Safe and Sound (The Hunger Games)

Chapter 27 - Friends

Hours pass and it is getting hotter in the arena. "Hey, do you have any water?" I ask Dylan.

"Nope, not since the Capitol." He says.

"Damn, you must be dying." I say.

"Aren't we all?" He says with a smile.

I smile back and continue to keep lookout. God I wish we had water... I'm so thirsty.

"Me too." He says.

"What?" I ask him. Did he just read my mind?

"You said you were thirsty, and I said me too." Dylan asks.

"I said that in my head... do you read minds?" I ask him one hundred percent seriously.

"No, crazy. That's my new nickname for you. Crazy." He smiles.

"I'm not crazy." I tell him defensively.

"Okay. You're not crazy, crazy." Dylan laughs.

"Stop that." I crack a smile. "Or I'll kill you."

"Killing a child in the Hunger Games? Since when is that allowed?" He says sarcastically.

We both laugh to ourselves and look at eachother in the eyes for the first time. I never noticed he had pretty green eyes.

"Thanks." He says.

"For what?" I ask him.

"For telling me I have pretty green eyes..." He says as if it were obvious.

"When did I... I said that in my head... oh never mind. Maybe I am crazy." I say in defeat.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you crazy." He smiles. "And for the record, your eyes are pretty too."

"Thanks." I blush. "So tell me about yourself."

"Well, I'm from twelve. My family is just my dad and I, my mentor is drunk and hasn't been helping me with sponsors, my district partner is dead, and I'll be dead soon." He says, trying to shrug it all off.

"How do you know Toby and I won't die?" I ask him.

"Oh come on. You two are career districts, where I am from a poor, hopeless, little district that only had two victors. District Twelve never wins. It's a miracle I'm in the top three." He says with no emotion.

"Well have some hope. Some hope is better than none." I tell him.

"Not necessarily. Sometimes I wonder instead of the arena and the game itself, they just don't kill twenty-three of us after the reaping." He says

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Think about it. After the reaping, they reap one name out of the twenty-four of us, and he or she is crowned the victor, while they shoot the other twenty-three of us dead. I mean, no mentors, no parade, no training, no allies, and especially no hope of survival. Just five minutes of knowing you are going to die rather than a week of knowing that maybe you are going to die." He says. "You know?"

"I agree, it would be so much better than the games. Twenty-three dead in the arena and twenty-three dead that way. Same end result." I say.

"But then I realize why the Capitol spends all of this money into the huge arenas. It's for their entertainment. I mean, just killing random twenty-three kids at the reaping? They don't get attached to us and they don't know our stories. It's just another face on their screen they see get killed." He says.

"Whereas the games get them to root for their favorites and get attached to them." I interrupt. "Do you think anyone from the Capitol is rooting for us?"

"Yeah, they're all like 'Go Dylan and Crazy! Win so I can win my betting money!' Yeah did you know they bet with money on us?"

"That's sick..." I mumble. "So you said it's just you and your dad? What happened to your mom?" I blurt out.

"Um... it's a long story." He says.

"We have time." I say.

He sighs and rubs his eyes. "She was killed." He says sadly. "In twelve, we are all poor and starving. You either starve, or you learn how to survive." He says a little stronger, but then he falls back to sadness. "She stole a little piece of bread from the bakery to feed me when I was little. They killed her on the spot."

"I'm so sorry." I sincerely tell him.

"My dad blames me for her death. I do too. If I had told her that day that I-"

"Don't. It wasn't your fault." I say.

"She stole the bread for me. Who else is there to blame here?" He asks angrily with tears in his eyes.

"THE CAPITOL!" I almost yell. "The Capitol is responsible for more than one thousand children lives for seventy years. Sending twelve to eighteen year olds in the arena to fight to the death? What the hell is wrong with them?"

"Kaya-" Dylan tries to stop me.

"No, someone has to say this. Someone has to-"

"KAYA!" He says louder.

"...stop the games." I finish quietly. Dylan looks up at the sky, which suddenly becomes darker. I hear a crack of thunder in the distance.

"Lets go, now." He says sternly.

We start running instantly.

"Away from the water! If the lightning hits the water, we will be fried!" I say.

"And forget about the trees! Lightning usually strikes trees most of the time!" He says back. We both stop running.

"So do we stay in the open space?" I ask him as I catch my breath.

"I guess so. We'll both have to be lookouts. Toby is outnumbered-"

"But two of us equals one of him, believe me." I say.

"So we will both really have to be lookouts." He says carefully. I nod and we both sit down. We sit back to back and have our weapons hand in hand.

"Lets kill that son of a bitch." I whisper to Dylan. He laughs back and then shushes me. It's on Toby.