Preji Soulter, District Three male- 17
Finally something good happened. The careers were so busy going after the "strong" people, because who would look twice at a weakling from THREE, that I could just walk right in and take whatever I wanted. I ended up with two backpacks. I would have had more but some of the other tributes got the same idea after a few minutes. I also had a hatchet that was lying off by itself.
This arena must be what Ten or Twelve looked like. Maybe not all the houses packed so close together, since I think they were more outdoorsy, but the houses themselves. They had holes in the roofs and walls and some of them didn't even have doors- just a tarp or blanket thrown over the opening. Everything smelled like sweat and dirt. I'd smell like that soon too, so at least that would cover me up.
Another good thing about the house I picked. Everything was so messy and thrown around that it would be hard to tell someone was actually in there and it didn't just look like that. I'd been expecting a dirt floor when I walked in but actually there was faded linoleum with cracks and probably bugs living in it. There was a light bulb hanging from the ceiling but I didn't dare try it. It wasn't even the careers- I was afraid it would shatter. There was a bed frame with no mattress, not that I would have slept on a mattress anyway, not one with that many bugs and spiders in it.
I started dumping out my backpacks on the table in the middle of the room with a chunk of rock stuffed under one broken leg. The first backpack had a full water bottle, a throwing knife, a rain poncho, and a flint and steel. The second had a can of beans (luckily it had a pull-tab top), an empty water bottle, a bottle of water purification tablets, a blanket, and a bag of chips. It would have been nice to have some soap or soemthing but the gamemakers didn't think we were really people. I was lucky I got a can of beans and not a can of dog food.
Seriously? I thought when I looked at the chips. I liked tortilla chips enough, preferably with something on them and not just plain boring chips, but they were about the loudest food I could think of. If I sat around eating tortilla chips the careers would hear me from a hundred feet away and come kill me and take the chips.
I sighed heavily as I opened the water bottle. I hunted around in a broken kitchen cabinet until I found a bowl next to a candle with a lady on it. I frowned as I looked at the dusty old bowl. Who knew what kind of gross germs were in a place like this. I wiped it out as well as I could with my shirtsleeve and sighed again. If I got sick hopefully it would take long enough to kill me that the games would be over. I dumped a handful of chips into the bowl and poured water in.
Tortilla soup, I told myself. That was a thing people made, right? Of course they used spices and meat and broth and not just tortilla chips floating in water. I set the bowl on the table to soak while I wandered around the house exploring and planning.
I had plenty of weapons, not that I was sure I could use them. If the careers came at me together, which they probably would since they never fought fair, I'd be a goner. If it was just one I had a chance- careers always thought outliers were useless and weak. At least I was safe from Allure. As many, many girls had told me, I was NOT attractive. Maybe they would be grossed out by how smelly and run-down the house was and move on. Of course all the houses were smelly and run-down so that was a long shot.
When I came back to the bowl the chips looked mushy and there was some cloudiness in the water. I reached into the lukewarm water and picked out a chip, which broke apart when I tried to lift it out. I popped it into my mouth and wished I could pretend it really was tortilla soup. It was a soggy tortilla chip and it tasted disgusting.
Soleil Kingston, District Eleven female- 17
It was probably dangerous to stay in the place I'd picked out. Of course anywhere was dangerous so I guess that didn't matter. And I'd run a long, long time before I finally stopped. I wanted to be really far away from everyone so no one would be around and also maybe the careers would work their way out from the cornucopia and not reach me for a long time.
It was mostly houses and big tall buildings in the arena but every now and then there were shops. The one I'd picked out was a little corner marketplace, kind of like the tiny shops we had in eleven where the storekeeper usually lived in an apartment upstairs. A lot of the shelves were bare or covered in garbage, probably since the gamemakers didn't want it to be too easy for us. But other shelves still had food or other stuff, mostly wrapped-up junk food. And best of all, there was a broken refrigerator cabinet filled with soda bottles. They weren't cold but as long as they were bottled they should still be okay to drink.
I took some candy off the shelves and shoved it in my pocket in case something happened before I could settle in and I needed to run away. The bottles were too big so I found a can of coconut water and shoved that in my pocket too. It felt almost like home being in the messy store. The paint was peeling and there were cracks in the tile floor. Instead of a nice neon sign there was a piece of cardboard with some sale prices scribbled onto it. The cash register was one of the old ones and not the nice fancy holographic ones I'd seen in the games building. There was even a ceiling fan with one missing blade.
After looking around to make sure no one was coming, I started rummaging through the shelves to see what the best options were. The candy bars all looked good and I was definitely planning to eat them, but I wanted to at least try to be healthy and eat high-energy food. I found a bar that was mostly peanuts held together with something sticky- probably marshmallow. That seemed like a lot of energy, so I took that one. I couldn't believe how sweet it was. Did people really eat things like this? It would make me sick if I ate more than one. In eleven we ate mostly rejected crops that were too old or sickly to be harvested and sent to the capitol. If there was any meat around, like maybe some of that salty canned meat, I was definitely going to be excited. I only got to eat meat a few times a year, mostly when one of the horses died and we had to butcher it even though it was really sad.
The soda was even worse. It was like drinking a bottle of syrup. The little bit of me that was still a kid was delighted but most of me just thought that I could feel my teeth rotting. If I won the games they would have to give me fake teeth like an old lady. The soda was supposed to be apple-flavored and I guess I could tell there were apples in there somewhere, so at least that reminded me of home. I liked apples better picked from the tree with no sugar added, though.
