I'm hungry, I'm freezing, I'm muddy, I'm trapped, but someone will come get me today. I bet they've been looking all night...
I decide that if they're looking, the least I can do is help them.
"I'M HERE! IT'S SOPHIE! I'M HERE! JASON! DAD! FREDDY! HAGGER! I'M HERE! I'M HERE! I'M OKAY! I'M HERE!" I scream for almost an hour, and I'm finally forced to stop when my voice gives out.
I sound like a dying toad.
"No one is... coming," I say in my dying toad voice.
"SOPHIE! WE'RE COMING!" That was definitely Hagger.
"Hagg-!" my voice is gone. I knew I shouldn't have screamed when I wasn't getting any reply.
"Haggerrrr..." I say, but it's no use, I can barely even hear myself.
I can hear all their footsteps. They're getting closer.
"Where'd she go? I heard her RIGHT HERE!" he yells, literally two feet away from the ledge.
I throw a rock up, but all it does is bounce off the ledge and come right back down and hit me on the head.
"Watch out Hagger," that was Freddy.
"What?" says Hagger, kicking dirt down on me with his movements.
"There's a ledge behind you. Do you think she went that way? Down the river? She couldn't have crossed the river," he says.
She could have FALLEN you idiot! I wish I could yell!
"Ha-, Fred-," It's no use. I'm like a needle in a haystack without my voice.
"SOPHIE!? Sophie! I heard her!" yells my dad.
"Where'd it come from?" asked Hagger, moving around, covering me in dirt.
"It sounded like..." He comes so close to the edge I see the tip of his boot.
"Dad, I'm dow-" I hate losing my voice. It makes me feel so vulnerable.
"I definitely heard her, right here!" he says.
"We believe you. Maybe you should take a few minutes to rest or something, then keep looking," says Freddy. They move away from the ledge, covering the dirt on me with more dirt.
"Dad I-" I try and scream! I HATE THIS!
"SHE'S RIGHT HERE! I PROMISE!" he yells at Freddy, coming back to the ledge, covering me with dirt, AGAIN!
Finally, he comes to his senses and looks down.
"Sophie!" he yells grabbing a rope from Hagger.
I wave and point to my throat and do my best impression of a dying toad.
"Ah," he says.
I nod. He knows I lose my voice if I yell.
"Huh? Did we miss something?" asks Freddy, setting up a rope on a tree and tossing it down to me.
"Sophie lost her voice, am I right?" he asks as he lifts me to the top of the ledge.
"Y-" I begin, then nod instead.
"Don't talk until tomorrow. Don't try to either," he says, reminding me of the first time I lost my voice and how he lectured me about how if I tried to talk before the next 24 hours I could damage my throat, which isn't true. It just hurts and makes my throat scratchy, but I always do it anyway since he takes it so seriously.
We sit around eating apple slices for about an hour since they were all out all night. I don't know anyone who came except for Hagger, Freddy, and, of course, my dad. Then there's about...I count heads and hats, six, no seven, other men that came.
I'm kind of annoyed that I don't know their names, and they were out all night looking for me. I mean, I can't just walk up to them and say, "Hey stranger! I don't know who you are, and I never bothered to notice you! But hey, thanks for saving my life!"
One of the men finishes his apple slices and walks over to the ledge.
"Don't go ov-" I can't talk. I hate this.
"Sophie! Shh!" My dad scolds me.
I look at him apologetically and he nods at me.
The man who went to the side of the ledge takes off his cap and reveals hair just like... Ug! Why does he have to have that dark brown hair? It reminds me of why I ended up out here. Jason.
The man turns around and faces Hagger. It IS Jason!
"Here, I found the second piece for that uh... launcher you wanted," Jason hands a piece of metal to Hagger, and he takes it, examining it.
"Thanks, this'll fix the chopper up easy," he says, placing it carefully in his pocket.
Jason turns my way.
He looks me in the eye for half a second as he turns away. I look deep into the expression on his face and find nothing except anger, and a hint of... I don't know... confusion?
I sit back down, next to my dad. He pops his last apple slice into his mouth and gets up.
