I know I know, It's been over a month since I last updated and I apologize for that. I've had two family members die and its just been a tad hectic and sad in my house lately. With Assignments due and work on top of all that I had no time at all, so I hope you guys forgive me!
Russell Darcy, 14, D5
Ever since Gray died a few days ago, Katie has been distant and twitchy, always glancing around as though she expects one of those monsters to drop out of thin air and tear her to pieces. She didn't say much about it, but all you have to do is name drop greapers and it's enough to send someone's stomach into somersault territory. They're some of the worst mutts the Capitol has ever sent into the games, and they've been the source of my nightmares more than a few times.
"You hungry?" I ask, offering her one of our apples. She tilts her head up and stares at me for the shortest second, before shaking her head and returning her attention to the stick she's been whittling away at.
"Suit yourself." I smile, taking a bite out of the apple. They aren't keeping as fresh as I'd like them to, and the flesh feels chalky and filmy, but its food nonetheless and that's enough for me. "How much more travelling do you want to do today?" I ask her, hoping to at least try and get some kind of conversation going.
This piques her interest. "Maybe another half mile, and then we could settle down for the night."
"Sounds good to me." I grin.
She looks over at me and smiles, but there's something else behind it, something I just can't place. "You take the lead alright?" She says.
"Sounds fine to me." I reply, writing the weird look off to just be nerves regarding the greapers. I know I'd be nervous if I'd seen them, that's for sure.
Grant Green, 13, D4
I've fallen head over heels in love with a girl five years my senior. At the most inopportune time as well, mind you.
It's that which I'm thinking about now as we trek through the shrubbery and away from our clearing, holding true to the decision we made days ago about not staying in one place for too long. She's walking ahead of me, both arms folded across her chest, the diary wedged fast between one palm and her parka. Even though it's ridiculous, I feel a pang of jealousy whenever I think of her diary and how it was a gift from her dead boyfriend. He's been dead for almost a year and she's still so dedicated to speaking with him through it. Right now she's got a wide gash on her right palm that she claims to have gotten by accident. I know better than that though. I know she's still been writing in that diary, even though there's nothing else she could use for ink around here. As grotesque as it is, I can't help but admire that amount of dedication. I know she'll probably never care about me like that, even if I care about her.
She knows how much that boy loved her. Maybe I ought to let her know how I feel too.
This is it. I've got to tell her. I clear my throat, take a big breath, and the words come out in a mish mash jumble, but they come out all the same.
"I think maybe I'm a little in love with you."
She stops dead in her tracks and turns around to face me. "Aren't I a little old for you?" She asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Unfortunately." I sigh.
She laughs, and it's both soft and shrill all at once, like a birds. She presses one of her hands against my cheek, setting my skin on fire, when seconds before it had been ice cold. "You're the sweetest thing."
"And you're the most beautiful." I stammer.
She blushes, for the first time taken by surprise, and when she looks at her feet and mumbles a "Thank you," I know she doesn't believe it, which is ridiculous.
"No I really mean it." I tell her, even though I can feel a nervous lump building up in my throat as I do. "Don't just brush it off like that. You're the most beautiful person I've ever met, and you need to know that. You need to know it's true."
What she does next leaves me the surprised one. She leans down, and ever so lightly brushes her lips against my forehead, and it's enough to turn my legs to jelly. "I'm too old for you Grant Green." She tells me when she pulls away, resting one hand on each of my shoulders to keep me steady. "But you make me wish I wasn't."
Flinch Lightwood, 17, D3
I've got to hand it to Modest, she's very good at keeping me distracted, or managing to keep me feeling upbeat even when Allius comes up in conversation. Of course I'm not going to be perfectly fine, but she doesn't mind me being a little upset here and there, so long as I'm not in the state I was the day following the bloodbath. For us to be a team, I need to be functional. I'm trying my best to stay that way.
"God I'm hungry." She wheezes, sitting down against a tree. We've been moving during the night and sleeping when we can during the day, and it's taking its toll on us. Add that to the fact that her dried fruit ration ran out pretty quickly, and I guess you could say we aren't doing too well at all. She was already thin to begin with, but now I can see the lines of her jaw poking through flesh where they should never been seen, and her collar bone is beginning to look more garish than feminine.
"If it's any consolation I think everyone's pretty hungry right now." I say, thinking about the state we found the Cornucopia in when we checked it late last night. The Careers were nowhere to be seen and the whole clearing looked like a bomb had gone off in it. When the girl from 4's face lit up in the sky later that night it furthered our suspicion that it was Gamemaker driven destruction rather than one of the boys throwing an almighty hissy fit. They were too strong to lose one of their own from any other tributes this early in the game after all. It had to be the Gamemakers
"Flinch can I ask you something?" Modest asks, breaking me out of my thoughts. "I know it's probably bad manners to ask about, but I'm too curious for my own good I guess."
