Under the Moon

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

"You looked great!" Brinkley beamed, "Though I would have been downright scared if I had to wear one of those electrified thingies!" I smiled in spite of myself. It was hard to feel depressed when the insanely dressed Brinkley talked in her strange voice and called clothes "thingies". "Come on now sweetie!" she said, "We are going to go to the rooms you will stay in for the week before the games! They are very pretty!" I followed her and Guerrick up a couple flights of stairs and into theme home for the next few days. Brinkley showed us the large living rooms, the fancy dining rooms, the high tech bathrooms, the doors of the rooms if the mentors and her, and then our rooms.

"Guerrick," Brinkley said, "there is your room! And Zoe, yours is right down the hall!" She pointed to our rooms, and I went inside. Wow! Brinkley was right; it was very pretty! It was done like a younger child's room. I guess they prepared the rooms after they found out who the tributes were, so they had made it for a twelve year old girl. It was very different from my usual taste, yet I was fascinated by how it looked. A swirl of pastel colors decorated the walls. The bedspread was a soft purple and the rest of the furniture was baby blue. The ground was covered by a fluffy pink rug. It was strange how they made the room that I was going to live in for the few days before my death so sweet looking. It was extremely different from my silver and blue bedroom which was filled with all the electronic devices I collected, the ones my parents no longer needed. I was already homesick. I was homesick for my parents, for Shayne, Belle, Tiff, and Liz. What had happened to Liz? I hope she was alright. I was homesick for the people of District Three. I missed my quiet neighborhood and my advanced school. I missed my house filled with all the inventions. I looked around my room a little longer. Suddenly, I turned around and what I saw made me shriek in fear.

Standing still, resting on the back wall stood a man. Well, he was more like an sixteen or seventeen year old boy. He shook his head in fear and put his finger to his lips. I was confused. What did he mean? When I continued screaming he ran over to me desperately and put his hand on my mouth. A few moments later, Brinkley arrived followed by a troop of four Peacekeepers. They immediately pulled the boy back and held him against the wall. Brinkley ran up and hugged me. "Are you alright sweetheart?" she asked.

"Yes, yes I'm fine," I responded. I saw Brinkley's agitated state. How was she going to handle my death in the games? A Peacekeeper nodded at me and spoke, "What did the Avox do to you, girl?" I saw the boy's fearful face, his eyes begging at me. So he was an Avox! I wondered what he had done to make them do this to him and why he was in my room. Maybe the Capitol used them as slaves. If that was the case, he had done nothing wrong! "Nothing," I said, "Nothing at all! Well except for try to get me to stop screaming."

"And you screamed because...?" the Peacekeeper wondered.

"I was frightened that he was here, that's all. I didn't know what he was doing in my room," I said.

"He's an Avox. They are servants, of course!" he responded.

"Oh sorry! I didn't know, sir," I said.

"It's fine," he said gruffly, "If you feel uncomfortable with his presence we can dispose of him for you." I was a little creeped out to have a mute boy as my temporary servant, but the words "dispose of him" scared me. It didn't seem like they were going to just change his work location. "No, it's fine. He can stay," I said. He looked relieved. "Very well," responded the Peacekeeper. He left the room, followed by Brinkley and the rest of his troop.

I glanced at the boy one more time and thought about what I had told no one. It wasn't the fact that he was mute or that he wore the strange pastel colored clothes or that he was in my room that made me scream; it was his straight raven black hair, his huge, haunting green eyes, his gaunt face, and his tall, slim figure that did. He looked like a carbon copy of Liz.