Chapter 9: The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird

I suppose it is serendipitous that in crafting the Memory Books, we have come to arrive at the 10th Victor. The timing couldn't be more perfect.

I've made sure that we three have been making slow and steady progress on preserving the people we need to remember, and have to praise myself for realizing we would need an entirely separate book just for the 75 Victors. In his spare time, Peeta has taken great pains to sketch each Victor from what little visual references we can find, and then he has to paint them. For these earliest champions, not many images exist, even on the Panemian Internet, so we've had to rely on the videotapes to capture their look, as only Peeta can do so brilliantly. Then there's the matter of recording the Victor's stats, such as kill count, and even acknowledging birth and death years. It has, therefore, proven to be quite the laborious process of the two we've set out for ourselves.

The videotape for Lucy Gray opens with a splashy serial cover title announcing the 10th Hunger Games. Then, there is a kind of montage where we see all the tributes' faces and even their names. The footage is old and grainy, and I'm half-expecting for us to see the edges of framing for each reel of film.

The Reapings are shown, one by one. It comes as a shock when none of the kids from Districts 1 and 2 look even remotely muscular. I might have even mistaken them for outliers if the scenery behind their Justice Buildings wasn't a dead giveaway: the graphite mines in One. The quarry mills in Two.

"Careers didn't exist back then," Haymitch explains. "The previous Victors, few as there were then, didn't even mentor."

"So who did?" I ask, but Peeta is shushing me.

We fly through the rest of the Reapings, and names come at me so fast, it's a wonder I'm able to retain all of them: Circ, Teslee, Mizzen, Coral, Hy… Treech, Bobbin, Wovey, Tanner, Reaper, Dill…

At last, we arrive at District 12. An escort with a shark's head (probably done with cosmetic surgery) steps up to the microphone and announces: "Lucy Gray Baird!"

Panning out, it astonishes me how so few people there are in Twelve, even a decade removed from the Dark Days, such that there doesn't appear to be any organizing in the Square based on age groups. The citizenry seems factioned off by households or at most smaller communities… like the band of what appear to be gypsies standing off to one side, from whence emerges a statuesque young lady of 16. And we get out first look at Lucy Gray Baird.

She definitely looks Seam, or at last, favors the features of someone who would eventually become Seam (did the Seam even exist so much as a place at that time?) Our first Victor has dark, curly hair, and she wears a rainbow-patterned dress kaleidoscopic as a butterfly's wing. An oval-shaped face makes her a vision of loveliness, and her smile as she mounts the stage is bright, almost coy.

Her district partner is called. "Jessup Diggs!" He's hulky and tall, probably around age 18, and the Merchant signs are unmistakable – blonde hair. Except his eyes are the grey of the Seam… perhaps he was half-and-half? I'm only half-Seam myself, on my daddy's side, though Primrose inherited most of the Merchant features from our mother. At any rate, Jessup appears better off than most District 12 tributes to come in the future.

That's where the similarities to our own Reaping ends. Whereas it was simply expected that Peeta and I were to stand there and shut up, Lucy Gray is permitted to sing. Even encouraged, by her neighbors. I am struck by the fearlessness with which she performs, and I think back to some of the stories Daddy would tell me, perched on his knee. About how we are descended from troubadours who roamed across Panem before the districts were sealed off from one another. The Covey, they were known as – it's why my sister and I were given colors as our middle names, a family tradition as old as the hills.

I remember how Haymitch said when he first met me that I exhibited a lot of spunk. The difference with Lucy Gray is that she has true boldness that the old government would have marked as dangerous, but is also tinged with a sensuous, sultry appeal. Plus, she manages to mask it well; you have to really dig for deeper meaning into the lyrics of the song she now belts to find anything defiant:

"You can't take my sass/ You can't take my talking… / You can kiss my ass / And just keep on walking…"

Next to me on the couch, Peeta chuckles. "She sure is a spitfire, isn't she?"

I nod, leaning forward with intrigue as our first Victor finishes by saying, in an aw-shucks, down-home country kind of way, "My friends call me Lucy Gray! I hope you will too!"

