Kombat Games

by KingKhrystopher

Oh yes. But so much more different. Takeda and Kylin.

1. Chapter 1

PART I

"THE TRIBUTES"

Chapter 1

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Khalila's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of The Reaping.

I prop myself up on one elbow, sighing deeply. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Khal, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Khal's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the Khalrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.

Sitting at Khal's knees, guarding her, is the world's ugliest dog. Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash. Khal named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Khal brought him home. Scrawny ten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed. But Khal begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he's a born mouser. Even catches the occasional stray cat.

Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped barking at me.

Entrails. No barking. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my trekking clothes. Black that has made to fit my body. Made by Hanzo Hasashi, but that's for later. I just say fuck underwear, and grab my Pulse Blades.

Our part of District 2, is usually crawling with diamond miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. But today the black cinder streets are empty. Shutters on the squat gray houses are closed. The reaping isn't until two. May as well sleep in. If you can.

Our house is almost at the edge of the Seam. I only have to pass a few gates to reach the scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from the woods, in fact enclosing all of District 2, is a high chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire loops. In theory, it's supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that live in the woods —packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears — that used to threaten our streets. But since we're lucky to get two or three hours of electricity in the evenings, it's usually safe to touch. Even so, I always take a moment to listen carefully for the hum that means the fence is live. Right now, it's silent as a stone. Concealed by a clump of bushes, I flatten out on my belly and slide under a two-foot stretch that's been loose for years. There are several other weak spots in the fence, but this one is so close to home I almost always enter the woods here.

As soon as I'm in the trees, I retrieve a large arm gauntlet containing my beautiful white whips from a hollow log. Electrified or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of District 2. Inside the woods they roam freely, and there are added concerns like venomous snakes, rabid animals, and no real paths to follow.

But there's also food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eight then. Ten years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.

Even though trespassing in the woods is illegal and poaching carries the severest of penalties, more people would risk it if they had weapons. But most are not bold enough to venture out with just a knife.

My whips are a rarity, crafted by Grandmaster Hanzo Hasashi, along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. He also made them, along with many of my friends' weapons. He could have made good money selling them publicly, with more workers, but if the officials found out he would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion. So the main reason he made mine is because partially, as my mother suspected, my father and he were in a forbidden relationship. Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is. Regardless of the fact that we do have one of the wealthiest diamond mines ever, no one stops to wonder about food, when, in fact, they're among our best customers. But we aren't allowed to hunt to make money that way. That's for OutWorld.

In the fall, a few brave souls sneak into the woods to harvest apples. But always in sight of the Meadow.

Always close enough to run back to the safety of District 2 if trouble arises."District Two. Where you can hide and not die, but slowly be consumed by insanity in safety," I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you.

When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 2, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money. Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Khal might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?

In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself. Jin. The boy with the bo. I can feel the muscles in my face relaxing, my pace quickening as I climb the hills to our place, a rock ledge overlooking a valley. A thicket of berry bushes protects it from unwanted eyes. The sight of him waiting there brings on a smile. Jin says I never smile except in the woods.

"Hey, Tape," says Jin. My real name is Takeda, but when I first told him, I had barely whispered it.

So he thought I'd said Tape. Then when this crazy lynx started following me around the woods looking for handouts, it became his official nickname for me. I finally had to kill the lynx because he scared off game. I almost regretted it because he wasn't bad company. But I got a decent price for his pelt.

"Look what I shot," Jin holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it, and I laugh. It's real bakery bread, not the flat, dense loaves we make from our grain rations. I take it in my hands, pull out the arrow, and hold the puncture in the crust to my nose, inhaling the fragrance that makes my mouth flood with saliva. Fine bread like this is for special occasions.

"Mm, still warm," I say. He must have been at the bakery at the crack of dawn to trade for it. "What did it cost you?"

"Just a few carats. Think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning," says Jin. "Even wished me luck."

"Well, we all feel a little closer today, don't we?" I say, not even bothering to roll my eyes.

Suddenly he falls into a Capitol accent as he mimics Mileena, the maniacally upbeat pink woman who arrives once a year to read out the names at the Reaping. "I almost forgot! Happy Hunger Games!" He plucks a few blackberries from the bushes around us. "And may the odds —" He tosses a berry in a high arc toward me.

I catch it in my mouth and break the delicate skin with my teeth. The sweet tartness explodes across my tongue. "—be ever in your favor!" I finish with equal verve. We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits. Besides, the Capitol accent is so affected, almost anything sounds funny in it.

I watch as Jin pulls out his knife and slices the bread. He could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same blue eyes. But we're not related, at least not closely. Most of the families who work the mines resemble one another this way.

That's why my mother and Khal, with their light hair and green eyes, always look out of place. They are. My mother's parents were part of the higher up class that caters to officials, Peacekeepers, and the occasional Seam customer. They ran an jewelry shop and apothecary shop in the nicest part of District 2. Since almost no one can afford doctors, apothecaries are our healers, and we can get diamonds, but no one can shape em, so jewelers are paid over the amount they should.

My father got to know my mother because on his hunts he would sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop to be brewed into remedies.

She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

Jin spreads the bread slices, carefully placing a basil leaf on each while I strip the bushes of their berries. We settle back in a nook in the rocks. From this place, we are invisible but have a clear view of the valley, which is teeming with summer life, greens to gather, roots to dig, fish iridescent in the sunlight. The day is glorious, with a blue sky and soft breeze. The food's wonderful, with the cheese seeping into the warm bread and the berries bursting in our mouths. Everything would be perfect if this really was a holiday, if all the day off meant was roaming the mountains with Jin, hunting for tonight's supper. But instead we have to be standing in the square at two o'clock waiting for the names to be called out.

"We could do it, you know," Jin says quietly.

"What?" I ask.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Jin.

I don't know how to respond. The idea is so preposterous.

"If we didn't have so many kids," he adds quickly.

They're not our kids, of course. But they might as well be. Jin's little sister. Khal. And you may as well throw in our mothers, too, because how would they live without us? Who would fill those mouths that are always asking for more? With both of us hunting daily, there are still nights when game has to be swapped for lard or shoelaces or wool, still nights when we go to bed with our stomachs growling.

"I never want to have kids," I say.

"I might. If I didn't live here," says Jin.

"But you do," I say, irritated.

"Forget it," he snaps back.

The conversation feels all wrong. Leave? How could I leave Khal, who is the only person in the world I'm certain I love? And Jin is devoted to his family. We can't leave, so why bother talking about it? And even if we did ... even if we did ... where did this stuff about having kids come from? Weld always looked at females as high maintenance and too much to handle. When we met, I was a skinny twelve-year-old, and although he was only two years older, he already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade and begin helping each other out.

Besides, if he wants kids, Jin won't have any trouble finding a wife. He's good-looking, he's strong enough to handle the work in the mines, and he can hunt.

You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me mad but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.

"What do you want to do?" I ask. We can hunt, fish, or gather.

"Let's fish at the lake. We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight," he says.

Tonight. After the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate. And a lot of people do, out of relief that their children have been spared for another year. But at least two families will pull their shutters, lock their doors, and try to figure out how they will survive the painful weeks to come.

We make out well. The predators ignore us on a day when easier, tastier prey abounds. By late morning, we have a dozen fish, a bag of greens and, best of all, a gallon of strawberries. I found the patch a few years ago, but Jin had the idea to string mesh nets around it to keep out the animals.

On the way home, we swing by the Hob, the black market that operates in an abandoned store that once sold food. When they came up with a more efficient system that could replace food with gems, the Hob gradually took over the space. Most businesses are closed by this time on reaping day, but the black market's still fairly busy. We easily trade six of the fish for good bread, the other two for salt. Greasy Sae, the bony old woman who sells bowls of hot soup from a large kettle, takes half the greens off our hands in exchange for a couple of chunks of paraffin. We might do a tad better elsewhere, but we make an effort to keep on good terms with Greasy Sae. She's the only one who can consistently be counted on to buy wild dog. We don't hunt them on purpose, but if you're attacked and you take out a dog or two, well, meat is meat. "Once it's in the soup, I'll call it beef," Greasy Sae says with a wink. No one in the Seam would turn up their nose at a good leg of wild dog, but the Peacekeepers who come to the Hob can afford to be a little choosier.

When we finish our business at the market, we go to the back door of the mayor's house to sell half the strawberries, knowing he has a particular fondness for them and can afford our price. The mayor's daughter, Cassie, opens the door. She's in my year at school. Being the mayor's daughter, you'd expect her to be a snob, but she's all right. She technically lives in District Four, like her dad, but they take space to monitor here. She's really popular in school, always surrounded by her group of SF kids. And that's if she decides not to fly out to D4.

Today her drab school outfit has been replaced by an expensive white dress, and her blonde hair is done up in a bun. Reaping clothes.

"Pretty dress," says Jin.

Cassie shoots him a look, trying to see if it's a genuine compliment or if he's just being ironic. It is a pretty dress, but she would never be wearing it ordinarily. She presses her lips together and then smiles. "Well, if I end up going to the Games, I want to look nice, don't I?"

Now it's Jin's turn to be confused. Does she mean it? Or is she messing with him? I'm guessing the second.

"You won't be going to the Games," says Jin coolly.

His eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns her dress. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family in bread for months. "What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old."

"That's not her fault," I say.

"No, it's no one's fault. Just the way it is," says Jin.

Cassie's face has become closed off. She puts the money for the berries in my hand. "Good luck, Takeda." "You, too," I say, and the door closes.

We walk toward the Seam in silence. I don't like that Jin took a dig at Cassie, but he's right, of course.

The reaping system is unfair, with the ones with no collateral getting the worst of it. You become eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve. That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. You peak at 36, where your name is in 25 times, because those people can give good fights. Then it decreases, at 37 you go to 24, nd so on and so on until you reach the age of fifty, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool 1 last time. That's true for every citizen in all twelve districts in the entire country of Panem.

But here's the catch. Say you are starving as we were. You can opt to add your name one more time in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year's supply of bread, chicken and water for one person.

You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once, because I had to, and three times for tesserae for myself, Khal, and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this.

And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of twenty-three, my name will be in the reaping fifteen times.

Jin, who is twenty-five and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have his name in twenty times.

You can see why someone like Cassie, who has never been at risk of needing a tessera, can set him off. The chance of her name being drawn is very slim compared to those of us who live in the Seam. Not impossible, but slim. And even though the rules were set up by the Capitol, not the districts, certainly not Cassie's family, it's hard not to resent those who don't have to sign up for tesserae.

Jin knows his anger at Cassie is misdirected. On other days, deep in the woods, I've listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. "It's to the Capitol's advantage to have us divided among ourselves," he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine. If it wasn't Reaping day. If a girl with a gold pin and no tesserae had not made what I'm sure she thought was a harmless comment.

As we walk, I glance over at Jin's face, still smoldering underneath his stony expression. His rages seem pointless to me, although I never say so.

