I stare at Lila's dead body. The helicopters that take the bodies away can't do so until we clear out of this area. And so, I examine her. The bite on her arm is definitely a snake bite. I have never heard of anything else that could leave a wound like that. Although, I'm not sure what a wound from one of those scorpion things would look like. But whatever gave her the wound is the thing that killed her. There are no signs of any other injuries. She could have eaten something too, but the bite seems more likely.

I keep watch for the rest of the night, but nothing else happens. Barley is the first to wake up, as he rolls over a bit too far and almost falls from the tree. "Whoa!" he yelps, clinging to a branch for dear life. "Wolfgang, help!... Oh, wait. Never mind. I think I can do this." I watch Barley place his foot on Coal's head.

Coal's eye snap open. "What the-?" he moves his head, and Barley stumbles, falling from the tree and pulling the sleeping bag with him.

"Ow!" Barley rubs his shaven head before standing up. He turns to look at me, and ends up looking past me. "Holy hornworms!" he exclaims as his eyes rest on Lila's dead body. "What happened?"

Coal looks from the body, to me, and back again. "Did you kill her?" he asks.

"No," I answer honestly. I point to the wheat field. "Something in there did."

"We should probably get moving," Coal says. "They'll want to take the body."

"Yeah," I respond.

Coal stands and walks over to Seamus, who is curled up inside the tarp. Coal kicks him. "Get up."

"Ow!" Seamus grunts, rolling over. His sits up and pushes the tarp off of himself. "What the thimble was that for?"

"We need to leave," Coal replies gruffly. "There's a dead person in our camp, and the helicopters can't take the body until we clear out."

"Who died?" Seamus asks frantically, scrambling to his feet. He looks at Barley and me, and a confused expression passes over his face. Coal steps out of the way and Seamus now has an unobscured view of Lila. "Oh," Seamus mumbles.

We pack our things quickly and rush for the field. Barley notices the pot that I'm carrying. "Where did you get that?" he asks.

"Lila had it when she stumbled into our camp last night. She said that she wanted to join us, and offered the pot as payment. Then, she fell down dead," I answer him.

"Great! We have a pot now!" Barley grins. "There are a lot of plants that can only be safely eaten if you boil them."

I raise my eyebrows at his obvious lack of concern over Lila's death. I can't blame him. This is the Hunger Games. One more dead tribute means that his odds of survival just went up.

We walk for about forty-five minutes when Coal spots it. "What the heck?" he mutters. When I come closer, I know why he is shocked. There is a backpack, lying out in the middle of nowhere. It is solid black, and it has a note on it.

I read the note. Pandora's Hope: A box of crackers.

Seamus apparently reads it too, because he smiles broadly and exclaims, "Crackers! Yay!" He reaches toward the backpack.

"Don't touch it!" I hiss. Everyone gives me funny looks.

"Why not?" Seamus whines.

"I read a story in the book last night," I reply. "It was about a woman named Pandora who opened a box that released bad things into the world. At the end of the story, only one good thing came out of the box, and that was hope. The note says, 'Pandora's hope'. I can guess that the crackers aren't the only thing in the bag, but they are probably the only good thing."

Coal and Barley look at me and nod solemnly. Seamus crosses his arms over his chest and sulks. "But we need food to live. Why would they put stuff in there to kill us?"

"Seamus," I answer, "this is the Hunger Games. We're supposed to die."

"That's not fair," Seamus pouts.

"Who said anything about the Hunger Games being fair?" Coal asks caustically.

We continue on for a while, leaving the backpack behind. After a while, Seamus mumbles, "I'm bored. Can we talk?"

"You have a mouth, Seamus," I reply. "Feel free."

"Um… okay…" Seamus thinks for a moment. "I guess we can talk about our lives. I'll start."

Coal and I exchange a glance, and I understand. Coal doesn't want to let the others know that he is a wolf-mutt. I nod, and he nods back. I won't tell them.

Seamus starts talking. "Let's see… I have four little brothers and three little sisters, and my mom. That's my family. Um… I work as a carpet porter, and-"

Barley cuts him off. "What happened to your dad?" The twelve-year-old seems intrigued.

Seamus develops a hard frown on his face. I haven't seen him look this serious since training. "My dad… He did something. I don't know what it was, and I don't want to know. The thing that he did… it's the reason that he's an Avox. He's probably serving some Capitol person their bread and cheese. He's probably… watching me."

We all stop. Coal looks surprised. Barley nods sympathetically. The youngest boy mumbles, "And I thought that what happened to my dad was bad."