We then transition to seeing the tributes pull into the Capitol, but it isn't anything like the cruisers of luxury we knew as tributes. This crop is herded into cattle cars, and once they arrive in the city, are literally thrown into cages in the Capitol Zoo. Mocking, not admiring, crowds, come to jeer, not cheer, at them, pointing and laughing at the "district scrum," as we hear one little girl holler out, along with the animals.

There is no chariot parade in the City Circle. There is no training. What we get instead is the tributes transferred briefly from their enclosure to a building so they can meet with their mentors and review potential skills and strategies, much of it delivered in the form of a questionnaire. The cameraperson is liberal in giving airtime to as many of the tributes as he can, so we don't see much of Lucy Gray, except for blink-and-you-miss it blips that are causing Peeta and I to point and cry out when we spot her.

"Whoa, wait: who's that she's talking to?" I ask. I swear I see a man with curly-blonde hair huddled with the girl in the rainbow dress. Haymitch tries to rewind, and even pause when I yell at him to, but we can never freeze it just right. We keep going.

The shot opens wide on the arena all of a sudden. The discordant order of it still throws me, even though I've come to understand from watching the previous nine tapes: the mentors and tributes were at one time allowed to take a guided tour of the arena, before the launch. The concept still makes absolutely no sense to me: there are so many gaping holes left open and vulnerable to someone cheating. It's like getting answers to a test before you take it.

Suddenly, there is tremor that causes even the camera itself to shake. Great rumbling sounds and the guided tour dissolves into chaos. Fire and smoke. We see tributes and mentors alike running, crawling, bucketloads of blood. The footage sweeps over and then zooms in on someone – we can't tell who – falling off the top of the arena stands. The camera cuts away, spotting another figure ducking under the turnstile we came through only days ago before the footage abruptly winks out.

After a chilling moment, the tape resumes again, and now I know where I've had this sensation before: watching raw footage like this gives me the impression of watching old home movies. We only had three in my house: reels of Mother holding Prim and me after we were born, and then a longer cut depicting my parents' wedding day.

Something familiar finally comes our way when the tape announces that the tributes, for the first time ever, will be sitting down for interviews. The host is one Lucky Flickerman.

"Caesar's grandfather, maybe?" Peeta muses.

"Father, more likely – Snow knows that man never aged!" I quip, dry as a bone. Lucy Gray goes second to last, and she comes onstage armed with a guitar. Strumming it expertly, she begins to sing again, this time about a girl falling out of love and admonishing her former lover. If anyone else chillingly notices that only 14 tributes are shown, absolutely no one comments on it, then or now.

We finally return to the arena, though it now much more closely resembles the ruins we wandered through. And no, I was not imagining things – only 14 tributes are lifted on their pedestals into the arena, every single one of them still wearing the clothes they were Reaped in, as they have been for days.

"Panem help us…" Peeta sucks in a breath. "Look!"

He points, and there, strung up between the two poles we noticed a few days earlier, is a bloody, rotting corpse, chained and hanging by his manacles. The lump lifts its head, moaning, his 14 competitors looking high above their heads to where he dangles, now sufficiently spooked. Another turn of the prisoner's head, and that's when I recognize him: it is Marcus, the boy from 2.

I ask Haymitch to pause the tape on a wide shot showing the surviving tributes standing in their semi-circle, complete with weapons but sans the Cornucopia. There are obviously no tribute uniforms, so I have to make careful tabulation by relying on my skill at matching names with faces. From there, I sort out who's missing: Both from District 1, Facet and Velvereen; Sabyn, Marcus's district partner from 2; Hy, the boy from 5; Otto and Ginnee of 6, Panlo and Sheaf from 9, and Brandy, the girl from 10. Nine dead and a tenth well on his way out… and that's before the gong's even sounded.

"The Bloodbath happened early that year," Haymitch snorts, and I actually glare at him. He frowns at me in bemusement, but clams up.