It's not that I don't agree with him. I do. But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn't change anything. It doesn't make things fair. It doesn't fill our stomachs. In fact, it scares off the nearby game. I let him yell though.

Better he does it in the woods than in the district.

Jin and I divide our spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each.

"See you in the square," I say.

"Wear something sexy," he says flatly.

At home, I find my mother and sister are ready to go.

My mother wears a fine dress from her apothecary days. Khal is in her first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. It's a bit big on her, but my mother has made it stay with pins. Even so, she's having trouble keeping the blouse tucked in at the back.

A tub of warm water waits for me. I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even wash my hair. To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her dads old tuxes for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes.

"Are you sure?" I ask. I'm trying to get past rejecting offers of help from her. For a while, I was so angry, I wouldn't allow her to do anything for me. And this is something special. Her clothes from her past are very precious to her.

"Of course. Let's put your hair up, too," she says. I let her towel-dry it and stick it up on my head. I can hardly recognize myself in the cracked mirror that leans against the wall. I look as though I possess some wealth, not someone who needs tesserae.

"You look cool," says Khal in a hushed voice.

"And nothing like myself," I say. I hug her, because I know these next few hours will be terrible for her. Her first reaping. She's about as safe as you can get, since she's only entered once. I wouldn't let her take out any tesserae. But she's worried about me. That the unthinkable might happen.

I protect Khal in every way I can, but I'm powerless against the reaping. The anguish I always feel when she's in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my (ace. I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. "Tuck your tail in, little duck," I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.

Khal giggles and gives me a small "Quack."

"Quack yourself," I say with a light laugh. The kind only Khal can draw out of me. "Come on, let's eat," I say and plant a quick kiss on the top of her head.

The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. We decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for this evening's meal, to make it special we say. Instead we drink milk from Khal's goat, Lady, and eat the rough bread made from the tessera, although no one has much appetite anyway.

At one o'clock, we head for the square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death's door. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you'll be imprisoned.

It's too bad, really, that they hold the reaping in the square — one of the few places in District 2 that can be pleasant. The square's surrounded by shops, and on public market days, especially if there's good weather, it has a holiday feel to it. But today, despite the bright banners hanging on the buildings, there's an air of grimness. The camera crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect.

People file in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve- through fifty-year-olds are herded into roped areas marked off by ages, the oldest in the front, the young ones, like Khal, toward the back. It lines up in groups of six. Females and males together by age, and the first row end with eighteen. And so on. Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another's hands. But there are others, too, who have no one they love at stake, or who no longer care, who slip among the crowd, taking bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn. Odds are given on their ages, whether they're Seam or merchant, if they will break down and weep. Most refuse dealing with the racketeers but carefully, carefully. These same people tend to be informers, and who hasn't broken the law? I could be shot on a daily basis for hunting, but the appetites of those in charge protect me. Not everyone can claim the same.

Anyway, Jin and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker.

The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive. The square's quite large, but not enough to hold District 2's population of about eight thousand.

Latecomers are directed to the adjacent streets, where they can watch the event on screens as it's televised live by the state.

I find myself standing in a clump of twenty-threes from the Seam. We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and a large glass ball. I stare at the paper slips in the ball.

Twenty of them have Takahashi Takeda written on them in careful handwriting.

Two of the three chairs fill with Cassie's father, Mayor Carlton, who's a tall, big man, and Mileena, District 2's escort, fresh from the Capitol with her scary white grin, choppy short hair, and undoubtedly sexy pink dress (Kahnum). They murmur to each other and then look with concern at the empty seat.

Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read. It's the same story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide two people, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland.

Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last four tributes standing win.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.

Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. "Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen."

To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tributes alive receive a life of ease back home, and their districts will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oill and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle starvation.

"It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks," intones the mayor.

Then he reads the list of past District 2 victors. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still alive. Kano Abernathy, a big, strong, middle-aged man, who used to run District Ten, but got tired of the work. The crowd responds with its token applause.

The mayor looks distressed. Since all of this is being televised, right now District 2 is the laughingstock of Panem, and he knows it. He quickly tries to pull the attention back to the reaping by introducing Mileena.

Bright and bubbly as ever, Mileena trots to the podium and gives her signature, "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!" Her pink hair must be a wig because her curls have shifted slightly off-center since her encounter with Kano. She goes on a bit about what an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows she's just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation.

Through the crowd, I spot Jin looking back at me with a ghost of a smile. As reapings go, this one at least has a slight entertainment factor. But suddenly I am thinking of Jin and his twenty names in that big glass ball and how the odds are not in his favor.

Not compared to a lot of the others, who are forced to have more simply because of their age. And maybe he's thinking the same thing about me because his face darkens and he turns away. "But there are still thousands of slips," I wish I could whisper to him.

It's time for the drawing. Mileena says as she always does, "Our first tribute!"and crosses to the glass ball with the names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper.

The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not me, that it's not me, that it's not me.

Mileena crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not me.

It's Khalila Takahashi.

Chapter 2

One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.

That's how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as the name bounces around the inside of my skull. Someone is gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he caught me.

There must have been some mistake. This can't be happening. Khal was one slip of paper in thousands!

Her chances of being chosen so remote that I'd not even bothered to worry about her. Hadn't I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn't mattered.

Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair. And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It's this detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.

"Khal!" The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to move again. "Khal!" I don't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage.

I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps, but guards begin to drag me back. I will not let them have her, never.

With one sweep of my arm, I push them behind me.

"I volunteer!" I gasp. "I volunteer as tribute!" There's some confusion on the stage. District 2 hasn't had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute's name has been pulled from the ball, another eligible person can step forward to take his or her place. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 2, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.

"Lovely!" says Mileena. "But I believe there's a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um ..." she trails off, unsure herself.

"What does it matter?" says the mayor. He's looking at me with a pained expression on his face. He doesn't know me really, but there's a faint recognition there. I am the boy who brings the strawberries. The boy his daughter might have spoken of on occasion.

The guy who five years ago stood huddled with his mother and sister, as he presented him, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for his father, vaporized in the mines. Does he remember that?

"What does it matter?" he repeats gruffly. "Let him come forward."

Khal is screaming hysterically behind me. She's wrapped her skinny arms around me like a vice. "No, Takeda! No! You can't go!"

"Khal, let go," I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don't want to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I'll be marked as an easy target.

A weakling. I will give no one that satisfaction. "Let go!"

I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see Jin has lifted Khal off the ground and she's thrashing in his arms. "Up you go, Tape," he says, in a voice he's fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Khal off toward my mother. I steel myself and climb the steps.

"Well, bravo!" gushes Mileena. "That's the spirit of the Games!" She's pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. "What's your name?" I swallow hard. "Takahashi Takeda," I say.

"I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don't want her to steal all the glory, do we? Come on, everybody!

Let's give a big round of applause to our newest tribute!" trills Mileena.

To the everlasting credit of the people of District 2, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring.

Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Khal, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage.

Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 2 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Khal's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

Now I am truly in danger of crying, but fortunately Kano chooses this time to come staggering across the stage to congratulate me. "Look at her. Look at this one!" he hollers in his accent, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He's surprisingly strong for such a wreck.

"I like her!" His breath reeks of liquor. "Lots of ... " He can't think of the word for a while. "Spunk!" he says triumphantly. "More than you!" he releases me and starts for the front of the stage.

Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance.

I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Jin.

For a moment, I yearn for something ... the idea of us leaving the district ... making our way in the woods ... but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have volunteered for Khal?

Mileena is trying to get the ball rolling again. "What an exciting day!" she warbles. "But more excitement to come! It's time to choose our second tribute!" Clearly hoping to contain her tenuous hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that contains the names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to the podium, and I don't even have time to wish for Jin's safety when she's reading the name.

"Kylin Jameson."

Kylin Jameson!

Oh, no, I think. Not him. Because I recognize this name, although I have never spoken directly to its owner. Kylin Jameson.

No, the odds are not in my favor today. I watch him as he makes his way toward the stage. Medium height, stocky build, ashy blond hair that falls in waves over

his forehead. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, you can see his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm I've seen so often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place.

Mileena asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older brothers, I know, I've seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other won't. This is standard.

Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What I did was the radical thing.

The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year at this point — it's required — but I'm not listening to a word.

Why him? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn't matter. Kylin Jameson and I are not friends.

Not even neighbors. We don't speak. Our only real interaction happened years ago. He's probably forgotten it. But I haven't and I know I never will... .

It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in the mine accident three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.

The district had given us a small amount of money as compensation for his death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time my mother would be expected to get a job. Only she didn't. She didn't do anything but sit propped up in a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Once in a while, she'd stir, get up as if moved by some urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. No amount of pleading from Khal seemed to affect her.

I was terrified. I suppose now that my mother was locked in some dark world of sadness, but at the time, all I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a mother as well. At eleven years old, with Khal just seven, I took over as head of the family. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market and cooked it as best I could and tried to keep Khal and myself looking presentable. Because if it had become known that my mother could no longer care for us, the district would have taken us away from her and placed us in the community home. I'd grown up seeing those home kids at school. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, the hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward. I could never let that happen to Khal. Sweet, tiny Khal who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited my mother's hair before we left for school, who still polished my father's shaving mirror each night because he'd hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would crush her like a bug. So I kept our predicament a secret.

But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to death. There's no other way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious grain and oill to feed us. Only there were still several weeks to go. We could well be dead by then.

Starvation's not an uncommon fate in District 2.

Who hasn't seen the victims? Older people who can't work. Children from a family with too many to feed.

Those injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, you hear the wails from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the body. Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It's always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one.

On the afternoon of my encounter with Kylin Jameson, the rain was falling in relentless icy sheets. I had been in town, trying to trade some threadbare old baby clothes of Khal's in the public market, but there were no takers. Although I had been to the Hob on several occasions with my father, I was too frightened to venture into that rough, gritty place alone. The rain had soaked through my father's jacket, leaving me chilled to the bone. For three days, we'd had nothing but boiled water with some old dried mint leaves I'd found in the back of a cupboard. By the time the market closed, I was shaking so hard I dropped my bundle of baby clothes in a mud puddle.

I didn't pick it up for fear I would keel over and be unable to regain my feet. Besides, no one wanted those clothes.

I couldn't go home. Because at home was my mother with her dead eyes and my little sister, with her hollow cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn't walk into that room with the smoky fire from the damp branches I had scavenged at the edge of the woods after the coal had run out, my bands empty of any hope.

I found myself stumbling along a muddy lane behind the shops that serve the wealthiest townspeople. The merchants live above their businesses, so I was essentially in their backyards. I remember the outlines of garden beds not yet planted for the spring, a goat or two in a pen, one sodden dog tied to a post, hunched defeated in the muck.

All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 2.

Punishable by death. But it crossed my mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher's or rotted vegetables at the grocer's, something no one but my family was desperate enough to eat.

Unfortunately, the bins had just been emptied.

When I passed the baker's, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen door. I stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life. I lifted the lid to the baker's trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.

Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker's wife, telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash. The words were ugly and I had no defense. As I carefully replaced the lid and backed away, I noticed him, a boy with black hair peering out from behind his mother's back. I'd seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn't know his name. He stuck with the town kids, so how would I?

His mother went back into the bakery, grumbling, but he must have been watching me as I made my way behind the pen that held their pig and leaned against the far side of an old apple tree. The realization that I'd have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.

There was a clatter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again and the sound of a blow, and I vaguely wondered what was going on. Feet sloshed toward me through the mud and I thought, It's her.

She's coming to drive me away with a stick. But it wasn't her. It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were scorched black.

His mother was yelling, "Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!"

He began to tear off chunks from the burned parts and toss them into the trough, and the front bakery bell rung and the mother disappeared to help a customer.

The boy never even glanced my way, but I was watching him. Because of the bread, because of the red weal that stood out on his cheekbone. What had she hit him with?

My parents never hit us. I couldn't even imagine it.

The boy took one look back to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in my direction. The second quickly followed, and he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.

I stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for the burned areas. Did he mean for me to have them? He must have. Because there they were at my feet. Before anyone could witness what had happened I shoved the loaves up under my shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about me, and walked swiftly away. The heat of the bread burned into my skin, but I clutched it tighter, clinging to life.

By the time I reached home, the loaves had cooled somewhat, but the insides were still warm. When I dropped them on the table, Khal's hands reached to tear off a chunk, but I made her sit, forced my mother to join us at the table, and poured warm tea. I scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. We ate an entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.

I put my clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep. It didn't occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me. But I dismissed this. It must have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn't even know me. Still, just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely resulted in a beating if discovered. 1 couldn't explain his actions.

We ate slices of bread for breakfast and headed to school. It was as if spring had come overnight. Warm sweet air. Fluffy clouds. At school, I passed the boy in the hall, his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his friends and didn't acknowledge me in any way. But as I collected Khal and started for home that afternoon, I found him staring at me from across the school yard. Our eyes met for only a second, then he turned his head away.

I dropped my gaze, embarrassed, and that's when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year. A bell went off in my head. I thought of the hours spent in the woods with my father and I knew how we were going to survive.

To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Kylin Jameson, and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed. And more than once, I have turned in the school hallway and caught his eyes trained on me, only to quickly flit away. I feel like I owe him something, and I hate owing people. Maybe if I had thanked him at some point, I'd be feeling less conflicted now. I thought about it a couple of times, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself.

And now it never will. Because we're going to be thrown into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thank-you in there?

Somehow it just won't seem sincere if I'm trying to slit his throat.

The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Kylin and me to shake hands. His are as solid and warm as those loaves of bread. Kylin looks me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it's just a nervous spasm.

We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays.

Oh, well, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.

Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.

Chapter Three

The moment the anthem ends, we are taken into custody. I don't mean we're handcuffed or anything, but a group of Peacekeepers marches us through the front door of the Justice Building. Maybe tributes have tried to escape in the past. I've never seen that happen though.

Once inside, I'm conducted to a room and left alone.

It's the richest place I've ever been in, with thick, deep carpets and a velvet couch and chairs. I know velvet because my mother has a dress with a collar made of the stuff. When I sit on the couch, I can't help running my fingers over the fabric repeatedly. It helps to calm me as I try to prepare for the next hour. The time allotted for the tributes to say goodbye to their loved ones. I cannot afford to get upset, to leave this room with puffy eyes and a red nose. Crying is not an option. There will be more cameras at the train station.

My sister and my mother come first. I reach out to Khal and she climbs on my lap, her arms around my neck, head on my shoulder, just like she did when she was a toddler. My mother sits beside me and wraps her arms around us. For a few minutes, we say nothing. Then I start telling them all the things they must remember to do, now that I will not be there to do them for them.

Khal is not to take any tesserae. They can get by, if they're careful, on selling Khal's goat milk and cheese and the small apothecary business my mother now runs for the people in the Seam. Jin will get her the herbs she doesn't grow herself, but she must be very careful to describe them because he's not as familiar with them as I am. He'll also bring them game — he and I made a pact about this a year or so ago — and will probably not ask for compensation, but they should thank him with some kind of trade, like milk or medicine.

I don't bother suggesting Khal learn to hunt. I tried to teach her a couple of times and it was disastrous. The woods terrified her, and whenever I shot something, she'd get teary and talk about how we might be able to heal it if we got it home soon enough. But she makes out well with her goat, so I concentrate on that.

When I am done with instructions about fuel, and trading, and staying in school, I turn to my mother and grip her arm, hard. "Listen to me. Are you listening to me?" She nods, alarmed by my intensity.

She must know what's coming. "You can't leave again," I say.

My mother's eyes find the floor. "I know. I won't. I couldn't help what—"

"Well, you have to help it this time. You can't clock out and leave Khal on her own. There's no me now to keep you both alive. It doesn't matter what happens. Whatever you see on the screen. You have to promise me you'll fight through it!" My voice has risen to a shout. In it is all the anger, all the fear I felt at her abandonment.

She pulls her arm from my grasp, moved to anger herself now. "I was ill. I could have treated myself if I'd had the medicine I have now."

That part about her being ill might be true. I've seen her bring back people suffering from immobilizing sadness since. Perhaps it is a sickness, but it's one we can't afford.

"Then take it. And take care of her!" I say.

"I'll be all right, Takeda," says Khal, clasping my face in her hands. "But you have to take care, too. You're so fast and brave. Maybe you can win." I can't win. Khal must know that in her heart. The competition will be far beyond my abilities. Kids from wealthier districts, where winning is a huge honor, who've been trained their whole lives for this. Boys who are two to three times my size. Girls who know twenty different ways to kill you with a knife. Oh, there'll be people like me, too. People to weed out before the real fun begins.

"Maybe," I say, because I can hardly tell my mother to carry on if I've already given up myself. Besides, it isn't in my nature to go down without a fight, even when things seem insurmountable. "Then we'd be rich as Kano."

"I don't care if we're rich. I just want you to come home. You will try, won't you? Really, really try?" asks Khal.

"Really, really try. I swear it," I say. And I know, because of Khal, I'll have to.

And then the Peacekeeper is at the door, signaling our time is up, and we're all hugging one another so hard it hurts and all I'm saying is "I love you. I love you both." And they're saying it back and then the Peacekeeper orders them out and the door closes. I bury my head in one of the velvet pillows as if this can block the whole thing out.

Someone else enters the room, and when I look up, I'm surprised to see it's the baker, Kylin Jameson's father. I can't believe he's come to visit me. After all, I'll be trying to kill his son soon. But we do know each other a bit, and he knows Khal even better. When she sells her goat cheeses at the Hob, she puts two of them aside for him and he gives her a generous amount of bread in return. We always wait to trade with him when his witch of a wife isn't around because he's so much nicer. I feel certain he would never have hit his son the way she did over the burned bread. But why has he come to see me?

The baker sits awkwardly on the edge of one of the plush chairs. He's a big, broad-shouldered man with burn scars from years at the ovens. He must have just said goodbye to his son.

He pulls a white paper package from his jacket pocket and holds it out to me. I open it and find cookies.

These are a luxury we can never afford.

"Thank you," I say. The baker's not a very talkative man in the best of times, and today he has no words at all. "I had some of your bread this morning. My friend Jin gave you a few carats for it." He nods, as if remembering the squirrel. "Not your best trade," I say.

He shrugs as if it couldn't possibly matter.

Then I can't think of anything else, so we sit in silence until a Peacemaker summons him. He rises and coughs to clear his throat. "I'll keep an eye on the little girl. Make sure she's eating." I feel some of the pressure in my chest lighten at his words. People deal with me, but they are genuinely fond of Khal. Maybe there will be enough fondness to keep her alive.

My next guest is also unexpected. Cassie walks straight to me. She is not weepy or evasive, instead there's an urgency about her tone that surprises me.

"They let you wear one thing from your district in the arena. One thing to remind you of home. Will you wear this?" She holds out the circular gold pin that was on her dress earlier. I hadn't paid much attention to it before, but now I see it's a small dragon, its tongue out.

"Your pin?" I say. Wearing a token from my district is about the last thing on my mind.

"Here, I'll put it on your tux, all right?" Cassie doesn't wait for an answer, she just leans in and fixes the bird to my tuxedo. "Promise you'll wear it into the arena, Takeda?" she asks. "Promise?"

"Yes," I say. Cookies. A pin. I'm getting all kinds of gifts today. Cassie gives me one more. A kiss on the cheek. Then she's gone and I'm left thinking that maybe Cassie really has been my friend all along.

Finally, Jin is here and maybe there is nothing romantic between us, but when he opens his arms I don't hesitate to go into them. His body is familiar to me — the way it moves, the smell of wood smoke, even the sound of his heart beating I know from quiet moments on a hunt — but this is the first time I really feel it, lean and hard-muscled against my own.

"Listen," he says. "Getting a knife should be pretty easy, but you've got to get your hands on your whips. That's your best chance."

"They don't make whips. Not the way Scorpion made mine," I say, thinking of the year there were only horrible spiked maces that the tributes had to bludgeon one another to death with.

"Then make one," says Jin. "Even a weak bow is better than no bow at all."

I have tried copying my father's bows with poor results. It's not that easy. Even he had to scrap his own work sometimes.

"I don't even know if there'll be wood," I say. Another year, they tossed everybody into a landscape of nothing but boulders and sand and scruffy bushes. I particularly hated that year. Many contestants were eaten by venomous snakes or went insane from thirst.

"There's almost always some wood," Jin says. "Since that year half of them died of cold. Not much entertainment in that."

It's true. We spent one Hunger Games watching the players freeze to death at night. You could hardly see them because they were just huddled in balls and had no wood for fires or torches or anything. It was considered very anti-climactic in the Capitol, all those quiet, bloodless deaths. Since then, there's usually been wood to make fires.

"Yes, there's usually some," I say.

"Takeda, it's just hunting. You're the best hunter I know," says Jin.

"It's not just hunting. They're armed. They think," I say.

"So do you. And you've had more practice. Real practice," he says. "You know how to kill."

"Not people," I say.

"How different can it be, really?" says Jin grimly.

The awful thing is that if I can forget they're people, it will be no different at all.

The Peacekeepers are back too soon and Jin asks for more time, but they're taking him away and I start to panic. "Don't let them starve!" I cry out, clinging to his hand.

"I won't! You know I won't! Takeda, remember I —" he says, and they yank us apart and slam the door and I'll never know what it was he wanted me to remember.

It's a short ride from the Justice Building to the train station. I've never been in a car before. Rarely even ridden in wagons. In the Seam, we travel on foot.

I've been right not to cry. The station is swarming with reporters with their insectlike cameras trained directly on my face. But I've had a lot of practice at wiping my face clean of emotions and I do this now. I catch a glimpse of myself on the television screen on the wall that's airing my arrival live and feel gratified that I appear almost bored.

Kylin Jameson, on the other hand, has obviously been crying and interestingly enough does not seem to be trying to cover it up. I immediately wonder if this will be his strategy in the Games. To appear weak and frightened, to reassure the other tributes that he is no competition at all, and then come out fighting. This worked very well for a girl, Johanna Mason, from District 7 a few years back. She seemed like such a sniveling, cowardly fool that no one bothered about her until there were only a handful of contestants left.

It turned out she could kill viciously. Pretty clever, the way she played it. But this seems an odd strategy for Kylin Jameson because he's a baker's son. All those years of having enough to eat and hauling bread trays around have made him broad-shouldered and strong.

It will take an awful lot of weeping to convince anyone to overlook him.

We have to stand for a few minutes in the doorway of the train while the cameras gobble up our images, then we're allowed inside and the doors close mercifully behind us. The train begins to move at once.

The speed initially takes my breath away. Of course, I've never been on a train, as travel between the districts is forbidden except for officially sanctioned duties. For us, that's mainly transporting coal. But this is no ordinary coal train. It's one of the high-speed Capitol models that average 250 miles per hour. Our journey to the Capitol will take less than a day.

In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 2 was in a region known is Arkansas. Even hundreds of years ago, they mined here. Which is why our miners have to dig so deep.

Somehow it all comes back to diamond at school. Besides basic reading and math most of our instruction is diamond or coal-related. Except for the weekly lecture on the history of Panem. It's mostly a lot of blather about what we owe the Capitol. I know there must be more than they're telling us, an actual account of what happened during the rebellion. But I don't spend much time thinking about it. Whatever the truth is, I don't see how it will help me get food on the table.

The tribute train is fancier than even the room in the Justice Building. We are each given our own chambers that have a bedroom, a dressing area, and a private bathroom with hot and cold running water.

We don't have hot water at home, unless we boil it.

There are drawers filled with fine clothes, and Mileena tells me to do anything I want, wear anything I want, everything is at my disposal. Just be ready for supper in an hour. I peel off my granddad's blue tux and take a hot shower. I've never had a shower before. It's like being in a summer rain, only warmer.

I dress in a dark red shirt and denim pants. Comfortable.

At the last minute, I remember Cassie's little gold pin.

For the first time, I get a good look at it. It's as if someone fashioned a small golden dragon and then attached a ring around it. The dragon is connected to the ring only by its bottom. I rings familiarity, its head shape, the dragon body, but I brush it off.

Mileena comes to collect me for supper. I follow her through the narrow, rocking corridor into a dining room with polished paneled walls. There's a table where all the dishes are highly breakable. Kylin Jameson sits waiting for us, the chair next to him empty.

"Where's Kano?" asks Mileena brightly.

"Last time I saw him, he said he was going to take a nap," says Kylin.

"Well, it's been an exhausting day," says Mileena.

I think she's relieved by Kano's absence, and who can blame her?

The supper comes in courses. A thick carrot soup, green salad, lamb chops and mashed potatoes, cheese and fruit, a chocolate cake. Throughout the meal, Mileena keeps reminding us to save space because there's more to come. But I'm stuffing myself because I've never had food like this, so good and so much, and because probably the best thing I can do between now and the Games is put on a few pounds.

"At least, you two have decent manners," says Mileena as we're finishing the main course. "The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages. It completely upset my digestion." The pair last year were two kids from the Seam who'd never, not one day of their lives, had enough to eat.

And when they did have food, table manners were surely the last thing on their minds. Kylin's a baker's son. My mother taught Khal and I to eat properly, so yes, I can handle a fork and knife. But I hate Mileena's comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers. Then I wipe my hands on the tablecloth. This makes her purse her lips tightly together.

Now that the meal's over, I'm fighting to keep the food down. I can see Kylin's looking a little green, too.

Neither of our stomachs is used to such rich fare. But if I can hold down Greasy Sae's concoction of mice meat, pig entrails, and tree bark — a winter specialty — I'm determined to hang on to this.

We go to another compartment to watch the recap of the reapings across Panem. They try to stagger them throughout the day so a person could conceivably watch the whole thing live, but only people in the Capitol could really do that, since none of them have to attend reapings themselves.

One by one, we see the other reapings, the names called, (the volunteers stepping forward or, more often, not. We examine the faces of the kids who will be our competition. A few stand out in my mind. A monstrous boy who lunges forward to volunteer from District 6 for a younger boy. A black girl with black from District 1. A man who looked like a cowboy from District 5.

And most hauntingly, Cassie is chosen. She smiles with a creepy look on her face as she goes onstage. It's as if she's laughing at Kung Jin for saying she couldn't get in.

Last of all, they show District 2. Khal being called, me running forward to volunteer. You can't miss the desperation in my voice as I shove Khal behind me, as if I'm afraid no one will hear and they'll take Khal away. But, of course, they do hear. I see Jin pulling her off me and watch myself mount the stage. The commentators are not sure what to say about the crowd's refusal to applaud. The silent salute. One says that District 2 has always been a bit backward but that local customs can be charming.

Kylin's name is drawn, and he quietly takes his place.

We shake hands. They cut to the anthem again, and the pro-gram ends.

Mileena is disgruntled about the state her wig was in. "Your mentor has a lot to learn about presentation. A lot about televised behavior." Kylin unexpectedly laughs. "He was drunk," says Kylin. "He's drunk every year."

"Every week," I add. I can't help smirking a little. Mileena makes it sound like Kano just has somewhat rough manners that could be corrected with a few tips from her.

"Yes," hisses Mileena. "How odd you two find it amusing. You know your mentor is your lifeline to the world in these Games. The one who advises you, lines up your sponsors, and dictates the presentation of any gifts. Kano can well be the difference between your life and your death!"

Just then, Kano staggers into the compartment.

"I miss supper?" he says in a sultry, Australian voice. He's not wearing a shirt, like always, so his impressive physique is shown. Then he falls on the floor.

"So laugh away!" says Mileena. She hops in her pointy shoes around Kano and flees the room.

Chapter Four

For a few moments, Kylin and I take in the scene of our mentor trying to rise out of the slippery vile stuff from his stomach. The reek of vomit and raw spirits almost brings my dinner up. We exchange a glance.

Obviously Kano isn't much, but Mileena is right about one thing, once we're in the arena he's all we've got. As if by some unspoken agreement, Kylin and I each take one of Kano's arms and help him to his feet.

"I tripped?" Kano asks. "Smells bad." He wipes his hand on his nose, smearing his face with vomit.

"Let's get you back to your room," says Kylin. "Clean you up a bit."

We half-lead half-carry Kano back to his compartment. Since we can't exactly set him down on the embroidered bedspread, we haul him into the bathtub and turn the shower on him. He hardly notices.

"It's okay," Kylin says to me. "I'll take it from here." I can't help feeling a little grateful since the last thing I want to do is strip down Kano, wash the vomit out of his chest hair, and tuck him into bed. Possibly Kylin is trying to make a good impression on him, to be his favorite once the Games begin. But judging by the state he's in, Kano will have no memory of this tomorrow.

"All right," I say. "I can send one of the Capitol people to help you." There's any number on the train.

Cooking lor us. Waiting on us. Guarding us. Taking care of us is their job.

"No. I don't want them," says Kylin.

I nod and head to my own room. I understand how Kylin feels. I can't stand the sight of the Capitol people myself. But making them deal with Kano might be a small form of revenge. So I'm pondering the reason why he insists on taking care of Kano and all of a sudden I think, It's because he's being kind. Just as he was kind to give me the bread.

The idea pulls me up short. A kind Kylin Jameson is far more dangerous to me than an unkind one. Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there. And I can't let Kylin do this. Not where we're going. So I decide, from this moment on, to have as little as possible to do with the baker's son.

For a while I stand staring out the train window, wishing I could open it again, but unsure of what would happen at such high speed. In the distance, I see the lights of another district. 7? 10? I don't know.

I think about the people in their houses, settling in for bed. I imagine my home, with its shutters drawn tight. What are they doing now, my mother and Khal?

Were they able to eat supper? The fish stew and the strawberries? Or did it lay untouched on their plates?

Did they watch the recap of the day's events on the battered old TV that sits on the table against the wall? Surely, there were more tears. Is my mother holding up, being strong for Khal? Or has she already started to slip away, leaving the weight of the world on my sister's fragile shoulders?

Khal will undoubtedly sleep with my mother tonight.

The thought of that scruffy old Buttercup posting himself on the bed to watch over Khal comforts me. If she cries, he will nose his way into her arms and curl up there until she calms down and falls asleep. I'm so glad I didn't drown him.

Imagining my home makes me ache with loneliness.

This day has been endless. Could Jin and I have been eating blackberries only this morning? It seems like a lifetime ago. Like a long dream that deteriorated into a nightmare. Maybe, if I go to sleep, I will wake up back in District 2, where I belong.

Probably the drawers hold any number of clothes, but I just strip off my shirt, jacket, shoes, tie and pants and climb into bed naked. The sheets are made of soft, silky fabric. A thick fluffy comforter gives immediate warmth.

If I'm going to cry, now is the time to do it. By morning, I'll be able to wash the damage done by the tears from my face. But no tears come. I'm too tired or too numb to cry. The only thing I feel is a desire to be somewhere else. So I let the train rock me into oblivion.

...

Gray light is leaking through the curtains when the rapping rouses me. I hear Mileena's voice, calling me to rise. "Up, up, up! It's going to be a big, big, big day!" I try and imagine, for a moment, what it must be like inside that woman's head. What thoughts fill her waking hours? What dreams come to her at night? I have no idea.

I rummage through the clothes for something, finding something that looked weird; it was underwear, with a hole in the back, so your ass was exposed. I put it on, and there were two lines going up from the back, inbetween your legs and on the sides of your ass. I decided to wear it, since it felt... Different than just being completely naked, with no underwear at all, like I used to do at home, or when I lived with Jin, for months at a time. So I resolve to wear only the underwear.

As I enter the dining car, Mileena brushes by me with a cup of black coffee. She's muttering obscenities under her breath, then gives me one good look, and walks away. Kano, his face puffy and red from the previous day's indulgences, is chuckling. "So, yeh like jocks, eh?"

Kylin holds a roll and looks somewhat embarrassed. He looks at Kano, and I notice that he can see, as I can, that Kano is dressed like I am; except he's completely and truly naked.

"Sit down! Sit down!" says Kano, waving me over.

The moment I slide into my chair I'm served an enormous platter of food. Eggs, ham, piles of fried potatoes. A tureen of fruit sits in ice to keep it chilled. I look at Kano as I eat, he chews his food loudly and I can't deal.

