Jedidiah "Jed" Acre

Age 18

District Eleven Male

I can't sleep, and I'm not sure I want to.

How can I, with the sound of people much younger than I am sobbing quietly in the night?

The nightmares of what happened a year ago await me and would bring little relief either.

I was supposed to turn nineteen in a couple of days. I was going to have cake and everything, things my family could rarely afford but were going to splurge on to celebrate my surviving what should have been a fatal injury and making a full recovery…but at what cost?

I lived, but someone else died. My younger sister, Tomatilla, was up in the orange trees with me when the one we were in suddenly fell, and we were both dumped out of it. Several branches impaled me and I suffered many broken bones as the tree landed on top of me, but I fell from a shorter distance. I was seriously hurt, but I survived.

Tomatilla, on the other hand, was higher up. She landed on her head, broke her neck, and died instantly. The sight of her head, crushed against the ground, still haunts my dreams every night.

No one blamed me. They said it was a freak accident, that It all seemed doom and gloom, but my parents tried to reassure me that Tomatilla would want me to be hopeful. I would bear the scars for the rest of my life, but I was going to get to live. I was going to have a life.

So I tried.

I almost succeeded.

One slip of paper from a beat-up burlap sack ruined all of that.

Now, I'm going to die. I won't get to be nineteen. I won't get to be an adult.

I feel horrible saying that. I have to be the oldest person here. Everyone is even younger than me. Chamomile, the girl who came here with me, is only thirteen years old. Tomatilla would have been her age…

It's so hot and disgusting in this stable. When we arrived earlier, one of the Peacekeepers said something about a heat wave. I couldn't help but feel a spark of anger when one of the tributes begged one of them for just a drop of water and was ignored as the Peacekeepers downed their canteens.

They had already dragged two kids out of the stables. They were completely limp, and the sweat had dried from their flushed faces. I knew at that moment that they had just died from heat stroke. It was a common problem back home. People would be working too hard and they'd just drop from the intense heat. Back home we had some access to water though. Here, we didn't get anything. Not a crumb, not a drop, nothing. My mouth feels like sandpaper. Even though we had some shade in these pens, the sun still shined through some spots and was beating down on us at times. The night brought some relief, but not much.

Chamomile is crying nearby. I should try to calm her down. She's wasting precious water, crying like that. Energy too. I know only one of us can get out of here, but I think at least a decent person would at least try and help. I scoot across the hay towards her. "Hey," I say, my voice hoarse from disuse and thirst. "Mind if I sit?" Chamomile nods and I move just a bit closer. "I'm Jedidiah, but my friends call me Jed. And you're Chamomile, right?"

Chamomile slowly nods again. The poor girl's face is stained with tears, her eyes are red and puffy, and she's shaking horribly. From nerves. It's much too hot, even now in the middle of the night, for it to be from any sort of chill. "Cammie," she croaks back. "It's Cammie."

"It's nice to meet you," I reply. "Can you take a deep breath for me?"

Cammie looks confused. "What?"

"Take a deep breath with me," I repeat. "In…" I take a deep breath in. Cammie slowly does it with me. "And out…" I slowly let the breath go. We do this a few more times until Cammie is finally calmed down.

"You need to stay calm, okay? You'll tire yourself out if you cry, and you'll lose water too."

A pained look crossed Cammie's face. "How can ask me to stay calm? How can you be so calm? We're going to die! My mama… She's really sick and now she's going to be all alone! She's going to die alone!" She almost starts crying again, but something jumpstarts me and I pull her into a hug. She trembles in my arms. I think about my own family. They have each other, and while they'll be heartbroken at losing another child, I know they'll survive. They have before, and will again.

Cammie, however, is so much younger than I am. She only has her mother, who is dying.

I feel two tiny arms wrap around me, and my breath hitches as it dawns on me.

For a year now, I wondered why I was the one who lived and not Tomatilla. Tomatilla, who was so young and innocent, just like the little girl in my arms.

Now, I know. I wasn't the one to live by some cruel stroke of fate.

It would be an absolute longshot, but perhaps there was a chance I could save Cammie. Take the one year I was given and give many more to my district partner.

My heartache and fear morph into determination. Determination to make my life mean something, instead of being the lucky kid who didn't die. "Don't worry, we're in this together. We'll take care of each other in there tomorrow."

Cammie looks up at me, eyes once again full of tears and confusion.

"Why are you being so nice to me?"

I have to blink back my own tears. "Because you deserve better. So much better."

And she does.

And I will do my best to give it to her.

Tomatilla's death would not be in vain.

In hindsight, perhaps I should tone down on the Dr. Gaul villainy, as fun as it is to write. The Petty Evil Queen is only going to be around for so long and I have to milk it, but…yeah I can't go through all the Petty Queen moments in the first decade of the Games. So I decided on something a little more grounded for Jed, and a little on the shorter end as well. His story was tragic for sure, but I needed a proper reason for him to want to try and save Cammie over himself. His being the victor unfortunately meant he failed to save her, but they both made it far and Jed avenged her death, and he made sure her mother wasn't alone in the end.

Who's your favorite victor so far out of the five introduced?