My mind runs through a list of things she could be leaning towards, and before I can object she just blurts it out. "I was wondering how you got that scar on your face."
My hand automatically reaches up to touch it, resting on the puckered skin that stretches across the left side of my face. I can't help but admire the brashness of the question; most people tend to just act like the scar doesn't even exist.
"Ally, myself and a couple of friends used to work in this factory part time, you know, what with the price of living being so high and all." I smile; recollecting what for the most part had been happy memories. "There was this one piece of equipment that had a rope with a huge hook thing on the end they used to move other equipment around with. One day Allius was supposed to be securing it onto something and she slipped. The rope went flying through the air and the hook smacked me in the face, then hey presto, I got my scar."
Modest's face blanches. "I'm sorry, I had no idea.."
"It'd involve her? Don't worry about it. I don't mind. I mean it still hurts to think about her, but I'm not going to go all manic depressed on you again. I promise." I tell her, squeezing her hand in reassurance.
"It must be so hard, losing someone you care so much about like this. I lost my parents, but that was a whole different situation to yours. Yours just seems unfair."
"All death is unfair, one way or the other. We've just got to get used to that."
Jarred Emery, 17, D2
Career kids never really get taught how to ration their supplies. The chance of us losing everything is so slim no one has ever really been bothered with it. Right now we all could have used just one class to let us know how to deal on minimal food. Even though none of us want to admit it, we're all feeling the hunger pangs, and we're feeling them hard.
It turned out that the girls had packed most of our food supplies in Brynn's bag, and of course that disappeared along with her body and my spear days ago. Brock's pack had what Rose tells me were the 'emergency' rations. That's something of a joke now; we've got none left. Now it's just the four of us sitting by a ledge, twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do next.
"We could eat each other." Brock jokes, resting his head atop his knees as he snickers. "What was that kid's name from three years ago? Titus? He did alright when he went that way. Well, until the whole 'buried alive in an avalanche' incident of course."
"Don't be disgusting." Rose mutters, eyeing him with what I've come to view as her trademark disdain. Of course it's not usually Brock who is on the receiving end of that look. Usually it only comes about when she's looking at me, right after I've done something she views as irreprehensible. I don't know how she can look at me that way considering our circumstances. It's not like we're in every day society any more. We're in the Hunger Games, and whether she likes it or not I'm going to continue making the right kind of decisions, the ones the others can't make. My aim here is to stay alive. I can deal with her disdain.
"Well we can't all have a well-bred victor's daughter sense of humor now can we?" Brock snaps back, and Aria shoves him hard, her way of telling him to shut it. It's amusing how quickly he responds to her push, settling back down, staring at his hands like an embarrassed child, and I can't help but smirk.
"What are you smirking about then?" Aria asks me, her eyes hard as stone and unblinking.
I shrug. "Nothing you should bother yourself with." Though in truth she really should. Even if neither of them has realized it, they've crossed the line between allies to friends, something which can only mean pain in these games. If their budding reliance on one another wasn't such an advantage for me I would let them know they're playing into dangerous territory. Of course I'm not going to do that though.
I'd much rather sit back and enjoy the show.
Demeter Ross, 17, D9
You know that saying adults go on about, the one where you'll find the thing you're looking for when you're not actually looking for it? Well today the three of us proved that theory right in what was perhaps the most frightening way something like that could happen. We were just plodding along, bickering about what our next meal would be when Hercules fell from a ledge we didn't even see coming. I screamed, he screamed, even Rye made some kind of weird animal noise. Then there was a loud thump, and Hercules was laughing. Not screaming or as I'd thought would be more likely, deathly silence, but laughing.
"You alright down there Herc?" Rye had blubbered, and he'd stuck his head back up in the same way cartoon moles used to on the cartoons I'd seen played in the village square on summer nights, a treat the Mayor's daughter always insisted on sharing. Anywhere else the comparison would have cracked me up, but here it just made me feel even more homesick, the gnawing in my heart going well into overdrive.
"You guys have to check this place out." He grinned, bobbing back down out of sight. "There's some easy footholds to follow, come on!"
I looked over at Rye and she just shrugged, before kneeling down and tentatively lowering herself down the void. With no other real option I crouched down and followed, trying to ignore the various creepy crawleys I could see scuttling about as I made my way down. My feet found level ground a lot sooner than I would have thought, and as my eyes adjusted to the slightly more dingy light I found myself staring into the entrance of a shallow cavern, twice as wide as I am tall, with what seemed to be a tiny passage veering to the left, which could only be accessed on all fours. A few specks of light filtering in from it could only mean it lead to a second opening.
