“Wake up, Sandi! Today is training!”
Training? I think, confused. Didn’t we already do training? I hesitate. Wait—was that just a dream? Was Jane, Sabrina, and that 7 I got on the Gamemakers’ assessment just something made up in my mind?
“Training for what?” I ask groggily.
“Interviews, of course! I’ve got to get you ready—find out your personality, and what you’re going to say!”
I groan. I’d rather just re-live the Training Center.
I roll out of bed and glance at Cassandra. “I’ll be in a second,” I tell her, fighting off the urge not to just shove her out of my room.
She smiles at me and walks away.
Only then am I reminded of yesterday night, when I saw her in the Hunger Games. That smile she just gave me—she is keeping a secret from me that she really doesn’t want me to know.
As I change my clothes, I narrow my eyes at the wall in deep thought. I will get the secret out of her. I have to find out what it is, because if I die in the Games, then I’ll never, ever know.
I stroll into the dining room, my plan all prepared. Everyone else—Archie, Daniel, his mentor, and Cassandra—are already halfway through breakfast, so I sit down and begin eating quickly.
“So, when are we going to start practicing for my interview?” I ask Cassandra eagerly with a mouthful of pancakes.
Cassandra grins. “Well, aren’t you an excited girl! Just for you, we’ll start a little earlier—right after breakfast.”
I stifle a moan. But I have to go with it. The sooner I get to speaking with Cassandra alone, the better.
I stuff the final pancake into my mouth and look up at Cassandra. “Now?”
“I’m not finished, silly,” Cassandra says, laughing. “Let me eat!”
“Okay,” I reply, still chewing the rest of my pancake as I stand up. “I’ll be in my room.”
I can feel everyone’s eyes on me as I quickly walk to my room and close the door.
Of course they would be staring. It isn’t like me to get along with Cassandra—anyone with sense would know that. But I don’t care. Soon I will be back to my normal self, after I have that talk with going Cassandra.
My thoughts are disrupted by a knock at my door. “Sandi, it’s Cassandra. Are you ready to start training?”
I go to open the door, staring into the annoying cheerfulness of Cassandra’s face. “Yep,” I say. “Where should we go?”
“To my room,” Cassandra answers, smiling.
Once we are inside the room, Cassandra closes the door behind us quietly. “We don’t want anyone to know what you’re planning to do,” she explains.
And we don’t want anyone to know the secret you’ll tell me, I add silently.
I wait while she turns on the lights and comes to sit down next to me on the bed.
“So, let’s start with this—how would you describe yourself, Sandi?”
I hesitate. I feel a bit uncomfortable sharing my answer with Cassandra, since I don’t exactly know her that well. “Um…nice?” I answer after thinking for a while.
Cassandra nods slowly, smiling and me like I’m a complete idiot. I pretende not to notice.
“Okay…well…that’s a good trait,” she says. “What else? Do you have any unique characteristics, which you would say makes you special?”
“I guess I’m friendly,” I suggest.
“Friendly! Great! What else?”
“Uh…energetic.”
“Yes! That’s fantastic! Keep going.”
It seems like I’m out of things to say. I think and think, and then I decide to admit, “But I’m kind of shy around big crowds.”
“Okay,” Cassandra says. “So maybe you could do something like…petite?”
Petite? I do not want to look small and girly.
“Um, no thanks,” I answer. “More like cheerful and polite.”
Cassandra stares at me, disappointment flaring in her eyes. “But don’t you want to stand out, Sandi?”
Time to start my plan. “Did you stand out at your interviews, Cassandra?” I ask, looking up at my mentor and blinking innocently.
Suddenly darkness and grief sweeps over Cassandra eyes, and she avoids my gaze. “Yes, a little,” she murmurs.
I bounce up and down on the bed, pretending like I didn’t notice her change of emotions. “Oh, please tell me about it! Please!”
Cassandra’s eyes narrow and she turns back to stare at me. “Now is not the time, Sandi! Don’t you know that? We need to be working on you, not me!”
I scoot away from her, my eyes round in surprise. Did Cassandra just yell at me?
Then Cassandra puts on that fake smile of hers again. “Now, Sandi, let’s get back to you—you want to be shy and polite, is that right?”
“Y-yes,” I answer warily.
“Okay. We’ll do that!”
I just stare back at her.
“So, I’ll be Sallie Castro, and you be you. Let’s start with our first question—”
“Was Sallie the interviewer when you were in the Hunger Games, or not?”
Cassandra stiffens, trying to sustain her smile. “Yes.”
“Was she nice to you?”
“She was,” Cassandra chokes out, her voice barely audible. But then she clears her throat and says, “Now, Sandi, why don’t we get started with our first question?”
“Okay,” I agree, shrugging.
“Tell me a little about your time in the Capitol.”
“It’s fun. The place where I stay is really luxurious, and the food is tasty.”
Cassandra gives me a nod of approval. “Good. You just need to be a bit more detailed.”
“Were you detailed at your interviews?”
Cassandra stares at me. “Detailed enough,” she mutters. “Now please, can we keep working?”
“Yes, Cassandra,” I agree. And the plan is going perfectly.
“Here’s your next question: Do you feel ready for the Games?”
I stare in surprise at my mentor. The Hunger Games is a very uncomfortable subject for me. What if Sallie asks me the same thing at the real interviews? Will I be able to answer?
Well, what do you think what you’re doing right now is for? Practice, dummy! Cassandra’s preparing you, and you’ll be fine.
“Well?” Cassandra interrupts my thoughts.
“I think so,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “And I hope to survive at the Games for as long as possible.” I look at Cassandra hopefully. “Good?”
“It’s good if you want people to think you’re a weakling,” Cassandra tells me, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “Now think of a different answer, and try sounding more confident.”
“Okay, well, I’m trying as hard as I can to be prepared. I’ve worked hard in training, and I believe I’m ready to take on the Games.”
“Great!” Cassandra says. “Now, the questions Sallie asks at the real interviews are probably going to be different than the ones you’ve just received. You have to be prepared to answer anything and to choose a good answer.”
I nod nervously.
“Are you ready?”
Suddenly I feel Cassandra’s eyes boring into mine. For a second I can see everything in the depth of those baby blues—so much anger and darkness, but caked with despair. Something has been troubling Cassandra for a very long time.
“I’m ready,” I say, preparing the next part of my plan. “But—one more question: Can I leave the interviews when I want, or does Sallie have to excuse me?”
Cassandra freezes, and I know she is remembering when she had left the interviews herself. “Sallie will excuse you,” she answers. Then she quickly changes the subject, saying, “I think we are finished for now. I will practice with you a little more tonight. You may go, Sandi.”
I slowly begin to slide off the bed. “You’re not supposed to say anything mean about the Capitol?” I add.
Cassandra’s expression darkens. “No more questions, Sandi. You can leave now.”
I ignore my mentor’s orders and push on. “But don’t you—”
“I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE!” Cassandra shouts. “Don’t you ever listen? We are done practicing! I’m not taking any more questions! Leave!”
I scramble off the edge of the bed and landed with a ‘plop’ on the floor. But the amount of pain in my butt isn’t even close to how surprised and disappointed I am. I have never seen Cassandra so enraged! I have never seen anyone so enraged!
But I have failed at my plan, too. Apparently Cassandra doesn’t give her secrets away as easily as I thought. This secret of hers must be a big one.
“O-okay, Cassandra,” I whisper. I stumble to the door and turn back towards Cassandra, and with one more attempt to break her, I say sadly, “Well, th-thanks. For teaching me.”
I reach out my hand to turn the knob when I hear a voice behind me. “I know you know, Sandi.”
I turn around to face her. I’ve done it.
“I know you know about me.” She sighs. “About my past.”
Warily, I edge back toward my mentor and sit on her bed. “I’m sorry about your parents,” I whisper.
Cassandra looks away. “It’s fine.”
Then she lies her head down on her pillow and we both just sit there, for almost five minutes, staying completely silent.
I am surprised when I suddenly hear Cassandra rasp, “I’ve never told anyone.”
“Told anyone….what?” I ask her in a quiet voice.
My mentor gulps and shivers with horror. Whatever happened to her, whatever secret she was keeping, it must have been pretty bad.
Cassandra looks into my eyes. “Well, they’ll never expect me to tell anyone here,” she murmurs to herself.
I force myself not ask any questions as to what that means, so I wait patiently for Cassandra to speak.
And she does. She starts at the very beginning of her story. “When I was younger,” she says, “Both of my parents were killed by the Capitol.”
“The Peacekeepers forced my father to keep working at the beach when there was a hurricane warning, because they didn’t believe it was true. And they also did it because, of course, the Capitol doesn’t care if some random guy dies. Only the work they are doing for the Capitol matters. There are twelve bustling districts, so it’s not a big deal if one person doesn’t get to live. Nobody cares!”
Cassandra looks up and stares me straight in the eye.
“But I did.”
Suddenly I realize how hard Cassandra’s life must’ve been. I understand her hate for the Capitol and the pain she has always been feeling.
“Anyway,” Cassandra continues, “There ended up truly being a hurricane, and it was the worst one yet. My father drowned in it,” she chokes the last sentence out. “And my mother knew that the Peacekeepers had caused my father’s death. She was so angry, she tried to rebel against the Capitol.” Cassandra sighs and puts her head in her hands.
“It didn’t go well, did it?” I whisper.
“She was killed fighting.”
