Sharp Objects

chapter five

Tallulah calls us all to the table for dinner.a huge roast chicken sits in the centre surrounded by colourful vegetables, along with a massive dish full of potatoes and various other things.i sit next to crystalline, trying to ignore catos staresfrom opposite me.

Tomorrow morning we arrive in the Capitol." Begins tallulah in a high pitch warble " you will spend the day with your prep teams and your stylists, who will prepare you for opening ceremony talking place that night. Then there are three days of training,finishing with a private display to the game makers on the last.the day after that, you will spend with crystalline and brutus, preparing for your interview, which takes place the following night. And then,in the morning, the hovercraft will take you to the arena so the games can begin! It's all very exciting it's it?"

She gets a few grunts and mutters in response from cato,but I don't say a word. In less then a week, 13 other tributes hunting me. I wonder how long it will take for someone to decide that I am their chosen target.

Clove, stop thinking about them,it will only make you feel worse!

" Tallulah?" I ask,looking at my feet "I was wondering if you had any paper,and a pencil?"

She looks taken aback by my question but smiles and points to a cabinet in the corner,telling me that it is in the third draw down.i take out a pad of paper and few pencils from the draw and retreat back to my room with them, laying them down on my bed. Then I slump to the floor, open the book,and sketch. I don't know what it is that I am drawing, I'm just letting shapes flow onto the page, every stroke leaching the anger and the hurt from my body. And then I'm done. I look down at my Finished page, and almost scream: there,staring up at me from my sketch,is cato.

Suddenly, all the anger and hurt that the drawing had stopped rockets back into me in one single burst. And I have to throw myself on to my bed and bury my face in the duvet to stop myself from screaming out.

Why him?,why him,Clove?

First, he mentally stalks me in my dream. Then,he actually stalks me to the Capitol.and now,he's taking over my drawings, the only thing that I have that means something to me. My only escape is now filled with the one person that I want to forget.

I stand up, scrunch up my drawing, and throw it out of the open window.into the summer breeze before settling at the side of the track then I slam the window in anguish.

Everything is wrong, this wasn't meant to happen!  The odds were in my favour! They were even in my favour after I was chosen. But when cato Hadley stepped up to that stage, the odds became more like never in my favour.i fought that I could forget him! But the current situation renders that impossible.

Which means the guy who's life I saved,I was going to have to kill.

I attempt sleeping, but it's no use, every time my head hits the pillow, my dreams are filled with images of me getting stabbed through the heart by a boy with a sword. Then me being shot in the head, the arrow neatly piercing my skull,wobbing, then falling gracefully to the ground amongst my fellow dead tributes. And finally the most disturbing of all shows a scene of me, sitting amongst a field of dead bodies, dipping one of my knives into a wound, and drawing in the blood. The drawing is of a girl, with long hair that hides one piercing eye.she is small,very small, and she has a knife in her hand,its me . And then I turn around, the me that is drawing me. Tears of blood are dripping from my eyes as I clutch my knife in one shaking hand, the scarlet liquid running down the blade and dribbling on to my arm. And I turn back to my sketch book and begin stabbing the book,bloody tears pouring from my eyes. I start to repeatedly drive the knife through the book. Until all that's left is a shredded page.

I shoot upwards, drenched in cold sweat, shivering uncontrollably. What the hell was that? So I'm not only an artist,but I now paint using blood? God,my dreams are
wired.luckily though, cato wasn't in them, which is a good sign that I might be getting my brain back. Actually, lets rethink this. Clove,you just dreamt about drawing someone's blood and the crying and stabbing a sketch pad with a knife. Sure !of course you've got your brain back! Who doesn't dream about being a murderous artist?

I wipe my brow with my duvet and walk up and down the room, trying to calm myself down. But it doesn't work so, I pick up my sketch pad luckily, this one bears no trace of blood or stabbing and head into the main carriage, hoping to find some peace.

No such luck. No correction, worst luck ever: cato is sitting here on the sofa,staring into space . I clear my throat he jumps out of his trance.

"Oh hey,cant sleep?" He addresses me like I'm a friend . Is he serious?

"You could say it like that." I reply, slumping down on the sofa and staring another sketch, taking extra care not to draw him. Instead, I chose to draw one of my knives.

"Me neither,too much going on." he says, putting his hands behind his head and leaning backwards.i ignore him and continue with my drawing.

The blissful silence lasts around five minutes, and by that time I've Finished with my knifes. And then he ruins it. In the worst way possible.

"You know, I've never really had the chance to say thank you." He says. I look up from my paper, waiting for him to say more. " you know, for helping me out, with that cougar..." he stalls, and I know that he wants to say more " ...no, that's not right,it wasnt helping me out. It was saving my god dam life." He looks at his feet and the red begins to creep up his cheeks.i almost laugh,but I hold it in.

He's an opponent, one that wants to kill you. He's a hunter! He's just trying to get tou to be on his side, to trust him, and as you have always said ' trust NO ONE in the area'.

I want to tell him how much I respected him when he presented us as a team at the repeating, when he sacrificed his popularity to thank the girl that saved his own life. but the words just won't come out,and instead, I just launch on him.

"Oh yeah?well, you could have said thank you at any point. I've been in that academy right next to you many times, yet you have never came over to me then! No, you just wanted to wait until we were alone, and the fact we're probably both going to die has given you a perfect opportunity to get an alley from the 'thank you'! You just want me to trust you and be on your side! And then you'll kill me with that bloody sword of yours! And then you might make it and then you'll go home and say ' oh I'm sorry it was just a game and I wanted to win' but it wouldn't matter! Because  I have no friends and you are mr popular! Everyone will love you because you killed me ! You'll get you stupid popularity back and everyone will be fine again! You don't even care that I might have people who care about me! Up until now, I thought that you might of been one of them, but I can see through your lies now  cato Hadley! Remember my mothers words ' trust no one in life,not even yourself'!"

My anger is poring out of me in screams of endless rage, and now that I'm done, I feel much more better. I've been waiting for years to get that out, and now I have. But I feel guilty for it.

" cato....." I say,not looking at him, not making an eye contact at all "sorry about that, I-I just had to get my anger out,and you were the trigger..." I can't even move, the guilt is overcoming me like a huge flood wave, dragging me away " in fact,I've been waiting for that thank you for a while now,and I'm glad that its finally here. But, as I said in my rant the time for thank you's is over. We're heading into an arena with twenty two other kids that want to kill us at the end of the week. Friendship and trust is a weakness that nobody can afford, not you,not me, not anyone. Good night cato." I stand up and leave the carriage, walking back to my own room, collapsing to the floor, and crying my eyes out,opening the folded piece of paper that contains the cause of my unwanted thank you, and sketching over and over again, myself,tears of blood pouring from my eyes, stabbing my own sketchbook with a razor sharp knife