R.J. Macready- District Six male 16

I don't like bullies. But just because someone is a bully doesn't mean I won't help them. Just because other people are bad doesn't give me an excuse to do the same.

The man on the table before me was a Peacekeeper. He'd been stabbed in the line of duty. That's what the Capitol would say, anyway. Anyone from the Districts would know that for a Districter to stab a Peacekeeper he must have done something absolutely monstrous. But that didn't matter now. The man on the table before me was helpless and dying and like my father before me, I was a surgeon. Or a surgeon's assistant, anyway.

"Pressure!" my father screamed. Nothing would matter if we couldn't stop the bleeding in the next ten seconds. It was amazing how fragile people were. Stab a man and he might live, without even knowing he'd been stabbed. Other times, a man might trip while walking down the road and be dead just like that. The line between life and death is as fragile as the line between good and evil. I walked one of those lines as a surgeon's assistant, and the other just as a human being.

If the man on the table died, the world might be a better place. That didn't matter. It wasn't my place to worry about whether the person on the table was better off in the world or beyond it. It was a doctor's place to treat the patient. It was a human's place to hope that the man would use his second chance for something good.

I grabbed a pad and pressed it to the man's side, covering the gaping wound where the knife had gone it. He'd tried to take it out. That was never good. If there was one thing I could tell Peacekeepers, it would be that if they got stabbed, they should leave the knife in. If they left it in, my father only had to worry about safely extracting it. If they took it out, he had to worry about treating damaged flesh that was gushing blood. So many times people didn't even get to the hospital before it was too late. Of course, if this man had been near a hospital, he wouldn't have been with us. Peacekeepers didn't need to go to the rundown shack that stood in for a surgery for us District folk. When we got a Peacekeeper it meant the man was so near death he couldn't even make it the distance to the real hospital. It was one of the reasons we had such a high fail rate, which was why we always had Capitol doctors knocking on our door to shut us down.

Blood spattered my face as I tried to clamp the fluid into his body. The man was already deathly pale. If he bled for much longer the color would be permanent. I dug my fingers into his side and shvoed the pad into his flesh.

"Hurry!" I screamed.

My father flew to my side, carrying a spool of medical thread in one hand and a glittering needle in the other. I watched as he shoved the thread through the needle and then shoved the needle into the man's side. The Peacekeeper didn't even flinch as the needle stuck into his flesh. I wished he had. It at least would have meant he was alive enough to feel pain.

It would be better for us if he did die, wouldn't it? I asked myself. One less Peacekeeper. One less person haunting us and tormenting us and reminding us that the Capitol owned us all. But it would be worse for him, wouldn't it? A Peacekeeper was a human too, even if he tried to hide it under his mask. Even if he wasn't allowed to have a family, he still cared about people. Maybe not about filthy Districters but about someone. And if he didn't, what right did I to be as craven as he was? I had to be better. I had to strive to make the world a better place, even if I didn't think I'd ever succeed.

Sweat beaded on my father's brow as he bent over his stitches, trying to sew the life back into the man's body. I saw his flesh seal together as the thread pulled the ragged edges of the wound back into something resembling a connected whole. The blood stopped gushing out into my hands, until I was able to pull the pad away and take a deep breath.

"He's stable." My father said. I saw the relief on his face, and it flowed into me. I backed away and put my bloodstained hands to my head. He was stable. We'd saved him. Whether or not he deserved his life, we'd saved him. Because whether or not he deserved to be on this earth, we had promised to do our best to keep him there. There can be good in the world. People can make every bit of the life we give them or they can throw it away, or worse, use it to hurt other people. That wasn't up to me to decide. I only knew that whether or not good would win out, I would always keep fighting for it.

Porsche Romeo, District Six female, (17)

It might be said that I am not smart. I would be mad about it except that… it's kind of true. I am not smart.

See, a smart person would stop playing poker after they lost more than a month's wages. A smart person certainly would. Me, I kept going. I guess maybe I thought I would win it back. I guess maybe I didn't care if I didn't. See, the thing about a loan shark beating you up, it only mattered if you didn't like getting beaten up. Some people don't mind that. Some people even pay extra for that.

I guess what I'm saying is that I kind of liked losing at poker.

If I didn't lose at poker, I wouldn't lose more than my paycheck. If I didn't lose more than my paycheck, I wouldn't be on the run from a loan shark. I kind of liked the part where the loan shark chased me. Therea was something thrilling about someone chasing after you trying to hurt you. It was almost the best part. It would have been the best part if the best part wasn't when he caught me.

I ran down the alleyway, throwing trash and random debris behind me as I tried to outrun the person behind me. But then, if I was smart I wouldn't have run down an alleyway. Of course, if I was smart, I wouldn't have lost all that money in poker in the first place. But we've been through this. I'm not smart. And I kind of like this part.

The man chasing me wouldn't have been able to catch me if I didn't want him to. Or maybe he would have, since I'd been beaten up so many times I had a limp. Even with the limp I was faster than the rather heavy man chasing after me. But even as stupid as I was, I knew if I actually got away from the loan shark, he'd only show up to my house a few days later. He'd show up later, and he might be mad enough to just shoot me. I might like a bit more spicy fun but I didn't think I'd like getting shot. At least not in the face.

No, it was best to let the man catch me after a while. One of these days my debtors would definitely lose patience and just kill me. I knew that was true, but does anyone really know that's true at my age? Does anyone my age really think they're going to die? Maybe in the Games. But I wasn't in the Games. I was just a small-time poker loser running away from the consequences of my own actions.

I reached the end of the alley and turned around the face the music. The loan shark was a new guy- I didn't recognize him. I had enough breath left to give him some background info.

"All right, you got me. Now's the part where you beat me up and I promise I'll never lose money I can't afford to repay again. And we'll both know I'm lying but it's okay because I usually pay back about half of what I owe and half is better than nothing so it's not worth killing me over."

The loan shark paused at the sheer stupid reality of what I was saying. His fist lingered at his side, too surprised to come at me.

"And then in a few weeks we'll do this all over again. So I better tell you how it usually goes down. I'm not going to tell you how to do your job. I'm sure you're better at being a loan shark than I am. You're probably also better at poker than I am, but that's not important right now. Anyway, it's best for both of us if you aim for the non-visible areas. Why you ask? Because I'm a valet. My boss is pretty mad at me right now and he said if I come in with any more bruises he's going to fire me. That seems pretty heartless but it's actually because I'm scaring the customers. Anyway, if I lose my job, I'll definitely never be able to repay my debts. What's better, half a repaid debt or none? That's why none of the other guys ever killed me before. So go ahead and hit me, but just saying, all the other guys know to aim for the stomach or legs or whatever. Or if you're feeling fancy maybe my backside or my shoulders? Haven't gotten any bruises there lately. But don't leave any marks or your boss might be mad. I know because I've talked to him, probably more times than is healthy."

The loan shark lowered his fist and gave me a weird look.

"Are you stupid or crazy or both?" he asked.

"Probably both. I'm too stupid and crazy to know," I admitted.