Amberlynn Hyde- District Nine female (15)

After one night in the woods, I wasn't sure I liked the woods. It was fun for a while, sure, but I didn't think I was going to be feeling fun and fresh after a few weeks. For the moment, though, I could still make the best of it.

"Ugh, I gotta find a bird's nest or something," Trayne said as we all picked at watery rice. "I usually had eggs for breakfast back home."

"What if the birds here are endangered?" Virgo fretted.

"One of them little warning signs will pop up. No problem," Trayne said.

I shifted to the side and brushed a pebble out from under my left butt cheek. I picked at the last grains of rice with one hand while I tried to brush out my hair with the other.

"Hey!" Rowena called from the woods. "I found a walnut tree!"

"Cool!" Enzo called back as he stood. Most of the rest of us followed, except for Cactus, who was still focused on his rice.

I followed the faster runners and found Rowena already in the tree. She was twenty feet up, I would have guessed, and it made me dizzy looking at her lying on her stomach out on a branch.

"Heads up!" Rowena called. She shook the branch. A dozen or so green balls fell and bounced off the ground. Along with a few of the others, I picked one up.

"This is a walnut?" Dorian asked, looking at the golf ball-sized orb.

"You gotta peel it!" Rowena called down.

"Yeah, like this," Enzo said. "Hiyah!" He threw the nut down at a rock. A chunk of green chipped off as it hit, exposing the walnut shell underneath.

No kidding? That's what a fresh walnut looks like? I'd only ever seen the shelled ones. Maybe roughing it wasn't so bad. I was learning a ton.

Enzo started pulling himself up the tree after Rowena. "Ooh, I want to climb, too!" I said. "How do you climb a tree?"

Enzo slid down the few feet he'd climbed like a bear. "What do you mean, how do you climb a tree? You just do. You've never climbed a tree?"

"I lived in the processing part of Nine. The only trees I've seen were in rich people's yards," I said. I'd seen decorative trees in parties but it wasn't couth for the party planner to climb the decorations.

"I've never climbed a tree," Lana piped up.

"See?" I pointed at her.

Enzo bent his back to look up the tree. "Rowena, how do you climb a tree?"

"What? You just do," she called back.

"Well, if it's that easy…" I put one leg up on the lowest branch and pulled myself up into the tree. As soon as my feet left the ground I felt a rush of exhilaration. I am a fierce leopard, lurking in the tree to pounce on a deer or zebra below…

Enzo scooted past me with the speed and confidence of a squirrel. Show-off.

Dorian looked around at all of us. "I suppose half of you don't know how to swim, either."

Clover Nguyen- District Eleven male (18)

We very quickly learned that in between challenges, which were a day apart, the Gamemakers intended to leave us entirely to our own devices. For the first day this was a boundless adventure of exploring the island, from the cool waterfall with a cave behind it to the thicket of bushes with dark berries that Kendall had come out of nowhere to identify as blackcurrants. After our feet were sore and we were afraid of burning more energy than rice and blackcurrants could provide, we sat around and started to plot.

"So we have a machete and a pot," Birdie summarized. "What can we make with what we have?"

"You think they'd let us trade? Like if we found the other tribe and we'd made stuff, could we trade it with them?" Taylor asked.

"Isabella didn't say anything about it being against the rules," I said. My mind was already going over weird and cool things we might be able to make.

"What should we make?" Birdie wondered aloud.

"Something to carry water," Kallik suggested.

"It won't carry water, but I can make a basket," I said. "It could carry berries and stuff at least."

"You can weave a basket? That's pretty cool," Taylor said, then remembered she was supposed to be grumpy and looked away.

"We used to make canopies for shade back home," I said as I looked around for some stiff grass. I found a patch of unfamiliar but promising stuff and plucked a few handfuls. I set them on my lap as some of the others gathered around.

"I'm going to see if I can find some rocks or something we can make a spear with," Val said, waving as he headed for the woods.

"We're not fighting this time, though," Leo said.

"No, for fish, weirdo," Val called over his shoulder.

"I'll help!" Josie ran after him, leaving Taylor, Birdie, Kendall and Yarrow as my students. Kallik had been by the river all morning looking for clay to make stuff with.

I arranged some grass into finger-sized cords. "You start with a spiral in the bottom and weave another section of grass through it," I narrated as I started a basket.

Taylor excitedly picked her spiral up. It fell into a heap. "Awww," she groaned, then started again as Birdie held the center down for stability.

"Look," Kendall held up a tiny basket only a few rows high. "It's a beautiful hat." He put it on his head. "The height of Capitol fashion."

"It's so weird being together like this," Birdie said. "Like just being with people from all over Panem. Most of us never would have met someone from another District."

"I know, right?" Kendall said. "I'm glad we don't have to fight."

Taylor gave him a less than pleased look. "You wanted to fight," she pointed out. I had to respect her confidence and frankness on saying it. We'd all been afraid to bring it up but there was some resentment about the Career among us.

"But I'm not now," he pointed out. "We're stuck together now. There's nothing we can do about our pasts."

Taylor didn't say anything, but she must have been thinking the same thing the rest of us were. There was something we could do about it. We were all equals here- each of us had one vote. When voting time came back around, I had a feeling a lot of us would remember who had spent all their life fearing the Games and who had spent all their life aiming for them.