Leonella had always thought that the reason she was never sad at funerals was because the deaths had never come as a surprise. Every time someone she knew died, it was because they had been old or sick or both. But when she found out her sister was going to die in a few weeks, the only thing Leonella felt was irritation that now her family would start being all sad and she'd have to stand there not knowing what to tell them.
Okay, she was a little bit sad. She had always liked her sister well enough, even if they had rarely interacted. But she had also been a little sad when her great-aunt died and she realized she would never call Leonella 'little daughter' again, as she always had. It wasn't anything strong. Leonella felt more upset when she did poorly on a test. It was just that…it happened.
Diana would be dead soon. Leonella felt nothing in particular. If the other option was to have a mental breakdown for the next week, Leonella counted it as a blessing.
Leonella had always hated funerals because everyone was sad and expected her to be sad and she never knew what to say. It was especially awful when she remembered a funny joke right when she was standing at the casket and had to fight to not start laughing. Now, everyone was dropping by to offer condolences. Simultaneously, news crews flooded their neighbourhood and made segments that called on everyone to donate. It was weird - one moment everyone was acting like Diana was dead, and the next, they were pretending she would be back soon. Had Leonella been smaller, she wouldn't have noticed the contradiction. But she was fifteen, so she simply ignored it.
What were you supposed to say when someone offered condolences? 'Thank you'? 'Yeah, it sucks'? Start crying? Mom and Dad and Grandpa cried enough for ten people. Leonella couldn't bear to be around them, she could never deal with emotional people. She crashed on the couch of a friend from school and promised she'd be back after Diana actually died.
The one thing Leonella did feel was that how weird it was that her sister had been Reaped. She had run the numbers a long time ago, the odds were vanishingly tiny. But the thing about odds was that it would happen to someone every year. It just so happened that this year, it was Diana.
Leonella was good at math. Diana had had to be forced through six grades and then into trade school, but Leonella was finishing up grade nine and had good marks. She wanted to go to university and become a phtisiatrist, or maybe a mathematician, she hadn't decided yet. It was really weird to think Diana would never finish her apprenticeship.
Yep, weird was the word. It all felt so weird.
"I disagree with the blond one," Leonella said, gesturing with a piece of cheesy garlic bread at the television in her friend's living room. "Diana's barely underweight. It's not going to cause her problems."
Charlotte nodded and ate some bread. Leonella had a bit of a crush on her, but she didn't know if Charlotte liked girls and wasn't going to ask because that was too awkward. Some people said it was obvious if you had a crush, but Grandpa, who had always known as soon as Diana had as much as thought about someone, only asked Leonella if there was anyone she liked and sighed sadly when she said there wasn't. Probably that was nonsense, like most of what people said about crushes. In reality, there were no butterflies in your stomach or being unable to stop staring at the person or randomly thinking about them. Leonella just liked hanging out with Charlotte and wanted to give her a hug.
"I was running the numbers a while back. If you look at dark horse Victors, previous levels of nutrition don't matter that much beyond how they contribute to physical appearance and performance in training. In the Arena, it's all about how many sponsors you have and whether you're able to remain uninjured. Even the Careers would look unimpressive if they weren't fed for a week." Of course, not only did they control the Cornucopia most years, they were generously sponsored even if there was no food or someone else took it.
"So it doesn't matter?"
"No, it does. It's just that the main advantages of being well-fed are being attractive and doing better in training. Once it's day 10, other stuff is more important. Even if having more body fat does mean that you'll have more energy for longer, so easier to fight, run away, stuff like that."
"Huh." Charlotte leaned back against the couch. "That's interesting."
Leonella washed down the hot bread with cold lemon soda. She liked living at Charlotte's place more than back home. Leonella wasn't the only working-class student at highschool, but all of her friends were middle-class. She wasn't sure why she was friends with them. She had happened to sit down on the same bench in the corridor during lunch on her first day as Aiden, and somehow she had ended up with a group of friends for the first time in her life. Her friends were all hardworking and didn't go out much. So it did make sense. Leonella and Diana were opposites - Leonella stayed in and liked reading books, Diana changed partners like socks and had begun staying out late already in elementary school - even if they were weird in the same way.
Honestly, Leonella was starting to see the appeal of staying out. Not only was Charlotte's apartment way nicer (they had their own bathroom instead of sharing with the corridor, and the toilet was the kind you could sit on!) and the food tastier, but she also didn't have to deal with Grandpa nagging and Mom panicking. She kind of liked Dad more. He was chill, like her. Yesterday had been the first time she had seen him show emotion since five years ago when Diana had done something to piss him off and he had shouted at her.
Leonella took another piece of bread and ate it. It was so tasty. Diana had always insisted that she couldn't live without hooking up, but privately, Leonella had always thought that tasty food was far more important than Jenny or Nate or Christina or Antony or God knew who else Diana was seeing this time. It was weird that she had never understood her sister, and now she never would.
Leonella went into the kitchen and took some leftover cake from the fridge. Yesterday had been the big Games party, so there were tons of leftovers. She still wasn't quite sure why the selection of Tributes merited getting together with your household and eating a lot of food, but this was the only holiday most people got aside from New Year's, so maybe it was just people wanting something to celebrate. Yay, two glorious fighters have been chosen, nos morituri te salutant, all that.
"You want some cake?"
"No, it's fine."
Leonella ate the tasty cake. It was light-yellow, covered in white chocolate ganache and whipped cream, and there were fresh fruits at the top. Expensive stuff. Maybe one day when she was a doctor or a mathematician she'd eat cake like this every day.
"Really?" she complained to the television when it showed current projected odds. "Come on, shouldn't it be obvious by now that gender doesn't matter? You don't have to be a tank to stab someone."
"Then why are they giving the girls lower odds?"
"Because the only thing they have to go off of is what everyone looks like. It'll even out after the scores are announced."
"Right." Charlotte drank some cherry soda. "It must be so strange for you this year."
"I guess. But I like the Games. Doing stats calms me down."
"You're a freak of nature."
Leonella was the only person in Mr. Simpson's Stats 1 class who didn't hate the subject. She let everyone copy her assignments. That was the polite thing to do. "Yeah. I mean, it's so weird that it's my sister this year, and it's kind of hard to speculate about odds or whatever when it's her. Like, I don't want her to die. But she will. She's not coming back."
Their synagogue was already raising funds for the funeral.
"Crazy."
"Yeah." Mom and Dad and Grandpa weren't going to watch the Games. Instead, Rabbi Simon would give them updates. Leonella was going to watch them. Vaguely, at the back of her brain, she had a scratching worry that if she turned around for even a second, she would never see her sister again.
Leonella clung to that feeling. It was always a relief to feel like she was supposed to. But shouldn't she have been crying, panicking, tearing out her hair, publicly calling on Diana to return? Surely most people felt more than a vague sadness when their sister was about to die. Honestly, most of her worries had to do with her family going to pieces. She didn't want to deal with Mom having a meltdown.
"Want to play Scrabble?"
A few rounds of Scrabble later, it was time for the parade. Charlotte's parents went out to meet with friends, so it was just the two of them. Diana had always gone out and Leonella had always stayed in. Now, Diana would be on television.
It was weird to think Diana would never drool over the Tributes ever again. Leonella liked looking at the skimpily dressed Ones, but Diana had always stared at hot Tributes as if they were food and she was starving.
"Are those jewelled pasties?" Charlotte asked.
The Ones were wearing only knee-length skirts and gems. "Looks like it. Funny how slapping on a few gems makes you somehow not topless."
"I bet all the girls will be wearing that at the club now."
Had Diana tried that, Grandpa would have had that coronary he had always threatened her with.
It was hard to evaluate the appearance of Tributes when Diana was due to appear soon. The Districts went by, one by one, some in more effective costumes, others less impressive. The Fives wore jumpsuits covered in small mirrors. Cool. Leonella began to feel nervous. What if Diana looked bad? And then it was Six's turn.
About ten kilometres away, Grandpa had two heart attacks, three strokes, and the failure of all major organs simultaneously.
Diana had her stomach and shoulders bared on national television.
Truly, the family was disgraced forever, Grandpa could never show his face in society again, it was the End Of All Things, the Mashiach would arrive tomorrow.
The crowd seemed pretty enthusiastic. Claudius Templesmith, who always commented on the parade, called Diana a beauty. "Such stoicism, too," he said. "She looks ready for anything." That was how Diana's face always looked like. "I can tell already that Diana Cohen will not be one to dismiss!"
"Is that good?" Charlotte asked. Leonella thought she sounded eager, or maybe desperate.
"That's great. First impressions are really important for sponsors. Though I'm sure my grandpa is really mad that she's so uncovered." Leonella couldn't laugh at the mental image because Grandpa was probably too sad about Diana dying to care about how she was dressed. He was probably just mad this was how the entire country was seeing her. Leonella disagreed. Diana had always liked dressing up and looking pretty, she was probably glad to get that chance.
Suddenly, Leonella felt sad that Diana would never dress up again after this. She'd never alter an old shirt, never stand at the windowsill for more light as she did precision work, never sit at the sewing machine, never take dictation for the illiterate Mom, Dad, and Grandpa. The crushing sense of unfairness suffocated her. Why did it have to be Diana? Why an apprentice with only seven slips in the bowl? Why not someone who had nobody to weep for them?
Of course, as soon as Leonella felt something normal, she didn't like it and wanted it to stop. She didn't want to be falling apart over this. With difficulty, she refocused on the television screen. She'd give all her friends her preliminary predictions tomorrow at school. Though she already knew what name would be at the top of the list for potential dark horse Victors. Anything else made her feel like she was suffocating.
School was a nightmare. A special assembly was called where Principal Lewis monologued for an hour about the glory of sacrifice and Leonella couldn't even skip because she had to sit on the stage and pretend to pay attention. Plus it was exams now, as if she didn't have enough to worry about.
"We are all very grateful for your sister's sacrifice," he said after the speech, mercifully, ended.
He had never met Diana in his life. "Thank you."
In the corridors, everyone looked weird at her and didn't want to hear her predictions. Even her friends looked weird at her when she gave preliminary odds. Finally, Mr. Simpson pulled her aside after the exam to say that it was impolite to talk about the Games like betting on a sports match when her sister was in them.
"But I always analyze the Games," she pointed out. "So what that Diana's in them? People are still going to be betting, so I want to make sure my friends make good bets."
"It doesn't feel strange?"
"The entire thing feels strange. Doing stats makes it feel a little more normal."
Mr. Simpson smiled. "If statistics make you happy, keep doing it. You're taking Stats 2 next year, right?"
"Look, I need to do this or I'll go nuts, alright?" she paraphrased to her friends on the bus home. The commute to Charlotte's place was longer than to home, but Leonella didn't care, because the more time she got to spend with her friends, the better.
"Only you do stats to relax," Lindy giggled.
"You clean your room to relax," Leonella shot back.
"Yeah, but that's not stats. I failed the exam, I just know it."
The exam had been easy. Now Chem had been awful and Leonella knew she'd get a bad mark. Tomorrow was English. Just another week and a bit, and she'd be free.
And Diana would be dead.
For the first time, Leonella did not look forward to the end of exams.
"Anyone want to come over to study for English?" Jake asked.
A bunch of them (seven including Leonella and Charlotte, to be exact) came over for the announcement of the scores. Leonella bounced with anticipation as she drank sweet tea and ate fried rice and sweet buns from nearby kiosks that the others had sponsored. They were all really nice and always bought stuff for her because she had no money (what she earned during summers went into a savings account). Leonella was a picky eater, but her friends knew what she liked, such as egg-fried rice with nothing and any variation on sweet dough.
The discussion on television went on and on and on before the scores actually began. The boy from One got an eight.
"Low for a Career," Aiden noted.
"Probably not flashy enough for anything higher." That was the bottom of their usual range. If they got any lower, that was noteworthy. An eight meant being good at something - really good.
The girl got the same, the boy from Two got a ten, and the girl - an eight.
