minutes during the bloodbath. He would probably run for the supplies, overestimating his abilities and underestimating those of his peers. Cass now recognizes him as the son of one of the larger land owners in the district. Her expression visibly sours. Citizens like her father work around the clock, while the wealthy, majority holders sit back and watch.

A bitter look crosses her face when she realizes that her predictions are pointless. He's not going to be chosen either way. He doesn't need the tesserae, not like the rest of the District 10, not like her, who work day and night to scrape up enough to feed their families, and only after they take care of the Capitol's precious cattle.

It isn't until this very moment that panic begins to settle uncomfortably in Cass's chest. Twenty-four entries with her name written on it in bold, brash writing lay in the glass bowl somewhere, waiting to be picked. Fear seeps through her, but she shuts her eyes tight against the whtie sun and tries to forget. Cass is strong. She had survived her mother's abrupt death and raised her sister as her father worked on the ranch, only making enough to scrape by. Cass is brave. She recalls the night she had killed a coyote in cold-blood with her father's axe. And yet. When the day of the reaping rolled around each year, nightmares plagued her sleepless nights and a heavy weight settled in the bottom of her gut.

Cass Whitlock takes pride in her maturity, invulnerability, and overall fearlessness. She is not an apt scholar, nor athlete. Those things were trivial, inconsequential. She takes pride in the fact that her seven year old sister looked up to her, looked up to her as a source of strength, wisdom, and guidance.

Every year when Reaping day rears its ugly head on District 10, Cass Whitlock feels as vulnerable and afraid as she did the night her sister was born and her mother was dead. There was nothing that Cass hates more than feeling helpless. And at the tender age of ten, she was motherless, as helpless as she had ever been.

Twenty-four entries. As she stands in line with the seventeen-year-olds at the reaping, lambs in line for slaughter, she tries to picture where they might be in the clear bowl. Perhaps it was that smaller paper pressed against the side. Maybe it hung at the very bottom.

She scoffs quietly at this thought. She convinces herself it didn't matter. She could do nothing but watch as a polished Capitol hand dipped into the opening of the rounded glass and picked up a cleanly folded note. Her stomach drops immediately. Cass is silently calculating probabilities that it is her name. She wishes she had listened in fourth year math a little better.

As the Capitol hand is unfolding the paper, Cass Whitlock desperately turns around and searches the crowd behind her. She spies her father, holding her little sister's hand tightly. His eyes are worn, worried, and tense. His calloused, dusty hand rubs the back of his neck nervously. She looks down at her sister and an involuntary smile spreads across her face. Willa Whitlock's short, blonde hair stuck out at all angles. The braids Cass had managed to pull them into that morning had finally been defeated by the hot, dry air and her sister's tendency to play around in the pasture. Willa had never been very good at keeping polished.

Cass remembers being that young, when the time of childhood stood still and the pulse of the living desert became her own. She would stand behind the older children ripe for picking at the reaping, hiding behind her mother and giggling at her father's appearance after a long day under the unforgiving sun. She recalls how she would race home to their small ranch after the reaping, eager to get the day over with. Her parents were always so tense that day. She never understood. Not until now.

She remembers the first year after her mother had died. She remembers staring outside of her window, counting the hours, watching the moon replace the blinding sun, waiting for her mother to come home. Cass Whitlock hates feeling helpless. She hates feeling control slip away from her hands as she did those nights.

She is grateful, though, she realizes. She is grateful that her baby sister is too young for the picking. She is grateful she is the only Whitlock standing at the reaping this year. Perhaps, she thought, by the time she turns twelve, the games would be over. Put to an end.

Every year as she waited for the name to be picked and drawn out of the crystal bowl, she feels the same way she did waiting for her mother to come home after her death. She feels the same way as the cattle she coaxes to the slaughterhouses.

Her little sister notices her now. She shoots her a toothless grin and waves with pudgy hands. Cass manages a weak smile back.

She turns around, facing the stage. Cass Whitlock is ready.

The Capitol hand is reading the name silently, eyes darting across the tiny slip. She raises it high in the air, an unsettling grin on her face.

The voice booms through the square.

"Cassia Whitlock!"

Cass feels as though the hot, blistering sun might strike her dead any moment as she walks down to the stage. Her stomach is churning, and her skin burning, but she paints her face bravely, and raises her chin to the applause.

Although she is now District 10's female tribute for the 65th annual Hunger Games, she is still Cass Whitlock, who took pride in her maturity, invulnerability, and overall fearlessness.