Interview day. This should be easy. Just go up on stage, talk to Caesar Flickerman, go off, and then wait. No biggie. But then again, I suck at talking in front of people. A few thousand people should just about cause me to freeze up.
I'm put into a simple blck suit. Clove is wearing a orange dress. She looks really nice. I wonder what they did to make her look like that...
Anyway, Brutus told me to play up my ruthless angle. He knows what I can do, and tells me to use that to my advantage. That's good, nice and easy. The words should flow naturally.
Glimmer is up first, wearing a see-through gold gown. I tried not to stare at her. Sure, she was hot, but she had this aura around her basically saying, "Get away from me, freak."
Next is Marvel, acting arrogant and stupid. Just like him. Then it's Clove's turn. She acts sweet, yet tough. My turn is next.
Caesar welcomes me on stage. I can hear the audience cheering and I wave to them nonchalantly. Ruthless and arrogant. I keep chanting that in my head.
I shake Caesar's hand. His dark blue hair was kind of distracting. Not as bad as last year's red hair, at least.
"So, Cato," Caesar says. "How are you liking the Capitol?"
"I like the food," I blurt, considering that there wasn't really anything else to say. "It is much better than the food back home."
"The food," he says thoughtfully. "It does show."
I laugh along with the audience. I know it's true because I've probably gained ten pounds of muscle and fat since I got here.
"I heard you got an impressive score of ten in training." Caesar changes the subject, thankfully. "What did you show them?"
"Everything that I got," I say, crossing my legs.
Caesar raises a blue eyebrow. "But of course, you can't say what happened in your training. You probably knocked over a few dummies just by looking at them. They were terrified, weren't they?"
I laugh, even though I'm not sure what he meant. "Yeah, that's my strategy: hope that people fall over every time I come close to them," I say sarcastically.
Caesar and the some of the audience laugh. In no time at all, my three minutes are up, and the buzzer sounds. I stand up and shake hands with Caesar, he says, "Cato Hadley, everybody!" The audience cheers and claps. I walk off the stage to see everyone waiting for me.
"You both did great," Rolt compliments, patting us both on the back.
"Better go to sleep now, tomorrow's going to be a long day." Brutus leads us both up the stairs, and back to our rooms.
Half an hour later, all of the tributes had done their interviews. They're broadcasted on all the television sets. Ours come on, and starts off with Glimmer's interview. Each interview is just as boring as the next, but a few stand out. There's a girl from District 5 who reminded me of a fox, especially because of her red hair.
District 11 both have interesting tributes as well. Thresh, this huge guy, probably a little bigger than me, was silent for pretty much the entire interview. He grunted a lot, and never cracked a smile. Then there's the little girl who stole my knife. She sounded sweet, like Glimmer and Clove had, but hers didn't sound forced.
Both tributes from District 12 stood out in my mind as well. The girl was so giggly. She spun around in her dress, giggling obnoxiously, and twirling around. The guy, though, seemed just like the dough that he baked with. Soft, and easy to break apart. He claimed that he was absolutely in love with this girl from home. Of course, the only reason he would bring that up was if his love was his district partner, as he revealed to the audience's astonishment
When the interviews end, I take off my tie. And Clove undos her hair. Her dark brown hair flows down her shoulders in curls. I was always fascinated with curly hair, ever since I was little. That's probably because no one in my family had it.
"Well, good night, Cato," Clove says, yawning. "You'd better get all the sleep you can."
"Good night, Clove." I turn around and make my way up the stairs.
"Hey, wait," she calls me.
"Huh?"
"You didn't call me Clover."
I raise an eyebrow. "Did you want me to?"
Her face is pink. "No, it's just that, I was kinda getting used to it."
**********
We're getting onto the hovercraft that transports us to the arena. I'm strapped into a metal seat next to Marvel, and the District 3 male tribute. Then, a nurse comes around with a giant needle. I, personally, don't really mind needles, but the kid next to me looked like he was going to pee his pants.
"Give me your arm." The lady takes my arm, and inserts the needle into my forearm. When she's done, I rub my arm. It stung. The boy next to me was sqeezing his eyes shut while the nurse put the needle in.
What was he gonna do during the Games? Run away from a little porcupine?
Finally, it's time to disembark. We're dropped off underground, where our stylists are waiting for us.
"Drink some water," Yanah orders, handing me a glass.
I down it, and ask, "How long do we have?"
Just as I ask that, a disembodied voice echoes around the room.
"One minute."
Oh. I try to shake my terror off. I am going to win these Games. For my uncle. For my dad and mom. For Comy. I look at the ornamental bird in my hand. I place it into my sweater pocket, which is underneath a windbreaker.
"Thirty seconds."
Yanah taps my arm. "Does everything fit? Are you ready?"
