22. One of Us

       I was pretty sure that this wasn't a dream. It sure didn't feel like one. Tributes just can't back off, can they? First I got interrupted from my good memories, and now here I was, cold and ill, looking straight at an arrowhead pointed at me. I was just having all sorts of luck, from good to bad. It was a constant roller coaster.

            I was waiting for the arrow to get shot right through my head or neck—that was the general area it was being directed in. Well, if I am going to die soon, I might as well look at my murderer. I pushed past the arrow to gaze at its master.

            Her hair was caked with mud, so I couldn't tell if her hair was really that dark or not. Bits of grass plagued her hair also. Her face had cuts on it, as if a squirrel had gotten to her or she had gotten into a catfight with one of the remaining female tributes in the arena. Her right eye was black but on the mend, and there were some possible bags under it as well though it was hard to tell. Her fingers were cut up as well; her lip was split and bruised. This girl had been through a lot...or maybe not.

            When my eyes met hers, I instantly knew who it was. How could I have not noticed that it was her when I first skimmed her over? Had it really been that many days since I had seen her on day one, the day she protected me from her pack? How could she not know who I was? We've been out here for a while, I reminded myself.

            "Sutton?" I croaked feebly. If it was her, then she'd lower her arrow. If it was Kristi, Jillian, or the District 11 girl, Dan and I were finished. I was a goner anyway, so what did it matter to me at this point?

            Her dark green eyes showed her surprise, confirming my guess. I bet she didn't expect me to know who she was. I knew who she was, now she needed to remember me. It'd save us all energy.

She studied me carefully from the safety of her arrow. To my relief, she lowered it.

            "Bridget?" she whispered. She remembered me after all! Besides her pack members, who else would know her name?

            Dan looked startled.

            "This is Sutton?" he asked me.

I nodded. "How could I forget her? She's kept me safe from the Career pack's bullying and their hunting party. You saw her a few times before."

            "It's been a while since then, Bri."

            "You bet," Sutton agreed. Her bow and arrow hung at her side. I noticed she was favoring her right leg. I would get to those questions later, about her injuries; there were more crucial ones to ask her. "I almost didn't recognize you, and I haven't seen you much so I assumed you were enemies. What happened to you? You both look awful."

            "Thanks," I said grimly. I adjusted myself under the blanket.

            "You look worse than he does."

            "That's because she's poisoned," Dan sighed.

            "Poisoned?" Sutton gasped. "When? Why? How?"

            "Easy, easy," I coughed. "I'll sum it up. We teamed up with a tribute, Noah, from Eight. This was his original camp." I sucked in a breath.

            "What in your right mind made you want to team up with him? He was in love with a psychopath!" Sutton groaned. She would know how Kaya was; they'd had been pack mates.

            "Hey, I figured we could mooch off him for a few days," I said defensively.

            "I'll take over, Bri. Don't overexert yourself," Dan told me gently. I shut my mouth and let him tell the rest of the story. "Anyway, we were low on food, so Bridget and he went out hunting, leaving me here alone. I had taken a night shift so I was exhausted by morning. We were going to abandon Noah sometime yesterday, but we didn't find the right time to. I didn't trust them alone, so I followed them. I'm glad that I did.

            "Noah had stabbed Bridget with a knife, and I wrestled him to the ground and slit his throat." Sutton shuddered. "We didn't know the knife was poisonous until last night."

            "What's happened since you've been hurt?" Sutton asked me. I was sure the only reason she didn't go into asking Noah's motives was because she knew that Kaya had meant something to him. She probably suspected I killed her as well. It wasn't like she'd kill me for it; she didn't like Kaya much when in the pack.

            "It's stung a few times, and I've got a nasty fever. I'm really weak too," I whimpered.

            Sutton shook her head in dismay. Her green eyes met Dan's blue ones. "Do you still have the knife?" she asked him.

            "Why?" he asked her.

            "I want to see something."

            "Okay..." He looked at me nervously.

            "Go get the knife for her. I'll be fine, she won't shoot me," I assured him. He still gave me an anxious look but shrugged out of the blanket and sauntered a few feet away to hunt for Noah's—and Kaya's—knife. Meanwhile, Sutton came to hover by my side. She felt my forehead.

            "You weren't kidding when you said you have a fever," she murmured. "That's all the poison's done to you?"

            "Yup. I'm just waiting for the rabies to kick in, or the hallucinations," I joked. Sutton shot me a severe look. I bit my lip, wishing I could take it back. I guess joking about being ill and slowly dying didn't settle very well with her.

            Dan came back, holding the knife by its hilt. Sutton rose and took it from him, holding it safely by the hilt as well. She got her nose close to it and took a few quick sniffs. She made a face and held out the knife. Dan took it back.

            "Well?" he asked her.

            "It's snake poison," she said. "Usually poisons don't have an odor, but this one does."

            "How do you know what it smells like?" I croaked.