"All right! Time to get back, Victoria will want to know we found her!" My dad tells the men. They begin packing up their little metal seats and putting the extra apple slices away in their backpacks.
We start off in the direction I ran here. Hagger catches up to me.
"So, are you and Jason speaking or..." He trails off.
I shake my head.
"He'll come around," He pats me on the back. I quicken my pace and walk forward, past the men in front of me. I take over the front of the line. I keep going until I'm just opening up into the meadow that leads to our camp.
I notice that I'm far ahead of everyone else. I can barely hear their quiet words.
"Sophie! Come back a bit. Where are you going in such a hurry!?" I hear Hagger call.
I don't answer, I can't.
I see I'm right underneath a large oak tree. It has a lot of branches; I begin climbing up. I'm not great with trees, or climbing, and occasionally I make a branch crack underneath my feet. I always assume that I'll fall, but I never do. I don't look down, only up. I eventually realize that I'm at the top of the tree, the top swaying back and forth in the breeze. I finally look down and almost shriek with fear. I'm like... 100 feet up!
"Sophie! Come back down here!" yells my dad. "What the heck is she doing?" he asks Hagger and Freddy.
I sit in a fork of branches, ignoring the words coming from below me. For the first time in months, I feel safe. I feel in control. I'd know if someone was going to sneak up behind me. I'd know if someone was coming at least fifteen minutes before they reached me.
I hear bickering below me. Everyone is yelling over everyone else's voices, trying to find someone among the group who can climb trees.
I finally hear my father speak up over everyone.
"Jason can! Will you please go get her down, Jason?" he pleads.
"Fine," Jason says in an angry tone.
I look down, he's scaling the tree. He'll have to stop when the branches get thin I tell myself. And he does.
"Sophie, come on, come down," he begs, in an angry voice.
I stare into the field beyond the tree I am perched in and ignore him. He's only speaking to me to make his life easier, so he can go back to camp and continue ignoring me.
I decide to show him just how angry I am with him by frightening him.
I walk dangerously close to the end of the thinnest branch on the tree, less than an inch away from stepping off.
"Sophie! Stop! What are you doing?!" He screams in an even angrier voice.
Even though my dad will kill me later, I speak anyway.
"Why are you ignoring me!" I yell at him. My throat is on fire.
He remains silent for a while.
"I...I don't...I don't know, okay?!" He yells back.
I take one step forward, half my foot dangling in mid air. I'm terrified of how high I am, but I push my fear away.
"Sophie! Okay, I know! I know!" Jason yells at me.
"Tell me," I say quietly.
"Because when I look at you... I see... I see your sister, all right? I see Maysilee, and it makes me remember everything, everything," his voice isn't angry anymore. I look down at him and see a tear rolling down his face, "I thought ignoring you would help, but it doesn't, and I'm sorry, now come on, come down and stop scaring your dad half to death," he says.
I take a step back, and I'm about to grab onto the trunk to start descending, but I lose my footing and my foot slips off, and there I am, falling.
I hit a few branches, and eventually I grab onto one enough that I land on the one below it. I watch the leaves above me wave in the wind for what seems like a lifetime. Then all the sudden I open my eyes, and I'm lying on a sleeping bag in a tent.
I sit up, and my throat still feels sore, and for a moment my vision is blurry and I feel confused. Then I focus on a face looking down on me.
"Sophie? Can you hear me?" It's Hagger.
"Ya, I can also smell your breath," I say waving a hand in front of my nose teasingly.
"She's fine," Hagger says rolling his eyes as he leaves the tent and lets my dad fuss over me.
"Does your leg feel sore? Can you move your arm? Does this hurt? How's your throat? Maybe I should get the medics. Would you like some water? Are you thirsty? Do you need food?" He talks in circles.
"Uhh... ya...Umm...I'm fine," I say, laughing on the inside. If I were a boy, I wonder if he'd still be this protective?
"Oh, okay, just take a little rest and hmm, I'll go tell Victoria you're okay," he walks out of the tent. I think I hurt his feelings. He always loves to fuss over me and Eli, making sure we have everything we need, asking if we want to have this or that. He acts just like mom used to... I wish she could see this place. She loved camping in tents. Dad's so much better now. For years I thought of Maysilee as the only one that could take care of me, but now it's like...my dad finally got a wake-up call.