The basket of rolls they set before me would keep my family going for a week. There's an elegant glass of orange juice. At least, I think it's orange juice. I've only even tasted an orange once, at New Year's when my father bought one as a special treat. A cup of coffee. My mother adores coffee, which we could almost never afford, but it only tastes bitter and thin to me. A rich brown cup of something I've never seen.

"They call it hot chocolate," says Kylin. "It's good." I take a sip of the hot, sweet, creamy liquid and a shudder runs through me. Even though the rest of the meal beckons, I ignore it until I've drained my cup. Then I stuff down every mouthful I can hold, which is a substantial amount, being careful to not overdo it on the richest stuff. One time, my mother told me that I always eat like I'll never see food again.

And I said, "I won't unless I bring it home." That shut her up.

When my stomach feels like it's about to split open, I lean back and take in my breakfast companions.

Kylin is still eating, breaking off bits of roll and dipping them in hot chocolate. Kano hasn't paid much attention to his platter, but he's knocking back a glass of red juice that he keeps thinning with a clear liquid from a bottle.

"So, you're supposed to give us advice," I say to Kano.

"Here's some advice. Stay alive," says Kano, and then bursts out laughing. I exchange a look with Kylin before I remember I'm having nothing more to do with him. I'm surprised to see the hardness in his eyes. He generally seems so mild.

"That's very funny," says Kylin. Suddenly he lashes out at the glass in Kano's hand. It shatters on the floor, sending the bloodred liquid running toward the back of the train. "Only not to us." Kano considers this a moment, then punches Kylin in the jaw, knocking him from his chair. When he turns back to reach for the spirits, I drive my knife into the table between his hand and the bottle, barely missing his fingers. I brace myself to deflect his hit, but it doesn't come. Instead he sits back and squints at us.

"Well, what's this?" says Kano. "Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year?"

Kylin rises from the floor and scoops up a handful of ice from under the fruit tureen. He starts to raise it to the red mark on his jaw.

"No," says Kano, stopping him. "Let the bruise show. The audience will think you've mixed it up with another tribute before you've even made it to the arena."

"That's against the rules," says Kylin.

"Only if they catch you. That bruise will say you fought, you weren't caught, even better," says Kano. He turns to me. "Can you hit anything with that knife besides a table?"

The whip is my weapon. But I've spent a fair amount of time throwing knives as well.

Sometimes, if I've wounded an animal with an arrow, it's better to get a knife into it, too, before I approach it. I realize that if I want Kano's attention, this is my moment to make an impression. I yank the knife out of the table, get a grip on the blade, and then throw it into the wall across the room. I was actually just hoping to get a good solid stick, but it lodges in the seam between two panels, making me look a lot better than I am.

"Stand over here. Both of you," says Kano, nodding to the middle of the room. We obey and he circles us, prodding us like animals at times, checking our muscles, examining our faces, groping my ass a lot, which pokes out through the underwear. "Well, you're not entirely hopeless. Seem fit. And once the stylists get hold of you, you'll be attractive enough." Kylin and I don't question this. The Hunger Games aren't a beauty contest, but the best-looking tributes always seem to pull more sponsors.

"All right, I'll make a deal with you. You don't interfere with my drinking, and I'll stay sober enough to help you," says Kano. "But you have to do exactly what I say."

It's not much of a deal but still a giant step forward from ten minutes ago when we had no guide at all.

"Fine," says Kylin.

"So help us," I say. "When we get to the arena, what's the best strategy at the Cornucopia for someone—"

"One thing at a time. In a few minutes, we'll be pulling into the station. You'll be put in the hands of your stylists. You're not going to like what they do to you. But no matter what it is, don't resist," says Kano.

"But —" I begin.

"No buts. Well, except yours," he says, staring, but switches back to us. "Don't resist," says Kano. He takes the bottle of spirits from the table and leaves the car. As the door swings shut behind him, the car goes dark.

There are still a few lights inside, but outside it's as if night has fallen again. I realize we must be in the tunnel that runs up through the mountains into the Capitol. The mountains form a natural barrier between the Capitol and the eastern districts. It is almost impossible to enter from the east except through the tunnels. This geographical advantage was a major factor in the districts losing the war that led to my being a tribute today. Since the rebels had to scale the mountains, they were easy targets for the Capitol's air forces.

Kylin Jameson and I stand in silence as the train speeds along. The tunnel goes on and on and I think of the tons of rock separating me from the sky, and my chest tightens. I hate being encased in stone this way. It reminds me of the mines and my father, trapped, unable to reach sunlight, buried forever in the darkness.

The train finally begins to slow and suddenly bright light floods the compartment. We can't help it. Both Kylin and I run to the window to see what we've only seen on television, the Capitol, the ruling city of Panem. The cameras haven't lied about its grandeur.

If anything, they have not quite captured the magnificence of the glistening buildings in a rainbow of hues that tower into the air, the shiny cars that roll down the wide paved streets, the oddly dressed people with bizarre hair and painted faces who have never missed a meal. All the colors seem artificial, the pinks too deep, the greens too bright, the yellows painful to the eyes, like the flat round disks of hard candy we can never afford to buy at the tiny sweet shop in District 2.

The people begin to point at us eagerly as they recognize a tribute train rolling into the city. I step away from the window, sickened by their excitement, knowing they can't wait to watch us die. But Kylin holds his ground, actually waving and smiling at the gawking crowd. He only stops when the train pulls into the station, blocking us from their view.

He sees me staring at him and shrugs. "Who knows?" he says. "One of them may be rich."

I have misjudged him. I think of his actions since the reaping began. The friendly squeeze of my hand. His father showing up with the cookies and promising to feed Khal ... did Kylin put him up to that? His tears at the station. Volunteering to wash Kano but then challenging him this morning when apparently the nice-guy approach had failed. And now the waving at the window, already trying to win the crowd.

All of the pieces are still fitting together, but I sense he has a plan forming. He hasn't accepted his death.

He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind Kylin Jameson, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill me.

Chapter Five

R-i-i-i-p! I grit my teeth as Venia, a woman with aqua hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows, yanks a strip of Fabric from my leg tearing out the hair beneath it. "Sorry!" she pipes in her silly Capitol accent. "You're just so hairy!"

Why do these people speak in such a high pitch? Why do their jaws barely open when they talk? Why do the ends of their sentences go up as if they're asking a question? Odd vowels, clipped words, and always a hiss on the letter s ... no wonder it's impossible not to mimic them.

Venia makes what's supposed to be a sympathetic face."Good news, though. This is the last one.

Ready?" I get a grip on the edges of the table I'm seated on and nod. The final swathe of my leg hair is uprooted in a painful jerk.

I've been in the Remake Center for more than three hours and I still haven't met my stylist. Apparently he has no interest in seeing me until Venia and the other members of my prep team have addressed some obvious problems. This has included scrubbing down my body with a gritty loam that has removed not only dirt but at least three layers of skin, turning my nails into uniform shapes, and primarily, ridding my body of hair. My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of my eyebrows have been stripped of the stuff, and although I usually try to keep it clean and under control, it leaves me feeling like a plucked bird, ready for roasting.

Especially when they start on my pubic hair. That hurts like a bitch. Why do they even need to remove that?

I don't like it.

My skin feels sore and tingling and intensely vulnerable. But I have kept my side of the bargain with Kano, and no objection has crossed my lips.

"You're doing very well," says some guy named Flavius. He gives his orange corkscrew locks a shake and applies a fresh coat of purple lipstick to his mouth. "If there's one thing we can't stand, it's a whiner. Grease him down!"

Venia and Octavia, a plump woman whose entire body has been dyed a pale shade of pea green, rub me down with a lotion that first stings but then soothes my raw skin. Then they pull me from the table, removing the thin robe I've been allowed to wear off and on. I stand there, completely naked, as the three circle me, wielding tweezers to remove any last bits of hair. I know I should be embarrassed, but they're so unlike people that I'm no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds were pecking around my feet.

The three step back and admire their work.

"Excellent! You almost look like a human being now!" says Flavius, and they all laugh.

I force my lips up into a smile to show how grateful I am. "Thank you," I say sweetly. "We don't have much cause to look nice in District Two." This wins them over completely. "Of course, you don't, you poor darling!" says Octavia clasping her hands together in distress for me.

"But don't worry," says Venia. "By the time Cinna is through with you, you're going to be absolutely gorgeous!"

"We promise! You know, now that we've gotten rid of all the hair and filth, you're not horrible at all!" says Flavius encouragingly. "Let's call Cinna!"

They dart out of the room. It's hard to hate my prep team. They're such total idiots. And yet, in an odd way, I know they're sincerely trying to help me.

I look at the cold white walls and floor and resist the impulse to retrieve my robe. But this Cinna, my stylist, will surely make me remove it at once. Instead my hands go to my hairdo, the one area of my body my prep team had been told to leave alone. My fingers stroke the silky mess my mother so carefully arranged. My mother. I left her blue tux and shoes on the floor of my train car, never thinking about retrieving them, of trying to hold on to a piece of her, of home. Now I wish I had.

The door opens and a young man who must be Cinna enters. I'm taken aback by how normal he looks. Most of the stylists they interview on television are so dyed, stenciled, and surgically altered they're grotesque.

But Cinna's close-cropped hair appears to be its natural shade of brown. He's in a simple black shirt and pants. The only concession to self-alteration seems to be metallic gold eyeliner that has been applied with a light hand. It brings out the flecks of gold in his gray eyes. And, despite my disgust with the Capitol and their hideous fashions, I can't help thinking how attractive it looks.

"Hello, Takeda. I'm Cinna, your stylist," he says in a quiet voice somewhat lacking in the Capitol's affectations.

"Hello," I venture cautiously.

"Just give me a moment, all right?" he asks. He walks around my naked body, not touching me, but taking in every inch of it with his eyes. I resist the impulse to cross my arms over my chest. "Who did your hair?"

"My mother," I say.

"It's beautiful. Classic really. And in almost perfect balance with your profile. She has very clever fingers," he says.

I had expected someone flamboyant, someone older trying desperately to look young, someone who viewed me as a piece of meat to be prepared for a platter.

Cinna has met none of these expectations.

"You're new, aren't you? I don't think I've seen you before," I say. Most of the stylists are familiar, constants in the ever-changing pool of tributes. Some have been around my whole life.

"Yes, this is my first year in the Games," says Cinna.

"So they gave you District Twelve," I say. Newcomers generally end up with us, the least desirable district.

"I asked for District Twelve," he says without further explanation. "Why don't you put on your robe and we'll have a chat."

Pulling on my robe, I follow him through a door into a sitting room. Two red couches face off over a low table. Three walls are blank, the fourth is entirely glass, providing a window to the city. I can see by the light that it must be around noon, although the sunny sky has turned overcast. Cinna invites me to sit on one of the couches and takes his place across from me. He presses a button on the side of the table.

The top splits and from below rises a second tabletop that holds our lunch. Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.