            "I was in the jungle area for a while and smelled the poison from a live snake. I ran when I saw it." She giggled apathetically. "Snakes are not my friends."

            "So how long does she have to live?" Dan asked. "Do you know that? You seem to be an expert on poisons."

            "I'll say she's lucky to be alive right now," Sutton said gravely. "She won't last much longer out here, though. She needs medicine and fast."

            "That's all she's talked about."

            "It's because if I don't get it, I die," I growled. I looked to Sutton. "I've got questions for you."

            "Go ahead," she said. She took a seat on the grass; Daniel hopped back under the blanket with me. "Lay them on me."

            "How did you escape the pack?"

            "Oh. That." Her face fell. "Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. I almost did it the first night, but I figured I could live off the stack we hoarded in the Cornucopia."

            "How big is it?"

            "We're—I mean, they're—well off." She didn't boast. "Anyway, by day three, I really wanted to leave them. After all, if it came down to just us Careers, we'd turn on each other. I'm sure I was the only one who was thinking about that so early in the Games. I didn't want to be around when it'd happen. I left on the fourth night, the day Kaya died." I winced at the name. Sutton didn't seem to notice. "I couldn't take it anymore; Eric kept ranting about how he was going to rip Noah's head off. Muhammad tried to calm him down—that's District Four's tribute," she added. I had shot her a confused look. "I decided I was going to leave, but Meeka caught me sneaking away.

            "I told him outright that I didn't want to be part of the pack anymore. Eric didn't take to that too well, neither did Kristi. Mostly all of them except Muhammad took a shot at me. They didn't kill me obviously, they just really injured me." She shook her hair away from her eyes. "Lucky for me nobody saw the pack I managed to steal." She ripped it off her back and sat it on her lap. She grinned.

            "It must've been hard from there, though, being on your own," Dan chimed.

            "Oh, it was." Sutton sighed. "I considered going back to the Cornucopia and stealing more supplies, but I figured it was too risky. I mean, I doubted the Careers would leave me alive if they caught me again. I had to crash here in the woods. I made it to the jungle eventually, and then back here again." She giggled. "I didn't really eat much of what I had in the pack; I don't eat a lot anyway."

            "What do you still have left?" I asked curiously.

            "Hmm, let's see." Sutton unzipped the pack and pulled out some dried fruit and jerky. The jerky looked so tempting that if I had felt good enough, I would have dived for it and snatched it from her in a second flat. She kept rummaging deep in her bag. She grimaced. "That's all that's left, I'm afraid."

            "Well, we have water." I gestured towards the pond behind her. Sutton looked over her shoulder.

            "I noticed that. Lucky you two claimed the place, huh?"

            "Big time," Dan agreed.

            "How bad are you hurt?" I asked her.

            "A black eye, few cuts here and there," she reported.

            "I saw you favoring your leg."

            She sighed heavily. "Eric thought it would be fun to try and break my leg."

            My brows knitted in anger. That bastard. He was not in his right mind. He had gone insane over Kaya's death. I was sure he was happy that Noah was out of the picture, but I was sure Eric would use his rage to kill all us non-Career tributes, and Sutton. To the pack, she wasn't a Career anymore. She was an outsider, a regular tribute like Daniel and me; the Careers were in a league of their own. There were the Careers, and then there were the average tributes, like Dan and me.

            "Did you manage to fight back and get a shot or two in on any of them?" Dan asked. "Surely you couldn't have escaped before making your mark on them somehow."

            "I think I managed to scratch Eric's face, but that's about it. I was too busy hurting from all the blows I was receiving." She looked down at the jerky, then up at us. "You guys want any? I don't really like it; I grabbed the first things I saw, really."

            "Better give it to Bridget to keep her quiet," Dan teased.

            "Be nice. I'm dying," I said, smacking his arm.

Sutton tossed me the jerky. I nibbled on it. It was really dry like my mouth had been earlier today, but it was food. I tried to savor each bite to make it seem more filling than it really was. I went through two strips before I stopped myself. There were at least ten left, but I didn't want to be a pig and eat half of it. The food needed to last over a few days.

            Sutton yawned.

            "You can sleep, you know," I told her tiredly.

            "Nah, I'm good," she lied.

            "Really? You look like you're losing a battle."

            "I'll watch over you two while you sleep," Dan offered. "Bri, give me a piece of the jerky. It'll help me stay awake."

            "If you say so." I handed him a piece and tossed the bag back to Sutton. She shoved it back in her pack.

I nestled close to Dan again, feeling kind of bad that Sutton slept on the forest floor with nothing to cover herself with. If she had thought about it, she could have stolen a sleeping bag or at least a blanket for herself. I guess she considered food more important over comfort. That seemed like a good logic to me.

            Sutton curled herself into a ball and lay facing Dan and me. Dan took a bite of the jerky and chewed slowly—he was trying to make the jerky last long.

            "Sutton?" I asked quietly.

            "Hmm?" she mumbled. Her eyes were practically closed, her hands under her head for her pillow.