When the gong sounds, most of the 14 scatter and disappear into the tunnels created by the bombings. Only four people make a go for the weapons – the girl from 4, Coral; the boy from 10, Tanner; the boy from 11, Reaper; and, to my immense surprise and even pride, our guy, Jessup. There's no dueling or hacking that would be seen in a traditional Bloodbath, though Reaper tries to initiate by pursuing and nearly overtaking Jessup, who spits in his eye to get away. Coral and two of the boys dart away once they've grabbed what they need. Only Reaper stays out in the open, armed with a pitchfork and a knife. Before long, he climbs into one of the empty stands to begin hunting for other tributes. Poor Marcus can only stay where he is, strung up in a contorted crucifix and left to waste away under the sweltering sun.

There is a long stretch of footage where absolutely nothing happens. This clearly isn't the three-hour condensed summary of the Games we see at the Crowning Ceremony, which are then sold on DVD, an exclusively Capitol technology. We can't even see any of the tributes, with the exception of Marcus and occasionally, a far away dot that is a scaling Reaper; by now, he's pretty far up. Haymitch doesn't bother to fast-forward, and we all sit there awkwardly, until at last, Peeta points to something in one corner of the screen.

"Hey! What's that there?"

The camera obliges by zooming, wobbling amateurishly. It's Lamina, the girl from 7, who has now emerged from one of the tunnels and is circling like some kind of reverse vulture. She keeps glancing up at Marcus as she continues to stroll blithely amidst the weapons left behind, supremely unconcerned. Finally, selecting an axe, she takes the hilt of it between her teeth and begins to shimmy up one of the poles, reaching the beams to which the early Career's chains are lashed and edging out along one of them to the swaying all-but-body. Bending low, the picture is clear enough that we can see Lamina's mouth moving.

"What's she saying?" Peeta barks. Haymitch cranks up the volume as high as it will go, but still, we can't make out what she whispers to Marcus. Next second, she bisects the man along his neck with three strikes, killing him.

I wait for a cannon, or maybe a pistol, something, but the sound doesn't come. I guess we'll just have to keep count of who lives manually. Peeta is already pulling out a notebook and marking the deceased tributes.

The arena is eerily quiet. No hovercraft arrives for Marcus's body, the crucified tribute staying right where he is in mid-air. Lamina stays with him, seated on the beams like a construction worker mounting a bridge, and then there is a buzzing sound.

A drone appears, like the one Haymitch used to reconnoiter the ruins of Everdeen, an object suspended from the bottom of it with coils. Lamina extracts what we learn is the very first sponsor gift: a bottle of water. She drinks heartily, and then uses her axe to cut Marcus down from the flagpoles; he plummets and crumples in a heap on the rocky sand violently. Lamina receives another sponsor gift – this time a slice of bread – and eats, keeping to her height advantage by lashing herself to the beam by her belt.

The afternoon progresses at a snail's pace, the drudgery broken only by tributes briefly popping up from the tunnels like gophers and scurrying out towards the weapons, only to then disappear again. Lucy Gray Baird is not among these. No one even tries to climb up after Lamina, the way Cato attempted with me in the trees.

The most interesting thing that happens before sundown is when Circ and Teslee, the District 3 tributes, creep out from behind a pile of splinters that have naturally formed a crude barricade and cautiously approach Marcus's still form. Lying broken around him are the remains of the two sponsor drones, which we saw seize up and then fall to the earth as soon as they finished delivering gifts to Lamina. The district partners painstakingly re-hotwire the drones, bringing them back to life. A third drone, which they also manage to salvage, brings them water and bread before they vanish back under the barricade with their treasures.

Not long after, Reaper appears from the tunnels carrying the girl from 11, Dill, in his arms. She is convulsing and frothing at the mouth as he sets her down by Marcus's stinking remains and then just…. leaves her there. Two water bottles are sent in to the dying girl by drone, which, outside of some kind of mercy, makes absolutely no sense – you don't send sponsor gifts if a tribute is beyond hope. And indeed, Dill is too weak to even acknowledge these. But Treech does, Lamina's district partner brazenly stealing water from a dying girl before fleeing into the depths again. By sunset, Dill is convulsing and spraying blood from her mouth until she grows still. The silence is damning.