"Who woulda thunk it hey?" Rye beamed. "Herc just falling into our base camp like the demi god he is."
"Our base camp?" Herc questioned, his eyebrows raised.
Rye smiled, nodding her head ecstatically. "Can you think of anywhere better than this around here?"
"Well no, probably not."
"Then I guess this'll have to be it."
Airick Marloth, 15, D8
"All I want right now is some insect repellent, do you think that's t–tt-too much to ask?" Spencer moans, scratching away at the huge welts covering his arms. Last night the arena's insects were well and truly doing their rounds, and poor Spencer seemed to be their number one pit stop.
"I'd really like something to quell my nausea, but it's not gonna happen."
"What about sponsors?" He moans, glaring up at the sky. "Surely we've got someone out there who could spare some dough for a little rrrrrelief?"
"Spence, we've been sitting in a tree for three days straight just about, why would anyone waste their money on us?" I say, pulling my parka up to shield my cheeks from the wind. "They're probably all just waiting for someone to off us already."
"That's an exxxtremely p-pessimistic outlook Airick."
"Well this is an extremely pessimistic situation."
"Touché"
Katie Chandler, 12, D6
Russell is walking a few paces ahead of me, completely zoned out and in his own world. His dragging his feet as he walks, paying no heed to the amount of noise he makes, and I just can't excuse that, not anymore. Maybe I would have a few days ago, but that was before I knew there were greapers lurking about. After seeing that thing tear apart Gray I'm not taking any chances. Russ has to go, and it has to be now.
Even as I pull the little knife out and flick it into my sleeve I feel regret washing over me. Despite how annoying the kid has been, he's been a very loyal ally. At the very least I decide I'll make it quick, I'll make sure he feels safe.
You're going soft, my mind snickers, but I ignore it, and instead I call out to Russ, forcing a plethora of tears to stream down my cheeks. Crocodile tears always work a treat.
He turns straight away, his face awash with concern, and I can't help but hate him for his immediate worry. "What's wrong?"
"I want to go home." I blubber, reaching my arms out towards him.
He rushes over, ever the obedient and kind hearted ally, wrapping me up in his teddy bear hug. "Don't cry Katie, It'll be ok. I promise."
"Not for you though Russ." I whisper, snaking my arm around his neck.
He tilts it in trademark confusion, like a little puppy, and asks, "What do you mean Katie?"
I slide the blade across his artery in answer, and try not to feel a thing as his hands grip me tight before the muscles slacken and his blood stains the green around my collar brown.
Brock Emerald, 18, D1
Hunger is something new to me. I'd always known the games would be tough, but nothing could have ever prepared me for this. The constant gnawing feeling, the way every tiny morsel that hits my stomach seems to disappear on contact and never ever seems to satiate its needs.
I'm so busy thinking about how hungry I am that I don't see the birds straight away. That's kind of ridiculous, seeing as when I do see them I can hardly understand how I missed them in the first place. Twenty or so metres ahead of us, across a small field and in amongst a cluster of trees is a group of about ten to twenty birds, each one a different color of the rainbow, each as equally fat as the other. Their wings are tiny and more closely resemble a plucked chicken wing than a feathered one, with long flamingo necks that support a parrot like head.
"Is that a dodo?" Rose gasps, pointing towards the creatures with her mouth agape.
Jarred narrows his eyes. "What do you mean by dodo?"
"It's a kind of bird, they went extinct in ancient times, we….you know what never mind."
"Do you think they taste good?" I stammer, feeling my mouth water almost as quickly as my eyes do. Food. We've found food.
"Probably," Aria starts, "but I think we should wait before we just.."
"Stuff waiting I'm getting me a chicken dinner." I shout over her, freeing my spear and making my way towards the group of waddling birds. Aria hisses something at me, but I ignore it. All I can think about is how good it'll be to finally crush the gnawing in my gut, to shut it right up with the first decent meal I've had in almost a week.
I'm not all that quiet when I walk, let alone creep along, and it doesn't take much for the birds to notice my presence. Most of them start to back away, but one holds its ground, head tilted to the side, one beady black eye looking back at me with about as much comprehension of what's going on as a slug. "I get what people mean by bird brained." I chuckle, raising the spear up, getting ready to strike the bird right through the neck. It doesn't make a sound, it just looks back up at me, it's gaze unblinking.
And then in a ball of fire that sticks to my skin and sears its way right through, the damn thing blows right up.
Tributes Killed This Chapter
15- Russell Darcy, aged fourteen, District Six
OOOOOooooOOO Cliffhanger. I feel cruel.
Starting next chapter there will be more deaths. No more warming up to the games, these kids will be getting desperate.