            "Why do you trust us?"

            "I would think that would be obvious. I trust you more than him, no offense. I can tell a person just by looking at them. I don't see you as a traitor to me. I know your head isn't in the killer mode like the Careers' are. And if you aren't like that, he's probably the same way you are. You guys aren't turning on each other; you have that bond that they don't have. Their bond is more of just an alliance, it's not genuine. I want to be a part of what you two have."

            Poor Sutton, she felt so out of place in her own pack. She wasn't upset about it or anything, she just knew what would be her fate if it was just down to the pack. She was a smart girl, I had to admit. If she could really tell how a person was by just looking at them, she'd stick around Dan and me for quite a while.

Maybe we can include her too, I considered. She seemed like the kind of girl who felt like an underdog, like Dan and me. People always rooted for the underdogs.

            If it ever came down to us as the final three, we'd stop fighting and demand to be crowned the victors. That's how I saw it, because I knew Sutton wouldn't kill either of us, and Daniel wouldn't kill me or Sutton. True, the original plan was for Dan and me to escape alive, but the plan could be melded to include Sutton as well. I couldn't leave her out of it, not when she was now on our side.

            "Well, stick with us and you won't regret it," I joked.

            "I don't." Sutton grinned. "I already like this choice better."

            "Stop chatting and start sleeping," Dan ordered.

            "Okay, okay." Sutton giggled tiredly. "But wake me up when you need me to take over, okay? You're not staying up all night, and Bridget is too ill to take a shift. She definitely wouldn't be up for one."

            "Thanks for your confidence in me," I grumbled.

            "Hmm...I'll consider it, Sutton," Dan said. He seemed to be taking to Sutton better than I had first thought. He's a lot better than he had been around Noah. Then again, if Dan was given the choice between who to trust between the two, he'd definitely take Sutton over Noah any day of the week.

            I felt so content due to Sutton joining the group, and her and Daniel getting along, that sleep came to me easily.

*     *     *

            Sutton's short, high-pitched scream made Daniel and me jump awake. We bumped heads. It sounded like Dan had given Sutton a night shift after all. Our attention snapped to her.

She stood, still favoring her right leg, looking in horror at the pond. I saw what the problem was: the pond was completely dry. My mouth dropped. I had to be dreaming this, but if Sutton was staring at an empty hole in the ground, it wasn't a dream.

            "No..." Dan muttered. He wriggled out of the blanket to trot to the empty hole that once held water. "It was full last night before I went to sleep!" He looked at Sutton. "You didn't see the pond drain?"

            "No," she stammered, dropping to her knees. "I hadn't even known it was happening! It must've happened so silently..."

            "This is bad."

            "Well, it's obvious why it dried up, isn't it?" I croaked. Sutton and Dan looked at me. "It's the Gamemakers' handiwork. They're cutting us off from a good resource. They want us to move, they're trying to herd us towards other tributes."

            "But it hasn't been that long since Noah died," Dan said.

            "They want to keep the Games interesting. We've been here for two days—two days too long in their eyes."

            "We can't move, though. You're too sick," Sutton complained.

            "I bet I can carry her," Dan theorized. My brows pulled together in confusion. "She's too sick to walk. She shouldn't be heavy at all."

            "I could try to walk," I piped.

            "You probably wouldn't get very far. Bri, if you looked at yourself right now, you'd agree. Carrying you will be easier, and we'd cover more ground quicker."

            "We filled the canteen, right?" I asked him. I figured there was no point in arguing over whether or not I really was too ill to walk much.

            "I think so. We should be fine."

            "I don't mind moving, but keep me wrapped up."

            Sutton gathered our things while Daniel covered our tracks. If the Careers, Jillian, or District 11's girl happened to come by and pick up that we were here, they'd hunt us down.

 Once everything was said and done, Dan scooped me up into his arms. I held onto him just in case. I knew he wouldn't drop me, but I didn't want him to accidentally drop me.

            "Where are we heading?" Dan asked.

            "Better head in front of us, I don't think that area's been explored yet. I'm not entirely sure about my theory, but it's worth a shot," Sutton said. She strutted ahead of Daniel, stopping a few feet away to make sure he was following. Dan and I exchanged looks.

            "Better go with it," I told him, shrugging a little.

            "You and her share the same logic when it comes to luck," he muttered.

            Dan lugged me along in his arms as Sutton led us to wherever. It would be unknown territory for all three of us—or would it be? We wouldn't know until we got there—whenever we would. Come on, Jo, I've been ill for two days. Where's the medicine I need? There was no way Johanna was going to let me suffer like this for much longer.

Maybe it's just a money issue. Nobody's filthy rich with all the money in the world. I didn't know how much longer I was going to last in the Games. I was lucky I was still alive on my second day of slowly dying.

            I had a queasy feeling in my stomach which I didn't want to amount to anything, so I shut my eyes and buried my head into Dan's neck as he and Sutton traveled to our intended destination—wherever that was.