I decide to rest for just a while to satisfy my dad, and I end up waking up in the middle of the night.
Maybe I should've listened to my dad. I hadn't slept for the past 24 hours, and I guess I was tired.
I sit up and find my scrapbook out, sitting on top of my bag, opened to a page with a picture of Jason and Maysilee, sitting on a log in the woods, laughing. She was so pretty...
I shake my head so I don't start crying and shut the book.
Then I hear hushed voices out by the fire pit.
"Well, why shouldn't we just take them now? Her dad would never know. Neither would that old mess. Who was he? Uhh... Hagg...Hagger! Hagger'd never come after us. He'd never know where they were," says a voice I don't have a name for.
I press my ear against the tent flap, and accidently lean forward a bit too much and ruffle my sleeping bag.
"Did you hear that?" says the same voice. He's moving toward my tent.
I silently slip back into my sleeping bag. When he opens the tent flap, I do fake breathing and act like I'm having a nightmare by moving my feet occasionally. He closes the tent flap and goes back to the fire.
"Just her, she's still asleep," he says, and then I hear him sit down on a log next to the fire. I stand back up to listen at the flap of the tent.
"What if she's not any better by tomorrow? What if we have to carry her out of the tent in the middle of the night? Someone might hear us," says Freddy. SAYS FREDDY?!
I nearly fall over, but manage to keep myself from falling out of the tent.
"She's awake!" Freddy whispers.
"Would you focus?! She's asleep, I just saw her! She's just moving around!" says the mysterious voice, "If we get her and him, and get out here before sunrise, we're home free, and we're rich!"
"Ya, ya, I know, the president is gonna pay plenty for them, but what do I do afterwards? I can't go back home! They'd know I was part of it!" Freddy says to the mysterious voice.
"Go back and say... you escaped, that they took you, Jason, and Sophie, and you got away," replies the mysterious voice.
"All right, I'm in, but I get 60%," Freddy says and walks off.
I hear footsteps, and the mysterious man slowly walks off into the campsite. I slowly crawl back into my sleeping bag. Freddy, traitor, me, Capitol, president, Jason, money, scary man, kidnap, me, me, me. I run these words through my head all night. None of them make sense, not together anyway.
The sun will rise in a few hours, but I have to talk to Jason now. I immediately make a b-line for Jason's tent. I sprint to it. I reach it, I enter, and I slam the tent flap closed behind me. Jason is still asleep, wearing nothing but his pants. Thank goodness he had pants on.
I shake him awake, and he eventually wakes up.
"Ahhh!" He yells as he wakes up to me shaking him.
"Shh!" I whisper back, "I gotta tell you something,"
I tell him everything, and when I'm finished all he does is sit there, digesting what I've told him.
"I know, I never thought Freddy would betray us, but...Jason, we've gotta leave, tomorrow," I say.
"How? I have my family, you have yours. We'd never get out of here without anyone noticing. How would we? Where would we go? How would we defend ourselves? Who could we trust? Is Hagger..." he takes a gulp, "in on it?"
"Not that I know, and I don't know. I hadn't thought that far ahead," I say sitting down in frustration.
"Maybe we could tell 13, get everyone in on it. Then when Freddy and that guy come to get us, they'll be outnumbered," Jason suggests.
"That could work, but if what they were saying was the truth, they gave me the idea that they wouldn't be alone. They're planning on taking us to the Capitol to sell to the president or something. Anyway, they'll have some Capitol guards here, wouldn't they?" I ask.
"I don't know, probably. I mean, if we're that important. Important enough for Freddy to lie to us, to trick us, to lead us to our death." Jason looks like an angry cartoon character. All that's missing is the smoke coming out of his ears.
"We should probably sleep in shifts, just in case they decide to come... early. Should we tell anyone?" I say, trying to keep his mind on something other than how much he despises Freddy.
"I'll go first, and no, that's what got us into this mess, including our families," Jason says scooting a box over by the tent flap to sit on.