"That's lower than average," Leonella noted, eating some noodles.
The boy from Three got a five. Leonella suddenly couldn't bring herself to speak and had to force herself to chew. The others all agreed he didn't have much potential. All of a sudden, the only thing Leonella could imagine was everyone saying Diana had no potential.
3F-6
4M-11
4F-9
5M-4
5F-3
6M-5
Diana got a seven. Leonella exhaled and took another sweet bun to give her hands something to do. A seven - that was good. Five was average and meant the Tribute had done a decent job of learning something. A seven meant being actually good. Not quite Career good, but good.
"Wonder what that is," Leonella spoke up, feeling much lighter. "Yeah, she's been in tons of fights, but not the kind with weapons."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Always some crap about how someone looked wrong at her boyfriend or whatever. But she can't be the only one."
"Yeah, but most of the others are rural itinerants, they've all got their backs broken from carrying heavy stuff."
That depended on how well-nourished they were. On average, rural people were stronger than urban people, but kids who ended up in the Games tended to be living in total poverty and to have been broken by hard work, not strengthened. Leonella dismissed a bunch of the others as potential Victors even when they had decent scores because they looked too frail, like the girl from Eight who got an entire nine. The girl from Ten looked good despite only being fourteen, the eighteen-year-old girl from Eleven also seemed a strong candidate, as were the boy from Twelve and possibly the boy from Eight. Objectively, Diana was the strongest non-Career. That made Leonella feel a little bit better.
Outside, people were partying because Diana had a good score. Leonella was annoyed by that. Before, she hadn't given it another thought except to complain about people not letting her sleep, but now, it felt like partying at someone's deathbed.
The Games were the Games, and exams were exams. Leonella wrote them as best as she could, thinking only about the interviews now. Step by step by step, the Games drew closer. One less day Diana had to live. Leonella wondered what her parents and Grandpa were thinking. She visited them for a little while but left when Mom started panicking.
Six was in a tricky position with the interviews. People remembered the first, the last, and the particularly noteworthy, and while Diana had a new partner each week, they all ran away quickly because she gave off bad vibes, and that would spell doom in the interview. Fortunately, nothing interesting happened in the first half, and then Diana was walking up to the stage in the sort of dress she had always dreamed of wearing.
"She's so stoic," Mr. Crawford, Charlotte's dad, said.
Diana looked like she always did and spoke as she always did, bragging to Flickerman about how she would personally slit the throat of anyone who looked wrong at her. She didn't actually say that, but Leonella had seen her argue on the street a few times, and the sentiment was implied.
"Is there something in particular you want to go back for?" Flickerman asked.
"Well, my family and friends, of course. Or just the little things, like singing as I cooked." Leonella had always hated Diana's so-called singing, though honestly, she'd take it every day if it meant her coming back.
"Oh, you like to sing?"
"I do. Should I sing now?"
"Yes, but keep it short please!"
Leonella winced. This could be great or a catastrophe. Diana wasn't actually that bad, Leonella was simply very sensitive and what most people found alright felt like her ears being stabbed, but would alright cut it?
Diana began to sing Hatikvah.
Scratch that, the only thing that mattered was that this had not been cut and now every single synagogue in the country would be fundraising for Diana alone.
"What's that?" Mrs. Crawford asked.
"No idea," Leonella lied.
In the end, the commentators didn't pay much attention to Diana's interview, but that didn't matter. Leonella had no exams the next day, so she could watch the Games as much as she wanted, though her Latin exam would be Monday.
"We should study for a few hours before the Games begin," Charlotte said as they ate breakfast, which consisted of leftovers from yesterday and fruit.
"I'm not going to be able to focus."
"Then when will you study?"
"Fuck the exam!" Leonella snapped. Diana could easily die today. "I'm not taking Latin next year anyway, and nobody cares about your grade nine marks." Even if she did want to understand the jokes the older nerds told each other - 'not otherwise than if', Catullus 16, and so on.
Fortunately, Charlotte backed off. "You want to go to the square to watch?"
Leonella generally hated large gatherings, but hey, she was living with a friend, she could do whatever she wanted. "Sure."
