Sunshine - A Hunger Games Story

20| Solutions

"Can you, uh, pull it out?" Henri's eyes widen and he gulps. "Do it quickly, before his teammates come back."

This kicks him into action. The 12 year old comes next to me and reaches his hands out to the knife, stopping just before he touches it. "Are you sure?" I nod my head quickly, the hot pain. I lift up my forearm to him, sure to do everything my my power to keep the angle of my limp hand the same to minimize pain. "5... 4... 3... 2," he pulls us out.

White light takes over my vision. I'm confident that my left arm must be on fire. My good hand is clenched as tight as possible around my left forearm, nails digging into the flesh. My wound throbs, it doesn't stop, the throbbing is the only thing I can think of.

Trying to blink back to reality, nausea replaces the white light. The throbbing, still pulsing in the background. As my eyes readjust, I can see red ooze pouring down my arm. The stench of copper is already familiar to my nose.

"Um, you- you have to stop that, the blood, right? With- with the belt? Like before?" Henri gulps, his eyes flicker to the cornucopia, just beyond the thin layer of grass we are in.

I nod, already too busy biting down on my tongue. My blood pulses strenuously in my wrist. I let Henri handle it. If I had much of any food in my system, I would most certainly throw up.

As I follow Henri's line of sight, I see Fred pulling the boy from 2 off of his district partner's body and the two of them run into the grass.

Henri tightens his belt on my lower arm, causing my head to whip back to him. My eyes widen and I suck in a deep breath to keep myself from showing too much of my pain.

It's not like my Henri is going to judge me for showing pain. I don't even really know why it matters. Maybe it's that small part of me that knows: everyone is watching you, you will be judged. Or the fact that everyone I love is seeing me and I don't want them to see me in pain.

After he is done securing the belt tightly around my forearm, I pull my arm to my chest. Of course the wound is still open and exposed, blood is still dripping down from it and I could still get a serious infection. "Are you sure you don't want to try and wrap your hand up better?"

"We only need to take out two more before you win," I replace 'kill' with 'take out'. "I'll be fine till then."

The anthem interrupts us, showing the faces of the girl from district two and then Aaron's face.

A soft beeping sound comes from a few feet from Henri. He reaches over and picks up a parachute off of the ground. The package must've been sent down during the anthem. My ally twists the lid off and reveals a small, clear, bottle of water and a note. The package shifts in his lap, causing the paper to slowly flutter to the ground. With my good hand, I reach down and grab the note, reading it quietly to my partner.

"With the help of district 8 -458912"

"Four, Five, Eight, Nine, One, Two? Why would one and two help us?" The other districts are still helping us, even though I failed to keep their tributes alive. Why?

"I think it means district 12." Henri seems to accept this and takes a large gulp of the water. "We're still getting sponsors? People must still want us to win," I think out loud.

We still have sponsors. The thought has my mind thinking. Almost half of the district mentors are helping us, that means what's left of the dipstick gang isn't getting much. Which is good. Unless you need to find them.

"Um, mentors, lovely capital people, if you can hear me, I need to ask you a favor," I say, barely above a whisper. "The other tributes, Fred and, uh, the boy from two, you need to send them a parachute. Whatever you send them, a match, a toothpick, a pencil, whatever it is, you need to send something to them." Talking to a hidden camera is very weird, I am never sure where to look or what to talk to. "And thank you very much in advance," I add.