Talise Cicero- District Four female (16)
Alice and I eagerly waited for the anthem to see the one Tributes we'd caught after an entire day of burning down buildings. Yesterday had only netted Deciduous and we'd thought for sure we'd get more after burning down everything but main street and the few buildings on the edge of town.
"Ooh, it's starting," Alice said at the subtle snap of feedback that indicated the oncoming anthem. I craned up my neck to see the face.
"Malcolm? Are you kidding me?"
"How even?" Alice shared my shock. "It was probably the circus alliance. Honestly those kids are really pissing me off."
"You know what?" I said. "Plan B."
Tyler Alvarez- District Ten male (18)
Deciduous would have liked to think of himself as the brains of the alliance. Personally I thought that I was also capable of abstract thought but Deciduous was a prideful sort of guy so I let him have his preening. He would have been glad to see me proving him right, though. With him gone there was nothing left to hold me back. I wanted the Careers dead and I was going to seek them out and attack them. It sounded stupid even to me and Cid would have been horrified.
Do you want to die? He'd ask. Well... not exactly. I just didn't really see anything in this world worth sticking around for. If I could do a little good in my life and make sure a Career didn't win then I'd consider myself ahead of the game.
The Careers had burned down almost everything other than the two rows of buildings that made up the central pathway of the Arena, flanking the Cornucopia. I was in the last house on the left row, searching for supplies. The Careers had secured the Cornucopia and the general store but those weren't the only places to get supplies. The thing about the wild west... it had a lot looser gun control.
The first house and the second house both didn't have anything. The third had a pistol but that wasn't what I wanted. I crept to the fourth house, putting in a halfhearted effort at stealth but knowing that it was just a chance of whether the Careers happened to be nearby. There wasn't much room for sneaking anymore- they'd seen to that. I just had to take a chance and gamble with my life.
The fourth house seemed to belong to a middle-class laborer. It was sparsely furnished and had a single lofted room instead of a real second floor. I clambered up the ladder and into a little room that had not much more than a double bed. I knelt down and felt underneath it. My fingers came into contact with something cold and hard and I pulled it out.
I smiled as I ran my eyes over the smooth wooden stock and metal barrel of the shotgun. I hadn't known if it would work but this gamble had proven lucky. A run-down house indicated a guy who might have to hunt to supplement his food. Hunting for food rather than sport meant he would hedge his bets. You don't have to hit bullseye with a shotgun. You just have to get halfway close.
Deciduous would have gone squeamish at the thought of killing someone with a shotgun. It was one thing to shoot someone with a rifle and leave a neat hole between their eyes. It was another thing entirely to pull the trigger on a shotgun and turn a man's head into a crater. But I didn't care about that anymore. I hadn't cared about killing for a long time and I certainly didn't care about killing a Career. A Career had no right to their life. They sold it to buy a chance at killing children. They can't cry foul when someone else kills them first.
Christobal Chanel- District Eight male (16)
The building at the edge of the town was beautiful. I didn't know why they would want to hide it off beyond the edge, almost a half-mile out into the deserted wilderness. It had a little gabled entrance with an arch over it and a pretty round window over the front door. There were four windows on either of the long sides of the building and they were set with beautiful panes of colored glass that made pictures. There was one tall tower right behind the front entrance and it had a bell on it. The whole building was painted white, setting it apart from the mostly natural-colored buildings in the Arena.
"It must be a school," I said, pointing up at the bell.
"Seems weird to put the school so far away from everything," Juniper said. It was probably a bad idea to even go into one of the few remaining buildings- surely the Careers would be expecting that. But we would be able to see them coming from a long way off and we might be able to find some supplies. Also... it was only Talise and Alice now. They might not want to attack a pair without thinking it over, especially since one of us was Juniper.
The smell of musty wood clouded into the air when Juniper opened the front door. It slid open heavily and revealed the building was a single large room. There were two rows of benches that reached all down either side of an aisle that led to a raised wooden platform. On the platform there was a speaking podium.