Since it was a Friday, the public viewing in the park was mostly middle-class youths who had no exams today and people lucky enough to get the full day off. They met up with a few friends and watched the commentators make last-minute predictions. The weather was great, sunny and hot, but it was hard to enjoy watching the Games like a normal person. Her family wouldn't be watching at all and had asked Rabbi Simon to give them updates. Leonella couldn't imagine that.
Had Diana been diagnosed with terminal cancer, it would have been easier. Two weeks to live means two weeks to live. But here, the fact that one person would walk out of the Arena prevented Leonella from fully coming to terms with her sister's death. Diana's choice of song only reinforced that feeling. As long as in the heart, a soul yearns, hope is not yet lost.
Hope dies last, as people said. But it did die eventually.
"Let's move somewhere less crowded," Leonella offered.
"Yeah, let's," Aiden said. "You'd think they'd give you a good spot, since she's your sister."
"I'd rather not have the attention." As it was, Leonella was very grateful for living in a big city. When Samira bought them all paper bowls of soup and vegetable skewers from the kiosks, nobody recognized Leonella. Mom and Dad and Grandpa had been interviewed the day of the Reapings, but Leonella had still been on the train home. It had been strange to return alone. She'd always be alone now.
"I'll get a meat skewer," Aiden said.
"If you want soy, get the tofu, it's the same thing and costs less," Samira quipped.
The vendor wasn't happy and flapped a towel at them. "Move along, you ungrateful-"
They moved along, clutching their bowls and skewers. "Mmm, this is good." Charlotte licked the wooden stick clean and tossed it in the trash. Most people threw garbage all over the place. "Where do you want to sit down?"
The Games would be starting in twenty minutes. Leonella felt like before a competition, but worse. "There should be fine."
The five of them climbed some rocks and sat down on the ledge, about two metres in the air. Leonella could easily jump from that height. She ate her soup, which was made with red lentils and buckwheat, and set the bowl aside. They should have been making predictions, but none of the others talked about the Games, so she didn't either, even though she wanted to.
An eighteen-year-old had a massive advantage even if you accounted for the Careers all being eighteen. The last three Career victories had been the Fifty-Seventh, the Forty-Seventh, and the Forty-Third (okay, last year's Victor had joined the pack, but even with his martial arts, he hadn't gotten 'real Career' training), so if a non-Career made it through the Bloodbath with a good showing, they were already a favourite above the Careers, who always got finished off eventually. Seventy percent of Victors scored above a five in training. Ninety percent of Victors were well-sponsored enough to receive food even towards the end of the Games.
The thing about odds was that if there was one red ball and nine blue balls in a box, and ten people drew one each, one would get the red ball. There could be ninety-nine blue balls and one red ball, but it was still possible to draw the red one, even though you'd never expect it.
Leonella glanced at her watch, a New Year's gift from when she was in grade seven. The airing was delayed by five minutes, so the Games had just begun. Maybe Diana was already dead. She had read about a thought experiment where a cat was in a box and there was a fifty-fifty chance of poison gas being put in the box, but the observer had no idea what was happening. The cat could be alive or it could be dead, and only when you opened the box would you find out if the cat had been dead that entire time.
This all felt wrong. They had always had a barbecue during the Games, roasting kebabs and burgers on the grill, a rectangular metal box on thin legs that they filled with charcoal. Grandpa always tried to start the fire and Dad always had to come to the rescue after he had gone through half a box of matches. Grandpa and Aunt Nelly always quarrelled while roasting the meat - pour on more marinade, for flavour! no, stop pouring, you'll put out the fire! Once the charcoal burned to ashes, they baked potatoes in them, and they tasted of the ash. They ate watermelons and fresh greens and drank mineral water and sweet tea and apple-pear juice. But there would be no barbecue this year. Would they have one next year? Leonella didn't want to think about that.
