Chapter 23: Garner Sunnoria

9 Fun Facts You Probably Didn't Know about Garner

#1: She was the youngest of six children.

When Garner was born the year that Shrimp Pescal won it all, her quintet of siblings ahead of her ranged in age from 14 to 1. Her mother always used to say she was a happy surprise, detected by the tesserae field doctor only eight months after her closest brother, Grist, had been born. As she grew older and came to understand how babies are made, Garner could easily say she wasn't as surprised. Sharing a nearly flat mattress with her sisters on the dirt floor of their shack, and listening to the moans and the creak of the bedsprings in the next room, it was clear: her parents had a lot of sex. But Mother and Papa clearly loved each other, and Mother always said that was what was important. You had to be in love with someone to "make love" with them.

#2: She lost her virginity at age 15.

The concept of sex always fascinated Garner, especially after watching her eldest sister always bring boys home, both of her brothers sneak girls into their rooms, and, in the case of her middle sister, Quinoa, catching her rutting on the old air mattress with her girlfriend. So it was that, when Garner was old enough and shipped halfway across the district one summer after the Reaping, to a summer camp, she quickly became hot and bothered whenever she encountered her camp counselor. He oversaw her cabin and also the lifeguard station out by the lake. One evening, he caught her alone in the cabin when she was running late to dinner following a swim and began flirting with her. When the counselor asked for her age, Garner lied and said she was 17 (the age of consent in Panem is 16). She shivered in pleasure when her counselor made love to her, burying her moans into his shoulder as they fucked. When he made her cum, she whimpered and drawing back to gaze into his eyes, she knew: she was in love.

#3: After being Reaped for the Games two years later, she got a Training Score of 10.

Even though the practice of Training Scores was only in its fifth year, Garner nonetheless tied three of the Careers for the top prize. It was the highest training score for an outsider tribute since Peppa Cornac achieved that 11 four years prior. Dell Fonio, District 9's only Victor, about fell out of his chair when Lucky Flickerman gave the returns and then demanded to know how she got it. Garner whispered what she had done, and swore Dell to not tell a soul.

To this day, no one knows exactly how Garner scored as well as she did, but it is said that the night the returns were given, at least two stand-by trainers had to be medevac'd to Victors' Mercy hospital and treated for certain…. reactions…

#4: She "drew first blood."

"Drawing first blood" is mentor lingo for the tribute who makes the first kill of the Games, or sometimes, lands the first injurious, non-lethal hit. More often that not, the former definition is more precise. In the case of Garner Sunnoria, she managed the first kill of the Games before the gong had even sounded. Standing on her plate and seeing the giant boy from One leering at her – the only Career to not score a 10 in Training – Garner quickly unlaced her boot and threw it at him.

The Career realized too late that she wasn't actually throwing it at him, and leaned out too late to try and catch the projectile before it landed on the grainy sand of this arid desert.

KABOOM.

From then on, the practice of using a projectile – your district token, a piece of your tribute uniform – to deliberately set off a competitor's land mines was an initial strategy that would be seen every now and again in the Games. The Gamemakers never tried to stop it, as most of the time they thought it was funny, so long as not too many tributes tried it in any one Games. One or two district scum who got blown up before the gong was fine. Any more than that was pushing it – this wasn't the Second, after all!

#5: She ended up poisoning a full quarter of the field.

Garner made off with a backpack full of water bottles at the Cornucopia, and nearly got caught at one point trying to get it. Having put enough distance between herself and the others, Garner wandered the nearly uniform desert for the next several days.

As everyone knows, very few plants can grow naturally in the desert, but that didn't stop the Gamemakers. On the morning of the seventh day, Garner found the single oasis that had been planted inside the arena – a paradise that boasted all manner of plants, some of which were invasive species in this sweltering clime. She was fortunate that this was the real one; the Gamemakers were able to manipulate their technology in such a way that compounded several tributes' hallucinations from dehydration. On at least five separate occasions, four other tributes thought they had found the oasis complete with a pool of clear water, only for it to be a mirage.

Cocooned in the actual paradise, Garner recognized from her excelling at the poisonous plants station in Training – and her upbringing in fauna-covered District 9 – that not all of these plants were safe to consume. She quickly set to work. Of the six water bottles found in her pack, Garner deliberately spiked two of them with poison, while leaving the other four untouched for herself. She also carefully extracted leaves from plants she knew to be poisonous.

