Maren McRae, 15 (Seeking allies)

People call me difficult. I call them difficult.

I'm not the one who runs a country by killing kids and inspiring fear in everyone. I don't occupy a District like an army, watching people work themselves to death instead of helping so none of us have to work so hard. I'm just a girl who doesn't stay quiet and not mention how messed up things are. According to them, that makes me difficult.

It had not been a good day. It's not easy to work and go to school at the same time. It's even harder when you're fifteen, the work is picking rocks out of a field, and the schoolbooks are faded and missing pages because they're so old. I'd stayed up nearly until morning last night studying just to stay afloat, and as soon as the sun came up, it was time to go to work. I'd been bending and standing for hours, lugging twenty-pound rocks out of a field after the spring floods washed them back in. My muscles ached and my back felt like it was on fire.

I was never one to sneak by. When I had something to say, I said it, which got me in trouble a lot. We workers had a million tricks to get out of work. We would pretend to hoe the same spot over and over, like there was an especially rough patch of dirt we had to break through. We shoved seeds into the ground without tilling it. We shook the trees when no one was looking instead of climbing all the way up to the top. I didn't resent the people who did that, but I resented the way we had to go about it. All those sneaky tricks implied the work was bearable and that we were cutting corners. We shouldn't have had to do any of those things. We shouldn't be working in conditions like that. And nothing was ever going to change if nobody said anything.

I set my rock back on the ground and sat on it. Straight away, an overseer ran over to read me the riot act. I didn't get up.

"What is going on here?" the overseer asked.

"A break," I said.

"There are no breaks," the overseer said.

"Really? Because I'm taking one," I said.

"We gonna do this again, McRae?" he asked.

"Yeah, we are," I said. I knew exactly what he meant. I'd gotten whipped plenty of times before. What he didn't know was that our work sucked so bad and I was so tired that I would rather lean against a whipping post and feel a whip on already thick and callused skin than pick up one more rock.

The overseer gestured to the Peacekeepers, and I rose. I never gave them unnecessary trouble. If I was the slighest bit difficult, they could say I was the problem. I walked proudly and calmly between the Peacekeepers, giving them no ammunition against me as they led a teenager to have the skin flayed from her back. It was a shameful sight. Someday, we wouldn't be able to take it anymore.

Jayson Dable- 17

"Are you ready for this?" I asked.

"Yes!" the kids surrounding me yelled.

"Are you sure!" I asked.

"Yes!" they screamed.

"All right. Here goes!" I said. I hefted the giant sack of seeds they were all clustered around- the one they were sure no one was strong enough to lift. They cheered wildly as I lifted it over my head. To be fair, it wasn't as heavy as they thought it was. It looked bigger when you were little. But it was the biggest sack of seeds we used, and none of the other workers ever lifted it alone. Mostly because it was stupid and you could get hurt. But sometimes... I was a little stupid.

A menacing figure approached from the other side of the field, and some of the children scattered as they saw him coming. The others fell silent, leaving me to face the villain.

"Jayson, what are you doing?" Overseer Mustard said.

"Lifting some seeds," I said, still carrying the bag.

"Why?" he asked, in the exasperated tone he usually used when speaking to me.

"Because they are here and they need to be over there," I said, shifting the bag to point to an open furrow waiting to be seeded.

"And you had to do this alone," he said.

"What, it's not like it's heavy," I said.

"You may be invincible now, but someday you're going to hurt yourself. You only have one back, boy," he said. I set the bag on the ground.

"Okay, I'll carry this little one instead," I said, picking up a smaller bag of seeds. The bag happened to have a little boy sitting on it, but that wasn't important. The boy yelped as I scooped him up along with the seeds so he sat enthroned on the bag in my arms. The remaining children gasped in awe.

"It's your body," Overseer Mustard said. "Don't come crying to me if you break it. And I won't lower your quota, either."

Two weeks later, it was Reaping Day. I wasn't nervous about it. I never won anything- just a pie-eating contest once, and that was because we could only afford ten pies. There was no way I was going to get picked.

"Jayson Dable!" Snapdragon called. Guess there's a first time for everything.

It wasn't under the best of circumstances, but it was great to have the entire District looking at me on that stage. I was looking fine, too. I wore my best clothes. They didn't even have any rips

"Let's hear from our brave Tributes!" Snapdragon said. I seized my chance and the microphone.

"Hey everyone, I'm Jayson Dable and what do I say? Bring it on!" I said, and I flexed for the crowd. Most of them were too stunned to say anything, but a few of the littler kids cheered. There was no use being all doom and gloom about it. I got Reaped and that was that. It didn't mean I had to give up and die. I was big. I was strong. People like me won the Games. Like... I tried to think of the last Eleven Victor like me and drew a blank. Okay, so it's been a while. That just means it's about time for it to happen.

Maren is tall and lean with dark hair and skin. Her eyes are squinty and her nose is pointy. Sadly, she suffers from Resting Grumpy Face. Jayson is the same: big buff white dude.