Amber Scott- District 3 Tribute

The Arena

  I doze off just as the sun starts to rise, and it feels as if I have only been asleep for seconds when Shanna knocks on my door.
"Time to get up, darling. The Avox has laid out your outfit! I'll send one in to do your hair."
Oh my god. The Games are today. I have to go into the Hunger Games and fake my own death. If I can't do it successfully, it means execution for not only me, but my friends and family. If I fail, it means death for my parents, Annora, Shanna, all my sisters! Tessa, Reyna, Robyn, Gemma, Abbie, even Posy! Posy isn't even five! They would all die before they even have a chance to live. All because of me.
  My hands are shaking and I'm sweating. I'm breathing heavily, huge gasping sobs are escaping my body. I try to calm down. Crying won't help anybody. I have to be ready and I have to have a plan. I'll do it during the bloodbath. I'll have to injure myself, and make it look convincing. Then I have to get as far away from the other tributes as I can, and activate my device. Hopefully I'll appear dead, and they will leave me alone until the bloodbath is over. I've never seen anyone attack a dead tribute before. It's not much of a plan, but I can't think of anything to do.
  Now that I have a plan, as pathetic and unlikely to work as it is, I feel a tiny bit better. I get out of bed and put on the clothes that are sitting at the foot of my bed. The shirt is mustard yellow, and the pants are made of a durable, brown fabric. Both the shirt and the pants fit perfectly. I pull on the boots, which are black and buckled. I sit on my bed and wait for the Avox to come in and do my hair.
One comes in, silently of course, and beckons to me to follow her into the bathroom. She combs out my hair and then twists the front section of it back. Then she pulls it back into a tight ponytail and then walks out without another glance at me. I follow her into the dining room. Shanna is sitting at the table nibbling primly at a piece of mango. She is wearing a bright orange dress that puffs out so much at the waist that she resembles a ball. Kilee hasn't come out yet. Typical.
"Hello, darling. Come eat! You'll certainly need your strength today!" Shanna says with a knowing smile. I sit down across from her. I can't eat anything. My stomach feels as if it is doing backflips. So many ways for my pathetic plan to go wrong. So few ways for it to go right. I sit there, imagining all the horrible ways that I could die. I'm just thinking about how I could be run through by a spear the second I step off the pedestal when Myron walks in. He is pale and his eyes are bloodshot. He gives me a small nod and then slumps into a chair.
"Eat, darling!" Shanna says to him.
"I'm not hungry," Myron says flatly.
"Suit yourself," says Shanna.
After about 10 minutes, Shanna gets up and says, "Time to go." Myron looks like he is about throw up. He has gotten even more pale, and his eyes are wide. He gets up and follows Shanna, staring at his feet. I follow him, but my legs are shaking so badly that I can hardly walk. I stumble out the door and into the street. We walk to a large, industrial looking building. Four Peacekeepers come, two for me, two for Myron.
  "Good luck, darlings. I'm sure you'll do brilliantly! Kilee wishes you luck, as well. May the odd be ever in your favor!" Shanna says as she pecks each of us on the cheeks. The Peacekeepers turn and put their hands on my back. We walk down the hallway, Myron behind us. We reach a huge airplane.
I climb the steps to get into the plane, and enter a large room. There are chairs with straps, presumably to hold us in during flight, along both walls. I take a seat in one of the middle seats, and wait for the other tributes. Myron sits closer to the end of the row. Slowly, the other tributes come in. They fill up the seats. The boy from District 6 sits to my right, and Lilla sits to my left. For once, she says nothing. I look over at her and she glances up at me, biting her lip. Her eyes are filled with tears. I can tell she is trying not to cry. Once all the tributes are seated, the plane gives a tremendous lurch, and it takes off. We are all thrown back against our seats, and I am grateful for the straps that hold us back. 
  A thin woman in a white coat enters the room. She is holding a large syringe with a glowing blue orb at one end of it. She walks down to the end of my aisle and speaks to the first tribute, the girl from 7.
  "Give me your arm," she says in a cool voice. The girl holds out her arm, and the woman injects some blue glowing thing into her arm. It glows for a second, and then you can no longer see it. The thin woman makes her way down the row. She reaches me, and I give her my arm. She injects me with the blue thing, and it doesn't hurt like I expected it to. I just feel some pressure on the injection site.
None of the tributes say anything as she injects it into them except Katniss. She asks, "What is that?" She looks doubtful, and gives her arm reluctantly to the woman.
"It's your tracker," the woman says in the same cool voice that she used earlier. Just as she is finished injecting the tracker into the last tribute, the girl from 8, the plane lurches to a stop.
"You may unbuckle your straps," the thin woman says. We do, but remain seated.
Before we stand up, I turn to Lilla and tell her, "Good luck." She smiles and nods at me.
We file off the plane, and a Peacekeeper comes for each of us. They lead us off to small rooms. Annora is waiting for me.