Then, she took a risk. While carefully counting her paces, Garner would wander out a ways from her oasis back into the desert and carefully planted both the poisonous leaves and the spiked water bottles randomly along the sand. She was always careful to not go too far or be away from her hideaway too long, for she knew the winds could cover up her footprints with more sand. At one point, this did happen, and only by sheer luck did Garner find her way back to the little island of paradise.

Over the next several days, whenever Garner heard a cannon without hearing any death screams, she would softly smile and figure it was her doing. Upon leaving the arena, she was shocked to learn that her kill count by poisoning was as high as it was.

#6: Her Games lasted an entire month – a record at that time.

Back in the Capitol, President Ravinstill and his administration threw a party when the Games reached the three-week marker and nine tributes still remained alive.

A week after that, there were still five alive, including Garner. Three days later, on the 31st day, the Gamemakers induced a sandstorm, disposing of the girl from One and driving their Top Two – Garner and the girl from 8 – together back at the Cornucopia.

The girl from 8 was dizzy and sick and clearly in no shape to fight. Wordlessly, Garner took out her last full water bottle, still capped, and held it out to her opponent. Desperate to have her thirst quenched, the girl from 8 seized it and guzzled it before giving even a thought to battling her last adversary.

She didn't even get to that thought before she was twitching on the ground as the poison seeped in and took her.

#7: Her Victory set off a debate over whether or not it tied Savera Inchcape's mentoring record.

At the time, District 8 held the distinction for the shortest gap between a district's two victories – three short years. As everyone knew (though it was never said aloud) Viscera Holstein from 10 had really been mentored to Victory by Garner's mentor, Dell Fonio, people in the Capitol debated whether Dell had tied Savera's record by mentoring two winning tributes in just three years. Dell was quick to deny it, for her didn't want to take any credit away from Guernsey, his dear friend. Besides, the two cases were not at all alike, he reminded the media – Savera had mentored Woof to Victory only three years after her own win. Hunger Games historians accepted and appreciated the qualifier. Savera's record stayed intact.

#8: Ganer and Dell Fonio's respective Games actually set the record for longest period between a district's two wins.

For the next several years, at least until the opening of the 30s, Dell Fonio and Garner Sunnoria held the distinction of being the district with the longest drought between two wins (District 6, still Victor-less, didn't count, and both master and apprentice were insulted whenever anyone dared to suggest otherwise).

District 9's record was eventually broken when the 31st Games arrived and District 12 still had not notched a second Victory. In fact, District 9 would fall behind District 12 not once, but twice, in the category of longest Victory drought: the forty-year gap between Lucy Gray Baird and Haymitch Abernathy (the ultimate record) and the twenty-four year gap between Haymitch Abernathy and the two lovebirds from District 12 who captured the imagination of everyone in the Seventy-Fourth.

#9: Garner's win ended up fulfilling a long promise.

It hadn't exactly been a promise, per se. Or even a wager, as Dell had ended up betting Acacia Ivy into marrying him before her boy, Rowan, came back triumphant after the Seventeenth. It had actually been a joke, delivered by Dell after he and his future bride had shared their second of many kisses: "Next wager better be if 9 ever wins again, you're having a baby."

Well, here they were, in Control Central, Dell reduced to tears at the knowledge that after twenty years – twenty years – of being a failure, he had finally made a kid from his own homeland into a Victor (he loved Viscera like she was his own, of course, but again, it wouldn't be fair to Guernsey to claim credit for her).

Now, sitting here while Viscera hugged him and Guernsey was jumping up and down and pointing at the big "9" on the screen under Garner's picture, to show the winning district, Dell melted into a deep kiss as Acacia, his wife, sultrily straddled his lap. Suddenly guiding her hands to her belly, the pretty woman from 7 whispered into his lips:

"You remember how we made love the night of the parade? Well, this would have been really awkward if one of yours didn't win, but… I'm pregnant."

Dell promptly dragged his beloved back into the Training Center where on Floor 7, their cries and happy shouts were enough to startle the Avoxes as they shagged for hours in celebration of the wonderful news.

As for Garner herself, she returned to District 9, married her handsome camp counselor, Cropper, by walking through the wheat fields with him (as was custom) and lived happily ever after. By the time she was Reaped for Nine once again in the Third Quarter Quell, she and Cropper had five children and seven grandchildren.