Daughter of the Games (Sequel to Pregnant in the Games)

Chapter 17: May The Odds...

It's not actually your mom. You're imagining things.

But I couldn't do it. I've seen my mom's dead body under a house. I don't need the image of me throwing a knife into her chest, regardless of it being my imagination.

"I would advise you to make a move, Chris," Luke said to me. 

I bit my lip and, letting go of my thoughts, threw the knife. The knife hit mom straight through the heart. Mom coughed when the knife hit. Blood started to stream from her chest and from her mouth. She still stood completely still. The sight brought me to my knees. My breaths came rapidly. I started to sob into my chest. I looked up again. Now, Mom was on her knees, the blood pooling on the ground. I screamed and buried my face into my knees. I only stayed in this position for a moment, because I felt my breakfast rising up my throat. I vomited on the floor. After a few minutes, I had nothing left, and started to dry heave. I looked back to the dummy. The dummy had returned to its original state. There was no sign of my mom or the blood.

 I'm going insane, I thought to myself.

After a moment of struggle, a pulled myself up to my feet. I became dizzy again. This time, there was no knife rack for me to hold on to. I fell to the ground and, upon impact, I blacked out.

When I woke, I was on the couch of the District 12 suite. Ivan and Grey were talking quietly on the couch beside me, not yet realizing I was awake. The smell of gourmet food drifted to me from the dining room table, which would usually bring me to my feet, but now the smell of food repulsed me. I closed my eyes, just for a moment,  and I got a flash of my mother's dead body. Not when I saw her under the house, but when I threw a throwing knife and say the knife going into my mom's chest. I whimpered and opened my eyes. Maybe if I never blink or sleep again, I can expel that image from my mind forever. 

"Chris? Are you awake?" Raven asked, suddenly by my side. 

I didn't reply and stared up at the ceiling. 

"Are you okay? What happened? Luke carried you up here and put you on the couch without saying a word." 

"I... I kinda freaked out." 

Suddenly Ivan was by my side too. He put his hand on top of mine and stared into my eyes. He looked so concerned, like I'm a tree about to fall. 

"I started hyperventilating. I started hallucinating. The dummy... It wasn't a dummy. It was my mom. And I threw a knife into her. I saw her on the ground, bleeding, and..." I trailed off. The memory came on too strong. The fear gripped my throat so that I could no longer speak. 

Silence fell over the group. Then Raven spoke very quietly, barely audible. "You're not supposed to tell us what happened in your private training session." 

I ignored her comment and put my hands over my face. "What am I going to do? I'm going to get a zero!" 

"I don't think it's possible to get a zero," Grey replied. 

"Well if it is, then that's what I'm getting!" I yelled. 

Silence fell over us again. I lost any interesting in speaking. I let the tears drip from the corners of my eyes, falling on the couch. After many minutes of this silent, someone finally spoke. 

"So I hate to be the downer, because this is already a bad situation, but I can't help but to point out the familiarity of your situation." 

I looked over to see Ni sitting on the floor, watching me. I hadn't even known he was here. He still hasn't forgiven me for what I said about him. This is the first sign of civil conversation between us since the incident. 

"The mental disease I have, what you like to call insanity, has many symptoms. Including hallucinations. With me personally, I sometimes experience these hallucinations in time of stress or extreme sadness. While my schizophrenia is mostly controlled, it's when my brain is in this high distress situations that it shines through. You may be like that too." 

"Are you suggesting I have schizophrenia?" I asked. I tried to not sound insulted. "That's really unlikely. I hadn't even heard of schizophrenia until I learned about you. What are the chances that both of us would have it?"

"It's not as uncommon as you may think. I see signs of it in tons of people. It's not that it's uncommon. It's that people are uninformed. A disease isn't diagnosed if it's not known." 

"Let's not make any assumptions," Ivan stated. "We don't want Chris to be worried about her mental disease, right?" Ivan looked at me once he finished speaking. 

Rather than replying to his statement, I said, "Now you're calling me Chris too."

"It rolls off the tongue," Ivan replied, shrugging. 

In the background, I heard the words, "Now it's time for our tribute scores." Instantly, all attention was on the TV. I even sat up to look at it. The scores started with the male tribute from District 1, announcing all the scores. I barely paid any attention until it got to Ivan. 

"District 11. Ivan Keene. 8." 

Ivan nodded. He seemed content with the score. 

"District 11. Grey Keene. 11." 

Grey lit up. Ivan pulled her into a tight hug. I smiled as I watched the two of them. We refrained from cheering, knowing that more scores were coming up. 

"District 12. Ni Plato. 8."

Then it was my turn. Surprisingly, I didn't even feel nervous, because I was expecting the awful number to come. 

"District 12. Crystal Erwin. 3." 

3. My score is 3. While it was expected, it still stung. No one will sponsor the girl who got a score of 3. It doesn't matter that I'm Willow and Talon's daughter. It doesn't matter that they watched me be born. It doesn't matter that I'm named after a fallen tribute. All they will see is the 3 next to my name. 

"I'm sorry, Chris," Grey said. 

I looked to her and smiled. "Don't worry about me. Let's focus on you. A score of 11! That's amazing!" 

We spent the rest of the night celebrating Grey's score, not mentioning that Ivan and Ni got average scores and not mentioning that my score was awful. It felt good, thinking about someone else's success for a while. Until I got into bed that night, when all I could think of was dead mom, my terrible score, and my potential mental illness. 

"May the odds..." I whispered to myself, "... the odds of surviving despite everything going against me, be ever in my favor." 

***

Do you like what you've read? Go to my website ( https://haileyladonna.wordpress.com/) and sign up for email notifications. There, you'll find work not published to Wattpad, as well as blog posts and updates on my life.

So it took me forever to update and I know what an awful person I am. BUT I HAVE GOOD NEWS. In 8 days from now, I will be taking the AP World History test. And it is then that most of my school responsibilities will fall off of my shoulders. Which means I'll actually have time to update! 

If you haven't abandoned me yet, please vote and comment. And if you have, that's okay, because I probably would've by now if I were you. Thank you, my little snowflakes! Thank you for everything! Including 2 MILLION FRICKEN READS ON PITG OMG YOU GUYS DID THIS YOU'RE SO AWESOME! 

Love you. DFTBA

-emukid96/Hailey