Ben Dover- District Twelve male

Allying with Jay was the best decision I could have made. He was the real deal. He wanted to win like anyone else but I really believed he wanted to help me as long as he could. One day after training we played a game of laser tag in the Games building. He was just a fun guy like that. No matter what happened I'd always remember playing a game of laser tag with a normal friend.

In the Bloodbath Jay and I didn't go for supplies. He was a strong guy and I was sort of fast but it wasn't worth the risk. The Careers were also strong and fast, probably more so than we were. We still didn't get out unscathed. One of the rats came straight at me. As I was wrestling with it, holding it above my head as it tried to angle its neck to bite my face, Jay smacked it in the side with a pipe like a baseball bat. I got him back when I spotted Margo aiming an arrow at the back of his head. I shoved him out of the way and we ducked behind one of the garbage piles before she could aim again.

The garbage Arena smelled terrible but in a weird way it was one of the better Arenas I could have asked for. Just about anything we could think of was available if we looked long enough. Jay and I made camp in the front end of a rusted-out pickup truck right at the bottom of a garbage hill. We pushed some of the garbage down onto it and it was invisible until you crawled through a really gross tunnel. It was as nice as some of the places people lived in Twelve. Warmer at night, too. We lived off stale bread and whatever odds and ends we found poking around the rubbish.

I didn't know the statistics off the top of my head but my Games was definitely one of the longest. The whole Arena was a hiding place. The garbage hid our tracks and the smell took away even the slim chance of sniffing us out. With water bottles dropped all around the Tributes didn't have to go to a central water source. It took days for the Careers to track down every one of their kills. Four weeks later Jay and I were still lurking in our truck, a little skinnier but not starving, talking about girls or sports or whatever else crossed our minds. Once we spent an entire day playing paper football with some scraps.

In a twist of fate that sounded poetic, Margo was the last one left with us in the end. When we heard the cannon signaling it was down to three we looked at each other nervously.

"Go out and get it over with?" Jay asked.

"It's been fun," I said, not wanting to mention what would happen if we somehow bested her.

"Maybe it'll work out," Jay said, similarly evasive.

Margo didn't have her bow when she met us. Maybe she lost it or just wasn't good at it. I wasn't any less afraid of her because of it. She had a sword and it was aimed right at us when she charged. We quickly discovered it didn't matter that there were two of us. No matter how we tried to fight she would always slide like an eel so there was one of us between her and the other. Before long Jay was bleeding from half a dozen wounds, I was limping on a lacerated leg, and even Margo was nursing hurts including bruised ribs from Jay's pipe. When Margo knocked me onto my back she'd stabbed Jay through the chest before I could even get up. Even as he fell he slammed his pipe into her stomach so hard she gagged.

Jay's cannon sounded as Margo turned to me. She took a step forward and staggered, her sword dropping to her side as she clutched her stomach. She bent forward and blood dribbled from her mouth. She couldn't move as fast as I could anymore, I realized. She had some serious damage going on inside. Not bad enough to kill her before she got to me, but bad enough that I now had a chance.

Weapons were scattered everywhere in this Arena. I scanned the ground and saw a long wrench practically right next to my feet. I picked it up and ran to meet Margo as she stumbled toward me. She didn't seem to notice how injured she was. I saw the surprise written all over her face when I brought the wrench up like a bat and hit her. She moved her sword up to block me but not fast enough to avoid the blow to the head. She went down hard and I hit her again half a dozen times even though the first one might have been enough. When the cannon sounded I sank down and sat on my butt between two dead bodies.