How she left

I pour my coffee into the cup that I use every day and walk outside onto the porch. As I sit down on the bench I look out at the view of the lushes trees in the forest that lies beyond the district, and I sigh feeling glad that we are now allowed to roam freely in the beauty that is the forest. I watch as my grandchildren run through the trees and start to break into an argument, I watch my daughter, Purl, try to break up the fight between Willow and River. I begin to twirl the thread bracelet on my wrist and a tear comes to my eye, my daughter is named after my best friend, Purl Gaberdine, and she was always the one who stopped arguments, I can't go a day without thinking about her. Probably my fault because I named my daughter after her, but I can't help not thinking about her, almost everything brings her to mind. She died sixty years ago and she was only fourteen, I was also fourteen and we were the best of friends, I would've volunteered for her if I could, but it was the Quarter Quell and only past victors could go into the games, and unfortunately for her, she had won two years before at the age of twelve, the youngest victor ever. After she won her first games I did everything to erase the images from my mind and I thought that because of her victory she would be safe the rest of her life, but I was wrong. You see, Purls first games were the first games I had ever watched, my parents would not allow me to watch the games until I was twelve because they didn't want it to scar me. The only reason I watched the games was because Purl was in them, if she wasn't I wouldn't have watched, lucky for her she had been watching the games since she was nine. It was the seventieth hunger games, the first day and there were 23 other opponents. It was also the same year that the revolution began, the revolution is the reason I don't need to worry about my grandchildren being reaped and dying in the games like how Purl died. Even though the seventy-fifth hunger games were sixty years ago, even though her death was sixty years ago and even though my memory is fading quickly, I remember the games perfectly. I was only fourteen and I shouldn't have had to deal with the pain of losing a best friend, I was too young, and I didn't deal with it to well. It was definitely the worst feeling I ever felt. Considering how she died too, it just adds to the pain, I couldn't even imagine how she felt during her death, well, right before her death anyways, the pain and the sorrow she would've felt knowing she would never return home. At least it was a quick death, I'm grateful for that. Although it was a quick death, the story leading up to it was a lot more interesting, grab your tissues and get comfortable, because I'm about to tell you the story of my experience watching the seventieth hunger games.

It was the third Quarter Quell, it was all past victors in the arena, which made me extremely nervous because they were all trained killers, whether they looked it or not. Even Purl was, believe it or not. It also made me nervous because Purls cousin was in the arena as well, and I knew that if it came down to the two of them, Purl wouldn't kill him, even if they weren't blood related, she was to nice. She began to rise up in her tube and just like her I had never seen the arena before, my heart was beating out of my chest and I felt as though I was the one in the tube, she got lifted up into the arena and we both took a look around for the first time, there was water everywhere with the cornucopia in the center on an island, and the arena was a perfect circle. Outlining the water was sand and behind the beach was a jungle.

I had known that it was a jungle because I had read it in a book once, I also think Purl wrote a book about one for the younger kids in our school. Anyways, the water didn't scare me that much because Purl was a pretty decent swimmer.

The clock was counting down and I watched as Purl took a deep breath in unison with me. She looked around at her opponents, and while the camera wasn't always on her I could see her ninety percent of the time. I saw her looking for something, she spotted someone, I remembered her from the training scores and interviews as Ever, the female from District 7, but I didn't know why Purl was looking for her. The gong rang and she dived into the water, she started swimming as hard as she could, then she climbed up onto a strip of land and started to run towards the cornucopia.