Grain & Blood | A Hunger Games collection

System Overload: Chapter Eleven

"You can go home in a week."

It's news I have wanted to hear for so long. Home! Jonen, Clementine, my mother, the rolling fields of District 9.

"But I also have bad news." I stop dreaming about home and look up at my father.

"Kamalyn tried to kill herself yesterday and-"

"Is she- dead?"

"No, but she can't go home when you do."

"Then I'll wait. We're doing this together, no matter what."

"Okay. But you know that means another two weeks here?"

"Yes, and I don't care." It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

"Alright. She asked me to give you this."

He hands me a note, kisses the top of my head and leaves.

I tried to kill myself yesterday, and since then Jake hasn't left my side. It's been annoying, yes, but now it's not in a 'romantic' way, I told him yesterday that I just don't give a f*ck and now it's a bit more manageable. So how's it going with you?

Yeah. That's probably not the best news I could receive because now I'll have to tell her that I've been given the chance to go home and turned it down for her.

I pick up the notebook with a sigh, trying to figure out what to write. I'll do it later. She can wait, and in any event I can just blame it on something like a slow delivery service.

Currently, I need to think of the cover for my little 'book' and a name. It's not really a book, more of a diary? Of my time in the arena.

I start sketching out wheat fields and blood dripping from the top. A light blue sky, crimson red blood. Golden fronds of crop, waving in the faint breeze.

It's too perfect, almost like the real place in District 9 on paper in a hospital room, halfway to hell. Now I need a title. The first half of my life was working in the fields and training with Jonen, spending so much of my day in the grain. And the second half, which isn't really half, more like eight days, was filled with so much blood and violence that it's a whole separate chapter in my life.

Grain and Blood.

I write the title on the sketched cover and keep writing, line after line, page after page, chapter after chapter.

I kept walking forwards, in a direct line from Robin's starting plate. He couldn't be much further, there's only a certain distance a 12 year old can run or walk in three hours. What if the cannon that went off just after the Bloodbath cannons was his? I just hoped that I didn't meet someone else before I met Robin.

I heard footsteps up ahead, trudging along the desert floor. Instinctively, I pulled a knife out and carefully approached to find out who it was.

"Robin!"

My brother spun around and smiled when he saw me.

"Iris!"

He ran towards me, evidently as happy as I was to see him as he was to see me and glad that I wasn't dead.

A small smile spreads across my face as I think about Robin. He was an amazing brother, and I miss him more than ever.

I should really write back to Kamalyn. She's probably waiting.

Glad you told Jake that you didn't care. He is probably the biggest pain in the arse I've ever met, and that's saying something. I was told earlier that I can go home next Friday, but I turned it down. I want us to go home together, continue your victory tour t♡gether, and I just feel like that would be so much better. Get better soon, and don't kill yourself again!

That should do it. Plus a little heart, in the o of together, and she'll notice it. Hopefully. If she doesn't, then it's fine, but I just hope she does.