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I’d grown up seeing those home kids at school.The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, the hopelessness thatcurled their shoulders forward. I could never let that happen to Prim. Sweet,tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushedand plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school,who still polished my father’s shaving mirror eachnight because he’d hated the layer of coal dust thatsettled on everything in the Seam. The community home would crush her like abug. So I kept our predicament a secret. 我在学校里经常能看到福利院的孩子。他们的痛苦哀愁、脸上印着愤怒的掌痕、因绝望而佝偻着身躯，这一切都深深地印在我的脑海里。我永远都不允许这样的事发生在波丽姆的身上。波丽姆是那样的娇小而乖巧，只要我哭，她也会不明不白地跟着哭起来；我们上学前，她总会给妈妈梳好头、编好辫子；她还常去擦干净爸爸的刮胡镜，因为他讨厌“夹缝地带”满天飞的灰尘。可在福利院，她会像虫子一样被踩死。所以家里再困难，我仍保守着秘密。But the money ran out and wewere slowly starving to death. There’s no other way to put it. I kept tellingmyself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I would turn twelveand be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious grain and oil tofeed us. Only there were still several weeks to go. We could well be dead bythen. 钱慢慢花完了，我们也快要饿死了。没有别的办法，我对自己说只要能坚持到五月，只要到五月八号，我就满十二岁了，就可以拿到食品券，得到珍贵的谷物和油，也就可以养活我们自己了。只不过距离五月八号还有几个星期，到那时我们肯定已经饿死了。Starvation’s not an uncommonfate in District 12. Who hasn’t seen the victims? Olderpeople who can’t work. Children from a family with toomany to feed. Those injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. Andone day, you come upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in theMeadow, you hear the wails from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in toretrieve the body. Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It’s always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one. 挨饿在十二区是家常便饭。谁没见过那些挨饿的人？没法干活的老人、姊妹众多无力养活的孩子、在矿上受伤的人，他们被迫流落街头。不知哪天，坐靠在墙边，身体已经僵直，或者躺在“牧场”死去。常有人家传来嚎啕的哭声。那些治安警会来收尸，他们谎称这些人得了流感、传染病或者肺炎。饥饿永远不会是官方承认的死因，可这欺骗不了任何人。
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