I lay down, but I don't sleep. An hour later Jason nudges me, but he didn't need to, I never slept.
I get up, sit down, and think. All I can think about is two words. Freddy, liar, Freddy, liar, Freddy, liar, Freddy, liar.
I fall off the box and realize I drifted off to sleep for a second.
"What happened?" Jason asks, yawning.
"I uh, nothing, just...staying alert," I say, sitting on the box as if I'd been here for the entire time.
Jason falls back to sleep, he starts snoring, great.
We sleep on and off all night, but by morning, I'm still worried about Freddy and his mystery employer.
Jason and I get up and come out of the tent to get breakfast. My dad's already sitting by the fire, putting his wet shirt on a bush to dry it off in the sun.
Jason and I sit down next to the fire. The smoke smells nice in the morning air.
We talk in hushed voices about our plan.
At exactly 2PM, we'll sneak into the big field with the airplanes and helicopters. We're gonna get Hagger to come and pilot a helicopter away from here, and Victoria will be in charge of bringing our families to meet us at the rendezvous point, a big field right outside of the Capitol, since that's the nearest point to meet.
We sit in silence for a while, and eventually Freddy and Hagger are awake, talking about something.
They walk over to the fire and sit down. I immediately walk away in disgust, that liar, that traitor. Jason follows me and we sit by a broken tree log near the woods.
Hagger comes a bit later, and he already knows something's going on.
"All right, spill the beans, I'm listenin'," he says.
I don't know where to begin, Jason tells him everything. I occasionally nod.
"So, basically, Freddy's a stinking traitor. You need me to fly a helicopter to escape from him and the Capitol troops and guards who are coming to kidnap you, and I haven't had breakfast yet!?" Hagger asks.
"Glad you understand, so you'll help us?" Jason asks.
"Sure, what have I got to lose?" Hagger says.
I wish I could say, "Everything!", but since he's risking his life to help us, I decide to keep that comment to myself.
At 1:30PM, I'm packing a small backpack and putting it on my shoulders, kissing Eli goodbye, and saying goodbye to my dad in my head. If he knew I was leaving, and why, he'd kill Freddy, and stop me from leaving. Jason and I say we have training and walk to the airfield.
I spot Hagger sneaking into a high tech helicopter that looks brand new.
"Nice choice," Jason says, scaring Hagger half to death.
"Don't scare me like that boy!" Hagger tells him in a hushed voice.
"All right, get in you two," he says, getting on his head set.
I get in, and just as we're closing the doors and taking off, I see a big, black, jet thing cover the sky over district 13.
It starts dropping little bags of something, Hagger starts pulling masks out from the front of the helicopter and yelling for us to put them on.
"What are those?!" I ask in bewilderment.
"Sleep syrup times one million. Everyone that breathes it in'll be asleep till tomorrow night. It doesn't hurt you though," he says, taking off.
I realize that means Victoria, dad, Eli, Jason's family.
We knew this would put us at risk, but a whole district of people?
Jason has a look of shock on his face.
Then all the sudden, we're hit by a blast from the jet. They know we're trying to escape.
We're hit by another blast, but this one is like an electric buzz that goes through the entire helicopter. Then we start going down. All the sudden, we're hit by a kind of pole that sinks itself into the helicopter's wall and has a rope that holds us in space. It begins to reel us in, into the jet. Into our doom.
"I'm sorry we got you into this Hagger," I say as we meet the jet, and we enter it.
"My years we're numbered anyway, thanks for making them exciting" he says sarcastically, closing his eyes. No doubt thinking they'll reel us into some sort of deadly trap.
Jason takes my hand. We hold onto each other's sweaty hands until our damaged doors are busted opened by men in black suits. Then we're both grabbed from opposite sides of the helicopter, our hands ripped apart.
We're in a large room that, I'm guessing, is the middle of the jet.
I see Freddy talking with some guy, probably the one from last night, on the other side of the room. Then they approach us.
Hagger is held at gunpoint, just like Jason and I, and our hands are tied behind our backs.
Freddy sits down in a chair. We're in a circle around him.
