Kensey O'Neill, District 5

I guess I don't look like much. Others have told me as much, anyway. My hair is thick and pesky, so I generally throw it back in a braid. My eyes are a light grey, usually with a playful expression, but that can become icy in a second. My skin is a light colour, but usually tanned, since I love spending time outside. My build is short and stocky, at five feet two inches. I've got shorter than average arms and long, gangly legs. My notable scars are on my neck, but no one sees them because of the headband.

Long black cargo pants, a red shirt, a messenger bag across one shoulder, a black jacket with short sleeves, a thick leather belt, combat boots. It's always like that, I don't change my clothes much or think about them. The usual outfit is good for banging around outside or doing my job, and that's the way I like it. I guess the most notable thing is my necklace. It's a lockpick set on a string. It's useful for the more sticky situations I run into. I get a little overly curious sometimes. Curiosity killed the cat, but I still sometimes dip into some files in the Career Training building.

I'm quiet by nature, not much on the people aspect of life. I keep my solitude and keep working, despite my shortcomings. Often, my classmates think that this is me being a snot, thinking I'm better because I'm older. It's more that they won't be around next year. They'll have gotten a job or gone off to the Games Training Centre. And I will be a student. What? Do I sound like a pessimist to you? Because I'm not. I simply face facts head on. More people should learn to. There is no magical sucess faerie or wonderful victory waiting for me. My life is a carousel. I go around the same pattern of failure and waiting, hoping, fighting to get ahead. But at some point, you just stop thrasing about.

I have a dark sense of humour. That's what comes of a bitter life like mine. I find myself in that place where you aren't happy but then you are. After all, life has given me lemons and I've discovered a new recipe for lemonade. It's one part acceptance, two parts humour and one part simple joy. Maybe having a two-year time limit on my life is what makes me want to live now, to be a happy while I can. I love the little beautiful things in life. I see the forest for the trees, to borrow a cliche. Opinions fade, lives change. But what remains is a willingness to accept happiness. After all, two years isn't long at all. 730 days. 17520 hours. That is all that is left, and I am determined to be merry, because there are only so many tomorrows.

But when I'm alone at night, sitting in my room, listening to the soft wind whistle by and feeling like I'm being left behind, I think, why couldn't I have lived up to expectations? I leave no place in my mind for regrets. But I keep fighting on. I don't win big money for my family or get chosen for advanced Games training, but I do what I am told well. I try my best to put others before myself, to help my District have a Victor, even if it won't be me. That's what will count in the long run. Or at least I hope it.

I am in the bottom rung of Career Tribute Training, the backup's backup. I'm often reminded that I am nothing but a cannon-fodder loser.

Not everyone is born for sucess, it's a given. Not everyone can be a Victor or a sucessful worker or a well liked member of the District. But what do you get when you stick the born loser, the one with the record for getting passed over for the Games the most, in the family of overachievers? It ain't a pretty picture.

My life was that. I ended up signing up to be a Career not for glory, but to survive. I have failed more than school: I have failed my own mother. I was twelve when she was teaching me in the forest. It's illegal to go out there without permission, but she'd taken me out to teach me to shoot with a bow and arrow and throw knives, so I wouldn't hit anyone or anything in densly populated 5. Back then, I had it all. Family approval, acceptance in the district, a future as part of my dad's fishing crew. And such markers of outward sucess all went away, in my life's longest instant. We were attacked by wild. I was quickly overwhelmed and knocked out. When I came to, she was dead and I was blamed. That is all I know. I remember feeling bitterness towards myself. How could I have let Mom die? I had been a kid. Still am. I try not to blame myself, for her death. Others aren't so kind. My dad shuns me, my sister ignores me at school.

This life has actually taught me a lot. Survival skills, how to have a thick skin, and a sense of humour. I'm grateful in a twisted way that I have never gone hungry, even if it's only because I sold my soul to the Capitol and volunteered for Career Training. And I have a good sense of irony, which actually comes from my name. Kensey means "victory", you see. And I am anything but victorious. I am a serf under the boot of a cruel regime, marked to die within two years. I hold myself together in order to die with honour, and maybe, when I am extinguished in that arena, my family will finally be proud of me. In the world of Careers, it is victory or death, and I am no victor.