Galvan Fabre, District Five male (18)

Since the crocodile incident, I'd been spending more time out of the water. Not much time, since it was still one of the safer places for me, but once in a while I'd give myself a break and tell myself it was for the best since I could find fruit and stuff. I also worried that if I stayed near the river all the time I'd start to fall apart. My skin already had a glassy translucency to it and sometimes little strips sloughed off. I felt mushy when I walked, like my outer skin and my inner skin were coming detached and sliding around on each other. So far I didn't have any open wounds but I knew the second I got any sort of cut it would get infected.

I hummed quietly to myself as I prowled through the trees looking for fruit or anything else interesting. I wasn't making enough noise for anyone to hear me- or at least my hums were less noisy than my steps, so at least they weren't making things worse- but I was going to lose my mind if I didn't get some stimulation. I hadn't talked to anyone for weeks. If things lasted much longer I was about to go find that crocodile and see if he wanted to chat.

Everyone knew the Games were scary and violent. What I didn't know was how bone-crushingly boring they were. Sure, I was constantly terrified, but after so long, that dulled into a background noise that never let me rest but never really engaged me, either. It was just hiding all day long and wiping muck off food before I ate it or slapping away the few flies and bugs that ignored my mosquito spray, though I hadn't felt any signs of malaria or anything, so it was mostly working.

The sun was starting to set. I couldn't see it too well through the trees, but I could tell by the way the light dimmed and the forest came to life. A twig fell on my head as some monkey ran through the trees above me. It called once, a cackling sort of noise, and I resisted the urge to call back to it like I used to meow at our cat Porkers. A little pig-looking critter darted by me when I passed a tree, scaring me half to death. I wondered what the animals would do after the Games were over. Were they all killed, or did they live on in this tiny artificial ecosystem?

A branch bent against me as I walked past it. It slid over my chest and then there was a snapping noise as it suddenly came free and straightened, releasing its tension. Another branch, presumably held back by its position, rocketed forward and smashed into me, as little hard fruits rained down on me. It knocked the wind out of me and I thought at first some little broken-off twig had pricked into me. But when I started to fall backwards, something stopped me, and my breath hitched oddly, like I'd swallowed something wrong. I looked down at the branch, which was still wedged against my torso, and saw the bamboo spikes jutting out of my stomach. It was just like people said- it only felt like I'd been punched. Breathing painfully, I picked a nut out of my hair. What lay in my hand was a small rock. A bunch of small rocks, balanced on a branch, so if it moved they would make noise...

This is what they made us. It seemed an incongruously unimportant thought, but the sheer brutality of it washed over me. Just weeks in this place and we were sharpening sticks like something out of Lord of the Flies. A stick sharpened at both ends. I shuddered as I remembered those sixth-grade essay questions.

I was strangely relieved when I saw the throwing knife whistling through the leaves. It was Charm, then. She'd already been like this long before the Games. Meanwhile people like me hadn't changed at all. We ran and hid and never tried to kill anyone. We just suffered when they tried to kill us.

Dahlia Redwood, District Seven female (18)

Romeo cursed up a storm as he poked at his infected foot. He'd smeared some antibiotic ointment on it when he noticed the bamboo shoot had drawn blood. Seeing as the arena was quite literally filthy, however, it didn't seem to be enough. We probably should have taken more medical supplies, but we hadn't wanted to test our luck with Isabella.

"It's probably blood poisoning," Romeo said darkly, wincing as he squeezed whitish-green goop from the cut.

"You think you'll die?" I asked.

"Not until I kill that bitch," Romeo said.

"You ever think maybe you're a little obsessed?" I asked. Clearly Romeo was a terrible person all around, but the worst thing about him had to be the way he treated people he claimed to have once loved.

"Shut up," Romeo said.

"It just seems like you care about her a lot more than you admit," I said. "It didn't work out. Get over it and find someone else."

Romeo looked at me with venom in his eyes. "And look who's talking about bad breakups. I seem to recall every one of your boyfriends abused you? Maybe you should embrace the single life."

"Where do you get off? I'm a victim!" I said indignantly. "I'm a survivor. You have no idea how strong I am after all of this." I was shaking with anger, my fists clenched at my sides. Romeo and I were nothing alike. Nothing. A worthless thug like him had no right to even speak to me.

"Strange you keep running into terrible boyfriends. I wonder what it is about you that attracts that type," Romeo scoffed.

The edges of my vision went red. For a few seconds I couldn't speak.

"I'm a kind person, that's what. I see the best in people and I can't admit they're just garbage until too late."

Romeo laughed. He actually laughed. "Bullshit," he said.

"What?" I asked, the words hissing out of my mouth.

"Bullshit," Romeo said again. "Go ahead, talk some more about how you're an angelic oppressed victim. I know you're full of it and if you're not an idiot, you do too. Since you already think I'm 'just garbage', I might as well go all in. You're a sad, pathetic liar. And you know what? I'm starting to think it wasn't your boyfriends who were abusive."

"how dare you," I almost whispered.

"Go ahead. Tell me more about how they abused you. How they hurt you. How they lied, and harassed, and harangued, and maybe even hit you. Why don't we add 'sexist' to the list, too, since obviously you think only men can abuse women. Lady, I'm literally a mobster and even I admit that's not true."

No one had ever spoken to me like that. To see someone look at me without any shred of fear, to know he didn't give one bit of credence to anything I was saying, shocked me to my bones. To tell the truth, it reminded me of a long, long time ago. It reminded me of how I used to look at my father.

Is it true? Am I like him? I couldn't believe the thought had entered my head. I was nothing like my father. He was weak and pathetic. He targeted people who couldn't fight back. My mother, who quietly endured his screaming and cried alone in her room. Me, a little girl who just wanted her house to be peaceful.