"Oh," Juniper said. "This isn't a school."
I'd never seen a church before. We didn't even have pictures of them in most of our school books. They were a relic of the past- an antiquated, ignorant, regressive refuge for backwards people who were easily brainwashed. In history class Miss Wormwood once told us that religion was one of the biggest factors in the First Rebellion. I would never tell anyone, but for the first time I thought there must have been something good in there somewhere, if they made such beautiful buildings.
"Oh, cool, a piano," Juniper said as he poked around behind the podium. I hopped up on the platform and saw a recessed chamber at the back of the room with a wooden upright piano in it. Juniper slid onto the bench and pressed a key.
"You know, I used to play the circus calliope sometimes," he said.
"You can play?" I asked excitedly.
"A little. Anything you want as long as it's "March of the Gladiators" or "Barnum and Bailey's Favorite"," Juniper said.
"Can you teach me?" I asked, Juniper looking up at the almost unhinged urgency in my voice. "If we time, I mean. After supplies and stuff."
"Sure," Juniper said. "It won't take long to get supplies, I bet. This is a pretty small building."
Juniper Triton- District Four male (18)
It was worth leaving the Careers just to watch Christobal play piano. I always thought of myself as partial to music but he Christobal was another beast entirely. I plinked out the notes to "Chopsticks", the first thing I'd ever learned from Dusty Rhodes, the retired clown who usually played the calliope, and he was all over it like it was a symphony. He got it down in ten minutes and wanted more. I showed him another simple exercise and he went off like a rocket, improvising and picking out new different notes by trial and error. His whole body swayed along with his moving arms like his fingers on the piano were completing a circuit and music was flowing around it.
Chris' parents should have gotten their kid a drum set, I thought in bemusement. Or at least a cheap plastic recorder. Just don't let all this go to waste...
"That was awesome," I said when Christobal finished the most baroque rendition of "Jingle Bells" I'd ever heard.
"It's noth-." Christobal looked up from the piano and swallowed the last half of the word when he saw my expression. "It's just whatever," he mumbled, turning away as he blushed.
"No seriously, that was the best thing ever," I said. "You should be a musician."
Christobal's face clouded. He turned sideways on the bench, away from the piano. "My mom doesn't like music," he said.
"What do you mean 'doesn't like music'? Everyone likes music!" I said.
"I dunno. She just always said that musicians are terrible people," Christobal said.
"I think you mom got dumped by a musician," I said. Christobal tried to stifle a laugh.
"Musicians are just... people," I said. "Pretty sure not all of them are mom-dumpers."
"I don't know what hurt her so much she could hate music." Christobal's voice went soft as he looked down at his still hand on the keys. "I guess I just wish she could be happy and be happy for me."
"Not to be rude, but your mom's not here," I said. "If you die I think she's gonna be more sad about you dying than mad that you made music. And if you win you'll need a talent. So mom's just gonna have to be mad."
"It can't hurt," Christobal almost whispered, still looking at the piano.
"Music doesn't hurt. It makes the world better," I said. Music was part of the soul of the circus. We had a whole code built into our songs. Different melodies meant different things, all the way from warning ushers of a fire so they could get people to safety without panicking to signaling that an act was lagging and the next performers needed to pick up the pace. All those messages went into our old circus calliope and came out sounding happy and playful and made the circus seem like another world. That was what I'd enjoyed most about the circus. It was so colorful and over-the-top that anyone could be themselves there. Most of us wore makeup and bombastic costumes but it was just a frame for our own dazzling, outlandish selves. Nothing was quiet in the circus. Everything was in cursive and written in all caps. It would have been a good place for Christobal.
"Hey, ready for a new song? This one's a duet, so get ready," I said. "I'll show both parts and then we can both pick one and play together." I put my fingers on the keys and started the simple melody.
"Heart and soul, I fell in love with you..."
Just a fun breather chapter to get some more character moments so people can better decide who to vote for.