NERO INCULTA- Anthony Morgan

Just because I couldn't help didn't mean I didn't regret it. Careers are supposed to be able to fight anything. It seemed unfair to put something in the Arena we couldn't fight. The Capitol tolerates us because we're the best warriors. We're all useless if they can just conjure up a giant snake. And Nero was even a Victor's descendant. Maybe it was a message.


PREJI SOULTIER- Martin Jackman

Porsche was right that I couldn't have stopped anything. Maybe we could have fought another Career, but Nailah used a bow and arrow. Preji was really hard to get along with but I still didn't want him to die. I hoped people didn't want me to die for all the annoying things I did. We all annoy other people sometimes, right? I wished I hadn't seen it happen. I dreamed about it at night.


CONNOR MERLYN- Cheyanne Talor

That wasn't Anthony? I thought it was Anthony. The size, the way he walked so confidently. It had to be Anthony. Anthony was a Career. It was okay to attack him. But Connor was one of us. Even worse, he was minding his own business. It's okay to fight back if someone attacks you but Connor was just walking under a tree and I dropped a coconut on his head. I killed someone...


Dionysus Bacchus- District One male (18)

Gigi wanted to ask. It was obvious. From the way she looked at me to the way she walked around to just... just the way she was. She wanted to ask why the Careers didn't want me. As the days went by I found myself wishing she'd just do it. It was giving me a headache, or maybe that was something else.

Just ask already, I thought as she roasted the bird I'd shot. It was weird how she always insisted on cooking and doing random stuff, like she was my slave or something. We were friends, right? It made sense that she was always nervous, since we were in the Hunger Games and all, but we were pretty safe when we were at our camp and could both hear any Careers coming.

Just ask already. I'd been having a bad few days. The stuff the doctors gave me in the Capitol only stopped me from literally dying of withdrawal. I'd been sober for about two weeks now and I didn't know how people lived like this. It didn't hurt so much as it was just wrong. Everything felt wrong. Was this what women were talking about when they said their "time of month" made them grumpy and just feel blah? On my honor, I was never going to disbelieve them again. Everything was just so annoying, from the stupid tree right by our camp with the stupid strip of bark scraped off by some animal, to the way the fire always scorched the outside of the meat but left the inside bloody, to that stupid freaking bird going WEEEE-weee-woooooooo ALL! NIGHT! LONG!

And Gigi wouldn't ask. Even though she wanted to she wouldn't ask. It was like that stupid book I had to read in school where the guy killed a guy but kept hearing his heartbeat until it drove him nuts.

"I left the Careers because I'm an alcoholic!" I blurted.

Gigi looked up from where she'd been slicing a mango. "Uh," she said with a confused expression. "That's... rough?"

"I know you've been dying to ask so I'll just tell you," I said.

"I didn't care," Gigi said, even more confused. "What do I know about Career strategy?"

"Well it's because I was a drunk, okay? They didn't want me and I knew they were gonna kill me probably the first day." It didn't matter if Gigi wanted to hear it. It was coming out.

"That's why you've been so tense lately?" Gigi looked like she was going to cry. "Oh my gosh I thought you were mad at me and you were gonna kill me. I'm so relieved."

"I'm not gonna kill you! That would be so mean!" How could she think something like that?

"I mean, you're a Career. That's what you do," Gigi said tactfully.

"Wait, is that why you keep acting like my maid?" I asked.

"I dunno, I thought if you liked the cooking and camp stuff maybe you'd keep me around," Gigi said.

"We're allies now," I said. "Maybe we had a weird start but we should really stick together at least until the Careers break up."

This time Gigi really did want to ask a question and I wasn't just being paranoid. "And after that, let's just split up and kind of agree that unless we're the last two we won't fight," I said.

"I won't even if we are," Gigi said. "I'd run for it."

"Damn, I'm not a good runner," I said.

Gigi smiled. "So you've been sober for what, two weeks? That's pretty cool. I wouldn't know but I've heard it's really hard."

"Well you heard right!"


Soleil Kingston, District Eleven (17)

I'd never been this hungry before. Things were lean sometimes at home but we always had food- it was just a question of whether it was good food or if it was potatoes every day. What I wouldn't give for a potato right now. Eating nothing but flowers sounded like a magical fairy life. Really it just meant I was always hungry. The thing about leaves and petals... they're really healthy but there's not much there. It was like having nothing to eat but celery. How much celery would you have to eat in order to get full?

Potato, I thought as I ate a tulip bulb. I'd felt terrible pulling up the beautiful red flower to eat the bulb, but times were tough and my stomach was bigger than my eyes. The bulb was harder and spicier than a potato but if I pretended really hard... it didn't taste like a potato. Mostly I tasted the bits of dirt I hadn't been able to wipe off. I thought about all the bugs and worms in dirt and just hoped I didn't get a parasite.

If Allure hadn't laughed I would have died. I didn't hear what her allies said but I just barely heard the unmistakably human laugh in response. I dove toward my rose bush and clawed inside so quickly the thorns gashed my skin and left little lines of blood on my arms. I turned myself around to see them coming and prayed they wouldn't smell me.

"Oh my gosh, this is beautiful!" Nailah said as the Careers entered the sunken garden. They stood on the raised balcony near the door looking down at the pond and the flowers arranged all around.

"Let's make this our camp instead," Allure said, and my pulse shot up.

"We'll have to drag all our stuff over here," Anthony said.

"Miss me with that," Allure sniffed, holding up a hand. My pulse shot back down.

"This is going to take forever. There's just so many places to hide in this Arena," Nailah said as she started poking around behind vases and statues.

I froze, though I hadn't been moving much anyway. They were looking for me. This was what they'd trained all their lives for. I had one cousin who was insanely good at hide and seek. We could look all day and never find her. But she wasn't me. I was just a normal girl with normal hide-and-seek skills. Sometimes I went unfound and sometimes I didn't.

Oh god. There was a tiny bit of fabric stuck on a thorn near the start of my tunnel. I looked down sickly at the tear in my shirt I hadn't noticed. But you can't notice everything, right? Even people trained to see things still missed them. People just can't see every last bit of the world around them. We take shortcuts. We overlook things. Sometimes.

Anthony looked right at me and I almost fainted. But he was just looking at the rose bush, I realized. I could see out plainly through the cracks but anyone looking in would just see a mass of branches... and hopefully not my eyes catching the light. I wanted to close them but I was too scared. As Anthony walked toward me I slowly put my hand on the spear I'd been carving. I had a wild notion that if he was about to kill me I was at least going to stab him.

Anthony looked over the bush as I lay seven feet away from him. It was almost like I was the predator, I thought incongruously. I could see him but he couldn't see me. He looked over the bush, trying to decide if someone would crawl in there past all the thorns. His eyes fell on the patch of thorns where the piece of my shirt was caught. He skimmed right over it and turned around.

"Maybe under all these water lilies?" Allure asked.

"Nu-uh. How would they breathe?" Anthony said as he joined her.

"A reed or something, like the movies," Allure said.

"You could hollow out a little pocket in some of these big ones," Nailah said thoughtfully. They searched the pond, and the lilac bush, and the big empty urn, and when they were satisfied they left, just like that.


These aren't incompetent Careers or anything. It's just a big, dense Arena and no one can be perfectly vigilant forever.