Sweetest Downfall

“Herring come on!” I screamed for him as Ari and I ran for our lives, each of us had two backpacks on each arm. I felt my stomach churn when he finally caught up with us and I saw the paleness in his face.

“Follow the stream! Come on,” Ari harshly whispered as we got further away from the Cornucopia and closer to the wooded base of the mountain. Cannon shots fired and I couldn’t focus on how many, I could only hear the heaviness in Herring’s breathing.

“Ari, hold on!” I called as she started to get too far ahead. She turned back around and looked at Herring and I, I brought him down to a rock beside the shallow stream. His blue eyes looked into mine and I could almost feel the pain he was feeling. “Here, give me your pack.”

Ari came back to us and she dropped her four packs on the floor beside my four and Herring’s one pack. We had six packs of dried beef sticks, three packs of dried fruits, five boxes of matches, three flashlights, four heat retaining sleeping bags, five pairs of gloves, two hats, four gallon-sized water canteens and a butt load of first aid supplies; the weapons we grabbed were a spear, four throwing knives, a smaller double edged spear and a boomerang with a deathly sharp edge. I quickly gathered the first aid things and laid them all out on an unrolled sleeping bag. There was gauze, ace bandages, scrap cloth, band aids, ointment and medical tapes, everything we would need was right there.

“You fix him, I’ll pack these up and keep watch.” Ari said as she pushed her wild curls out of her eyes, put aside the scary boomerang and began to divide and pack everything up into three bags.

I took one of the knives she put aside and cut away the hair around the bloodiest part of Herring’s head and I couldn’t help but gasp. There was a coin sized indent about four inches behind his left ear and blood was pouring out from a gash around the top half. In that moment I knew he wouldn’t last long and I started to cry silent tears. I walked around to the front of Herring and grabbed the spare cloth, he took my hand as I tried to hide my face from him.

“Shay, it’s okay,” his calm voice only made my tears come down faster and he pulled me into him. “I don’t regret it, you know.” I looked up at him and heard Ari take a few steps away, giving the two of us as much privacy as she could while still guarding the supplies and keeping watch.

“Herring, it’s not too late! I—I can wrap it up, stop the bleeding and… and,” I felt my voice get caught as he took my face in one of his hands. “Who did it? Who hit you? You knocked Presh out of the way.”

“District 1. Him,” I nodded.

“I will avenge you,” it was his turn to nod. He kissed my forehead and fixed my ribbon.

“And I’ll help you,” He raised his voice so that Ari could hear. “Both of you, for as long as I can, but when I get too weak, I want you to kill me; I can’t drag you two down.”

I felt my tears come back as I cleaned off the blood; the dent was much worse than I had originally thought, but I couldn’t tell him. When he was wrapped up and ready, Ari forced us to walk along the stream until dark. As the sky got darker the temperature dropped and snow started to fall the higher we got on the mountainside. I took the first watch and made sure to annually check on Herring, waking him up every so often to make sure he was alright. I watched the photos of the tributes show up, the girl from District 6, both from District 7 and both from District 9.

I watched the moon and woke Herring again. “Hey…” I whispered.

His big blue eyes looked up at me, they reflected the moonlight perfectly. If I had a brother, Herring would be the exact look, his blue eyes were mirror to mine and his hair was only a shade or two darker than mine. But something was wrong, his eyes were starting to glaze over and his skin was paler, he was slipping. “Hey… I can take the next watch, if you want me too.”

I shook my head and he sat up, leaning against the tree next to me. “No, Ari said she’s fine with taking it; speaking of which I should wake her up soon.” I moved to shake Ari but Herring stopped me with an embrace.

It was filled with so much sadness I immediately squeezed him back. His hug was weak, and he couldn’t squeeze for long. I pulled away just enough to see his face, his eyes were sinking in and they were starting to fade into grey. “I want you to have something.” He took off his token, a silver dog tag necklace with the outline of a fish engraved on it and put it in my hand, closing my fingers around it. “You asked me where I got it… My dad, he gave it to me when my mom was lost at sea.”

“Your mom was on the same boat as my father, that’s why—”

“That’s why I was cold to you in the beginning; you act a lot like how she did, or at least what I remember. I’m really sorry, it was just that I didn’t want to think of her, it hurts.” He sighed and I put my head on his chest, listening for his heart. It was so faint, and I knew this was it and I couldn’t stop the tears. “Tell me about your dad?”

“Well,” I started, taking a deep breath. “He’s a lot like you, big shoulders and blue eyes. He was really nice, every time he came home from a long fishing trip he’d bring me and my little sister, Opal a new fish hook.” I smiled at the memory. “Opal, she’d string them all together and hang them off of our wind chimer outside on the porch. You’ve seen it, I remember you came by after school once when we were in the second grade and we had a play date. But anyway, he’d come home after trips and bring us a new fishhook and when he didn’t come home one day… my mother cried and told us that daddy wasn’t going to come home for a long time. As we got older she told us that the ship was lost at sea, though you know that… I’m really sorry about your mom—”

I was cut off by a cannon and I stopped and listened. He didn’t have a heart beat anymore. I put on the token and laid his body down, my tears occasionally falling down onto him. I shook Ari and she immediately understood what had happened; she pulled me in for a quick hug and started to gather up our things.

“We have to go, the hovercraft will come for his body, we can’t be here when it does.” I nodded and took two of the bags and she took the third and the two unrolled sleeping bags. “I’m sorry you lost your friend.”

“He wasn’t just a friend, he was like a brother.” She nodded and we walked for about a half hour. I settled into one of the sleeping bags and she sat comfortably for her turn to guard but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep very well.

I felt my eyelids droop before I could protest, but once they shut I just kept having images of the bloody dent in the back of Herring’s head and his caring blue eyes. He died too young, too soon, but that was the nature of the Hunger Games.