"Come on in," she says briskly. "I have to give you your jacket and your token." Here she gives me another pointed look. Normally I would be annoyed that she thinks me to be such an idiot that I can't remember that I have a way to cheat death, but I'm too scared.
  Annora hands me my jacket, a windbreaker that is the same shade of yellow as my shirt, and I put it on. My hands are shaking so much that I have trouble putting it on. Once I manage to shove my quaking arms through the sleeves, Annora grabs my necklace from a small table. She chains it around my neck, and then embraces me. That's odd. She didn't strike me as an affectionate sort of person. But then she starts to whisper in my ear in an intense, urgent voice.
  "You understand what to do, right? Pull the clasp on the side of the pendant and the device will fall out. Then push the button and it will administer the shock. It should stop your heart for a little while, and then administer another shock to start it again. Then the hovercraft will pick you up. I've spoken to the pilot of the one that will pick you up. He is in on the plan; he works with me and Jessalyn on helping the tributes as much as we can."
  "Ten seconds," announces a cool voice. My heart starts to pound. I can't think straight. I feel numb. Annora shoves me towards a large glass tube
on the other side of the room. I step inside and the doors slide shut. Oh my god. I could die. I could have myself and my entire family killed. I could ruin everything.
Suddenly, the tube lurches and I stumble against the side of the tube. I look at Annora, who nods at me solemnly. The tube begins to move up.
And then there's a blinding light. All around me, other tributes are coming up on pedestals just like mine. All of our pedestals are arranged in a huge circle around the Cornucopia. There are weapons and supplies in the Cornucopia, and also around it. There is a backpack and some food about 20 feet away from me. It looks like the most valuable weapons and supplies are in the Cornucopia and the least valuable ones are closest to the tributes.
I look around. To my left is the boy from 10 and to my right is the girl from 4. I don't see Myron or Lilla They must be on the other side of the Cornucopia.
  A deep voice starts counting down, "50, 49, 48, 47..." All around me, tributes get ready to run, fierce expressions on their faces. I mimic their stances. I decide I'll run for the backpack. I'll run to where the other tributes can't see me, and I'll activate my device. Then, hopefully I will be saved.
"10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" A loud horn blares.
Everybody takes off their pedestals, sprinting at full speed. I run to the backpack I spotted during the countdown. I am just about to grab it, when I see the girl from District 4 running straight at me with a huge sword. Blind panic flashes through my mind, and I try to dodge to the side, but I trip over the backpack and I stumble. The girl makes a wild slash at me, and I manage to roll mostly out of her way, but she slices my leg. She makes a long, deep gash from my knee to my ankle. I feel searing pain, followed by a warm, wet feeling as my blood gushes out of my leg. The girl is about to slash at my head when the boy from 6 tackles her, and starts to wrestle with her, trying to take her sword. While they're preoccupied, I roll over onto my stomach and fumble with the clasps on my necklace. I feel clumsy and lightheaded, I've lost a lot of blood from my leg. I manage to pull the clasp, and the shock device falls out. I shove my hand into my pocket, so that when my hand goes limp, the device will stay with me. I frantically press the button, making sure to hold on to the device, so it will administer its shock into me.
I feel an instant of the most intense pain I've ever felt. It's as if every cell in my body is being individually sliced open and burned. And then there is nothing. I can feel my heart thudding slowly, gradually coming closer to stopping. I can't move; I can't even blink. It's as if I've been paralyzed. All around me, tributes are fighting with each other. Slashing, stabbing, shooting, or just punching. They are ignoring me, taking me for dead.
As my heart is just about to stop, hopefully not permanently, the boy from 5 comes rushing at me. He is wielding a wicked looking sickle. He swings it down at my head, and it's as if time slows. I can see it coming closer and closer to my face. It's about to hit me. I will die. I won't make it home. They'll find my shock device, clutched in my cold stuff fingers. My whole family. Dead. Annora. Dead. My friends. Dead.
And then it's like time speeds up. The sickle hits my cheek, but only the flesh. It doesn't hit my skull, as I'm sure was intended. The sickle hits the ground, not an inch from my face. The boy pulls it out of the ground, about to swing at me again, when the boy from 7 snatches the backpack I had been holding and sprints away. This distracts the boy from 5, and he rushes off to get the backpack.
  Just as the boy from 5 leaves, my vision fades out, and I black out.

  I feel another instant of terrible pain, and my heart begins beating once more. I still feel as if I can't move. I can't hear any noise; the bloodbath must be over. But as the rest of my senses come back, I feel something cold and sharp pressing on my back. I open my eyes, and see the top of the huge claw-like device that is used to pick up the corpses of the tributes. That must mean... I'm safe. I'm being lifted into the hovercraft. My family won't die, I won't die, Annora won't die! I've done it. I'm going home.