I nod, thinking about my clothes. I don't answer whether I'm ready or not. I think about Clove. Is she nervous? Or like me, downright terrified on the inside, but never letting it get to me?
"Ten seconds."
I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. I start towards the glass tube which will carry me up.
"Good luck," Yanah says, patting my back.
I stand in the tube, and the door closes. The platform begins to rise. A bright light suddenly flashes in my eyes. Sunlight. When I can finally see again, my vision is swamped with green.
A forest. How original of the Gamemakers to come up with a forest for the fiftieth time. There is a huge, golden Cornucopia lying before me, right in the middle of all the tributes' platforms. It glints like a beacon, and I can see the packs and weapons stashed in abundance within it. From my position, I catch a glimpse of blue water down past a thick of trees.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!" The voice of Claudius Templesmith booms all around the arena.
"60 seconds," comes the disembodied voice again. It begins to count down. I look over to my right and see Clove. She nods at me and gives me a small smile.
To my left, are Marvel and Glimmer. They both have fierce looks on their faces. They're ready to kill.
5
4
3
2
1
The gong rings out.
I sprint to the centre of the golden Cornucopia where the rest of the District 1, 2 and 4 tributes are running. My allies. I grab a small sword and spin around to impale the blade into a girl's stomach. I pick up a spear and stick it through another boy's chest.
I see a District 6 kid sneak up on Glimmer and grab her by the hair. I run to them and snap the unsuspecting boy's neck. Glimmer nods thanks, then runs off.
When there aren't any other tributes around me, I go straight to the middle of the horn. There, a large assortment of deadly weapons are lined up on a crate. I turn around with my pick, and see a little red-head kid pop up from behind some boxes, face turned away from me. I run him through with my sword. It's not until I roll his body over to see his face, do I realize that he's from District 4.
Oops.
All of the other tributes are dead, or had already escaped. But Clove, Marvel, Glimmer, and the District 4 girl, Ariel, are picking through the stuff piled around the Cornucopia.
Ariel comes up to me. "Where's Sebastian?" She must've been talking about the District 4 boy.
"He's dead."
She grimaces and studies my face, which I try to keep neutral. Realization dawns on her face. "No, you didn't- you-"
Thankfully, Glimmer comes up to us and says, "Come on, better find a place to camp."
Clove suddenly stops walking and throws a knife in the direction of the lake. The blade finds it's mark, and a tribute falls down, dead just before the tree line. A couple more tributes, bigger than the others I killed, charge at us. They each have a deadly weapon in hand. But the five of us have a whole stock of them. In no time at all, they're both dead, and we are running off into the woods.
I don't know how long it's been, but it begins to get dark. The trees are becoming denser. I realize that I didn't grab any supplies other than weapons. Neither had Clove or Marvel. Glimmer had picked up a small backpack, and Ariel has only a small bag of dried fruit.
Finally, it's night, and the temperature is steadily dropping. I can see my breath coming out in little puffs. We decide to stop for a little while to eat our meagre rations. After a bit of rest, we continue to walk.
Suddenly, loud music blares around the arena. In the sky, the Capitol's seal is shown. Then, one by one, the dead tributes' pictures appear. The first face to appear is the District 3 girl's. The second is Sebastian. I try not to meet Ariel's suspicious eyes. I turn away, and nine more tributes are shown. Just as soon as the music came on, it ended. We are left in silence, which feels oddly quieter than before the anthem had played.
"How many did you kill?" Clove asks.
I count in my head. "Four."
"Two."
Suddenly, I hear footsteps. I spin around wielding my sword. It's the District 12 tribute. Peeta.
He holds his hand up in surrender. "Wait."
I roll my eyes. "What do you want, Lover Boy?"
His hands are still up. "I wanna be allies with you guys." Lover Boy shuffles his feet nervously.
Marvel and I look at each other. Maybe he could be valuable in finding the girl.
"On one condition," Clove butts in. "You have to lead us to fire girl. Your lover."
For a moment, he tenses up, but says, "Yes, I'll help you find Katniss."
After what feels like hours, it's still dark, but it is starting to feel a bit warmer. Maybe it was the new recruit. He had managed to scrape up a few rations from his own pack, but that was it.
"Over there," I say, pointing to a small cluster of trees a few yards away. Someone had light up a fire.
I turn to see Clove smirking. We run over to the fire. The girl has her back to us. She is asleep. When we get there, she's just waking up. I take out a small knife and smile at the girl.
Her eyes go wide, and her mouth gapes open. "No! Please, no!"
"Thanks, hun," Glimmer says. The girl screams loudly, and I cut her off with a knife in the chest. Blood splatters over the fire. We can hear the sizzle. I laugh, and Marvel claps me on the back. Clove smiles, and Glimmer is laughing as well.
"Twelve down and eleven to go!" shouts Marvel.
We quickly ransack the site, and come up with nothing. Then we hear a branch break behind us. I spin around...