37th Hunger Games: Jackie Ledger, District 10, age 15
She and Larni and Dell make it clear of the Cornucopia, and though they don't have much between them, they do all right for the first few days.
Dell builds a snare trap that catches two squirrels, and Larni skins and cooks them saying she's had plenty of practice. She and Larni also managed to grab water bottles and a knife, and their mentors sends matches to help with the cold nights. They actually become friends out in the woodlands, forced to huddle together once the sun goes down, just three fifteen-year-old girls surviving day to day against the odds. She swears every day gets a little colder, an observation borne out when it starts to snow on the fourth afternoon.
It's nice to have someone else to talk to, she decides. Someone to trust to cover your back. No wonder the volunteers—Careers as they call them in District Twelve according to Larni—join together, at least until they kill the others. Also someone to share the work, and to take turns standing guard at night so they can actually get some sleep.
The only problem with having other people around, she decides, is when they have to make a difficult decision. If she had been on her own, she knows in her heart she would have killed the two boys who bungled an attack on them.
Of course, she's the one that ended up with a bleeding face, so maybe she's just biased. Dell is practical enough to realize that they can't trust the boys, but also doesn't feel right about killing them in cold blood. Larni, who had no trouble gutting squirrels, but says people are a completely different matter isn't keen on the idea either. Finally they agree to put it to a vote. Each of them pick up an acorn and a rock, throw one in the fire, stick the other in a bag without looking.
When they empty the bag, for all the talk of mercy, there are two rocks and she volunteers to do the job. The bigger boy she thinks was from District Eleven. Still not big, really, and he gave up easy enough when he was outnumbered. The smaller boy was the one she fought with. District Five, she's pretty sure. He cut her twice before she knocked the knife out of his hand and belted him in the balls so hard he spent ten minutes gasping for air. Both of them are tied to trees with some of Dell's braided vine ropes. The kid from Eleven has a pleading look in his eyes as she opens up his throat with her knife. The little bastard from Five tries to kick her, writhing madly in his ties. He knows she has no mercy for him.
When it's done, she unties them for the hovercraft to collect, and makes sure her allies don't watch her puking since she's supposed to be the tough one. Neither of them says anything when she gets back.
Three days later the "Career band" hits them, or what's left of the volunteer lot anyway. Dell goes down quick, a spear through her guts and Larni hesitates on a strike and the boy from Two takes off her hand.
She however manages to get one knife into the girl from One, and another into the boy from Four before she realizes the fight is lost.
She flees deeper into the woods, a temporary reprieve, she thinks, until she sees the four faces on the night-time sky. Neither of her blows should have been deadly, but she figures the boy from Two might have finished them when he had the chance.
Two more cannons sound the next day, and she's pretty sure it's just her and him hunting each other. He's got her by head and shoulders, easily eighty pounds and she is unarmed. None of that matters when something he eats or drinks makes him sick, and she finds him squatting and moaning, his weapons just out of his reach.