The first thing Jason does is get a mouthful of spit, and he gets Freddy right in the eye.
"That was uncalled for," Freddy says, signaling to the man holding Jason.
The man forces him to his knees.
Freddy comes close to him, "Don't blame me for this. Whatever pays is what I do. I wasn't getting paid to play nice with you, so why bother?" He says, then returns to his chair.
"And Hagger, how foolish you must feel to have trusted me!" Freddy yells.
"You disappointed me Freddy," is all Hagger says in reply.
"What about you? Sophie? Did I disappoint you?" he asks me.
I don't look at him. I stare at the floor, staying silent.
"Did I or did I not disappoint you?!" he demands an answer.
I stand my ground.
He motions to the guard holding my hands letting out a deadly smile across his lips.
The man shoves me to the ground. I land on my face.
I expect my face is going to be red for a bit, but as I was before, I stay silent.
"Sophie!" Jason yells struggling against his restraints.
The man grabs me again and forces me to my knees, like Jason.
I look him in the eye and give him a calm look.
He nods, then glares at Freddy.
"Take her to cell..." Freddy thinks for a while, "D, cell D," he decides.
The man holding my arms tugs me toward a hallway, and just as the door closes, I hear what cell Jason is staying in.
"Take the boy to cell B," Freddy instructs, Jason is pulled toward the hallway I'm being taken down.
"What about this one?" The one holding Hagger asks.
"Oh, him? He's gonna stay in A," Freddy says.
But Hagger doesn't come down the hallway Jason and I are in.
Jason and I are pulled for awhile. Then finally I am shoved into a cell marked "D."
Jason is two doors down from me, in B.
"Jason? Jason?" I whisper from the bars that connect me to cell C, then continue to cell B.
"Are you okay Sophie?" he answers.
"Ya, it's just sore," I say rubbing my cheek where I hit the floor.
"What do we do?" I ask.
"I don't know, where's Hagger?" he asks.
"I'm not sure, they took him down the other hallway," I reply.
"For now, I guess we're stuck," he says, sitting down on his cell floor.
We hang around for about two days, maybe three. There's no window, so I can't see the sun set and rise.
About three times a day there's been a small bag with a few crackers and a slice of cheese slid underneath my door, and I can't decide whether it's someone making sure their prize doesn't starve, or whether it's someone slipping me food.
On the second day, a man went into cell C and blocked it off, so I can no longer hear or see Jason, and he can't hear or see me. I don't even know if Hagger and Jason are still on the same jet as me.
No one has opened the door to my cell. No one has made a sound. I've just sat in the quiet, watching water drip from a crack in the ceiling, and make a small puddle in the center of the floor. This makes it very hard to sleep without getting wet.
I've given up the attempt to shake the bars on the metal door trapping me in this cell. They won't budge.
I sit around for a few hours, then finally decide it's close enough to night time to go to sleep. I lie down in my damp cell and close my eyes.
It feels like it's only been seconds when I'm being lifted up and having my hands tied behind my back. The same man that lugged me into my cell is now tugging me out of it. We go through a few hallways, then a door opens on the side of the jet, and we exit into sunlight. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust after being in a dark cell for so long.
I realize we landed on a large field. I can see buildings in the distance. I spot Freddy talking to a tall man in a gray suit beside a truck.
I glare at him and he looks me in the eye for half a second, then goes back to his conversation.
I haven't seen Jason, and I'm starting to wonder if he was taken off the jet somewhere else.
I'm tied to a large metal pole near the truck. It seems to be some sort of flag pole, but it's much too large to climb and un-tie myself. The man in the gray suit comes over to me with Freddy trailing behind him.
"Ah, she's great, young enough, small enough, innocent enough. Freddy you didn't let me down," he says, handing Freddy a pouch I assume is filled with money.
Freddy walks off, but I see him look back for a moment. I hope he's wondering if what he's done was the right thing to do.
I decide to let him know it wasn't, "Hey Freddy!" I yell at him. He turns around, "If this is how you treat your friends, I'd hate to be you're enem-"
The man that tugged me out here wraps a cloth around my mouth, so I can't talk.