There weren't any stairs leading to an apartment, so I would have to find a place to stay somewhere in the store. There weren't any clothes racks or anything like that to hide behind- it was all just food. There WAS an empty ice-cream cabinet, though. It had a big hole in the side so I wouldn't suffocate. I gathered up a bunch of the trash and empty wrappers from a couple of the shelves and dumped them all into the cabinet. After a lot of trips it was full enough that I could hide entirely under the wrappers and if anyone looked in they would think it was just a bunch of garbage. I climbed in and tried it and I was definitely hidden. I just wished it was a little softer lying against the hard plastic base.
There must be something a little soft around here, I thought. If nothing else, at least a little cardboard I could shred up a little. I didn't mean to be picky, but it was so uncomfortable in there that I would be all stiff and sore when I got up in the mornings. That meant I couldn't run, and then the careers could catch me more easily. If I couldn't find anything I would make do but it was a good idea to at least look.
Allure Beldam, District one female- 18
The capitol wanted a beautiful victor. Don't try to tell me it wasn't true. Anyone who looked at the victors could see that it was funny how many attractive people won. They got more sponsors. They got less mutts sent after them. When luck came into play somehow they always rolled high. If you played the part you won the prize. It was as simple as that.
So it wasn't entirely for vanity that I was stalking mostly the female tributes. It WAS a LITTLE about vanity, since like anyone else, I was a product of my environment. All careers wanted to be the best. In Four that meant the most well-rounded. In Two it meant the most brutal. And in One, it meant the most attractive, by lots of different measures. The prettiest. The most well-spoken. The most charming in social situations. The kind of victor you'd want on the front lines of any publicity meeting, talking to the audience and showing who's the best in Panem. And some things never change, not in all of history. Men can be handsome but no man can be as handsome as a woman can be beautiful. We're just better made.
I wasn't an expert tracker but I dabbled a little. Honestly, I got lucky with this arena. The pathways between the houses and buildings were all dirt. Loose, light dirt. Mud would have made a nice, deep footprint, nice enough that tributes would take measures to hide them. The dirt just left little markings from the bottom of a shoe, small enough for most people to overlook but there if you looked really hard. As expected, there were footprints leading every which way out of the bloodbath. Whenever I ran across some I took a peek. The set I was currently following was small and shallow, even more shallow than normal. I was following either a girl tribute or Pell. If it turned out to be Pell I'd kill him anyway, since I had to kill him eventually and people DID like to sponsor cute young tributes, but I was hoping for a girl. And hopefully not Porsche. I'm sure she had a lot going for her, bless her heart, but she wasn't turning any heads.
The sun was brutal as I walked down the paths. I'd found some sunscreen in one of our first aid kits and took one of the bottles with me. Vanity aside, a sunburn could be really damaging. It would make it hard to move and certainly hard to fight. I shuddered to think about trying to wrestle someone when my skin felt like burned plastic whenever I moved. A pleasant side effect was that in an Arena that reeked of waste and filth, I smelled like coconuts.
The footsteps got clearer some distance away from the cornucopia. If I had to guess, though I wasn't sure, I'd say the person stopped running and started walking. It was pretty far from the cornucopia so I'd say they just got tired. I was going to be a little annoyed if the hunt went bust- I was a long way from camp and it would be a bothersome walk back. But if I eliminated a competitor it would all be worth it.
I smiled when I looked ahead and saw the footsteps disappeared across the threshold of a little corner store. It was probably full of supplies and worse, full of hiding places. Whoever was in there might even be able to ambush me and while I wasn't afraid of a fight, isn't it always better to stop a fight before it begins? I didn't want to get disfigured or injured by a lucky blow or a particularly strong outlier.
So I played it smarter, not harder. I put my hands on my hips and bent over, pretending the footsteps had disappeared. I looked around and scowled at all the buildings. If whoever was in the store was watching they'd think I'd lost the trail and was frustrated at how many possibilities there were. I sighed visibly and turned around, turning a corner and vanishing down a side road... where I looped around and came up alongside the corner market. I crept down the alley until I could just barely see inside one of the windows. I hunkered down beside a garbage can and waited for whoever was inside to walk past the window.
The academy doesn't prepare us for how gross the arena is. The stench of garbage made me sick as I kept up my stakeout. The air was stuffy and just kept heating up as the sun neared the top of the sky. I felt sweat pooling on my neck and dripping down my back and squirmed a little at the warm stickiness. I needed a shower. I wouldn't have one for weeks but I needed one. And my legs were about to fall asleep since I didn't want to kneel on the gross dirt floor and crouched instead. I swear if she runs out and I have to sprint after her all noodle-legged I am going to die of embarrassment. My arms ached where I'd steadied them on the garbage can. And ewwww it's MOIST
The tribute inside the shop finally walked in front of the window. I saw who it was and smirked.
15th place: Soleil Kingston, shot by Allure
As hilariously vain as Allure is, I kinda wanted her to at least get ONE kill for her vendetta against pretty people. Soleil sounded pretty so RIP Soleil. Also I needed more dead girls since I had so many dead boys. Soleil had a good idea going on and if she hadn't had an obsessed career hunting her things would have turned out a lot better. But what can you do when someone thinks you're pretty and decides to kill you? Our thoughts and prayers are with daughteroftheonetrueking, who got ripped off because her tribute was pretty.