Chaff's POV

I wake up to the sun in my eyes and the families getting ready for today. I wonder what today is as if I've lost my memory, then my mother calls, "Reaping Day! Wake up Chaff!" I crawl out of bed and get the shirt my mom must've got last night. It was a blue shirt that was the style we wore around here in district 11. Today we have the day off, but once you turn 12 you gotta start working in the fields from early morning to sunset. I started about 4 years ago and it's backbreaking work.

Every month or so there's a public whipping because some idiot decided to steal the crop, fight a peacekeeper, or some other dumb thing. I put the shirt on and I am greeted by my mother. "Oh there you are, I thought you would never wake up!" she exclaims.

"Well I kinda have to..." I answer. The bell rings from the justice building and I stare out the window.

"You better get going!" she says and she kisses me on the cheek. I walk out the door and hear the mockingjays mimicking the bell from the justice building, I smile loving the sound they make, as the little kids would always sing songs and play with them.

My mom would always say, "We don't got much here in 11, but we make a lot out of nothing." District 11 has a bunch of grey and is a pretty ugly place. There are a bunch of places to store our crops, including corn, grapes, apples, and a lot of fruit and vegetables overall. I hear district 9 takes care of grain, so we don't grow that here. I walk up and they prick my finger to take some blood, and I stand next to the 16 year old boys. The way district 11 does the reaping is there are 7 rows and 2 columns. The rows stand for the ages, like the 12's and 13's and so on until the 18's. And the columns are for boys on the left and the girls from the right.

I don't know how the other districts do this exactly, because we aren't allowed to leave our district unless under special circumstances. I watch as Mayor Tayte walks up to the microphone and talks about the Dark Days and the Treaty Of Treason, which I find boring. Everyone hates the capitol here, while they get to laugh at our deaths and get anything they want at a snap of the finger, we have to work day and night to feed our families, its dumb. Then the mentor(s) come out. The one I recognize is Seeder. She won her games a while ago, and is a short calm looking woman with dark skin like many people here in district 11.

"Now, let us choose our tributes for this year's hunger games!" exclaims Elaina, who is the district 11 escort and a shrill and ecstatic woman. She pulls a slip of paper from the girl's glass ball, which has about 5,000 sheets of paper, and 11 of them are mine in the boy's. The way the slips work is first it depends on your age, which means that the 12's get their name in once, then 13's are 2 and all the way up till the 18's. There is also the tesserae, which gets you put your name in once depending on how many you get, however it gives you about a bag of grain. As an only child, I put my name in the tesserae 6 times, then 5 because I'm 16. Elaina picks a piece of paper out of the glass jar, "Soya Guava." she calls, and some girls in the 14 year old section look at a girl. She's skinny, and I don't recognize her exactly. She has straight black hair tied into a bun on her head. She walks forward, and I can see the fear in her eyes as she walks up to the stage. Then Elaina goes to the boy's jar, and she calls, "Chaff Mitchell." My name.