The Hunger Games

Chapter 16

          A cannon blasts through the arena, and the sound enters my dreams, causing me to wake up a little bit.

           “Get up! Get up!” Lily’s cry wakes me, as her hands are on my shoulders and shakes me, making me aware of my surroundings.

           “What?” I ask blinking my eyes awake. I look around, and it’s still dark. Lily looks petrified and scared.

          “It’s the Career tributes! They took our stuff! They found us, and nearly killed me!” Lily says.

          “What!” this is when I notice that Lily’s cheek has a long cut on it, with blood oozing out, but it’s not that deep, and she also has a black eye. I look around in the tree, and notice only my backpack remains. I look inside and find our water gone, the same with our food. Lily’s bow and arrows are gone, and the same with my knife. “How did they do this? And why didn’t they kill us, if they knew we were here?”

          “Because I woke up,” Lily says. “I got up and found the boy from 1 taking our stuff with the girl from 10. The girl from 10 escaped with our things, but I grabbed your arrow and killed the boy from 1. He managed to stay alive for a few minutes, but then died. The cannon just blasted. I’m scared Katharine, we have to move on, we need to go somewhere else!”

          Just then, a hovercraft appears. It picks up Tortian off the ground. I sigh. “I’m sorry Lily, we must go now.” I say. “To the lake, we need to get our stuff back. We’ll need to risk it.”

          Lily nods. “Okay. But if we are going to the same place we want to go to anyway, can we wait till morning? It makes no difference if we just wait.”

          I shake my head. “They’ll be awake then. We will want to element of surprise attack.”

          “Yeah, but the lake is still a day’s travel. We probably won’t have a surprise attack on them anyway.”

           “Then how do you explain the girl from 10 and Tortian, the boy from 1, to get here? They were a part of the Careers.” I say.

           Lily shrugs. “Maybe they left. Or they’ve been trying to find us, and are now heading back.” She then gets back in the sleeping bag. I clench on my bow. I’m lucky I hold this all the time. Otherwise, it might have been stolen. There is no way I could survive without this weapon.

          I don’t fall asleep again. I lay in the sleeping bag looking out the trees. I begin to think about everything that has happened to me so far. How I’m starting to care for Lily, she’s now a friend to me. I look down and sigh, and suddenly think about Danny. Where is he? If he’s not with the Careers anymore, is he okay or what? Is he actually telling the truth about loving me? I’m so unsure. I don’t feel confident about anything at the moment, and I just feel plain confused. Will things ever be right again? I feel as if all this is just fake, and not real. Am I actually dreaming the Games, or is this real? As confused as I am, I don’t think I’ll ever get my senses back, even if I do live these stupid Games.

          About two hours later, I finally decide that I won’t be sleeping again, so I get up and climb down the tree and decide to hunt since we have no food left, and I’m getting pretty hungry. Dawn is breaking in by the time I catch four small squirrels and return to the tree. I find Lily still asleep. I climb up and shake her awake.

          Lily blinks her eyes open and yawns. “Hey.”

          “Hello.” I say. “Let’s get going to the lake. I also went hunting, so we’ll eat later. Okay?”