Night arrives, but there are no faces in the sky. Cloaked in shadow, we almost don't see it, and probably wouldn't have, if the camera hadn't alerted us by zooming in on Marcus's body, still just maddeningly lying there. A figure is stooped low over it, sprinkling what might be seeds or maybe bread crumbs over the corpse. It almost reminds me of…

"What I did with Rue and the flowers!" I blurt out, without context. The guys look at me. "Isn't that what he's doing? By why would another tribute…?"

Peeta hushes me abruptly, eyes narrowing. "I don't think he's a tribute…"

And when the moon happens to hit at just the right angle, I can see that Peeta is right: the young man is just too old enough, and too fancily dressed, to be a tribute.

"He's Marcus's mentor," I breathe.

"But how? A mentor entering the arena to go to their tribute – it's never been done!" Peeta has turned as pale as the moon on the screen.

Then, we see another figure, with curly golden hair, dash into the center ring and tug at the mentor. "Sejanus! Are you mad?! We have to go!"

I know without a doubt: it's the same mysterious man who we briefly saw with Lucy Gray when she was filling out that questionnaire. I will the camera to stay focused on the blonde haired, handsome youth, but all of a sudden –

As the two mentors are attempting to spirit Marcus's body away, four figures armed with torches – I denote Tanner, Coral, her district partner Mizzen and Bobbin, the boy from 8 – descend on the men with war cries. The blonde man is forced to abandon Marcus in order to save his friend, this Sejanus person, and when Bobbin goes for him, the blonde man gets a grip on a plank of wood, and bludgeons the kid from 8 in the head. He goes down instantly, without a sound, and the mentors are able to flee.

12 tributes alive…

Dawn breaks on the second day in the arena, and we open on Sol, the girl from 5, skirting along the top of the edges of the stands in the arena. War whoops reach our ears again, as the three survivors of one of the very first alliances – Tanner and the kids from 4 – chase her down, and Coral spears Sol through the throat with a trident.

Minutes later, far below, we finally get out first glimpse of Lucy Gray in nearly twenty-four hours. She bursts out of one of the tunnels, running for her life… and we see that her own district partner is chasing her. Jessup Diggs is frothing at the mouth even worse than Dill was. Jessup corners Lucy Gray up what I recognize as being the remnants of the concession stand. As he makes to pursue her onto the roof of the structure, we think he has her, until several drones buzz in with water to break up the fight. Just the sight of the bottles causes Jessup to completely lose his shit, shrieking and batting at the containers so that they roll away.

"Rabies," Haymitch diagnoses grimly. "Victims can't stand the sight or touch of water."

Jessup is now moving so erratically that he loses his balance and plunges from the concession stand. We can hear his bones breaking in several places. When he doesn't move for a time, Lucy Gray climbs down and approaches him. She actually comforts him as he dies, and unlike the exchange between Lamina and Marcus, we can hear what she's saying:

"It's all right. You can sleep now." Lucy Gray then gathers up the bottles of water, drinking through most of them, while leaving a little remainder to wash Jessup's face. She finishes by closing her eyes with what looks like a handkerchief.

"Her district token?" I ask. I don't remember seeing any of the others carrying one.

Lucy Gray moves towards a nearby tunnel, ducking out of sight all the faster when she spots Reaper coming near. The fearsome boy from 11 takes what little water remains around Jessup's final resting place and then returns to the stands.

We watch the lifeless arena for close to thirty minutes before Haymitch finally decides we probably should think about fast-forwarding. The sun sinks with dizzying speed, replaced by the moon, then usurped by the sun again, without any other movement taking place on the earth below the warring celestial bodies.

Only 10 tributes still live…

On the third day, Reaper ventures up to where Lamina still hasn't moved from the beams scaffolding the flagpoles. He gives her what look like bits of fabric from what may have been flags we saw flying briefly during the pre-tour of the arena, and the two form a mini alliance. In exchange, Lamina shares some bread and cheese with him.

Things get exciting when District 4 and Tanner are seen approaching the pedestals. Reaper rapidly scales back down the flagpoles and retreats to the barricade where we last saw the kids from 3, ducking from view. There might be a tunnel under the bits of wood, for why would Reaper go somewhere where two other tributes would be lying in wait?