The image on the screen switched to the point of view of a Tribute in their elevator. Maybe it was even Diana. The elevator rose into the Arena, a dry forest that didn't look too different from these parts. The temperature was the same as here. The countdown began, the camera showing a brief glimpse of every single Tribute. The Cornucopia was typical - a good range of weapons and supplies, typical distances, but with the twist of twelve bags with water close to the podiums. The rest of the water was closer to the centre, and there were no natural sources of water. A dark-horse potential would have to grab a bag and hope they had enough sponsors to last them the Games.
Due to the delay, the countdown on television was always edited in a way that took longer than a minute, so that the audience could see all the Tributes. The boy from Three scanned the ground in front of him. The boy from One kissed the cross he had on his neck and hid it under his shirt. The girl from Five stood frozen. Diana…grinned at her neighbour.
Applause thundered through the park, people whooping and cheering. Leonella had seen Diana fight a couple of times, but she had never done that.
"She looks ready," Charlotte said.
Every single Victor in the history of the Games had appeared focused and alert at the start.
So had many of those who died.
"Ten! Nine! Eight!" the crowd counted down. "Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!"
The gong sounded.
The audience roared with excitement and anticipation.
The Bloodbath was probably the most-edited part, the chronology distorted to show all the fights in full. Plus every District had its Tributes be the focus. So the camera briefly showed the boy, Sanchez, run into the forest with nothing before focusing on Diana. Leonella hyperfocused on the screen as her sister picked up a knife from the ground and stabbed the girl from Twelve from behind as she picked up the bag.
"Cohen! Cohen! Cohen!" the crowd cheered, the volume making Leonella wince. Good thing she was far away from the thick of the crowd.
Diana turned around, grabbed a larger knife, and the image changed to the girl from Two wrestling the boy from Five to the ground. He was a slippery one, twisting out of her grasp, and as she tried to lock her hands around his throat, she suddenly collapsed with a knife to her back. It was Diana. She picked up a pouch of dried meat and dashed into the forest, Templesmith narrating what she had with her. Water for two to five days, depending on how she rationed it, a survival kit, and two thousand calories of meat - enough for maybe two days, depending on how much she moved around.
The television went back to show the other deaths while the crowd celebrated. People blew whistles, banged pots together, and shouted at the top of their lungs. This was the best Bloodbath performance for Six in literal decades. Leonella didn't remember the exact numbers that well, this was too niche even for her, but she wouldn't have been surprised if the last Tribute from Six to aggressively kill multiple Tributes at the Cornucopia had been Blake Young, the Victor of the Twenty-Fifth who had killed four in the Bloodbath in nasty hand-to-hand fights. Forget the Jews, all of Six would be donating now. Leonella could see civil servants carrying donation boxes through the crowd, and they gave like never before.
Seven died in the Bloodbath, and Diana had one full kill and one partial credited to her. That was really, really good. With that under her belt, the supplies she had, and the sponsors not only from Six but all over the country who were donating for her, Diana had just made herself the top dark-horse potential. Leonella couldn't relax. The pack was on the prowl, and the girl from One was a magnificent archer. Fortunately, Diana had the presence of mind to keep walking, which, in combination with her head start, put her out of reach. The map showed that if the Careers walked at their usual pace directly towards her, they'd still be two kilometres away by sunset.
People came and went during the afternoon. The evening crowd was far rowdier - the park was next to a working-class neighbourhood, and the bosses would understand it if people were a bit lazy tomorrow - but Leonella stayed. It was a bit loud and crowded for her liking, but honestly, behaving like a normal person was nice for a change. She and her friends watched as the anthem played, Diana jotting down the deaths on her arm with a marker from her backpack. Plenty of Tributes had gotten screwed over by forgetting who was alive, so that was smart of her. Templesmith hinted that the hollow she was in had mutts in it, but really, this was the first night and Diana had two kills.
Two other commentators came on air to discuss how the first day had gone. That was the signal for the party to start. Leonella and her friends stayed out for a little while longer, eating pizza and drinking beer (which tasted awful), before going home. Tomorrow would be a new day, and the Latin exam wasn't going anywhere.
