The Hunger Games Chapters 1-3

 Katniss crawls under the fence that surrounds the district that is supposed to "protect them", but is really there to keep Panem's citizens complaisant. She enters the woods through the fence, where she forages and hunts. Her father taught her these skills before his death in a mine explosion when she was eleven years old, and she uses a bow he made. Though trespassing in the woods and poaching are illegal, nobody pays attention, and Katniss even sells meat to the Peacekeepers who are supposed to enforce the laws. Katniss explains that, at age twelve, your name is entered into the drawing once; at thirteen, it’s entered twice; and so on up until age eighteen. But you can choose to have your name entered again in exchange for a tessera, a year’s supply of grain and oil for one person. Katniss, who is sixteen, will have her name in 20 times, and Gale, who is eighteen, will have his in 42 times. Katniss’s sister, Prim, is only twelve and has taken no tesserae, Katniss would not let her, so her name is only in once. The name that is called is, of course, Prim's........

Katniss volenteers for her sister, and starts to wonder about who the male competitor is this year. It is Peeta Mellark, a boy who saved her from starving by burning the bakery bread so he could toss it to Katniss. His mother would never have allowed him to give away bread. She expected for Peeta to feed the burnt bread to the pigs and not Katniss.......

Katniss is escorted to the Justice building where she will say her good-byes. First is her family, and where she yells at her mother to promise she wont just become catatonic like she did when her husband died. Katniss also promises Prim, that she will win for HER. Next, is Peeta's father, who promises that her family will be fed by his bread if Katniss dies. Finally, Gale enters, her best friend, and says that she has a chance if she can get a bow, and that killing humans won't be much different from killing animals. (The contestents/competitors become animals because of the games.) Gale also promises that anything he kills in the woods will be split 50/50 for his family and for Katniss's. Katniss and Peeta are then wisked away, to the train station where they board a super-sophisticated/fast train that will take them across the country to the capitol, where all the festivities are to take place before the Games.


These are the first three chapters. :)