The 4-10 alliance halts under Lamina's beam, Tanner smacking his sword against it. The girl from 7 takes no notice of them until then and the three tributes underneath her huddle up. We can't make out the plan they hatch, but it soon becomes clear as Mizzen and Coral each take a pole and scale it, while Tanner stays below. The trio intend to trap and box her out. As the District 4 kids edge out onto the beam, Lamina bravely attacks Coral, who manages to dance away in this most deadly of high-wire acts. Lamina switches targets, and in the moment that Tanner tries to lob a trident up to Mizzen, Lamina closes in and jams the blunt end of her axe into Mizzen's knee, breaking it. Mizzen topples, missing the catch of the trident completely and we think he's going to fall to his death, but he catches himself just barely. Coral advances as Lamina's back is turned, letting out a loud war cry. She plunges her trident into the girl from 7's abdomen, and it is Lamina who falls to her death and expires on impact.

It takes some careful creativity for District 4 to rappel hand-over-hand back down the pole, Mizzen nursing a broken knee. Tanner is doing some kind of spastic, pagan dance over Lamina's body, which landed not far from where the bodies of Marcus, Dill and Bobbin are still sprawled and starting to rot. District 4 comes up looking like they're going to join in the celebration…

… and Peeta screams when Coral jabs the prongs of her trident into the boy from 10 from behind. Mizzen finishes Tanner off with a knife across the throat. District 4 retreats down a tunnel, and shortly thereafter, Treech, the boy from 7, finds his district partner's body and recovers her axe, receiving food from sponsors. The reward system seems very arbitrary; Treech hasn't done anything since we started the Games.

In the late afternoon, Reaper returns to the center ring and surveys the damage, clearly traumatized at the demise of Lamina.

And that's when the most interesting and truly bizarre aspect of the Games begins.

With a diligence that almost beggars belief, Reaper sets about with an obsessive-compulsive need to take each of the bodies of the tributes and arrange them in a pile under the flagpoles. He does this with every single corpse except for Jessup's, still out by the concession stand, over the course of the next hour. Over each person lying in repose, he drapes part of the Panemian flags, making a crude sort of shroud. With the swatches he has left, he fashions a cape for himself, and it seems to give him strength.

Peeta is agog. Utterly gobsmacked. "What even in the world….?" I, for one, can't help but be grateful to the large, black boy. Without the employ of hovercraft, and since we can't tell whether or not the tributes were implanted with trackers, it is hard to keep track of who lives and who dies, or where anyone is at all. The kids in the nine previous Games we've watched have always been out in the open, and there weren't nearly as many natural places to run or hide. As the third day concludes, I think we are witnessing the longest Games ever up to that point.

Haymitch looks to us, smiling gamely. "Final Eight." He brings a beer bottle to his lips.

And indeed we are at the Final Eight: Circ and Teslee from 3, Mizzen and Coral from 4, Treech from 7…. The girl from 8, I think? Reaper. And Lucy Gray.

Sunrise arrives for the fourth day in the arena, and with it, sunrise here in Everdeen as we have been watching the 10th Hunger Games all night, straight through. About midmorning, Wovey, the girl from 8 from whom we've seen neither hide nor hair since the Games were launched, suddenly appears and advances towards the center ring. She is waifish, emaciated, with what appears to be a parcel of sponsor gifts, and a water bottle in her hand, capped and still full. Pausing, the girl manages to take only a few gulps before she collapses and twitches, ceasing motion. The camera zooms in to capture the trickle of silver liquid dribbling from Wovey's mouth.

With the sun at high noon, Reaper arrives and cautiously approaches Wovey. He seems almost pissed that a tribute decided to up and die in what he must judge to be an incorrect spot, before growing contemplative and examining both her face and a bitten apple nearby. Despite exhaustion, the signs of intelligence are still with Reaper for him to conclude that her death wasn't the least bit natural. He rightly abandons the food and water and retreats, ceding the spoils to the vicious brutes from 4, who eat away happily, seemingly oblivious to Wovey's death even though she's lying mere inches from them. Neither Mizzen nor Coral touch the water, and after consuming the food, nothing happens to them.

