The Hunger Games: Tribute

It's two o'clock on Reaping Day and you're standing in the roped-off pen with the other kids your age, staring at the glass ball on the stage. Your name is in it more times than you'd like. By tonight you'll be on a train to the Capitol with a district partner you barely know, and in a week you'll be standing on a metal plate in an arena while twenty-three other kids wait for the gong. Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne are standing in District 12's square; in District 2, a Career named Cato is waiting to volunteer. Or you won your Games years ago, and the Quarter Quell card has just put you back in with Finnick Odair and Haymitch Abernathy. You play a tribute of your own making from the district you choose, through the training score, the interview and the sponsors, the arena's days of hunger and thirst, the cannons and the faces in the sky, and a love story the cameras won't let you keep to yourself.