Culling

Part I • Chapter VII

"It's alright Kota." I touched his arm in reassurance. "I am pretty sure that Dr Green is messing with you."

Dr Green laughed while Kota blushed. "She called me out!" He pouted. "Not nice Pookie."

I wasn't even going to address the Pookie thing right now. It seemed as though I was accumulating a lot of nicknames today.

Gabriel sauntered over and sat down on my other side as he threw his arm over my shoulders.

He laughed at Dr Green and addressed me. "So you do have some sass!"

He picked up a strand of my hair and examined it. At some point pieces of my hair had fallen into my face, and was sure that the whole thing was now a disaster.

"Now we just need to get you all fixed up again. What happened to your hair, there's even a twig in it!" Gabriel said in a contemplative tone.

Oh. I guess I missed a spot.

"Before I met Kota, I was looking around the gardens." I put my finger to my lip and I knew I was blushing. "I was curious to see what was there. I may have strayed off the path once or twice. Then when I realized it was a mess, I took out the hairstyle Adam put together for me."

"Adam?" Gabriel sighed dramatically.

What was wrong with Adam?

I pulled at my hair. "Do you have a rubber band or something, I'll just put it up for now."

"What?" Gabriel actually leaned away from me, a horrified look on his face. "Absolutely not! We do not put rubber bands in our hair! I'll do something for the time being, but I get play around with it more later when we get to our room."

He stood up, pulled me up after him and sat me sideways in Kota's lap, so that Kota was to my left. Then he walked around to my back and started doing something to my hair. "They try to spoil the tributes before the games start, so I am sure I will have no problem getting any products we need."

Kota seemed to take it all in stride and didn't seem to be bothered that I was now using him as a seat. I knew that I was red as a tomato though. Kota put his arms around my waist to hold me closer. "Just let him do his thing, Gabriel is good with hair and clothes."

"Damn right I am." Gabriel tugged at something, then I felt him pick up sections of hair and start to twist them. "Of course Adam would snatch you up, he is such an opportunist. Thank the merciful heavens he didn't cut your hair into one of his usual styles. Well, none of this is going to happen again under my watch."

Dr Green moved behind me and was watching Gabriel. "I think it would look cuter if-"

"Do I tell you how to doctor?" Gabriel cut him off as he continued his ministrations. "No, I do not. Leave this to the expert and go over there and do doctor things."

"So demanding." Dr Green stayed where he was, but didn't say anything else. There was a moment of silence while everyone seemed to just watch Gabriel as he worked.

I was going to ask why Gabriel seemed to have a thing against Adam, for some reason I had a sense of foreboding that this would come back up again.

Then something else he had said stood out to me. "Our room?"

"Of course!" Kota smiled warmly at me. "We are friends now! I'm not going to abandon you. There's nine of us and we need a tenth, so this works out perfectly for everyone involved!"

"Are you sure?" I suddenly felt shy.

I heard a chuckle and Nathan spoke up as he saw me looking at him. "You are stuck with us now Peanut."