Bella Yoder

“Boy, that was mean, even by my standards," Maysilee says to me. "You can't choose your parents."

"You could reject their business," I point out.

"I couldn't," says Maysilee. "I was going to spend the rest of my life behind that candy counter, no matter how much I hated it. And I'm guessing you'd have been wearing miner's overalls to your grave. We never, none of us, had any choices."

She follows Wyatt to the van, leaving me to ponder the possibility that I out-meaned Maysilee. Not something to be proud of. But neither is factoring Louella's death into our odds. Her body's not even cold, and he'd reduced her to a number. But she was not a number, she was a little girl I met on the day she was born when Mr. McCoy, his face alight with joy, held her up at the window for all us kids to see. A terrible, dark grief begins to well up inside me, threatening to drown me, but I force it back down. Swallow the sadness, clamp a lid on it, dam it up. They will not use my tears for their entertainment.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping