Cecelia Spinner, District Eight (18)

I'd always told myself if I went into the Games, I wouldn't fight. I wouldn't take a life, not even if it meant I would die. I wasn't brave enough to fight the entire Capitol, but I could take that step. They wouldn't even know it was rebellion. They would just think I died. I would be the only one who knew why.

That wasn't what happened, though. I crept down the hall of the endless house that made up the Arena, listening for anyone who might be near. There was a wrongness about my surroundings that had cast a shadow over my soul for days. It was the subtle creepiness of how every door simply opened to another room, with no rhyme or reason to the floorplan. I had no idea how far I'd gone, since there were no windows. There were lights all along the hall, set into the walls and dangling from the roof, but there was no warmth to their glow. Their light was cold and they were recessed far enough to leave shadows overlapping between them. All the rooms I'd been in so far were empty, but each had the signs of recent occupation- a swinging light, one chair pulled out from a table, a disturbance in the dust on the furniture. I would have called the house haunted if I'd ever seen any evidence of it. Somehow it was worse without.

I'd been in here for six days. I knew it by the grandfather clocks in several of the rooms. Every night they sounded once, overlapping and echoing. Never at midnight, though. Always at 3:33 A.M. Every night as the hour approached I felt the dread rising as I wondered what would happen. Nothing yet, but I could only guess this Games had a time limit. Once we reached it, we would find out.

The scream staggered me, sending me reeling sideways into the wall so strongly my ribs ached. I ducked into the nearest room just as a girl rounded the corner of the hallway I'd been walking down. A second later I winced as she ran through the doorway to my room and our eyes met, me standing beside an antique refrigerator and her holding the bleeding wound in her side, both of us sharing a moment of kinship as prey animals. She opened her mouth to whisper a plea with me not to attract the Careers and I shook my head to remind her I didn't want them any more than she did. I ducked behind the fridge and watched with horror as the other girl climbed into the oven. I clapped my hands to my mouth, unable to think about what the Careers would do if they found her.

"Not in here," I heard from down the hall. I knew Nihilus' voice from his Two accent. I felt the vibration of the slamming door through the wall, though it sounded like he was a few rooms down.

A female voice made a noise of disgust. "This is gonna take forever." It would, too. Some of the rooms, like ours, were sparsely furnished. Others were packed from wall to wall. Even worse, every once in a while, when you shut the door and opened it, it wasn't what you'd closed it to. As far as I could tell, the Careers hadn't even been straying far from their camp. They didn't want to get lost like the rest of us were.

"She's gonna bleed out anyway," Empress said. "Let's get out of here before something creepy happens."

It was a long time before I came out from behind the fridge, even after I heard the Careers' footsteps fading. I should probably run off before the other girl got out of the oven, but I had half a mind to scold her for what an unbelievably stupid decision that had been.

I climbed out from behind the fridge and saw two thin lines of blood coming from the silent oven door. My stomach dropped as I remembered Empress' words. But the cannon hadn't sounded yet, and the blood was still slowly dripping. I opened the door and found the girl curled on her side, her eyes closed but her chest still slightly rising. Her pale hands were clutched over the wound as blood trickled through the fingers.

She's dying, I knew. My hand rested on the oven door. There were seven of us left. I'd never dreamed I would make it this far. My goals had already changed beyond what I'd dreamed possible, and as I stood, they shifted once more. On the front of the oven, a dish towel was tucked into the handle. I wadded it up and gently pushed the girl into a straighter position so I could lay it on her wound. I rummaged in the kitchen drawers, flinching at each jumbling tool, until I found a roll of plastic wrap. I tugged the girl out onto the floor and wrapped the towel to the wound, pulling tightly to add pressure as the girl lay limp in my arms. I tucked her into the space between the oven and the wall, in a position that wouldn't strain her wound, and left.

I didn't see her face on the ceiling that night. I didn't know if she just hadn't quite bled out yet, or if the towel would fuse to the wound and she'd die of infection. My time with her was over. I'd done what I could. I'd done it for the same reason I'd decided not to quietly die. It was only a week before the Reaping when I knew. It was so early to tell these things, but I just knew. I felt the life inside me, far before any test could have told me. In the Capitol I'd hidden the menstruation cessation pill in my hand and dropped it into the garbage. If I died, it made no difference. If I won, I could say it happened after. I was already sick thinking of how easy it would be to pass it off on someone, knowing what they did to Victors. If it had just been me, I was ready to die, but for her (I didn't know, but I liked to hope) I would try. I still wouldn't kill, though, and when I saw the girl lying helpless, I saw someone else alongside her. I was a mother, and I was only beginning to understand how that would change me. Somewhere out there was another mother, one who loved her daughter as much as I loved mine. My daughter wasn't even here yet and I already hoped nothing would ever happen to her. If she was ever lying in pain and afraid, helpless to stop her life leaking out of her, I prayed someone would help her. I might not be able to save my daughter, but for that other mother, I would do the same.


The books mentioned three children clung to Cecelia when she got Reaped. I thought I'd put a spin on that and have her oldest be conceived before the Games.