Never Underestimate Her

The Arena

"Remember, stick with the careers" Enobaria whispered to me as I paced in front of my tube, delaying getting in for as long as possible. I looked up at the clock, three minutes until the games began, and two minutes until I was to be locked in the tube. I was running over my plan in my head, I had considered running away from the cornucopia, but then I realized I didn't know how to hunt so the only thing I would be able to eat other than berries is at the cornucopia. But then again, I don't even know if the arena will have berries, which makes getting food from the cornucopia all the more important.

"Tributes, you have ten seconds to secure yourself in the tubes," The announcer says. I look over at Seven who is a yard away from me about to get into his tube when I run over and hug him. He smiled

"Thank you, Seven for everything," I told him "You've been more family to me this past week than my own family"

"For what it's worth, I've always thought of you as a little sister," Seven says. We both pulled away and we climbed into our respective tubes as the door shuts. I took a deep breath and shut my eyes tightly as the tubes started rising to the arena. Everything was dark for a moment, I could barely see the figures of my hands. Then there was a light, blinding light, finally when my eyes adjusted the first thing I saw was a tall mountain, which didn't look to hard to climb, on the other side of the cornucopia clearing there was a dark woods but strangely there was no water in sight. I looked to my right and saw a strong-looking girl from ten, about 16 years old, she was eyeing a spear that wasn't too far from where they were. On my other side, there was the thirteen-year-old boy from nine who was shifting his weight nervously, it didn't seem like he had the stomach to kill. On the left of the thirteen-year-old, there were Seven he gave me and nod and I smiled back.

"Welcome to the 71st hunger games, and may the odds be ever in your favor!" said a voice. I looked ahead at the large stone cornucopia that displayed a 10 and started counting down

...9...

...8...

...7...

...6... I leaned forward, getting ready to push off my pedestal. 

...5...

...4... My eyes darted between all of the backpacks, and I knew what I had to do

...3...

...2...

...1... then there was a loud gong and I jumped off my pedestal on to the ground, I ran and grabbed the nearest backpack then picked it up and ran to the woods where I could hide it, I hid it in a spot that wasn't too hidden so that I could access it easily but hidden enough so that the other tributes scrambling into the woods wouldn't spot it. After that, I ran back for another backpack. I saw one and sprinted towards it, but then I heard Seven yell

"Sallow, Duck!" I dropped to my hands and knees just as a spear flew over my head where I was just standing, it would have hit me in the head had I not ducked in time. The spear landed a few feet away from me and I quickly scrambled over on my hands and knees then picked up the spear. I saw that it had been thrown by the district ten female who was now running at me, looking to kill. I squealed and held out the spear in front of me and the girl from ten ran right into it as it impaled her shoulder. She yelped in pain and dropped to her knees clutching her shoulder, Seven ran over and slit her throat. I gasped and was frozen for a moment as I looked at her body then down at the blood on my hands

"Sallow!" Seven broke me out of my trance, I picked up the backpack and the one the girl from ten had dropped as well and ran back to my hiding spot where I deposited the backpack as well as the spear, which I now could barely look at without feeling guilty. I completed a few more trips by crawling underneath all of the carnage so the other tributes wouldn't notice me. I managed to rack up a total of 7 backpacks. Finally, all the tributes who weren't dead at the cornucopia had fled into the woods or up the mountain leaving on the careers standing around the bloody cornucopia.