“Oh. That’s terrible…”
Cassandra obviously doesn’t want to talk about her mom and dad anymore. She moves on in her story. “After my parents were dead, I became an orphan. I was sent to orphanage school.” Cassandra shivers at the memory. “They barely fed us at all. All day we were trapped in the ‘play’ room. The toys were crappy and nobody even cared about us. It was terrible.”
I nod sympathetically. “How old were you when your parents died?” I ask quietly.
“Oh, about nine,” Cassandra replies, sadness tinging her voice. “I stayed at the orphanage for a pretty long time. But you know how I kept the will to live? I played with my favorite ‘toy’—the weights.
“I had always liked lifting weights. When I was younger I wanted to be an athlete, but I soon realized that my dream would never come true.
“Anyway, every day I played with the weights, and I began to notice myself getting stronger. I liked that this was happening. It would show the Capitol that I was strong. It would show them that they couldn’t bring me down by killing my parents.
“I gradually became very muscular. Meanwhile, I was getting older and I was beginning to attend reapings. I hated them. I tried to get my teachers to let me skip it but every time they would force me into it, no matter how much I resisted.
“Soon I was sixteen, and it was time to attend another reaping. My life had become terrible. I lived in misery every day. And then having to go to the reaping that day—I didn’t think it could get any worse.
“That year a very young girl was called up to be a tribute. She was obviously very weak.
“And suddenly, watching her walk to the stage, frightened, I thought of something. A way to show the Capitol I was brave enough to take on anything they set in front of me. That the rebel’s daughter wasn’t broken yet. That they could take away my family, but not my spirit. And so I decided to volunteer. I would try my best to win that Hunger Games. But not by getting a sword and killing everyone, like the Careers. I knew that the worst way to embarrass the Capitol was to mess up the thing that makes them feel most powerful over the districts—the Hunger Games.
“Life went on. Tributes would gape at my muscles at training, thinking I was a Career. But I wasn’t. I would never join those idiots, those suck-ups to the Capitol and their Games.
“The Gamemakers gave me a 10, just as I suspected. Of course they thought I was a Career, too.
“The interviews were interesting. I revealed to the entire Capitol that I hated them. It was a big step towards the path I had chosen to take.
“At the Games, I was lucky to get a weapon and avoid getting killed at the bloodbath. I went into the forest, found water, and hunted food. I was doing well—but the section of the forest that I was in was running out of prey, as I had killed most of them in the area. I decided to move camps.
“I finally found a new place with a nice little pond by it. But there was one problem—tracker jackers.”
There’s that name again. The name the Careers called those poisonous, Capitol-created bugs.
“I watched the tracker jackers closely. I found out what they liked to eat, and what caused them to attack humans. Carefully I began to feed them the food they liked, like leaves and twigs. It was all part of the plan of my rebellion—taking advantage of the Capitol’s own weapons and using them as my own.
“They liked the leaves and twigs, and, fortunately, they didn’t notice that I was the one feeding them. Also, I noticed the tracker jackers were getting bigger and stronger as they ate. I had to be extra careful, because I knew a sting from one of them would really hurt.
“Meanwhile, I could tell the Careers were killing tons of people. Every day I would hear at least two cannon fires, signaling that someone had died. But there were still a lot of tributes left. I remember keeping track; soon there were around seven or eight tributes remaining, including the Careers. They would be after me soon. Since I didn’t join them, I seemed more like a weakling and an easier target.
“They did come. But they were too loud, laughing and talking with each other. I was prepared before they even came into view.
I threw bunches of leaves and twigs in the direction I heard the Careers coming. I listened as the soft buzzing of the tracker jackers headed to their food and began eating up.
“The Careers’ were so arrogant they were still joking around as they came into view. Now that they were close, I could understand what they were saying. They were talking about how weak their victims were. Sick.
“Suddenly I heard the Career in front let out a cry of shock. He had approached the area where the tracker jackers were feeding themselves. The loud voices in the conversation had tuned out the buzz of the poisonous flies, so they came by surprise. The tracker jackers immediately went into full attack.
“I couldn’t help but smile as the Careers ran in circles, screaming like wimps. Only the two Careers who had been in the back of the pack had gotten away, but their bodies were still loaded with stings. The other two Careers, including the leader, were killed by the tracker jackers’ stings. I let the poisonous bugs feed on their bodies while I went out for a drink of water.
“Soon I noticed more tributes dying—the two remaining Careers had probably killed them, or perhaps the tributes had starved or died of thirst.
“After another cannon fire I had heard one night, I realized the two Careers and I were the only ones left. They probably knew, too. I had to get ready for their attack.
“A few nights passed. Nothing was happening. I began to relax. But I shouldn’t have relaxed. While I was eating a meal of fried squirrel, the two Careers snuck up on me. They had a good strategy—waiting until I thought they wouldn’t be coming for a while, then showing up suddenly, during my lunch. I stood up and faced them.
