【饥饿游戏】06

Chapter 2
One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless
for game(猎物）to wander by, I dozed 1 off and fell ten feet to the
ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had
knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there
struggling to inhale 2, to exhale 3, to do anything.
That’s how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe,
unable to speak, totally stunned 4 as the name bounces around
the inside of my skull 5. Someone is gripping my arm, a boy
from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he
caught me.
There must have been some mistake. This can’t be happening.
Prim 6 was one slip of paper in thousands! Her chances
of being chosen so remote that I’d not even bothered to worry
about her. Hadn’t I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused
to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands.
The odds 7 had been entirely 8 in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.
Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily
as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen
because no one thinks this is fair. And then I see her, the blood
drained from her face, hands clenched 9 in fists at her sides,
walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing
me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and
hangs out over her skirt. It’s this detail, the untucked blouse
forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.
“Prim!” The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my
muscles begin to move again. “Prim!” I don’t need to shove
through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately allowing
me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she is
about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push
her behind me.
“I volunteer!” I gasp 10. “I volunteer as tribute!”
There’s some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn’t had
a volunteer in decades and the protocol 11 has become rusty 12. The
rule is that once a tribute’s name has been pulled from the
ball, another eligible 13 boy, if a boy’s name has been read, or
girl, if a girl’s name has been read, can step forward to take his
or her place. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is
such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering
is complicated. But in District 12, where the word
tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse 14, volunteers
are all but extinct.
“Lovely!” says Effie Trinket. “But I believe there’s a small
matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for
volunteers, and if one does come forth 15 then we, um . . .” she
trails off, unsure herself.
“What does it matter?” says the mayor. He’s looking at me
with a pained expression on his face. He doesn’t know me really,
but there’s a faint recognition there. I am the girl who
brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have spoken 
of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled 16
with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest
child, with a medal of valor 17. A medal for her father, vaporized
in the mines. Does he remember that? “What does it matter?”
he repeats gruffly. “Let her come forward.”
Prim is screaming hysterically 18 behind me. She’s wrapped
her skinny arms around me like a vice 19. “No, Katniss! No! You
can’t go!”
“Prim, let go,” I say harshly, because this is upsetting me
and I don’t want to cry. When they televise the replay of the
reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I’ll
be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no one
that satisfaction. “Let go!”
I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see
Gale 20 has lifted Prim off the ground and she’s thrashing in his
arms. “Up you go, Catnip,” he says, in a voice he’s fighting to
keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my mother. I
steel myself and climb the steps.