"The water…" I whisper. "Something's wrong with the water…"

In the afternoon, Circ and Teslee make an appearance again, poking around near the arena's center. Treech chooses this moment to stage an ambush and when District 3 attempts to flee, he gives chase.

All at once, the trio of tributes are distracted by a drone straining under the weight of…. a tank.

"I'm sorry, why the fuck are they sending in a tank?!" Peeta bellows, absolutely stupefied and clearly so done with these Games already. His outburst almost makes me laugh.

Treech and District 3 are actually approaching the tank; after all, if a drone brought it, it must be a sponsor gift, right?

Wrong.

Snakes shoot out with inhuman speed, and Peeta and I gasp as one, for what we are witnessing is the advent of…

"MUTTS!"

Treech clambers up into the stands like a mountain goat. Circ isn't so lucky and the snakes swarm him. The District 3 boy's death screams are hideous, and lines of pink, yellow and blue cover his body as the poison and brief asphyxiation take him. Teslee clings to a pole, crying as the snakes switch targets and she manages to start climbing one of the flagpoles.

Just then, there is a piercing shriek as Coral darts out of a tunnel, a snake wrapped around her arm. She manages to bat it away, but then runs almost directly into the path of more, the serpents descending on her as they did poor Circ. Mizzen leaves his district partner to her gruesome fate, flinging his trident so it sticks into the pole directly opposite Teslee's; even with his bad knee, the boy from 4 scales the pole in half the time he did when pursuing Lamina yesterday.

"HELP!" Teslee wails to Mizzen. Her grip on the pole is slipping, as she hasn't gotten anywhere close to the beams. Mizzen can only shake his head, dumbstruck as the snakes try to pursue Teslee for another kill.

At that moment, a beautiful melody, too beautiful to be real, comes to us on the wind, and Lucy Gray practically glides out of one of the tunnels, calm as can be. The snakes abandon Teslee in favor of the girl from 12, but instead of attacking, they flock to her and twist at her feet. Lucy Gray is acting like a snake charmer, not afraid in the slightest, and the snakes are quite literally dancing to her tune. Her beautiful music eases into humming, which keeps the snakes docile.

Sunset heralds a storm rolling in, which ends up killing off the snake mutts as they can't adapt quickly enough to the cold and wet weather. By now, the Games are down to Teslee of 3, Mizzen of 4, Treech of 7, Reaper of 11 and Lucy Gray Baird. The two girls retreat to the barricade for cover, while the boys stay drenched outside. Mizzen is still balancing on his pole. Reaper and Treech are huddled up in the stands, but far away from each other, the former having moved not a tick during all the chaos that played out below.

Day 5. The rainstorm has abated, leaving the arena pocketed with wet puddles. The water is mostly clear except when it mixes in with the gravel and sand of the earth. Both Treech and Reaper have received food from sponsors, but only the boy from 7 touches the foodstuff. Reaper drinks from a puddle like a dog.

Up on his pole, Mizzen is chomping his jaws at the air, eating away at nothing. He must be going coo-coo, but he gets some real sponsor gifts for his troubles. Teslee shows up again, and we can see it in her face – she is determined, armed with one of the drones she hacked with Circ earlier. She maneuvers, unseen, under the poles were Mizzen sits like a bird. Flipping a switch, she emotionlessly launches the drone into the sky, keeping it tethered to her wrist with a cable.

Thinking the drone is there to present him with another gift, Mizzen watches it. The drone arrives normally and simply hovers, then turns away… before bizarrely turning back as if to make another nonexistent delivery. More drones are now buzzing in, hovering around Mizzen, one of which almost comically clocks him in the eye. Balanced precariously on a pole, Mizzen tries to get away by making a break across the beams to the pole where Teslee was trapped the day before. In the process, he puts weight on his fractured knee, tumbling off to his doom with a scream. We hear his neck snap.

