Zach Connouis, District Eleven male (18)

What happens if you're meant to be in second place but the first-place guy isn't there?

I'd always hung out with Jay. Jay had been the one who first spoke when we met. Jay was the one who came up with the ideas. I was high right-hand man. Jay wasn't anyone's right-hand man. He was just Jay- the boss of our friend group. He never meant it to turn out that way- he wasn't bossy or rude- he just had that personality. He was the kind of guy who would lead the charge in a battle and I was the kind of guy who would follow him.

Jay wasn't here this time. I couldn't believe it when I first woke up and they told me he hadn't been picked. First I thought I was just still feeling the pain medications and then I thought they were pulling my leg. No way. No way they picked me but not Jay. That was like picking jelly but not peanut butter. You can eat peanut butter on its own but no one eats jelly on its own.

It was a jungle again. Do they have the same three guys picking Resurrection Games themes? Again with the jungle. This one felt a little cooler, sort of. Like, less hot. It was still hot but maybe it was just that the air wasn't so wet. It was a drier heat, as they always say. It gave me weird deja vu at night, waking up to a jungle again. I was starting to lose track of how many times I'd died.

The only other one of us they picked was Demarcus. I just didn't get it. Someone was out there picking Tributes and they said "Yeah, don't take Jay and Logan but we want Zach and Demarcus". Maybe Jay said something that made them mad. It was true he talked more than I did. Mostly I was just afraid I'd say something dumb.

The monsters killed more people than the Tributes did. I couldn't count how many times I heard growling and roaring noises before a cannon went off. Demarcus and I had our share of encounters. I didn't know what they called the gross-looking two-legged things with big nasty fangs but I didn't like them. There sure were a lot of them, though. If we'd all been together we might have been able to always get away. But there were only two of us, and the fifth one took Demarcus' leg. I still felt guilty that I thought about how pretty the red was against the glistening green grass.

I hadn't been alone for almost as long as I could remember, other than being dead. I'd always had one friend or another around. I was just an outgoing, friendly guy. So it weirded me out something fierce being by myself after Demarcus died. I started to think that I almost knew how it must have felt in war hundreds of years ago in the jungle. Out in the jungle there are strange noises and movements in the night. I always wanted to go out and see if it was another Tribute and maybe we could be friends. But even if it was another Tribute and not a monster it would end the same way. So I stayed alone.

The first person I saw after Demarcus died was Floki. Demarcus had died in fifth place and I guess everyone else guess either Floki or someone else got all the others before I saw them. I was expecting Floki to have a weapon so I was surprised when we ended up just barehanded grappling. Probably he lost his along the way or it got broken. I didn't have anything either so it was just two massive guys beating on each other.

It was fun fighting Floki. It shouldn't have been, since he half gouged my eye out and bit off one of my ears. It hurt like hell but I was just glad it was another person who hurt me. I'd been entirely alone for two weeks and when I first saw Floki I'd thought I was hallucinating. He must have been feeling it too, since we talked all through the fight like something out of a swashbuckler movie.

I was curled up on my side, trying to shift my weight off my broken leg and pressing the stump of my right thumb into my stomach to stop the bleeding. Floki was facedown in the grass, almost as covered in cuts and bruises as I was. I was crawling toward him, waiting for him to start crawling toward me, when the anthem started playing.

What happens when you're meant to be in second place but the first-place guy isn't there?

I guess you get first place.