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"Stop that!" I giggled as my best friend, Finnick, splashed water at me. How life was so much simpler back then. I even think of that moment now and remember how easy it was before I became eligible for the reaping. Before my best friend was a taken away from me. Before I was taken away from me
"Stop what? This?" He smiled as he splashed water on me again.
"Yes!" I screamed and laughed then splashed the water back at him.
The ocean was so warm that day. I had shoved my toes down in the sand hoping to take in even more of the warmth. I thought about how I could go down to the water now, but none of it would be the same. I could not feel that same warmth anymore. I could not feel joy anymore. So much had changed since that memory. It would only take three years for my best friend to be sent to the Capitol and he would change completely. I would be 18 when I would find that the Capitol wanted me in their Games.
The memory would fade each day I spent in the Capitol. It would soon be hard to even think of the past when my Games would come to be. I would be engulfed in need for survival and fear of the need to kill for my survival. I would rock back and forth while covering my ears trying to bring the memory of the warm sand between my toes. Maybe if I could not hear what was happening around me, it would not be real anymore. No matter how hard I tried, I failed to remove myself from the current situation.
I would finally get this memory in my mind and it would seem real then the water would turn red with my blood. I would see other tributes slowly slipping in the water as they cried for help when I knew I could not help them. My body was growing tired as the last of the tributes fell into the dark depths of the water. I was nearly deciding to join him when the booming voice came out of the sky and declared me the winner.
I had won the Hunger Games. The Games that I had found changed people in ways they did not even know themselves. Those Games that I knew I did not want to ever see the other side of. Now I would be forced to take part in every year where I would prepare new children for slaughter and maybe a few would come out in my entire lifetime. I knew deep inside of me that I truly wished to drown in that area. I had to take the chance even if they tried to pull me out.
I looked at my blood turning the waves around me a sickening pink color and decided I did not want to play their games anymore. I stopped swimming and let myself begin falling deeper into the darkness. I felt my body suddenly being yanked from the wet and cold ocean. Arms were wrapped around me the same way the Game Maker grabbed me to forced me inside the Hovercraft. I screamed and tried to swim away, but the arms were far too strong.
"Annie!" I heard a familiar voice say and I looked up to see Finnick. I saw Finnick in front of me the same way I saw his face screaming for me to stop fighting the Peace Keeper when I had won the Games. I gazed around me and noticed that I was not in the Arena filled with water. I was in District 4, my home, the whole time.