“Rue! Rue! Where are you?!?” I hear my mother calling me. I guess it’s time to go to the square for the reaping. I fell asleep while sitting in the tree. I quickly climb down and go to my mother and the rest of my family. “Rue, are you ready to go to the square?” she asks. “Yes m’am. I was just in the peach tree. I guess I dosed off,” I said to her with a small grin. My family and I start walking towards the square. When we get there, there’s already thousands of kids and older teenagers checked in. My mom walks with me to the table and I get blood pricked from my finger. I’m told to go to a taped off area for the other girls that are twelve. There’s not many other girls here. Suddenly, fear hits me. I don’t freak out on the outside, but on the inside I feel like I’m dying. “Calm down, Rue. You’re name’s only in there once. You won’t be picked. The odds will be in your favor,” I tell myself. The rest of the kids get checked in and head to their areas based on gender and age. I turn my head toward the stage where our district’s escort, whose name I don’t know, will be picking the tributes. We watch a video that has to be played from the Capitol. It’s about the Dark Days and why we have the hunger games. The escort steps up to the microphone and introduces herself as Magenta. “Welcome, District 11! Happy Hunger Games and may the odds be ever in your favor. The time has come to pick our tributes for the 74th Annual Hunger Games!”, Magenta says with a big smile, “We are going to pick our lady first!” She slowly walks to the biggest glass bowl I have ever seen in my life. When she finally gets there, she sticks her hand in, grabs a slip, and walks back to the microphone. Magenta slowly opens up the slip of paper. “Our first tribute..” she begins, “Rue….” I hardly even hear her say my last name. I feel like I am out of breath. Does she mean me? No. This can’t be. I only had my name in there once.. The other kids stare at me as I regain my breath. I slowly start walking to the stage, fear obviously extremely noticable on my dark face. I definatly thought the odds were in my favor. When I get to the stage, nothing is said. Magenta looks at me with a big smile and walks over to the microphone again. “What a nice looking young lady,” she says, “and now, on to the boy tribute!” I don’t even watch as she starts her way to the other big galss bowl. Everything is such a blur right now. Magenta walks back over to the microphone, opens the slip and reads off the first name and the last name is all a blur. “Thresh..!” says Magenta. When I hear the name, I have a flashback to the fields, the orchards, everything. Thresh and I have met once. He’s a few years older than me and I like to think of him as an older brother. He has the same dark skin as I do, as much as district 11 does. I think back to one day on the orchard when I first started climbing trees, and the day I met Thresh. He found me in one of the apple trees, on accident. I had been in the tree, gathering as many apples as my small arms could hold. Then, Thresh walked under the tree and BAM! an apple fell and hit him right on the head. I jumped down and we couldn’t help but laugh. We introduced ourselves and that was really the only day we’ve ever spoken. Every now and then, I’d look over at him while in the orchards and he’d grab an apple and hit himself on top of the head with it. I’d grin back. Flashback over. Thresh is on the stage now. Magenta is telling us to shake hands. We do as told. “Your tributes, Rue and Thresh! Happy Hunger Games and may the odds be ever in your favor,” Magenta closes with a smile and we are escorted to our rooms for our family and friends to say their goodbye’s. All I can think about is, how could I possibly kill Thresh, the boy I made friends with after hitting him with an apple?