It's pretty remarkable when you think about it: a Final Four void of any Careers, or even proto-Careers at that, the way District 4 will later prove to often be. Districts 1 and 2 didn't even get anywhere close to the Final Eight.

During the mayhem with Mizzen, Teslee doesn't notice Treech climb down the scoreboard and rush in to take her down until it's too late. He brings his axe down on her skull, killing her instantly.

We've reached the Top Three, and with it, probably the endgame: Treech, Reaper and Lucy Gray, the eventual Victor of whom hasn't even made a single kill yet. Come to think of it, I don't think Reaper has either. When Treech withdraws to the barricade, Reaper finally descends from the stands for the first time in over a day and gives Mizzen and Teslee's bodies the rites they deserve.

Lucy Gray shows up just before noon and surveys the arena. As we watch in amazement, she opens what looks like a woman's makeup compact and dumps some kind of substance into a rainwater puddle, receiving many drones of sponsor gifts.

"What's she doing?" Peeta asks. I shush him.

Seeing Reaper from far off, Lucy Gray attempts to flee again. Treech, however, is not as far off, and gives chase. Just as the boy from 7 closes in for the kill, Lucy Gray spins and rushes him, throwing her arms about him in an embrace. The fake-out surprises Treech and he stupidly stays still for a moment, the axe halting midswing.

In buying time, it turns out to be just enough.

When Lucy Gray draws back, we can see she did it so fast, we almost missed it: She took a snake – still alive – from the folds of her dress and positioned it next to Treech's neck, letting the beast have a bite. Treech staggers away, convulsing as the poison seeps in. Dropping the snake, Lucy Gray watches as Treech manages to bash the snake into the ground before he too follows it into that good night.

Lucy Gray now attempts to drag Treech's body to the others, but Reaper shouts at her, and she abandons the effort in favor of the tunnels. Reaper collect Treech himself, satisfied, and sets him on the rotting funeral pyre, its only flames from the heat of the sun.

What happens next can only be described as a game of cat and mouse.

Periodically over the rest of the day, Lucy Gray makes a run for the funeral pile and steals bits and pieces of the flag shrouds from the bodies. She teases Reaper into chasing after her, progressively tiring him out. Exhausted, Reaper finally gives in to his cravings of sustenance and drinks from a puddle.

The same puddle that Lucy Gray had poisoned.

Knowing he is dying, Reaper manages to crawl to Treech's body and cover himself with remains of a flag before growing limp.

The arena is deathly still. Thirty solid minutes later, Lucy Gray comes down from the stands to check that Reaper is really dead. She checks for a pulse. She finds none. Closing his eyelids, she sits against one of the flagpoles and waits. We are then forced to wait for another, awkward twenty additional minutes before – without trumpets – Lucy Gray Baird of District 12 is announced as the Victor of the 10th Annual Hunger Games.

The tape runs out almost weakly. We stare at the fuzzy screen in disbelief.

"What…. in the hell…. did we just watch?" Peeta splutters.

"You're right, Haymitch," I muse. "That… was a shitshow."

"Lucy Gray returned to District 12 and her performing with the Covey. She disappeared not long after. Records indicate that after further review, she and her mentor were judged to have cheated, and Coriolanus Snow…."

"SNOW?!" we scream in shocked horror. The blonde haired man! The youth who killed the District 8 tribute! That was Snow?!

"… was banished from the Academy. The 10th Games were deemed a failure and nearly all records of it were lost. Lucy Gray Baird disappeared not long after."

I take the tape out of the player. In a way, it is classic District 12. Lucy Gray "cheated" with the poison. Haymitch "cheated" with the force field. Peeta and I "cheated" with the berries.

"Do you realize what we have here?" I ask the men. At their silence, I continue. "We have the only record of the 10th Games, which now includes secrets such as tunnels under the arena itself. None of the other mentors will be going into this summer knowing why the tunnels came to be, or how they were used. That gives us an advantage, no matter who we're assigned to mentor."

"Your point?" Peeta folds his arms, fighting a scowl at the reminder of our mentoring duties for the Games in only a few weeks' time.

"District 12 has cheated to win the Games before. If we play our cards right… we can help another tribute cheat again."