Chapter 10

Night falls fast as we try to perch on the highly slippery rocks on isle eleven. I would move on but we can't trust these rocks in daylight, let alone in the pitch black of night.

Our clothes are slow to dry and we were soaked to the skin, so the shivering perseveres for hours. I can't sleep, even when Julie agrees to watch.

Not that there is much to watch. Looking into a night without a fire to light it is like wearing a thick, black blindfold and just cramped. It is also very nerve wracking, especially in the silence.

I am just so scared of being alone, so I talk to Julie to make sure she is definitely there.

"Julie?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell me more about your life in Eight."

She sort of groans, but starts to speak.

"Well, my family - the five of us - is fairly high up in terms of riches in Five, though isn't saying much. We're rich enough for my parents to get addicted to morphine, but poor enough for them to need it. They sort of... Left when I was ten, and went into their own world of pretty colours and bright lights where everything is just wonderful. The way they talk, the way they look at the world... I sort of wanted to join them, once. I probably, would've done, if it wasn't for my brothers."

"You have siblings?"

"Jeremy and James. Don't laugh."

"I'm not laughing at the fact that your names all start with the same letter, Julie. I have four siblings: Aimee, Kendra, Liv and Peter. I'm the youngest."

"Lucky. Jeremy's twelve and James is eight. My parents aren't ever sober enough to notice that we exist most of he time, so I'm the mum to the boys. They didn't even say goodbye to me after the reaping."

I bite my lip. My whole family crowded into the room in the Justice Building say goodbye, and the Peacekeeper had to let us have extra time so they could all give me lengthy goodbye speeches. We were all crying at the end of it, and I think I saw the peacekeeper crying a tiny bit, too, but could've just been the light on his visor.

Julie gives a sniff from where she sits; I reach out and take her hand.

"What were you doing through the Games, Julie?"

"Me?"

"Can you see another Julie here?"

"I can't see anything."

"You know what I mean!"

"Well, I spent the first couple of days alone, looking for allies. Y'know, just someone to talk to. I found Robert on day three, I think, and he gave me food. We talked for a bit; he told me his plans with the careers."

"Which were...?"

"To kill them off one by one when they left the camp alone. He was doing alright, stealing food and using his own supplies."

"Who did he steal from?"

"Careers, mainly, but also other alliances, like the District Seven pair and the District Three pair before the hovercraft took them. He certainly wasn't going to starve, that's for sure." She sighs. "Robert told me to meet him in various places every few days, and I spent my time wandering to them. That was all. What about you?"

I tell her about my alliance, going through their deaths from Tad being betrayed to Rachel and Drew being poisoned.

"So... Yeah," I say when I finish. "That's it."

No reply.

"Julie?"

Her deep, slow breathing tells me all I need to know.

So I sit in silence for a few minutes. Then I lie in silence. Then I pace in silence.

"Julie?"

"Julie." I shake her shoulders and flick her ears.

"Whoa," she says. "What?"

"It's me."

"It's still nighttime," she groans. "Please let me sleep."

"No."

"What? That's mean."

"I'm worried you're going to disappear," I admit, cringing slightly at how lame that sounds.

"It bothers you that much?"

"Yes."

"Ok." She sighs. "Ok, I'll stay awake. So..." She yawns. "What is your life like? I told you about mine."

"Thank you," I say, then start on my story. "I am eighteen years old, and I am the youngest in a family of five children. My oldest sister is Aimee, she's twenty-five, and my parents' pride and joy. They're so happy with everything she did in the dark days, despite her being only fourteen... Blah, blah, blah." I sigh. "My next-oldest sister is called Kendra. She's the quiet, thoughtful one of the family. My brother - I'll get to him in a bit - has a theory that she has PTSD, but he has a theory for everything, so I'm not so sure myself. Not that I know anything about PTSD...

"My youngest sister is twenty, and goes by the name of Olivia, or Liv. Weirdly, I think she's the only one out of the whole family of seven people who does remotely girly things."

"Define 'girly'."

"Having crushes, worrying about appearance... I don't know, liking Capitol men?"

"How is that last one girly?!" If I could see Julie, I think she would look very indignant.

"Maybe not. But, sort of, y'know..."

"No, I don't."

"Liking makeup and boys and dresses."

"Ok."

"My brother is called Peter. He's almost a year older than me, and he doesn't really belong in Ten. Well, none of us do if you're going by stereotypes: Aimee would be best in Two, though she would hate it; Kendra would fit in if she was in Eleven, though maybe not with the things she says sometimes, I hear they're very strict in Eleven."

"They are."

"Liv would fit right in if she moved to One, though she wouldn't be a career, as you call them; and Peter live a wonderful life in Three, because he loves knowing things and researching random stuff, which I think is kind of pointless."

"You're so lucky to have such a big family..." Julie sighs.

"Not really. We argue all the time, and we still haven't recovered from the Dark Days, financially, physically and mentally. At the moment, we share a room in the farmhouse we work the land around. It isn't a very large room."

"But it's on a farm! In Eight, we never see anything but grey. Grey factories, grey uniforms, grey land, grey skin."

"Grey skin?!"

"Yeah. It's a disease that's been infecting Eight recently. I want to get back home so I can check my brothers and parents are still ok; hardly anyone survives it once they get it. I spent my whole time in the Capitol dreading any messages in case it was someone telling me my family had been infected."

"We had something like that in Ten a few years ago, when I was little. Liv wouldn't leave the house for a month, but I'm not sure it was lethal. None of my family got it, anyway, though school was closed for a while. I remember being happy about the event, but not knowing the reason, really." I sigh, remembering a smaller, younger me. "I was so innocent back then. It was almost as though I blotted the Dark Days from my mind."

"We were born a third of the way through it, weren't we? It was a long war... Most of which we spent in blissful ignorance."

Behind me, the eleventh day begins to dawn, and I stifle a yawn, my eyelids drooping slightly.

No, Frances, stay awake. Only two more to die, and you're home.

Two more, but one is Julie. After our lengthy talk, I feel we've known each other for years, not just a few days.

But that's stupid; I will have to kill her at some point.

Before she kills me.