Almost as bad as losing my voice, but worse, it makes me even more mad, makes me feel like if I needed to say something, I couldn't say it and get in trouble later. Now I just plain can't talk at all.
"Hm, upset are we?" The man in the gray suit asks me.
"Mmmhmmmmgumumhumhumf" I reply.
"Ha ha! Very funny...Sophie, wasn't it?" he asks.
I stay silent, not willing to be laughed at again for my inability to talk back.
"Ah, the quiet type," he says, "don't worry Sophie, by the time you're done here, you'll talk to me whenever I need an answer." He gives me a half wink, then walks off.
"I don't even know you!" I wish I could scream.
Where's Jason? Where am I? Who are these people? What have they done to Hagger? Why did Freddy chose to do this?
These are the questions that consume me on our ride to a large city. I see construction going on everywhere. Everything looks brand new.
Maybe this is the elusive Capitol they've begun to build in the past two years.
The man who has been my "guard" for the past few days once again drags me into a cell. This time it is in a building. At least this cell is larger than the last one. He takes off the cloth on my head, and unties the ropes around my hands. Then he walks out of the cell, locking the door tightly behind him.
I sit around for a few hours. Then I hear some screaming and the cell door next to mine opens. Through the small window of bars on the cell wall, I can see the cell next door to mine.
"Hey, who are you?" I whisper to the person pounding on his door to be let out. He looks about my age, maybe 14 at the most.
"I'm," he looks over at me and appears shocked, "You're Sophie," he says.
"How do you know?" I ask suspiciously.
"Who doesn't?" he asks me.
I look at him, confused.
"You're the girl they've been showing on TV, the supposed 'Rebel Leader', but I can see that's not working out for you," he tells me.
"Oh, right, that, ya, not really," I say, having forgotten.
"Who are you?" I ask him.
"Oh me? I'm Peter, but you can call me Pete," he says.
"Well, nice to have some company, Pete," I say, sitting back down on the cold cement floor, "Why did they bring you here?" I say, wanting to know.
"I don't know exactly. My older brother was in the Deathmatch last year, Brandon," he says, a tear rolls down his face.
"I'm sorry about your brother, my sister..." I remember Brandon, the one that...Maysilee killed. "They were only playing along. I'm sure she didn't want to..." I can't think of any way to give him a good reason for his brother's death, no, not death, murder.
We stay silent, and for the first time, I realize that my sister wasn't just an innocent player of the games. She was also a murderer.
"He promised that he'd come home, that he'd win. If Maysilee hadn't gotten that bow, then..." he pauses, "he would've come home." Pete finishes and sits down on his cell floor.
We stay silent for a long time, maybe hours, but of course, we can't see the sun, so we have no idea what time it is.
Eventually, as if there wasn't enough to handle with just myself and Peter here, we hear more guards, bringing another person to another cell, this time on the other side of me.
But this time, there's no resistance. It sounds like they're dragging someone.
"Oh, just leave him in there. He'll wake up eventually," one of the guards says to the other, and they leave the prisoner lying on his side. I can't see his face, but I have a bad feeling about who it is.
"Hello? Are you okay?" Peter and I whisper to the unresponsive prisoner.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Peter asks me.
"I'm pretty sure it's a boy, and I don't know, but it might be Ja-" whoever it was wakes up.
"Are you okay?" I say through the barred window.
"Sophie?" It was Jason.
"What happened? I thought we were on the same jet. Where've you been?" I say.
He stands up, "I don't know. All I remember is that they opened the door to my cell on the jet, then some guy in a gray suit came in and whispered something to a guard. Then he punched me so hard I saw stars. Then I was here."
I can't imagine why they wouldn't have brought him here with me and Peter immediately.
"Who is it?" Peter whispers to me from his window. I let Jason see through my cell and Peter and him nod to each other, "Hi, I'm Peter, who are you?" He asks Jason.
"Jason, I'm Sophie's..." he pauses, as if not sure what to say, "friend," he decides, "So, where are we, Peter?"
"No Idea. You met my brother Brandon in the Deathmatch," he says, almost accusingly.
