Beth Crissino, Victor

It had to be the most awkward victory ever. For most of the Games I'd been in the Cornucopia with plenty of supplies. Then I'd been easily able to purify water and find fruit. The medics told me I was the healthiest Victor they'd seen since Jerky. So instead of getting hauled into a hovercraft and immediately rushed to an emergency room, I sort of self-consciously climbed the hovercraft ladder and made excruciating small talk with the medics checking my vitals and nagging me to drink electrolyte water.

Turns out, the worst thing wrong with me was some ringworm. I'd thought the itchy patches on my arms were just from being damp all the time, but nope, they were fungus. Not a particularly bad fungus, either- it sloughed right off with the fancy medicated exfoliater thing the medics used. Then I just had to stay in bed a few days to hydrate and wait for some tests in case any deeper problems had been missed.

It wasn't until bed rest that I had space to go over what had happened in the Games. The medics only came in to check things or bring more water and food. Most of the time, I was alone. Alone from the medics. Alone from my allies. Alone with my thoughts. The weird thing was, I wasn't as sad as I thought I would be. I guess I'd had time in the Arena to process losing my allies and I'd made most of my peace with the finale when I decided to do it. I'd worried I would regret my decision, but mostly I just felt... excited. I had my whole life ahead of me. I could do anything I wanted. I never had to be afraid of the Hunger Games again and I was financially set for life. It would probably be harder when I saw my students again for the first time, but for now, I was weirdly free.

"Great news," a blue-haired medic said, smiling widely as he came in.

"I can get up?" I asked, pushing the sheets back.

"Noooooooo," the medic said teasingly. "You get to have your operations!"

"Operations? But I'm healthy," I said. Anxiety flooded over me at whatever the tests had turned up that I hadn't known about.

"Exactly. You're cleared to get your plastic surgeries," the medic said.

"Oh..." I looked down at my body, trying to memorize it before goodness knew what would happen to it. "Did they say anything about big breasts?" I already had an iffy enough feeling about my secondary sexual characteristics. They weren't bad but if I'd been consulted, I'd have looked a little more androgynous.

"You're a 'sporty' Victor, so I don't think that's in the cards," the medic said sympathetically.

"No no no, that's fine," I said. "Do they take requests?"

"I've never heard of it. Usually we do it before they wake up, but you came here awake," the medic said.

"Well if they do..." I tried to think of things small enough to maybe get approved just to humor me, but important enough they mattered. "Maybe make me a little tanner? That's 'sporty', and it will help me not get sunburned." If I could stop coming home from long swimming lessons all scorchy and sore, that would be nice. Plus the skin cancer thing.

It took a while before I was brave enough to look in the mirror. I could feel my chest was the same but I didn't know how far that luck had spread. I finally snatched it up and braced myself. All things considered, it wasn't that bad. The biggest change I could see was that my right eye was noticeably lighter than it had been. I guess they let me keep my brown eyes but they needed some "pizazz", so they went with a quasi-heterochromia. Kind of rude, really. I doubted they would have changed them if they'd been any other color, but brown was "boring". Guess every race on this planet except white people have boring eyes. If I wasn't mistaken, my jawline was a little stronger. I was pleased to see I was a healthy shade of beach-kissed tan, though they'd added on some blush and contour lines I hadn't asked for. My hair was feathered. I'd never really tried feathering my hair before, but I didn't mind it. I was just glad it was glossy and light and healthy instead of matted and just sodden with sweat and grease.

"There's someone very special waiting to interview you!" my stylist Danae crowed as she fussed over my outfit. I was wearing a relatively understated black suit with white accents. I kind of like it. Maybe they'd let me take it home...

"Is it Isabella?" I asked.

Danae's face fell into a pout. "Who told you?" she asked.

"Lucky guess."

"Usually it would be Caesar, of course, but under the circumstances he suggested Isabella do it this time," Danae said.

Isabella was part of why this wasn't so hard for me. I'd lost three friends, of course, but I still had Isabella. I guess just having even one happy thing to cling to made all the difference for me. Probably it had something to do with the fact that the only parents I'd met were hers. The only parents I'd personally met were happy and that would have to be enough for me. That, and the fact that I hadn't had to kill Mike. That would have been the most awkward interview of the century.

I couldn't get over how modern the stage felt. After weeks in the jungle, it was crazy to have tile flooring under my feet, and synthetic fibers in the chair I sat on, and blaring lights overhead. For weeks I'd just had to go without light when the sun went down. It seemed unreal that here I could just have full light whenever I wanted.

Isabella's eyes met mine and we both smiled nervously. I'd been afraid she'd be mad for some reason, and looking at her, I could see she'd felt the same way about me. But we locked eyes and we were just happy to have someone who understood. I took my seat and the crowd faded away. For me it was like I was just talking to a friend.

"Great to see you again, Beth! How excited are you to be Panem's sixty-eight Victor?" she asked.

"Really excited," I said. "Honestly I didn't think I'd get this far."

"Well the rest of us had more faith in you," Isabella said. "Come on, brag just a little. What's your proudest moment in the Games?"

"You're gonna say this is lame, but I think I'm proudest of how long my alliance stayed together," I said. My eyes misted and I could see Isabella's doing the same.

"What are you going to do first when you get home?" Isabella asked, after she coughed.

"I bet you can already guess," I said, turning to face the crowd.

"GO SWIMMING!" they shouted.

"That's right!" I said.

"Before you jump in, let's see some memorable moments," Isabella said. She hit a button on a remote control and the screen on the wall lit up. We both braced ourselves for what was coming next. We winced at Sky's death, uncomfortably looked away when Zeb did what Isabella didn't seem to judge him for and I certainly couldn't anymore, and cheered when Amaranth blew Charm sky high. I smiled in wonder when I saw Mike disappear into a cloud of moths. Isabella had watched it live, but for me it was the first time. I was glad the interview was over, since I certainly couldn't speak. Even in the Games, sometimes things could go right.

Meeting President Snow was like when you have to give a speech in front of the whole school. I more or less just blocked out all my thoughts and tried not to mess anything up. The crown felt oddly heavy for such a smvll circlet. I was so nervous I didn't even notice until later, when I took it off and it caught the light, that it was made of dozens of fitted-together pieces of sea glass.

PS just a note that the next story is a Resurrection Games, so no need to make reservations.