Chapter 10

The water thrashes, throws me like I weigh nothing, and the whole time I cannot breathe. I can hold my breath underwater abnormally long, but I know that I have to figure out which way is up and which way is down soon, because I can't hold out much longer. My lungs tighten, burning. I thrash desperately but that only makes it worse.

Eventually I hit the hard, sandy island, and the water drags me, my knees scraping against the dirt and pebbles. The current slows down after that. It still drags me, but now not so much that I can't swim. Every inch of my body is sore and weak. It's a struggle to resurface, but as soon as I do I take in precious air. I look around for Arielle, shivering. My teeth are chattering so hard at one point I bite down on my lower lip, tasting blood.

I scan my surroundings, trying to figure out where I've ended up. I'm east of the pillar, the second level of which is now flooded. The first level was submerged last night around the same time…And that's when it hits me. Starting with the second night here, the water has submerged one level of the pillar, and one of the islands has flooded.

That means that in the next two nights the remaining two islands will sink, and only the top of the Cornucopia will stay standing.

I swallow. Will they flood the Cornucopia after that? Will this entire arena just be an endless body of water and they'll wait for the remaining tributes to drown until they have a winner?

"Arielle?" I call out to the nothingness that surrounds me. I suddenly am desperate to find her, so that I don't have be alone with this terrifying realization.

"Nolan?" Yes, at this point I will even take Nolan. No response. "Arielle!" I scream.

I unzip my jacket. Soaked as it is, it provides little warmth and will slow me down when I swim. I paddle away, leaving the jacket behind and screaming Arielle and Nolan's names until my throat is hoarse.

"Nolan!" I call out again.

"Finnick!" someone calls back. The voice is high, female. Arielle.

"Arielle! Arielle!" I call. Turning around in circles. Then I see her hand in the air, waving at me. I can just make her out under the pale glow of the moon.

"Over here, Finnick!" Arielle says.

"Arielle! Stay there!" I say. Better I swim to her.

I dive under. Somewhat used to the motions of the current by now, I feel a little bit like my old self again. It's not exactly like it is when I swim in District 4—where the water doesn't control me, but rather I effortlessly control myself—but at least I'm not struggling as hard.

I resurface, spitting water out of my mouth. I reach her and see that she is clutching the branch of a tree for dear life. She has a manic look to her. Her hair has fallen out of her ponytail, surrounding her in thick, damp strands. Her skin is so pale and her lips are blue. She was wearing her sword sheath before the wave hit but now it's gone; probably lost in the water along with all our other valuables.

We embrace, and it's purely for practical reasons. . We are just both so unbearably cold that we are desperate for even a trace of body warmth. Her body isn't warm though. It's just cold and wet. I rub her arms furiously, and she does the same for me.

"I can't feel my feet. It's so c-cold," she says, teeth chattering.

"What do we do now?" I say. Along with nearly drowning, we have lost the cave that sheltered us, all our sponsor gifts and supplies. Even Arielle's jacket, which she didn't get rid of, is completely useless. We have nothing.

"We have to find a new island," Arielle says.

"Did you figure out the pattern? Every night the water level rises and an island submerges," I say.

She nods slowly. "I see."

"So how are we supposed to figure out which freaking island is going to go tomorrow?"

"The first one was on the other side of the pillar," Arielle says. "The next one was on this side. So…it'll flood back to the other side?"

I shrug. "The island on the other side is way too far for us to swim to. We'll never make it there. Not in this condition."

So we swim to the island that is in the southeast corner of the arena, across from us. The swim is agony. Arielle, who got more beaten up by the tidal wave than I did, is exhausted, and half the time I have to carry her through the swim. At the very least, the closer we get the lower the water level since the flooding was from where we were.

When we reach the island, we keep moving. We don't stop until we find the resources to make a fire. Since all our weapons are gone, the only thing we have to protect ourselves are some large rocks we can throw at people. There are more caves on this island, but we can't risk another encounter with those vines. We sit in front of the fire, shivering and miserable. Still the warmth of the fire makes it so much more bearable that neither of us care about the risk of revealing our location. Arielle hangs her coat up on a nearby tree branch to dry.

"I think you can give up on that coat," I say.

"I'm not ready to," Arielle mutters.

I throw my head back and call into the sky, "Hey, sponsors! Why so quiet when we need you now more than ever?"

Arielle laughs joylessly.

"I wonder if Nolan made it out," I say.

"At one point after we were caught in the wave I thought I heard a cannon go off," Arielle says.

That was probably him. Our alliance is down to two. It's both a good and terrible thing. Nolan would've been hard to take down ourselves, butt he's a strong ally to lose.

