Jamie Coal- District Twelve male
My eyes went wide when I saw the Arena. Something like this wasn't possible. There couldn't be a store this big, that just went on and on. I looked up, and there were three more stories above me, all full of more and more and more stores. I'd never imagined something like that. I didn't even hear the countdown, I was so in awe.
It was just luck that got me through the Bloodbath. I even ran in to grab something, as stupid as that was. Why did I even do that? This place had everything. There was nothing in the Bloodbath I couldn't just pick up lying around. And what did I get out of almost getting myself killed? A rain poncho.
I should have kept running down the halls, but when I saw the store, I stopped. I just couldn't make myself leave it. I looked in through the door and saw food. Food everywhere. Food lining the walls. Food piles against the counter. Food from floor to ceiling. I ran around the borders of the store, reading the labels.
Caramel delight. Lo-Fat. Sea Salt. Dill and Vinegar. Creme Brulee. Words I didn't even know. Things I'd never heard of. Food from all over Panem, just thrown together. They put it here all in a certain way, and they didn't even stop to eat it. They had so much food they didn't need to eat it. I hadn't known there were this many kinds of food in the world. I wasn't even ashamed that I was crying. There was enough food. I could eat until I wasn't hungry. That was something I'd never dreamed of.
I made my home in a barrel tucked along the side of the store. It was full of popcorn, like most of the store. I emptied it out and distributed the bags along the shelves, then crawled inside. For four weeks, I never left that store. I drank the bottles from the glass case by the cash register. When the time came and I had to go, I did something embarrassing but necessary. I went into an empty bag, rolled it up, and tucked it behind the blue cheese flavored popcorn, since that was the smelliest. It made me sick thinking about something that dirty in a food store, but this was the Hunger Games.
I tried every flavor of popcorn in that store. I never got sick of it. People said that, but I never understood it. How do you get sick of food? I finally started to understand that some people felt full all the time and were able to "get sick of" food, but I never got there. I ate and ate and ate, and when I felt like doing something different, I took a stick of the jerky in a tray on the selling counter.
It never entered my mind that I would win the Games. I didn't even count the cannons going off. All I thought about was eating, and how warm and nice my store was, and laying awake at night wondering which noise was the Careers coming to kill me.
I didn't realize it when I won. A cannon went off. Then a minute later, the anthem started playing. A voice boomed through the Arena, saying I was the winner. Half a dozen men came walking up to my store like they didn't have to be afraid to walk in the open. I cowered in my barrel, screeching and guarding my head with my arms when they tipped me out.
Back in the Capitol, the doctors fussed about my teeth and vitamin deficiencies or something like that. They put me on a scale, and they all walked away throwing up their arms and shaking their heads in confusion. I was the first Victor in history to gain weight inside the Arena.