"You don't know anything," I said. I turned away from Romeo and drew into myself.

"I suppose none of your boyfriends did, either," Romeo said. "I suppose if you asked them, it was all sunshine and rainbows until they went and messed it up and lost you."

I hadn't thought about them, not for a long time. For the first time, I did so. I thought of how Jay might have felt when I screamed at him. When I hit him. I could at least admit it must have messed him up a little, since he went and told the court all those lies about me being abusive. So where did I fit in? What part did I have in the failure of my relationships? I briefly warred with myself, wondering if I should come to a very, very significant conclusion. Thoughts and emotions jumbled around until they finally settled into resolution.

"It was their fault," I said, "for making me do it."

Romeo looked at me with something other than anger. For a second I thought it was disappointment, like a mother gets when her children misbehave. But that wasn't it, I saw when I looked closer. It was contempt. It was the same way I so often looked at him.

"That's what I thought," he said. "Come on. Let's go find Val while I can still walk."

Kade McNamara, District Eight female (13)

Sometimes, when the sun was bright and we were in a larger section of the tunnel, it felt almost like a little home. Valencia was my big sister and we were two young ladies just trying to make it in the world. We had clean water and fruit to eat, and sometimes we even dunked the fruit in the water to make fun fancy drinks. It wasn't too cold at night and in the tunnels it wasn't too hot in the daytime. Of course, it wasn't all rainbows. My clothes were filthy. I'd actually thrown out my panties after they got so mucky I was honestly afraid they might give me an infection. My skin constantly chafed and I tasted the dirt under my fingernails every time I ate. The ground was hard, even after we put some leaves down, and I always slept badly and woke up tired. But it was an okay life. I could almost imagine what it must have been like to live thousands of years ago.

Valencia had so many cool stories. She'd lived so much life I'd never even imagined. She'd lived on her own and when she got paid, she kept it all and didn't have to give it to her mother for safekeeping. If she wanted a fancy dress, she just bought it. She didn't ask anyone, she just bought it. It must have been a wonderfully thrilling life. It made me feel more alive just hearing about it. And there was one thing Valencia knew about that I'd been trying to get up the courage to ask about. It was something that had been blooming up in me for some time. I couldn't pinpoint when it had started, but like a little candle in a dark room, once the flame started it kept smoldering.

"What's it like to be in love?" I asked.

Valencia looked up, surprised but not panicked. "It didn't work out so well for me," she said.

"But before that. Before it went bad, when you thought it was good," I said. "What's it like to be in love, I mean? What does it feel like?"

"It's hard to say," Valencia said. "It's like... you really, really want someone. Like you want your favorite food, almost. You want to eat that person up and taste them. Not really like food, of course, but there's something primal about eating. You don't just like it, like you like a pretty painting. You want to... experience it. Oh, that's not the word. I think I lost track of where I was going."

It didn't sound like it to me. What Valencia was saying was exactly what I'd wanted to ask about. Valencia was older than me. She was in that age where people started to think about romance and all those things. Just two years ago, I'd never thought about those things. But right when I suddenly grew half a foot and got little lumps on my chest, thoughts sometimes came to me that I didn't know how to make sense of. Now it was my last chance. I was almost certainly going to die here, and if I didn't ask, I would die without knowing.

"What's..." I looked around for the cameras I couldn't see. My mother was watching. I couldn't say it. I put my hands around my mouth and whispered. "What is sex like?'

Valencia laughed. "I'm sorry," she said, covering her mouth. "That just wasn't what I expected." She smiled wistfully, seeming to think back to earlier days before her nasty boyfriend went and ruined everything.

"It's not like anything else. People don't usually actually talk about what it's like and that's entirely because there's nothing like it to compare it to."

I broke in as she tried to think of a way to explain it. "People say it's really good."

"It definitely is," Valencia said.

"What does it actually feel like?" I asked. It was forbidden knowledge. It was magic I was just starting to see, since I'd passed some threshold. It was an element of the world I hadn't known, like I was just starting to be aware of a color I'd never been able to see before.

"It's like... like when you push on a bruise. That feeling of a weird sort of relief. But the opposite, sort of, since it's good instead of hurting. But that feeling where you want to press harder and harder. It's like when you're really itchy and you finally scratch. It's like relief, but where relief is removing a negative, it's adding a positive. It's like hugging someone you love really hard and that mushy love-feeling you get from it. All those things added together."

My stomach hurt. Somehow even that made me feel enlightened. My stomach hurt but in a way that I wanted more. I felt like I was stumbling around right next to something enormous. "Is it really the best thing ever in the world like everyone talks about?"

Valencia smiled again, gently. "I don't think anything ever lives up entirely to what people say. But it is really nice. Maybe not the entire world, but a really good part."

I couldn't sleep that night. I wanted something. I didn't even know entirely what it was. Valencia could describe it but she couldn't say everything. You had to learn it for yourself. I didn't think I ever would. And it wasn't just what we talked about. Sex was one thing, among so many others, that adults did. I didn't think I would ever be an adult. I would be like this until I died. I would be a girl, afraid and excited about all that magic, poised right on the edge.

13 place: Galvan Fabre- booby-trap set by Charm

Since the numbers are decreasing, I had to pick one or the other of Pi's Tributes. I chose to focus on Dahlia since I sometimes underdevelop villains. While Galvan was a last-minute addition to fill a late slot, he was still a full character. I'm happy he got to see the swamp, even if it wasn't the ocean. Thanks Pi for Galvan, who brought some nice ADHD rep and energized the story with his activeness.

In other news, local author attempts to describe sex when she's never had any. PS while I faded to black, the conversation did continue for a while in more detail.