"I guess we're better off just the two of us," I say, though I don't necessarily think that this is true. I'm just trying to stay positive. "I'd rather be with you than him."

"Yeah," Arielle says, staring into the fire thoughtfully.

"And you'd rather it be me," I blurt like an idiot before I can stop myself.

I hope that she thinks I just mean that Nolan was difficult, but her head jerks up from the fire to look at me. She knows what I meant, that I suspect she has feelings for me. I have the decency to feel bad for about ten seconds, but then I realize that it won't matter in a few days. Both of us, or only one of us if that person's really lucky, will be dead and that'll be it.

"You think that I…like you," she says carefully.

"No, it's nothing like that," I say.

I'm throwing her a line. She can pretend she believes me, I can pretend I never suspected anything. And then we'll both die and it won't make a difference.

"Were you awake when I kissed you in the cave?" she asks.

I cringe. "Well, I wasn't…not awake."

She slaps my knee, though gentle enough that it doesn't hurt. "I knew it! You jerk."

"How'd you know?"

"Because you looked like a moron when you came down to the shore after," she says.

"I'm sorry," I say, though I'm actually not exactly sure what I've apologized for.

I sigh and rub my thighs, attempting to will some warmth into them. That's when one of my hands goes to my pocket, suddenly remembering the token that Annie Cresta gave me. I assumed it'd be gone, just like everything else. But miraculously when I open up the zipper, I find it there. I take it out of my pocket and stare at the little koi fish in disbelief.

"What's that?" Arielle asked.

"A token I got before going into the arena," I say.

"Who gave it to you?"

I consider lying to preserve her feelings but, again, at least one of us will be dead so it doesn't matter. "This girl I know."

Arielle smiled sadly. "I should've known there was someone else. You're too good looking for there not to be."

"It's not like that," I say. Then I remember Mags's knowing smile when I mentioned it to her. "At least…I don't think it is."

We drop the conversation then, but I'm still stuck on it. I think about Annie, and how I thought she was pretty. Arielle is too, but in a harsher, more intense sort of way. Annie is the shy little girl, proper and respectful; the one you'd bring home to introduce to your parents. Arielle is the kind of girl who would be too much to handle; intense, passionate, exhilarating. She's the kind of girl your mom would hate, if she was traditional like that, and your dad would probably get a kick out of. Suppose I had my choice between the two, which kind of girl would I prefer?

Not for the first time since the reaping, I feel deeply saddened by the many things I will never get to do. I'll never turn eighteen, become an adult. I'll never get to break away from my father or tell him off, or maybe even set things right. They say the human brain is fully developed at the age of twenty-five. Mine never will be.

I'll never fall in love. I'll never get married or have children. I'll never get to decide if I even want those things in life. And now, with two girls who I at least suspect would like me enough to get to know me better, I'll never get to pick one. I won't be able to attempt dating or see if I'm as horrible at it as I suspect. Maybe in a different place, in a different world, I could've loved Arielle. But I just don't know anything anymore.

Arielle and I are too cold and miserable to say much the rest of the night. We'd had plenty of rest before the island sunk, but now we're exhausted. Arielle suggests we take turns resting and guarding again.

"I'll take the first watch," she says.

"What's the point?" I mutter. "We've lost Nolan and all of our supplies. The sponsors must've given up on me, which was about all I was good for. As far as I know, Marina's alliance is going just fine. We're out of the Games."

Arielle doesn't say anything for a long time.

"I'll take the first watch. You go sleep," she says tightly.

I'm no help, telling her things she already knows. I follow her lead and just drop it. "Thanks," I say.

There's nothing to make a bed with, so I just stretch out on the dirt and grass. It doesn't take long before I fall into a fitful sleep ridden with bad dreams.

In the morning Arielle shakes me awake. "Finnick! Wake up. You won't believe what the sponsors gave you now," she says.

I sit up and close my eyes against the bright sun. I rub them, stand, and follow her over to a long, thin box.

"Remember when you were wondering why didn't receive any gifts yesterday? It wasn't that they weren't giving you anything. It was that they were collecting money to give you this," says Arielle.

The ribbon is already untied since Arielle opened it. I pull off the top and gasp at the beauty of what's inside. A trident.

It's brand new, with three prongs on one end. I take it out of the box. It feels so natural in my hands. This has got to be one of the most expensive gifts any tribute has ever received.

"Arielle," I say, "if the islands are flooding that means the survivors are all going to end up on one island eventually."

"Yes…" she says, eying that trident with both excitement and fear.

"Perfect. If we can survive the next flood, then the rest of the tributes will be sitting ducks," I say. I point the trident at the shore, as though expecting one of the other tributes will walk into it right now. "I spoke too soon when I said we were out of the Games."