“Wakey wakey, boys!” Mrs Coulomb bawled at five am, as punctual as ever. All twenty five of us groaned in unison, sounding like background actors in a zombie film, as we were pulled from sleep by the strip lighting flickering into life with the usual whingey buzz above us. Mornings are torturous anyway at the orphanage (have you ever had to share a bathroom with another two dozen guys? Well, you have to wait ages before you can pee) but today was Reaping Day, which made it all the more agonizing.
“Lu! Come on!” A cold hand grabbed my ankle and shook it gently. I peeked out from under my pillow to see Coulomb’s careworn face at the foot of my bed. “Your breakfast will be going cold, love. Don’t want Nickel helping himself to extra eggs and bacon, do we?”
“He’s welcome to it; I hate fry ups anyway.” I mumbled, pulling my duvet back over my head. “I’m not hungry anyway.”
“You’ve got to eat, Lumen! Everyone’s nervous, Lu, but we all just have to get through the next few hours and then it’ll be all over.”
I scoffed. Mrs Coulomb was always a glass-half-full, optimistic kind of person, but even she couldn’t fake a grin convincingly on Reaping Day. Think about it: most parents in District Five only had two or three kids to worry about when Reaping Day comes around each year, but Coulomb had a whole dormitory of sons to fear for. I don’t know how she coped so well when the rest of the District seemed to be up in arms, drowning in a sea of worry.
Yet every year, she and the other matrons and chaperones managed to try and lighten the mood with a cooked breakfast, a hot drink and a present for everyone one of us in the form of a ‘lucky’ penny in a fancy-wrapped matchbox, accompanied with a twist of fabric containing dried fruit. They even made gifts for kids that were still too young to be reaped, just so they didn’t feel like they were missing out, though there matchboxes homed a small pretty bead or button along with their fruit rather than a penny. Apart from shoes and food, and a single toy or book on our birthdays or at Christmas, Reaping Day was the only time we received anything new. Even our clothes were second hand, straight from donators or charity shops. Even so, the attempts to make The Reaping a less daunting day were fruitless.
“Want my breakfast, Burd?” I asked her, nudging my plate towards her.
“You have it, it’s yours.” Burd yawned, pushing my plate back across the table. Her brown eyes were circled with a week’s worth of dark purple sleepless nights and a lifetime of crying until she’d had no more tears to be shed. Her lank orange-brown ringlets were pulled back into a pony tail and secured with a green rag tied into a bow, and she shook from head to foot. “I so scared, Lu.”
Burd Serkit was pretty much the only friend that I actually really cared about. Everyone thought she was strange, but I thought she was magical, right from when we were kids. I just got her and loved her while no one else seemed to, and I still don’t know why. She was so quiet she was practically mute; she wasn’t particularly pretty; she couldn’t sing or dance any better than most people, and she was always so jumpy and on edge that even most of the matrons thought that she wasn’t all that right in the head, though they knew she was perfectly harmless.
Away from school and the orphanage, when it was just me and her, Burd was so much different, however. She was intelligent, funny and had the best imagination. Back when we were eight or nine, I can remember that we both used to bunk off school on a regular basis and would play out in the fields and hills to the edge of the District. We were pirates, royalty, dragon slayers, master mind criminals, farmers, explorers, wolf pack leaders, soldiers, we were the last humans on Earth, but most of all we were inseparable. I couldn’t, and still can’t, imagine life without her.
I reached out across the table and stilled her trembling hands. I could see that she was descending into the throes of a panic attack and felt utterly powerless in terms of helping her, so I just watched as she struggled to gulp down enough air, as her pale face got paler still. The dining hall bell suddenly rung out to signal the end of breakfast and the start of the Reapings. Chaperones and matrons started to dismiss each table, separating boys from girls, and teenagers from children from babies.
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Writers Games; Alliances
FanfictionThese are the Games where alliances are made and broken. Who can you trust? Who can't you turn your back to for a single second? To survive you must join forces but the people you choose to work with can get you killed. You must be sly and cunning...