"What happened to your dad, Barley?" I ask.

Barley looks up at me. "One day, he was pickin' peaches. He was too old to be climbin' trees, but the peacekeepers made him do it anyway. He fell and… his back broke. He's been paralyzed from the waist down ever since."

I look at Barley in shock. Then, I turn to Seamus. I didn't know that they had such severe pasts. It makes my life look easy.

"It's okay, though," Barley smiles. "Mama works, and I do too. We keep my two little sisters fed, and take care of Papa. If I win the Games, we might be able to have Papa's back fixed. Wouldn't that be great?" Barley grins brightly.

Seamus frowns. "If I win, my family might be able to get some good food. It's tough to feed so many mouths when only two people work, and I really don't want my little brothers to have to get jobs as station runners." His jaw clenches, and that's when I realize that this conversation can lead to discord among my pack. If we start comparing our reasons to live, we'll only end up wanting to kill each other.

"Well," I say, "we should work together to take out the Careers."

"And what about after that?" Seamus asks in a bit of a sinister voice.

"After that is…" I pause for a moment, trying to think of what to say. "After that, is after that. We shouldn't rush things." I can tell from that look in his eye that he's considering killing me. That makes sense. In his eyes, I'm the biggest threat here, because he doesn't know that Coal is a wolf-mutt too.

"Let's go," Seamus says darkly.

We continue to walk. We find another backpack. Then there's another, and another. Seamus begins to complain. "Why won't you guys let me carry a weapon?"

"You're too strong to need one," I tell him.

"You're a half wolf-mutt," he points out. "You're stronger than I am."

"Yep," I nod. "And I have better vision and hearing too. I could kill an enemy from about a mile off with a clear shot. Can you?"

Seamus frowns and grumbles something that I can't hear.

Soon, it is night. We all make camp to sleep. We can't light a fire. That's too risky. The entire field could burst into flames, and then what would we do?

Barley tears down stalks of grain and lays them on the ground. He lays the tarp over the sheaves and folds it in half, creating a makeshift bed. He hands Seamus the sleeping bag.

Seamus looks at the object in his hands before tossing it to me. "You stayed up pretty late last night, Wolfgang. You should get some sleep. I've slept every night that we've been in the arena. It's time that I start pulling my weight. I'll keep watch tonight." I don't like the tone in his voice.

Coal glances from me to Seamus, and then says, "I'll stay up tonight, too, just in case Seamus gets into trouble." Coal looks back at me, and we talk with our eyes. He knows what's happening, and I'm glad that he's trying to protect me. Pack loyalty is a must if any of us are going to come out of this thing alive.

I lay in the sleeping bag as the sky plays the anthem and shows Lila's picture. Then, I drift off to sleep.

I awake to the sound of a canon. I bolt straight up, and Coal is talking to me. "Seamus kept trying to get into the weapons. I made sure that he couldn't get to them. He got angry and took off around thirty minutes ago. He hasn't come back."

Barley gets up and rummages through the green backpack, pulling out the weird sunglasses and putting them on. "These are night-vision glasses," he says. "I wear these sometimes when they want us to harvest the orchard during the night."

I nod, but I really don't pay Barley much attention right now. Seamus could be dead. And even if he was sending me murderous looks all day, I don't want one of my pack members to die tonight. "Which way did he go?" I ask Coal.

Coal nods to me and takes off in a certain direction. I scramble to my feet and follow him. Barley follows too. As we run, I hear another canon sound. What's happening? Suddenly, Coal stops in front of us. I walk around him and see it.

Seamus lies next to a black backpack. With my excellent night vision, I can see the words on the note attached to the bag. Pandora's Hope: knives. Then, I see the cause of Seamus' death. Scorpions are crawling everywhere. They must have come out of the backpack. "Go back! Run! Scorpions!" I hiss.

"What?" Coal asks, baffled.

"They're poisonous bugs. Their stings kill. They're the reason Seamus is dead. Run, run!" I take off back in the direction from which we had come. The others follow me, and we soon make it back to camp.

After catching my breath, I sit down on the sleeping bag. "I can't feel sorry for him," I mutter. "He died because he was trying to kill us. The note on that backpack said 'knives'. He wanted a weapon. He wanted to kill us. But instead, he opened Pandora's Box."

My last two pack mates stared at me. "We should sleep," I say. Barley takes off his glasses and puts them on the ground next to his bed. I settle back into the sleeping bag. "Coal, keep watch," I order. He nods. Just before I drift off to sleep again, I wonder who the other canon was for.