I try to imagine assembling this meal myself back home. Chickens are too expensive, but I could make do with a wild turkey. I'd need to shoot a second turkey to trade for an orange. Goat's milk would have to substitute for cream. We can grow peas in the garden. I'd have to get wild onions from the woods. I don't recognize the grain, our own tessera ration cooks down to an unattractive brown mush. Fancy rolls would mean another trade with the baker, perhaps for two or three squirrels. As for the pudding, I can't even guess what's in it. Days of hunting and gathering for this one meal and even then it would be a poor substitution for the Capitol version.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to bing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?

What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?

I look up and find Cinna's eyes trained on mine. "How despicable we must seem to you," he says.

Has he seen this in my face or somehow read my thoughts? He's right, though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable.

"No matter," says Cinna. "So, Takeda, about your costume for the opening ceremonies. My partner, Portia, is the stylist for your fellow tribute, Kylin. And our current thought is to dress you in complementary costumes," says Cinna. "As you know, it's customary to reflect the flavor of the district." For the opening ceremonies, you're supposed to wear something that suggests your district's principal industry. District 1, agriculture. District 4, fishing. District 3, factories. This means that coming from District 2, Kylin and I will be in some kind of coal or, more likely, diamond miner's up. Since the baggy miner's jumpsuits are not particularly becoming, our tributes usually end up in skimpy outfits and hats with headlamps. One year, our tributes were stark naked and covered in black powder to represent coal dust. It's always dreadful and does nothing to win favor with the crowd. I prepare myself for the worst.

"So, I'll be in a diamond miner outfit?" I ask, hoping it won't be indecent.

"Not exactly. You see, Portia and I think that coal miner thing's very overdone. No one will remember you in that. And we both see it as our job to make the District Twelve tributes unforgettable," says Cinna.

I'll be naked for sure, I think.

"So rather than focus on the mining itself, we're going to focus on the materials produced," says Cinna. Naked and covered in black dust, I think. "And what do we do with coal? We burn it, or crush it, and it sparkles," says Cinna.

"You're not afraid of fire, are you, Takeda?" He sees my expression and grins.

A few hours later, I am dressed in what will either be the most sensational or the deadliest costume in the opening ceremonies. I'm in a badass black armor bodysuit that covers me from ankle to neck. Shiny leather boots lace up to my knees. But it's the sparkling lights all over the costume that make it what it is. Diamonds bedazzle me from head to toe, even my fingernails have been painted in asthetic silver, basically, mirrors. Kylin, however, is dressed in a suit which has a cape on the back, and all over his body, and he has liquid that has been poured on his clothes, and he will be set afire when we go out. So, diamonds, and fire. With his lights and my sparkles, we might as well be mirroring each other, but it is obvious what we are wearing. The lights or fire has not been turned on, but we can get the gist.

"It's not real flame, of course, just a little synthetic fire Portia and I me up with. You'll be perfectly safe," he says. But I'm not convinced Kylin and I won't be perfectly barbecued by the time we reach the city's center. But if he is, that makes it easier on me.

My face is relatively clear of make up, just a bit of highlighting here and there. My hair has been brushed out and put up with a band in myhair I have always kept, my dad's fabric. It's a gold long stretch of fabric, made for his eyes, as my father was blind, so he gave it to me. "I want the audience to recognize you when you're in the arena," says Cinna dreamily."Takeda, the man who set sparkle to the stage." It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.

Kylin's stylist, Portia, and her team accompany him in, and everyone is absolutely giddy with excitement over what a splash we'll make. Except Cinna. He just seems a bit weary as he accepts congratulations.

We're whisked down to the bottom level of the Remake Center, which is essentially a gigantic stable.

The opening ceremonies are about to start. Pairs of tributes are being loaded into chariots pulled by teams of four horses. Ours are specifically made for us. One has a sparkly mane, tied up with jewels, its body sleek, with gorgeous gems on it, and one who is duller, with the same liquids as Kylin. The animals are so well trained, no one even needs to guide their reins. Cinna and Portia direct us into the chariot and carefully arrange our body positions, the drape of our clothes, before moving off to consult with each other.

"What do you think?" I whisper to Kylin. "About the fire?"

"I like it," he says through gritted teeth. "It'll make us-"

The opening music begins. It's easy to hear, blasted around the Capitol. Massive doors slide open revealing the crowd-lined streets. The ride lasts about twenty minutes and ends up at the City Circle, where they will welcome us, play the anthem, and escort us into the Training Center, which will be our home/prison until the Games begin.

The tributes from District 1 ride out in a chariot pulled by snow-white horses. They look so beautiful, spray-painted white, in tasteful tunics with flowers all around. District 2 is known as LotusRealm, as they are inhabited by the white flower.

You can hear the roarofthe crowd. They are always favorites.

District 11 gets into position to follow them. In no time at all, we are approaching the door and I can see that between the overcast sky and evening hour the light is turning gray. The tributes from District 3 are just rolling out when Cinna appears with a lighted torch.

"Here we go then," he says, and before we can react he sets Kylin's cape on fire. I gasp, waiting for the heat, but there is only a faint tickling sensation. Cinna climbs up before us and ignites his hair. He lets out a sign of relief. "It works." Then he gently tucks a hand under my chin. "Remember, heads high. Smiles. They're going to love you!"

Cinna jumps off the chariot and has one last idea. He shouts something up at us, but the music drowns him out. He shouts again and gestures.

"What's he saying?" I ask Kylin. For the first time, I look at him and realize that ablaze with the fake flames, he is dazzling. And I must be, too. And I can see it, the arms of my armor suit are glistening and shimmering with light.

The crowd's initial alarm at our appearance quickly changes to cheers and shouts of "District Two!" Every head is turned our way, pulling the focus from the chariots ahead of us. At first, I'm frozen, but then I catch sight of us on a large television screen and am floored by how breathtaking we look. In the deepening twilight, the firelight and sparkles illuminates our faces.

We seem to be leaving a trail of fire and fairy dust off us capes. Cinna was right about the minimal make up, we both look more attractive but utterly recognizable.

Remember, heads high. Smiles. They're going to love you! I hear Cinna's voice in my head. I lift my chin a bit higher, put on my most winning smile, and wave with my hand. I'm glad now I have Kylin to clutch for balance, he is so steady, solid as a rock.

The people of the Capitol are going nuts, showering us with flowers, shouting our names, our first names, which they have bothered to find on the program.

The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can't suppress my excitement. Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name.

Takeda. The man who set the world to sparkle.

For the first time, I feel a flicker of hope rising up in me. Surely, there must be one sponsor willing to take me on! And with a little extra help, some food, the right weapon, why should I count myself out of the Games?

Someone throws me a red rose. I catch it, give it a delicate sniff, and throw a salute back in the general direction of the giver. A hundred hands reach up to catch my salute, as if it were a real and tangible thing. Whores.

"Takeda! Takeda!" I can hear my name being called from all sides. Everyone wants my graces.

I can't help feeling strange about the way Cinna has linked us together. It's not really fair to present us as a team and then lock us into the arena to kill each other.

The twelve chariots fill the loop of the City Circle. On the buildings that surround the Circle, every window is packed with the most prestigious citizens of the Capitol. Our horses pull our chariot right up to President Snow's mansion, and we come to a halt.

The music ends with a flourish.

The president, a small, thin man with paper-white hair, gives the official welcome from a balcony above us. It is traditional to cut away to the faces of the tributes during the speech. But I can see on the screen that we are getting way more than our share of airtime. The darker it becomes, the more difficult it is to take your eyes off our flickering. When the national anthem plays, they do make an effort to do a quick cut around to each pair of tributes, but the camera holds on the District 2 chariot as it parades around the circle one final time and disappears into the Training Center.

The doors have only just shut behind us when we're engulfed by the prep teams, who are nearly unintelligible as they babble out praise. As I glance around, I notice a lot of the other tributes are shooting us dirty looks, which confirms what I've suspected, we've literally outshone them all. Then Cinna and Portia are there, helping us down from the chariot, carefully removing our flaming capes, magic clothes, and headdresses. Portia extinguishes them with some kind of spray from a canister.

"I'm sure they didn't notice anything but you. You should wear flames more often. Maybe we could switch." he says. "They suit you." And then he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.

A warning bell goes off in my head. Don't be so stupid. Kylin is planning how to kill you, I remind myself. He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likable he is, the more deadly he is.

But because two can play at this game, I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.

Chapter Six

The Training Center has a tower designed exclusively for the tributes and their teams. This will be our home until the actual Games begin. Each district has an entire floor. You simply step onto an elevator and press the number of your district. Easy enough to remember.

I've ridden the elevator a couple of times in the Justice Building back in District 2. Once to receive the medal for my father's death and then yesterday to say my final goodbyes to my friends and family. But that's a dark and creaky thing that moves like a snail and smells of sour milk. The walls of this elevator are made of crystal so that you can watch the people on the ground floor shrink to ants as you shoot up into the air. It's exhilarating and I'm tempted to ask Mileena if we can ride it again, but somehow that seems childish.

Apparently, Mileena's duties did not conclude at the station. She and Kano will be overseeing us right into the arena. In a way, that's a plus because at least she can be counted on to corral us around to places on time whereas we haven't seen Kano since he agreed to help us on the train. Probably passed out somewhere. Mileena, on the other hand, seems to be flying high. We're the first team she's ever chaperoned that made a splash at the opening ceremonies. She's complimentary about not just our costumes but how we conducted ourselves.

And, to hear her tell it, Mileena knows everyone who's anyone in the Capitol and has been talking us up all day, trying to win us sponsors.

"I've been very mysterious, though," she says, her eyes squint half shut. "Because, of course, Kano hasn't bothered to tell me your strategies. But I've done my best with what I had to work with. How Takeda sacrificed herself for his sister. How you've both successfully struggled to overcome the barbarism of your district."

Barbarism? That's ironic coming from a woman helping to prepare us for slaughter. And what's she basing our success on? Our table manners?

"Everyone has their reservations, naturally. You being from the coal and jewel district. But I said, and this was very clever of me, I said, 'Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to diamonds! That's what they do!'" Mileena beams at us so brilliantly that we have no choice but to respond enthusiastically to her cleverness.

"Unfortunately, I can't seal the sponsor deals for you. Only Kano can do that," says Mileena grimly. "But don't worry, I'll get him to the table at gunpoint if necessary."

Although lacking in many departments, Mileena has a certain determination I have to admire.

My quarters are larger than our entire house back home. They are plush, like the train car, but also have so many automatic gadgets that I'm sure I won't have time to press all the buttons. The shower alone has a panel with more than a hundred options you can choose regulating water temperature, pressure, soaps, shampoos, scents, oils, and massaging sponges. When you step out on a mat, heaters come on that blow-dry your body. Instead of struggling with the knots in my wet hair, I merely place my hand on a box that sends a current through my scalp, untangling, parting, and drying my hair almost instantly. It floats down around my shoulders in a glossy curtain.

