I was waiting for all the forms to come in but I finally couldn't take it anymore and started writing. And I do have MOST of the forms.
Malcolm Roydon, District One male- 18
No one is going to help you but yourself. That's not me being edgy, it's just something everyone knows. Your family cares about you (sometimes- my family does but not everyone has that blessing) but that's about it. That's not to say I don't have friends. Other people's lives can cross paths with yours and you can both come out the better for it. But that's the thing. People make friends because they enjoy being with that person. They get something out of the friendship- companionship, company, protection, support, a thousand different reasons. If someone offered nothing in a friendship and was just a terrible unlikable person they wouldn't have any friends. People don't want to be with someone who offers absolutely nothing. And that's not a character flaw. People like their friends but strip everything away and we're all on our own in the end. The number of outer-District volunteers proves that's true.
And another thing. "Family first" is overrated. Blood is thicker than water. People say that and they think it means family is a blood connection and family is a water connection. If they'd read the source material they'd know that the Vikings meant the exact opposite. "Blood" refers to shared experiences on the battlefield and "water" is a pregnant woman's water breaking. The saying means that people who choose to fight with you in life are closer to you than those accidentally linked to you by your birth. My family includes my mother and my twin brother Gabriel. It doesn't include my father, who is rightly rotting in his grave. It does include Beren Whitehall, my mother's coworker and the "thug" who put my father where he is, and Darren, my best friend. It doesn't include my cousin Calvados, who thinks "street rats" shouldn't be allowed in the Academy. Family, I've learned, overlaps with blood relation only coincidentally and not by definition.
Darren was exactly the kind of person that Calvados would have sneered at. He fought not for prizes or a family name but because he didn't want to die. It turns out that's a far more effective strategy than what the Academy instructors can teach me. Most of them never even fought in the Games. There aren't any members of Beren's black market thugs, including Darren, who can't keep themselves alive. The ones who couldn't didn't.
Darren interrupted my thoughts with a switchblade to the face. He'd said we were doing unarmed combat today but I knew by now that he would do this. It was blunted and only scored across my arm without breaking the skin but the point was clear. Always take an advantage, the dirtier the better. No rules and "style" just means you get killed while looking pretty. My fellow Academy students hated me for- well, first they hated me for existing as a poor person. They hated me even more for saying I was their equal. And most of all they hated me for beating them.
The Academy told us to fight dirty. Darren told me how.
Irina Sokolova- District One female (18)
Rumor had it I was going to be the chosen volunteer. Rumor also had it that Roydon was the chosen male and boy was that pissing everyone off. If they didn't want him to get picked they should have gotten better than him. As for me, I didn't really want to get picked anyway. I liked the attention when everyone watched me do a difficult move but I never wanted to join the Games. That was my parents' idea. I assumed someone who actually wanted it and who trained super hard would get chosen to volunteer but it turned out this year was a kind of wimpy bunch. I was good and all but I didn't want to be here. I had my own dream. I couldn't tell my parents but I had something I wanted more than anything else, something I wanted to devote every second of my life to.
I wanted lions.
I would remember the moment until the day I died. I snuck out of training one day, telling my teacher I was sick, and stole out to the cluster of red-and-white striped tents that had popped up at the edge of the city like some come-to-life child's dream. A distant rumbling inside one of the tents, hidden from sight by the folds of striped canvas, beckoned me in. I snuck forward, expecting to find a terrible muttation or some monster from the depths of a horror novel. As I reached the edge of the tent opening the sounds of a violent battle broke out- a woman screaming, an ear-splitting roar, sliding furniture and a sharp cracking. I ran inside to see what it all meant.
A woman was fighting a lion. She wore a bright red skintight suit covered in sequins and held a whip above her head. Not five feet in front of her an unchained lion snarled and swatted at her but she stood firm. She brought the whip forward and it gave a massive crack in the air above the lion's head. The lion roared at it but backed away, unhurt but dominated. The woman danced toward the lion still whipping all around it, driving the beast back toward an open cage in the corner of the larger enclosure that separated them from the bleachers holding an audience.
I was enthralled. Never had I seen anything half as spellbinding as a woman who could control a lion. She was alight with energy and intensity and movement. The lights sparkled off her leotard and reflected on the bars of the cage like dancing fairies. Her face was bold and splendid in her determination. And the lion cowered before her.
The lion shot forward in what I saw then had only been pretended submission. He snapped his jaws at the woman, missing by inches since she jumped out of the way. She grabbed a chair from behind her and prodded at the lion's face. It roared again, its bellow shaking the ground and vibrating my ribs, but began to give up ground again. It gave the woman no further trouble as she drove it into the cage. I watched, awe-struck and trembling, as she locked the door and caged the beast.
I never told my parents what I'd seen. They thought it was strange that I switched from a bow and arrow to a whip and shield but they never guessed why. They didn't care, not as long as I was still at the Academy. During the day I trained for the Games, ever the good little daughter. But at night I dreamed of lions.
Irina: Blonde hair, green eyes, pretty District One-looking girl
Malcolm: Thick and messy auburn hair. Grey green eyes, fair skinned, with horrific scars on his back from being beaten by his now dead father. Callused hands and lean muscles from training, 6'0.