Mentally, Leonella recalculated the percentages every time a Tribute died. Assuming equal odds (which was like assuming a spherical horse in a vacuum), the first day's nine deaths left fifteen Tributes. 1/15=6.666…% chance. Up from 1/24=4.1666…%, but it didn't appear to be much better. Obviously the bookies had actual odds, but it was really had to account for 'the Gamemakers decided things were boring and unleashed carnivorous frogs on the Careers', making betting a crapshoot at best. Some of her friends liked to bet, but not this year. Honestly, that was good. Had they bet against Diana, that would have been weird, and had they bet on her, that still would have been weird.
The Latin exam was from eight to ten because the school administration hated them, and after that, they were free to cheer on Diana full-time. Leonella wrote to the factory where she usually worked in the summer that she'd wait for the Games to be over, and they agreed to take her on then. She didn't think about how the next time she stepped on the factory floor, her sister would be dead.
Sanchez had died the other day, as had two others, both from dehydration. 1/12=8.333…%. Still so little. It took a while to get to the point where a single death changed the odds greatly.
Leonella and her friends sat on their usual rock and ate hamburgers (both meat and bean), watching Diana walk around. She looked like she was in pain, but the chart in the corner said she had no injuries. Maybe she had blisters or was tired. The nights were steadily becoming colder. Hopefully there would be enough money for a sleeping bag once it came to it.
The boy from Five had been ambushed by raccoons who herded him towards Diana. He was fifteen, which was weird to think about, because Leonella was fifteen. Fifteen-year-olds had only won three times - the First, the Fifteenth, and the Nineteenth, all very early on when the country had still been recovering from the Dark Days and most older Tributes had looked to be on death's door, surviving by taking out tens of tesserae to feed their massive families and for sale. Leonella would have died in that Arena. That was a fact she had always lived with, but now, it wasn't just an idle thought like 'had I been the one to get lost in the woods/get attacked by a dog/have my apartment catch on fire, I'd have died'.
Usually, Leonella paid attention to the names, but this year, she couldn't bring herself to care. Diana climbed a tree when she heard the boy. He half-heartedly threw his knife and said he didn't want to fight her.
Diana climbed down from the tree. "Come on, get him, get him!" Leonella said, clenching her fists. Diana grabbed her knife and attacked. "Yeah!" The crowd cheered as Diana stabbed the boy to death, coming away uninjured and with a bit of food and water to show for it. 1/11=9.090909…%.
"Let's get something to drink," Leonella offered. "And more food."
They got themselves a bottle of vodka, a carton of apple-pear juice, and a box of vegetable and sausage pizza. By the time they got back, the Annual Career Wipe-Out was about to begin. A giant wolf attacked the pack, inflicting serious wounds on all of them before being killed by the boy from Two's spear. The boy from Four received a mercy death. 1/10=10%.
Leonella took her water bottle and mixed herself a drink that didn't taste like paint stripper. Given how much juice she poured it, it was probably five percent strong at most. She took a slice of pizza, took off the toppings because they tasted bad, and watched the commentator speculate on whether the Careers were still capable of fighting. Leonella doubted that. Those wounds were going to get infected.
Then came a few days of nothing really happening. Leonella spent most of her time hanging out with her friends at the park, unable to take her eyes from Diana for even a second. She was swarmed by adorable pillbugs, who would have eaten her alive had she begun to crush them, but she ran away. A Feast was called, but Diana just struck a cocky pose and didn't go to the Cornucopia. Privately, Leonella thought she was simply lost in the monotonous woods.
At the Cornucopia, a table laden with MREs, water, and matches rose out of the ground. The Careers approached, but the boy from Eight leapt out of the horn and stabbed the girl from One before being cut down by the boy from Four as he tried to run.
⅛=12.5%.
The final eight interview was a bit of a mess. Leonella sat with Mom, Dad, and Grandpa in the apartment cleaned up for the purpose. Grandpa went on a monologue about Great-Grandpa Hillel, Mom could barely open her mouth, and Dad said they were ready for the funeral. Leonella had no idea what to say, so she recited some statistics until a journalist for a national channel told her to stop.