I put on a jockstrap, that's what it's called, a black one with lots of straps, and I program the closet for an outfit to my taste. The windows zoom in and out on parts of the city at my command. You need only whisper a type of food from a gigantic menu into a mouthpiece and it appears, hot and steamy, before you in less than a minute. I walk around the room eating goose liver and puffy bread until there's a knock on the door. Mileena's calling me to dinner.

Good. I'm starving.

Kylin, Cinna, and Portia are standing out on a balcony that overlooks the Capitol when we enter the dining room. I'm glad to see the stylists, particularly after I hear that Kano will be joining us. A meal presided over by just Mileena and Kano is bound to be a disaster. Besides, dinner isn't really about food, it's about planning out our strategies, and Cinna and Portia have already proven how valuable they are. However, no one can even adress me without going back over that I am wearing only a jockstrap.

A silent young man dressed in a white tunic offers us all stemmed glasses of wine. I turn it down quickly.

Kano shows up just as dinner is being served. It looks as if he's had his own stylist because he's clean and groomed and about as sober as I've ever seen him. He doesn't refuse the offer of wine, but when he starts in on his soup, I realize it's the first time I've ever seen him eat. Maybe he really will pull himself together long enough to help us. He's wearing a suit of black, and has actually looked decent.

Cinna and Portia seem to have a civilizing effect on Kano and Mileena. At least they're addressing each other decently. And they both have nothing but praise for our stylists' opening act. While they make small talk, I concentrate on the meal. Mushroom soup, bitter greens with tomatoes the size of peas, rare roast beef sliced as thin as paper, noodles in a green sauce, cheese that melts on your tongue served with sweet blue grapes. The servers, all young people dressed in white tunics like the one who gave us wine, move wordlessly to and from the table, keeping the platters and glasses full.

I try to focus on the talk, which has turned to our interview costumes, when a girl sets a gorgeous-looking cake on the table and deftly lights it. It blazes up and then the flames flicker around the edges awhile until it finally goes out. I have a moment of doubt. "What makes it burn? Is it alcohol?" I say, looking up at the girl. "That's the last thing I wa — oh! I know you!"

I can't place a name or time to the girl's face. But I'm certain of it. The dark red hair, the striking features, the porcelain white skin. But even as I utter the words, I feel my insides contracting with anxiety and guilt at the sight of her, and while I can't pull it up, I know some bad memory is associated with her. The expression of terror that crosses her face only adds to my confusion and unease. She shakes her head in denial quickly and hurries away from the table.

When I look back, the four adults are watching me like hawks.

"Don't be ridiculous, Takeda. How could you possibly know an Avox?" snaps Mileena. "The very thought."

"What's an Avox?" I ask stupidly.

"Someone who committed a crime. They cut her tongue so she can't speak," says Kano. "She's probably a traitor of some sort. Not likely you'd know her."

"And even if you did, you're not to speak to one of them unless it's to give an order," says Mileena. "Of course, you don't really know her."

But I do know her. And now that Kano has mentioned the word traitor I remember from where.

The disapproval is so high I could never admit it. "No, I guess not, I just —" I stammer, and the wine is not helping.

Kylin snaps his fingers. "Delly Cartwright. That's who it is. I kept thinking she looked familiar as well. Then I realized she's a dead ringer for Delly."

Delly Cartwright is a pasty-faced, lumpy girl with yellowish hair who looks about as much like our server as a beetle does a butterfly. She may also be the friendliest person on the planet — she smiles constantly at everybody in school, even me. I have never seen the girl with the red hair smile. But I jump on Kylin's suggestion gratefully. "Of course, that's who I was thinking of. It must be the hair," I say.

"Something about the eyes, too," says Kylin.

The energy at the table relaxes. "Oh, well. If that's all it is," says Cinna. "And yes, the cake has spirits, but all the alcohol has burned off. I ordered it specially in honor of your fiery debut, Kylin."

We eat the cake and move into a sitting room to watch the replay of the opening ceremonies that's being broadcast. A few of the other couples make a nice impression, but none of them can hold a candle to us. Even our own party lets out an "Ahh!" as they show us coming out of the Remake Center.

"Whose idea was the shoulder?" asks Kano.

"Cinna's," says Portia.

"Just the perfect touch of rebellion," says Kano."Very nice."

Rebellion? I have to think about that one a moment.

But when I remember the other couples, standing stiffly apart, never touching or acknowledging each other, as if their fellow tribute did not exist, as if the Games had already begun, I know what Kano means. Presenting ourselves not as adversaries but as friends has distinguished us as much as the fiery costumes.

"Tomorrow morning is the first training session. Meet me for breakfast and I'll tell you exactly how I want you to play it,"says Kano to Kylin and I. "Now go get some sleep while the grown-ups talk." Kylin and I walk together down the corridor to our rooms. When we get to my door, he leans against the frame, not blocking my entrance exactly but insisting I pay attention to him."So, Delly Cartwright. Imagine finding her lookalike here."

He's asking for an explanation, and I'm tempted to give him one. We both know he covered for me. So here I am in his debt again. If I tell him the truth about the girl, somehow that might even things up. But honestly? He's bothering me and he needs to get out of my space. I push him out of the way and go in.

When I open my door, the redheaded girl is collecting my armor and boots from where I left them on the floor before my shower. I want to apologize for possibly getting her in trouble earlier. But I remember I'm not supposed to speak to her unless I'm giving her an order.

"Oh, sorry," I say. "I was supposed to get those back to Cinna. I'm sorry. Can you take them to him?"

She avoids my eyes, gives a small nod, and heads out the door.

I kick off my shoes and climb under the covers in my clothes. The shivering hasn't stopped. Perhaps the girl doesn't even remember me. But I know she does. You don't forget the face of the person who was your last hope. I pull the covers up over my head as if this will protect me from the redheaded girl who can't speak.

But I can feel her eyes staring at me, piercing through walls and doors and bedding.

I wonder if she'll enjoy watching me die.

Chapter Seven

My slumbers are filled with disturbing dreams. The face of the redheaded girl intertwines with gory images from earlier Hunger Games, with my mother withdrawn and unreachable, with Khal emaciated and terrified. I bolt up screaming for my father to run as the mine explodes into a million deadly bits of light.

Dawn is breaking through the windows. The Capitol has a misty, haunted air. My head aches. Slowly, I drag myself out of bed and into the public bathroom. I arbitrarily punch buttons on the control board and end up hopping from foot to foot as alternating jets of icy cold and steaming hot water assault me. Then I'm deluged in lemony foam that I have to scrape off with a heavy bristled brush. Oh, well. At least my blood is flowing.

As I bathe, I hear Kano clearing his throat. I turn around, and he is standing there, wearing nothing but his boxers. Kylin stands behind him, watching me bathe myself. "Mind if we join yeh?" he asks, and I gesture for them to hop in. They do with ease. We all sit down and enjoy the water in the bath. Kano is the first to speak.

"So, uh, Kylin, how old are you?" he asked.

Kylin opened one of his previously closed eyes, looked at Kano, and said, "Twenty-one."

Kano turns to me. "You, Takeda?"

I look him in the eyes and say, "Twenty-three." I notice as a smirk comes across his face. "Well, I'm 42. Capitol's got me lookin younger than 'at, right?"

I look at him, and just raise my eyebrow and lower my head slowly, basically asking him, "Really?"

Kano laughs and says that we'd better get dressed, or Mileena'll have our heads. I get up and out, and can't help but notice Kano is sporting a massive hardon. Kylin notices too, and we start walking behind him as he starts playing with himself. I make a beeline or my room.

When I'm dried and moisturized with lotion, I find an outfit has been left for me at the front of the closet. It's a suit like the one Hanzo made for me, well, exactly as Hanzo made.

Kano didn't give us an exact time to meet for break-last and no one has contacted me this morning since the bath, but I'm hungry so I head down to the dining room, hoping there will be food. I'm not disappointed.

While the table is empty, a long board off to the side has been laid with at least twenty dishes. A young man, an Avox, stands at attention by the spread.

When I ask if I can serve myself, he nods assent. I load a plate with eggs, sausages, batter cakes covered in thick orange preserves, slices of pale purple melon.

As I gorge myself, I watch the sun rise over the Capitol. I have a second plate of hot grain smothered in beef stew. Finally, I fill a plate with rolls and sit at the table, breaking off bits and dipping them into hot chocolate, the way Kylin did on the train.

My mind wanders to my mother and Khal. They must be up. My mother getting their breakfast of mush.

Khalila milking her goat before school. Just two mornings ago, I was home. Can that be right? Yes, just two. And now how empty the house feels, even from a distance. What did they say last night about my fiery debut at the Games? Did it give them hope, or simply add to their terror when they saw the reality of twenty-four tributes circled together, knowing only one could live?

Kano and Kylin come in, bid me good morning, fill their plates. It makes me irritated that Kylin is wearing exactly the same outfit I am. I need to say something to Cinna. This twins act is going to blow up in out faces once the Games begin, especially since this outfit thing was made for me. Not for fucking him. Surely, they must know this. Then I remember Kano telling me to do exactly what the stylists tell me to do. If it was anyone but Cinna, I would ignore him. But after last night's triumph, I don't have a lot of room to criticize his choices.

I'm nervous about the training. There will be three days in which all the tributes practice together. On the last afternoon, we'll each get a chance to perform in private before the Gamemakers. The thought of meeting the other tributes face-to-face makes me feel anxious, but I'm ready. I turn the roll I have just taken from the basket over and over in my hands, but my appetite is gone.

When Kano has finished several platters of stew, he pushes back his plate with a sigh. He takes a flask from his pocket and takes a long pull on it and leans his elbows on the table. "So, let's get down to business. Training. First off, if you like, I'll coach you separately. Decide now."

"Why would you coach us separately?" I ask.

"Say if you had a secret skill you might not want the other to know about," says Kano.

I exchange a look with Kylin. "I don't have any secret skills," he says. "And I already know what yours is, right? I mean, I've eaten enough of your squirrels." I never thought about Kylin eating the squirrels I killed. Somehow I always pictured the baker quietly going off and frying them up for himself. Not out of greed. But because town families usually eat expensive butcher meat. Beef and chicken and horse. But maybe he only knows archery, and not about my thing with my whips. He just can't know about them.

"You can coach us together," I tell Kano. Kylin nods.

"All right, so give me some idea of what you can do,"says Kano.

"I can't do anything," says Kylin. "Unless you count baking bread."

"Sorry, I don't. Takeda. I already know you're handy with a knife," says Kano.

"Yeah, I play around with Pulse Blades. But I can hunt," I say. "With a bow and arrow."

"And you're good. Is that it?" asks Kano.

I have to think about it. I've been putting food on the table for four years. That's no small task. I'm not as good as my father was, but he'd had more practice. Nor am I good as Jin, who owns his own engraved bo made for both hitting and shooting. He in fact taught me how to hunt with a bow and arrow. Then I look at Kylin, and decide, no, I don't trust him enough to tell him about the whips. But I can to Kano.

