Hetal Fuhrman | District 2

Small, bare quick feet hit the hot pavement, and a little pale body hops around carefully, trying to reach home before her feet burned too much. The toenails are neat and clean, and the bottoms of her feet rough for not bothering to ever put any shoes on. Her ankles are small but still manage to poke out in a strange way. Her thin legs are long, even for her 4’5” height. The knees are nothing to brag about, boney and poking out at those who bothered to look.

The little girl you look at is rather thin, too much running and not bothering to eat more. She has a flat chest, but that would never bother her in a million years. Her arms are long like her legs, proving the long-limb-ness that seemed to run in the family. The hands are smooth on the top though the bottoms have a slight bit of roughness to account for. She twirls in the air, giggling slightly. Her voice is rather high, a bell in the quiet air surrounding you. She turns her head for a moment, and you catch her face.

It is like an oval, no freckles and a clear face. Her small mouth is turned down in a frown – she seems to have heard you. The small, rabbit-like nose crinkles and her light, thin eyebrows furrow together as she freezes to listen. The feet begin to heat up, and eventually she hops again, mouth opening to reveal little white teeth. Her large, pale-blue eyes glance around one more time before her head turns once more to hop home. The chocolate brown waves of her hair dance behind her, land by her waist for a moment, then jump back into the air with every step she takes. The honey tinge comes and goes as the sunlight hits, then she is inside.

"Hetal Aeli Fuhrman!” her mother nearly screams, rushing at her and sweeping the little girl up into her arms. Hetal fights back momentarily, and then gives up against the strength of arms that had trained far past the age of eighteen. She was never the type to try too hard, but if something seemed possible for her to do on her own she would want to prove she really could. “Where have you been?” her mother - Maeve - asks, turning her daughter’s head to look at her.

“I was getting Sissy’s hat, she left it,” Hetal says quite bluntly, pulling the most innocent expression she could manage. It was true, Hetal always told the truth, and she could not bear to be dishonest with anyone. She was good with secrets though. She didn’t lie – she just told someone she wouldn’t tell them. She had always been a very blunt child, not bothering to sugar coat anything or bring it out slow and steady. This could be a curse – and a great blessing. At that moment, the girl’s older sister walks in, finely brushed chestnut hair and smoothing the pretty blue dress she had put on.

“I have your hat Enawell,” Hetal says, holding the hat out towards her sister and landing on her feet when her mother lets her drop. The child was very graceful, just like her sister, and just as clever in nearly every way. The only difference was Hetal was better at staying quiet for long periods of time. The two girls shared a very close relationship, unlike the one she shared with her two brothers. At the same moment, the boys, fourteen and sixteen, walk in, wearing their finest clothes for the day ahead.

“You should not have been late, Hate-el,” the older one – Thorn - says, messing with her hair and taking a seat. Meanwhile, Kavan, the handsome one, laughs with their father over some joke. Both were very silly, but Hetal was a serious, humorless child that had no intention of letting people see her having fun. She knew she was the weak one, but she wanted other people to think that as little as possible. Her mother shoves a dress into her arms and pushes her into the bathroom, where the girl finds herself staring into a mirror.

“I do wonder,” the thoughtful girl begins, “If I went to the Reaping in my normal clothes if anyone would notice.” Many a time her mother told her to stop thinking so quirky, but the girl could not help it, it was her thought process. Nonetheless, she slowly puts on the modest brown dress that fell a little past her knees. She makes a face in the mirror, disliking the nice clothes. She preferred being barefoot with shorts and a t-shirt that was a little too big. She smirks at the hair tie left on the counter. Ena is the girly one, why would mother leave that for me?

When she walks out of the bathroom, she glances out the window. It was still very early morning, the same time her family liked to wake up, but still a little eerie. Her first Reaping would be in a few hours. Hetal was very rarely frightened, and something as simple as having six names in the ball, out of all the thousands of people in her humongous District would not frighten her in the slightest. Turning the corner to the living room, her sister turns around to look at her.

“You look magnificent, beautiful, gorgeous, stupendous!” she gushes from her chair. Hetal blushes, but quickly lets it slip away. She was modest, but also didn’t want people to know when she was embarrassed. “You should put your hair up, it would look so much prettier than that ugly mess,” Thorn says. The boy did like insulting others, but one did not grow up in the Fuhrman household without picking up on such things.

“Look who’s talking, milk face,” she spits back, walking towards Enawell, who had her arms open and motioning for the little girl to sit in her lap. Her brother quickly wipes his face with his sleeve, then checking it to make sure it wasn’t ruined. The girls laugh, including her parents as the boy discovers his clean face. A single glare, and Hetal is in her sister’s lap.

“Oh, how clever, Hettie,” Ena says. “Promise me you’ll never grow up,” the eighteen-year-old continues. Hetal agrees, thinking the comment ordinary. For twelve years her sister had insisted she not grow up, but she just kept going. She did have that innocent cloud around her though, that no one could seem to shatter, though in reality it was very thin and only required a little poke. “If you are Reaped, let me volunteer though, I don’t want to lose you,” she adds, trying to pant a kiss on the young one’s cheek. She wiggles away slightly.

“No, why do you think I am weak?” Hetal asks, “I can make it. You said yourself I’m clever. And I always make good grades. I’m fast, too! And small, so I can hide. Promise me you won’t even try to volunteer!” Her squeaky little voice had risen, fright and frustration keeping her on edge. Her brothers laugh, her father shakes his head, and her mother sighs. “Just because I don’t train does not mean I’m not perfectly capable of winning.”

At that moment, Ena thinks back to all the times her brothers had tried to get the young one to train. All had ended in failure, with Hetal getting hurt or something breaking. The girl much preferred to hang out with her older sister and dip her feet in the water, lost in thought and imagination, staring up at the sky and imagining the day she would be a cloud, or a star, or a comet shooting through the night and carrying ungranted wishes with it forever.

“It’s time to go,” their father says, standing. Everyone else stands and follows him out the door, just as they had every year. At first, Ena tries to carry Hetal out the door, but she wiggles free and jumps down ever-so-gracefully. Thorn laughs in amusement at his older sister’s rejection. In the past, he had tried to be the protective big brother most people had expected him to be, but eventually let Hetal use because of the times her failed. He would still protect her if the time came, though, and Hetal knew that.

When she was ten, he had taken her to the training center to try to start her. He lost her at some point and began to freak out over his vanished sister, looking and demanding answers on if someone had seen her. When he found her talking with a boy his age, he nearly knocked the boy out. It is a very vivid memory in Hetal’s mind, and on occasion she will actually crack a smile remembering it.

The family approaches the Town Square and split up into their sections, waiting anxiously to learn who would represent their family in the Games this year, and hopeful it would be either themselves or one of them. In the past years, Hetal had stood between her father and mother, avoiding touching and waiting to see if the wishes her siblings had voiced would true. This usually failed. Maybe not this year, though.

As the escort for District 2 begins talking, Hetal finds herself lost in the words she had never before payed any attention to. Then the woman walks over to the girl’s ball, huge smile planted on her face and reaches into the ball. The slip comes out, and the entire District holds their breath. Come on, come on Hetal, say Hetal. Say Hetal Fuhrman. The woman’s mouth opens, and the name called is;