Attention was on Diana like never before. The last Tribute from Six to make it this far had been Popescu, who had won eight years ago. Enough money was raised to send Diana a sleeping bag for the increasingly cold nights. On the tenth day of the Games, Diana killed the girl from Seven, who was near delirious from dehydration. 1/7=14.285714285714285714…% (screw that fraction).
There were so few Tributes left, Leonella could easily analyze each one. The girls from Nine and Ten were a wash, they had too few sponsors to help them survive. The boy from Two struggled to walk. The boys from One and Four had lesser wounds, and the boy from Twelve didn't get enough to eat or drink, though he did have a blanket. Diana was uninjured but she had a UTI from the unsanitary conditions.
Leonella couldn't make predictions. Every second that passed was one second closer to Diana's death. She simply watched. She came to the park on day 12 to discover the girl from Nine had died several hours ago from exposure. ⅙=16.666…%. In the early hours of day 14, the girl from Ten followed. ⅕=20%. The numbers were moving quickly now, unlike the Tributes, who were slowly stumbling around a rapidly shrinking Arena. People were now heavily betting on how many days the Games would last.
Two weeks already. Everyone always talked about being dead in two weeks, but five still lived.
In the morning of day 17, signposts pointed the Tributes towards the Cornucopia. They went. Leonella sat on the rock, half-heartedly munching on some falafel. When they were all about two kilometres away, a small fire was started, the smoke wafted at the Tributes to get them to move faster. Diana, who had been eating, immediately got up and ran with only her knife. The others also moved faster.
This was the finale. Six had made it to the finale a grand total of five times, and of those, three had walked away. Leonella sat frozen, watching her sister jog along the path. As the Tributes neared the Cornucopia, the fire began to spread and spread.
"Run faster!" someone shouted.
With maybe a hundred metres left, the Tributes heard or felt or whatever the flames. They ran. The fire was fast, terrifyingly fast. Wildfires could engulf a village in seconds. The boy from Two couldn't keep up and was the first to die. ¼=25%, and honestly, it would mostly be down to luck now. Diana was tired, the Careers were injured, Twelve was hungry. The screen was split into four, showing the overhead view - the other cameras would have been destroyed by the flames - of the runners. Four pushed over One, and he fell and couldn't get up in time. Obviously the deaths took a little longer, but they would have been so gnarly, they weren't being shown. ⅓=33.333…%.
The footage had a five minute delay. Diana could have been dead already, and Leonella didn't know.
The boy from One coughed from the smoke, slowed down, and disappeared from the screen as a cannon sounded. ½=50%. The crowd in the park was united in a roar that made Leonella hold her hands over her ears.
"Run, Cohen, run!"
"Go faster!"
"Go, go, go!"
Leonella counted down the metres. All Diana had to do was make it. The boy was unarmed and she was. Twenty, fifteen, ten, the crowd counted down. The boy was behind her, running more slowly from hunger and thirst.
"Come on, come on, a little longer!"
"You got it, you got it!"
"A few more metres!"
"Faster, faster, faster!"
Diana made it to the ring of dry earth.
The boy didn't.
A cannon sounded.
"I am pleased to present the Victor of the Sixty-First Hunger Games! I give you - Diana Cohen of District Six!"
Leonella raised her hand and dropped it. She felt confused more than anything. She hadn't expected this.
The crowd, meanwhile, exploded. Fireworks exploded like an artillery barrage overhead, tens of thousands screaming themselves hoarse. Leonella didn't feel anything. She just sat there, watching Diana bow and salute before stepping into the hovercraft.
"Holy shit," Charlotte said. "You sister won! Oh my God! Congratulations! Can I hug you?"
"Sure." She liked being hugged by friends, and especially Charlotte.
Leonella had no idea what now. Her sister was a Victor. That was the last thing any of them had expected. She had seen programs about the Victors on television, but she didn't really know much.
"Huh," she said. "Does this mean I'm rich now?"
A/N: 'Not otherwise than if' is from Virgil - Latin is far more flexible when it comes to word order than English. When my highschool classmates who took advanced Latin found Catullus 16 in their books, they immediately raced to enlighten their less nerdy friends about the greatness of classical poetry.