Sunrise on the Reaping

A bootlegger's boy receives a gift forged for survival

Haymitch Abernathy turns sixteen on the worst day of the year in District 12.

A bootlegger's boy receives a gift forged for survival

Haymitch Abernathy turns sixteen on the worst day of the year in District 12. Before dawn, he hauls grain for Hattie, an old moonshiner who brews illegal white liquor beyond the fence. The work keeps his widowed mother's laundry business afloat. After collecting his birthday pint, he crosses the Meadow to find Lenore Dove, his Covey girlfriend, playing forbidden songs about stolen land while her geese graze. She gives him a gift her blacksmith uncle forged: a flint striker disguised as a necklace, a snake facing a songbird on a steel curve. Pretty with a purpose, she tells him. The Second Quarter Quell demands double the tributes this year — four children instead of two. Neither of them can imagine what the afternoon holds.

A sniper's bullet turns a reaping into a riot

The escort Drusilla Sickle draws the four names with theatrical cruelty. Louella McCoy, Haymitch's thirteen-year-old neighbor, climbs the stage with pigtails and a scowl. Maysilee Donner, a merchant's daughter known as the meanest girl in town, disengages from her weeping twin Merrilee and ascends. Wyatt Callow, a stoic miner, walks up without expression. But when Drusilla calls the final name — Woodbine Chance — the boy bolts for an alley. His family cheers. The crowd instinctively blocks the Peacekeepers. A rooftop sniper obliterates the back of Woodbine's head. The screens go dark. The square erupts. Peacekeepers fire into the crowd. Drusilla screams that they have five minutes before the broadcast goes live, and they need a replacement boy.

Shielding his girlfriend costs Haymitch his freedom

In the chaos, Lenore Dove tries to wrench Woodbine's body from the Peacekeepers on behalf of his mother. Haymitch leaps to shield her from a rifle butt and catches it across the temple. He's dragged to Drusilla's yellow boots. She declares him the replacement. A man in violet — Plutarch Heavensbee, the Capitol TV producer assigned to District 12 — intervenes just as Drusilla orders Lenore Dove shot, asking to keep the weeping girlfriend for reaction footage. The broadcast resumes with Drusilla pretending to draw Haymitch's pre-planted name. His face fills the screen. He finds Lenore Dove in the crowd. She presses her hand to her heart and mouths their private declaration of love. Confetti rains down, and he loses sight of her in the fluttering paper.

Their shattered farewell refuses to become Capitol entertainment Drusilla cancels official goodbyes as punishment for the riot. Plutarch bargains: two minutes with family if Ma performs reaction shots for the cameras. She agrees,…