"Oh, that's..." he sits down on the cement floor, deciding not to bring up anything more about Brandon, "So, where are we?" he asks instead.
"I have my suspicions that it's the Capitol, but... I don't think they'd bring us there," I say.
"I don't know, they're pretty stupid, if you know what I mean," Jason says, revealing a hidden knife from his sock. "When the guard opens that door, he's getting more than he bargained for."
I make a mental note to look away when the guard opens Jason's cell door.
We sit around for a few hours. Then a guard comes and opens Jason's cell door slowly. Jason is sitting on the floor.
"All right, get up," The guard says, getting the handcuffs from his belt.
While the guard's getting the handcuffs, Jason pins him to the ground, takes out his knife, and I cover my eyes and ears, then crouch down on the ground and pull my knees up to my head, wrapping my arms around them.
I remain like this until I feel someone's hand touching my shoulder, trying to get me to stand. I expect it's a guard, so I scoot away and elbow him in the leg.
I hear a faint sound of the guard falling to his butt. I brace myself for whatever punishment he's going to give me for elbowing him.
"Sophie, Sophie, Sophie," It's Peter's voice. He reaches his arm out and pulls my arms away from my knees, forcing me to open up from my shell.
"You okay?" he asks.
"How'd the door...open?" I ask, still not moving away from the back wall.
"Jason got the key from...the guard," he says, motioning to Jason who is sitting on the ground rubbing his knee.
"That was...you guys, not a guard?" I say.
"I'm sorry Sophie, I didn't mean to scare you," Jason says.
"Sorry I made you fall. Is your knee okay?" I ask.
That makes him laugh a bit. "It's fine," he says, standing, "let's get out of here before they figure out we're free." Peter and I follow Jason down the hallway. Then we see sunlight through a door with a window. We also see the shoulder of a guard, blocking our escape.
I hear Jason whisper a cuss word under his breath.
"We could wait until he goes away," Peter suggests.
"Or we could...," Jason opens the door suddenly, and it hits the guard right in the head. He falls over. I guess he'll have a headache when he wakes up.
We go out the door. After scooting across the wall on the outside of the...building? Prison? House? It could be anything, really, we find a small car with an open roof. A word comes to my mind and struggles into reality, jeep. I've seen a couple of those when guards were driving around in town, back in district 12.
I miss home, and I hope desperately that after the war, I can return there. But then again, it was fun when Maysilee was there. It was fun when Jason fed us and let us stay with him, but was it ever fun because it was home? No, the only thing that made it "home" was the people, not the place. If I live through the war, I want to go somewhere where I can forget, somewhere I can be alone. That way I don't have to look out for anyone except myself, I don't have to protect anyone. No one has to be hurt because of me.
I push these thoughts out of my mind and sit down in the back of the jeep as Jason begins to do something he calls hot wiring to the car. It starts after a while, and the three of us begin driving along a path next to a train track.
"So, you think they'll catch us?" Peter asks Jason.
"I'm not sure. No one was out when we left. Sure they'll know we escaped. They might even know we used the jeep, but do they know which way we went?" Jason asks.
"Good point," Peter thinks about this.
"How much of a lead do you think we have if they realize we left and start to follow the track both ways?" I ask.
"About..." he thinks for a moment, "maybe like... about fifteen minutes tops," he finally decides.
We drive all day, and finally we run out of gas.
"Awww...Crap!" Jason yells, punching the steering wheel with his fist.
"We can ditch the jeep in the bushes and start walking into the woods. They won't expect us to the leave the tracks," Peter suggests.
"Maybe, but we won't be alone in the woods, certain... animals are in the woods hunting for a meal as we speak," Jason replies.
"Better than getting hunted by...Freddy?" Peter remembers Freddy's name.
"Ya, Freddy," I say, almost in a growl.
We push the jeep into a large pond and it begins to sink. Then only the top is visible. We begin throwing pine needles and mud on top of it to camouflage it. I grab a big bunch of sticks, mud, and leaves, and I really wanna dump it right in the middle of the jeep to make it look like the bottom of the pond, so I step into the water a bit, then a little further, then one more...