Nothing Personal

District Ten Interviews

Lizz still had her arm in a cast. She'd broken it the day before the reaping by falling over at school, well, that was the official version, anyway. Actually she'd been pushed. She'd missed a whole day of training while her stylists brought in some doctors from somewhere to prod and poke at her arm and give her all kinds of injections. She'd had injections before; you had to, in Ten, because of all the bugs that flew around. While they'd examined her, she'd stared at the ceiling and wondered where the Capitol got their books printed, medical kits and their wigs.

She'd had three different injections, two of them very painful. It was supposed to heal the bone overnight but it was taking longer than that and in the end they'd just re-wrapped her cast in emerald green to match her dress and hoped for the best. On the slightly brighter side, the cast was heavy enough to make a decent weapon, if she needed it to.

She sat down, glaring at Martina. The woman looked back at her curiously through a mop of hair that probably came from some poor hair-extension girl in District One. "Lizzinia or Lizz?" she asked.

"Lizz, please," she replied sharply, trying to make it clear that she didn't want to be here.

"Right, well then, Lizz, let's start easy. What happened to your arm?" Martina sounded hopeful. She'd had enough of relucant or difficult tributes today but Lizz's cast gave her a platform to work on that was different to the other tributes.

Lizz was going to have to let her down.

She said nothing.

Martina groaned visibly and tipped her head back. She was handing in her notice after this. They were getting more and more troublesome every year. If she was the Gamemakers, she'd be worried.

"So, we've got one deaf and one mute, have we?" she joked. This was appreciated by the Capitol, who laughed heartily to fill the silence that Lizz was making, but not by the tributes.

"That's not funny!" exclaimed Misty, jumping to her feet. Meridan reached up and wrenched her back down again, frowning. He could work out that whatever was being said concerned him because a couple of people turned to look at him. 'Calm down', he signed. Whether she understood or not, she scowled and threw herself back into her chair.

"I'm not mute, and that was uncalled for," snapped Lizz.

"Then why didn't you answer my question?"

Nothing.

Vedran chuckled to himself. Sebastian was muttering under his breath to Cherry, who was obviously trying her hardest to ignore him, staring straight ahead with a few stray tears streaking down her cheeks.

The Career pack glanced at each other; they'd get Lizz. She was trying too hard to be tough and that was just drawing attention to her. They knew that they could take her on. Pataya was looking sad, muttering to herself about her sister and how Lizz had triplet sisters. Clarence was starting to want to belt her.

Raylum was staring at Court again.

"You know, sometimes I think some of these tributes try to be difficult!" exclaimed Martina to the audience. Some of them cheered agreement. Lizz looked at them stonily, stroking her cast. Her sisters would be proud of her, not bowing down to the Capitol. And her family too. Thousands of eyes gawped at her, the entertainment. 

Well, she wouldn't entertain.

For the next two and a half minutes Martina tried everything to get Lizz to talk. She tried joking about the other tributes. All this got her was some laughs from the crowd but some very angry glares from the tributes, especially the Biagotti twins and Misty. Lizz looked straight over her head. She tried asking about her home life, her sisters; this was met with a cold silence. Questions about the Capitol only produced a flicker of anger, but not a word. Whenever she asked about Lizz herself, Lizz only frowned as if she didn't think the questions were relevant.