Neverending Game

“Get him!” the Careers shouted with glee. The hairs on the back of my neck stood high. I started to panic. Vic was on the edge of his branch, eyes wide with terror. In spite of the situation, I ran in the opposite direction. ‘The Careers will get me anyway; why not go down with a fight?’ I thought to myself. I reached the opposite edge of the woods. Branches and twigs smacked past my face as I ran. I tried to block out the jeering of the Careers. Suddenly, a face popped out of the bushes. He had brown and blonde hair swept to one side. “Hide in here,” he whispered. Desperate for a place to go, I dove into the bush beside the tribute. I crouched there. The Careers sped past us, still cheering on my death.

I sighed. “Thank you,” I said. The tribute smiled. “No problem.” He said. “I’m Jack Barakat. What’s your name?” “Kellin. Kellin Quinn.” I said curtly. Jack nodded. “What district? I’m district 8.” He said. “12.” I said, keeping my answers short and to the point. “I guess you’ll be staying with me for a while, Kellin.” He said.

I nodded. “Until I get back to the other tribute from my District, yeah.” I said. I felt desperate to get back to Vic. I surely didn’t want the Careers to get to him. Jack nodded. “Well, my other tribute is back here. We have a camp and everything, and we got some stuff from the Cornucopia. There’s an extra weapon, you can have it.” He offered. I grinned. “Sure,” I said.

He led me back behind the bush. After going back a bit, I saw a guy that looked a bit older than Jack crouching over a few weapons from the Cornucopia. He looked up, and looked a bit scared when he saw me. “It’s okay, Alex, he’s not going to murder us.” Jack assured. ‘Alex’ seemed to calm down a bit. “Alex, this is Kellin from District 12. I saved him from the Careers.” Jack stated proudly. I waved shyly.

“Hi, I’m Alex Gaskarth, District 8.” The older boy introduced. I eyed the weapons that Alex had in front of him. There was a short dagger, a bow and 3 arrows, and an axe. My skill at the testing was throwing knives at the targets, earning me a 10, so I figured the dagger would be my best choice.
“Well, get what you want now.” Jack encouraged. As soon as he said that, a scream followed by sadistic cheers were blared across the Arena. The cannon shot, showing the face of a boy named Jaimie from District 6. Jack sighed sadly. “The Careers got him.” Alex grunted. Jack nodded. “We better hide; they’ll be coming back this way to look for me.” I said. Alex nodded.

I grabbed the dagger out of the pile and ran off. I heard leaves crunching behind me, so I knew Jack and Alex were behind me. Suddenly, the leaves stopped crunching behind me. Terrified that the Careers had gotten one of them, I whirled around. Jack and Alex were still safe and sound; they had just stopped for a second.

“We need to get you back to the guy from your district. What was his name?” Jack asked. “Vic.” I said. Suddenly, I had a terrible thought. When the Careers killed Haimie, Vic might’ve thought that it was me. The Careers were after me in the beginning. From his point, you couldn’t see the sky, so he didn’t know who died. He thought I was dead.