“They teased me about how I would have never won. Their weapons were extremely high-tech. The taller boy had a sword longer than my arm, and the shorter one had knives with curled points that had been dipped in nightlock juice.
“I knew they were going to kill me. I was okay with that by now. I had embarrassed the Capitol by using their own creation as an advantage for myself, which should be very embarrassing for them. But would make it even better than being a rebel in the games was to be a rebel and come out alive.
“I had such little chance of surviving. My weapons were a few yards away; if I tried to run to them, the Careers would surely kill me. My only weapon was the tracker jacker nest, which stood in the distance behind the Careers—but that was quite a risk.
The Careers kept trying to kill me, but I avoided the knife-throws and slashes. And I was getting closer to the tracker jacker nest by the minute. I knew that would probably be the end of me, but I thought maybe it would be the end of them, too, if my throw was accurate. That would satisfy me. I could die in peace.
“When I got to the nest one of the Careers decided it was the perfect time to throw knives at me. That gave the tracker jackers time to get out and sting me. And trust me, it hurt a lot.
“As I finally got to throw the nest, I had been stung several times. I was beginning to feel dizzy, and I was becoming unconsious. But then I heard angry shouts. I looked up drowsily. The boy with the knives—his shot at me had been intercepted by the tracker jacker nest. The knife went right into that instead of into my heart. The tracker jackers attacked them, angry that their habitat was disturbed. I heard the Career with the sword yelling, and then the screams of being stabbed. The Career had killed his own ally. And I was ready to die the same way. I was becoming so dizzy from the stings, I had to lie down. I heard the Career’s words, but barely. Something like, ‘I’ll get you!’ That’s the last thing I remember when I was in the arena.
“Then, when I came to, I was in a Capitol blimp because I had won. But instead of taking me to the Remake Center to get cleaned up for the celebration ceremony like any other normal victor, they took me straight to President Doltner’s house. Why? I had rebelled, of course. They knew it, and I knew it. And they were pretty mad. But I didn’t care. It served the Capitol right.
“Anyway, when I got there, President Doltner had a private talk with me. He was very angry about what I’d done to win. He told me that I had to act like the happiest mentor anyone could have, one that loved the Capitol and appreciated her life in New Panem, or I would have my tongue cut off and become an Avox.
“I was disappointed that ‘execution’ wasn’t one of the choices. But anyway, both of these options were bad, so I had to choose the lesser of the two evils. I definitely would not want to be an Avox. A servant for the Capitol? No way! I decided to be a happy mentor, so I would be able to talk. And at that time I had a new plan. I wanted to continue my rebellion.
“But I couldn’t do it myself. The Capitol would kill me immediately. So I had to find someone they would never expect to be a rebel, until it was too late. And so for years, I have been looking for the right person to lead a rebellion. It has to be someone brave and clever. But it also has to be someone the Capitol would never expect me to tell my secrets to, and someone they would never expect to rebel.” Cassandra stops speaking. She looks at me silently.
My head is buzzing. I can no longer see Cassandra as a stupid perky girl. She is wise and kind, yet she has a tortured soul. And she’s depending on me to help her take down the Capitol.
“Me?” I say out loud. “I probably won’t even make it through the Games!”
“You could,” Cassandra replies. “You may be young, but you are sharp and quick. And I know your sword-fighting skills are excellent.”
I feel astonished at how Cassandra—the real Cassandra—actually believes in me.
Suddenly, without any knocking, the door of Cassandra’s room opens, and I jump. A few Peacekeepers stand by the door. “Is something wrong, Ms. Hudgens?”
Cassandra does not look surprised, so it’s obvious the Peacekeepers check up on her often. “No,” she answers, with a polite face and a convincing smile. “We’ve just been discussing what to do for Sandi’s interviews. We’re leaning towards cheerful and polite. Do you think that’s a good idea? ‘Cause she’s pretty good at acting outgoing, too…I really don’t know…What do you think?”
The Peacekeepers look stumped. “Uh…whatever suits her best.” They close the door awkwardly.
“So,” Cassandra turns to me, and I know she is back to her ‘happy-stupid mentor’ act. She has to, now that the Peacekeepers might be listening in on our conversation. “Let’s practice more for your interviews, Sandi.”
The rest of the night we work on getting ready for my interviews. When we are finally finished, I trudge off to my bedroom. The second I lie down on that bed, I am off like a light.
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(A/N): Hey guys! Hope you liked this chapter! Get excited for some interesting interviews next chapter--and Sandi's pre-Hunger Games anxiety! Because after the interviews in Chapter Eight...the 130th Hunger Games will finally begin...
Comment and vote! :D
~candysmart5