"I'm all right," I say.

"He's excellent," says Kylin. "My father buys his squirrels. He always comments on how the arrows never pierce the body. He hits every one in the eye. It's the same with the rabbits he sells the butcher. He can even bring down deer."

This assessment of my skills from Kylin takes me totally by surprise. First, that he ever noticed. Second, that he's talking me up. I don't like this at all. "What are you doing?" I ask him suspiciously.

"What are you doing? If he's going to help you, he has to know what you're capable of. Don't underrate yourself," says Kylin.

I don't know why, but this rubs me the wrong way. He keeps trying to talk me up like I'm depressed. "What about you? I've seen you in the market. You can lift hundred-pound bags of flour," I snap at him. "Tell him that. That's not nothing. Don't push me up so damn high."

"Yes, and I'm sure the arena will be full of bags of flour for me to chuck at people. It's not like being able to use a weapon. You know it isn't," he shoots back.

"He can wrestle," I tell Kano. "He me in second in our school competition last year, only after his brother. Work with that."

"What use is that? How many times have you seen someone wrestle someone to death?" says Kylin in disgust.

"There's always hand-to-hand combat. All you need is to come up with a knife, and you'll at least stand a chance. If I get jumped, I'm dead!" I can hear my voice rising in anger. "Stop doing that!"

"But you won't! You'll be living up in some tree eating raw squirrels and picking off people with arrows. You know what my mother said to me when she me to say good-bye, as if to cheer me up, she says maybe District Two will finally have a winner. Then I realized, she didn't mean me, she meant you!" bursts out Kylin.

"Oh, she meant you," I say with a wave of dismissal.

"She said, 'He's a survivor, that one.' He is, not you are," says Kylin.

That pulls me up short. Did his mother really say that about me? Did she rate me over her son? I see the pain in Kylin's eyes and know he isn't lying.

Suddenly I'm behind the bakery and I can feel the chill of the rain running down my back, the hollowness in my belly. I sound eleven years old when I speak. "But only because someone helped me." Kylin's eyes flicker down to the roll in my hands, and I know he remembers that day, too. But he just shrugs. "People will help you in the arena. They'll be tripping over each other to sponsor you."

"No more than you," I say.

Kylin rolls his eyes at Kano. "He has no idea. The effect he can have." He runs his fingernail along the wood grain in the table, refusing to look at me.

What on earth does he mean? People help me? When we were dying of starvation, no one helped me! No one except Kylin. Once I had something to barter with, things changed. I'm a tough trader. Or am I? What effect do I have? That I'm weak and needy? Is he suggesting that I got good deals because people pitied me? I try to think if this is true. Perhaps some of the merchants were a little generous in their trades, but I always attributed that to their long-standing relationship with my father. Besides, my game is first-class. No one pitied me!

After about a minute of this, Kano says, "Well, then. Well, well, well. Takeda, there's no guarantee they'll be bows and arrows in the arena, but during your private session with the Gamemakers, show them what you can do. Until then, stay clear of archery. Are you any good at trapping?"

"I know a few basic snares," I mutter.

"That may be significant in terms of food," says Kano. "And Kylin, he's right, never underestimate strength in the arena. Very often, physical power tilts the advantage to a player. In the Training Center, they will have weights, but don't reveal how much you can lift in front of the other tributes. The plan's the same for both of you. You go to group training. Spend the time trying to learn something you don't know. Throw a spear. Swing a mace. Learn to tie a decent knot. Save showing what you're best at until your private sessions. Are we clear?" says Kano. Kylin and I nod.

"One last thing. In public, I want you by each other's side every minute," says Kano. We both start to object, but Kano slams his hand on the table.

"Every minute! It's not open for discussion! You agreed to do as I said! You will be together, you will appear amiable to each other. Now get out. Meet Mileena at the elevator at ten for training." I bite my lip and stalk back to my room, making sure Kylin can hear the door slam. I sit on the bed, hating Kano, hating Kylin, hating myself for mentioning that day long ago in the rain. It's such a joke! Kylin and I going along pretending to be friends! Talking up each other's strengths, insisting the other take credit for their abilities.

Because, in fact, at some point, we're going to have to knock it off and accept we're bitter adversaries. Which I'd be prepared to do right now if it wasn't for Kano's stupid instruction that we stick together in training. It's my own fault, I guess, for telling him he didn't have to coach us separately. But that didn't mean I wanted to do everything with Kylin. Who, by the way, clearly doesn't want to be partnering up with me, either.

I hear Kylin's voice in my head. She has no idea. The effect she can have. Obviously meant to demean me.

Right? But a tiny part of me wonders if this was a compliment. That he meant I was appealing in some way. It's weird, how much he's noticed me. Like the attention he's paid to my hunting. And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either. The flour. The wrestling. I have kept track of the boy with the bread.

It's almost ten. I clean my teeth and smooth back my hair again. Anger temporarily blocked out my nervousness about meeting the other tributes, but now I can feel my anxiety rising again. By the time I meet Mileena and Kylin at the elevator, I catch myself biting my nails. I stop at once.

The actual training rooms are below ground level of our building. With these elevators, the ride is less than a minute. The doors open into an enormous gymnasium filled with various weapons and obstacle courses. Although it's not yet ten, we're the last ones to arrive. The other tributes are gathered in a tense circle. They each have a cloth square with their district number on it pinned to their shirts. While someone pins the number 2 on my back, I do a quick assessment. Kylin and I are the only two dressed alike.

As soon as we join the circle, the head trainer, a tall, athletic woman named Atala steps up and begins to explain the training schedule. Experts in each skill will remain at their stations. We will be free to travel from area to area as we choose, per our mentor's instructions. Some of the stations teach survival skills, others fighting techniques. We are forbidden to engage in any combative exercise with another tribute. There are assistants on hand if we want to practice with a partner.

When Atala begins to read down the list of the skill stations, my eyes can't help flitting around to the other tributes. It's the first time we've been assembled, on level ground, in our special clothes. My heart sinks. Almost all of the boys and at least half of the girls are bigger than I am, even though many of the tributes have never been fed properly. You can see it in their bones, their skin, the hollow look in their eyes. I may be smaller naturally, but overall my family's resourcefulness has given me an edge in that area. I stand straight, and while I'm thin, I'm strong. With a rather large myscle mass compared to other young tributes. The meat and plants from the woods combined with the exertion it took to get them have given me a healthier body than most of those I see around me. The exceptions are the kids from the wealthier districts, the volunteers, the ones who have been fed and trained throughout their lives for this moment.

The tributes from 1, 4, and 6 traditionally have this look about them. It's technically against the rules to train tributes before they reach the Capitol but it happens every year. In District 6, we call them the Career Tributes, or just the Careers. And like as not, the winner will be one of them.

The slight advantage I held coming into the Training Center, my sparkly entrance last night, seems to vanish in the presence of my competition. The other tributes were jealous of us, but not because we were amazing, because our stylists were. Now I see nothing but contempt in the glances of the Career Tributes. Each must have fifty to a hundred pounds on me. They project arrogance and brutality. When Atala releases us, they head straight for the deadliest-looking weapons in the gym and handle them with ease.

I'm thinking that it's lucky I'm a fast runner when Kylin nudges my arm and I jump. He is still beside me, per Kano's instructions. His expression is sober. "Where would you like to start?" I look around at the Career Tributes who are showing off, clearly trying to intimidate the field. Then at the others, the underfed, the incompetent, shakily having their first lessons with a knife or an ax.

"Suppose we tie some knots," I say.

"Right you are," says Kylin. We cross to an empty station where the trainer seems pleased to have students. You get the feeling that the knot-tying class is not the Hunger Games hot spot. When he realizes I know something about snares, he shows us a simple, excellent trap that will leave a human competitor dangling by a leg from a tree. We concentrate on this one skill for an hour until both of us have mastered it. Then we move on to camouflage. Kylin genuinely seems to enjoy this station, swirling a combination of mud and clay and berry juices around on his pale skin, weaving disguises from vines and leaves. The trainer who runs the camouflage station is full of enthusiasm at his work.

"I do the cakes," he admits to me.

"The cakes?" I ask. I've been preoccupied with watching the boy from District 3 send a spear through a dummy's heart from fifteen yards. "What cakes?"

"At home. The iced ones, for the bakery," he says.

He means the ones they play in the windows. Fancy cakes with flowers and pretty things painted in frosting. They're for birthdays and New Year's Day. When we're in the square, Khal always drags me over to admire them, although we'd never be able to afford one. There's little enough beauty in District 2, though, so I can hardly deny her this.

I look more critically at the design on Kylin's arm. The alternating pattern of light and dark suggests sunlight falling through the leaves in the woods. I wonder how he knows this, since I doubt he's ever been beyond the fence. Has he been able to pick this up from just that scraggly old apple tree in his backyard? Somehow the whole thing — his skill, those inaccessible cakes, the praise of the camouflage expert — annoys me. I have talents, but those talents I must hide.

"It's lovely. If only you could frost someone to death,"I say.

"Don't be so superior. You can never tell what you'll find in the arena. Say it's actually a gigantic cake —" begins Kylin.

"Say we move on," I break in.

So the next three days pass with Kylin and I going quietly from station to station. We do pick up some valuable skills, from starting fires, to knife throwing, to making shelter. Despite Kano's order to appear mediocre, Kylin excels in hand-to-hand combat, and I sweep the edible plants test without blinking an eye.

We steer clear of archery and lifting though, wanting to save those for our private sessions. However, I consult Kano about

The Gamemakers appeared early on the first day.

Twenty or so men and women dressed in robes. They sit in the elevated stands that surround the gymnasium, sometimes wandering about to watch us, jotting down notes, other times eating at the endless banquet that has been set for them, ignoring the lot of us. But they do seem to be keeping their eye on the District 2 tributes. Several times I've looked up to find one fixated on me. They consult with the trainers during our meals as well. We see them all gathered together when we come back.

Breakfast and dinner are served on our floor, but at lunch the twenty-four of us eat in a dining room off the gymnasium. Food is arranged on carts around the room and you serve yourself. The Career Tributes tend to gather rowdily around one table, as if to prove their superiority, that they have no fear of one another and consider the rest of us beneath notice.

Most of the other tributes sit alone, like lost sheep. No one says a word to us. Kylin and I eat together, and since Kano keeps dogging us about it, try to keep up a friendly conversation during the meals.

It's not easy to find a topic. Talking of home is painful. Talking of the present unbearable. One day, Kylin empties our breadbasket and points out how they have been careful to include types from the districts along with the refined bread of the Capitol.

The fish-shaped loaf tinted green with seaweed from District 4. The crescent moon roll dotted with seeds from District 11. Somehow, although it's made from the same stuff, it looks a lot more appetizing than the ugly drop biscuits that are the standard fare at home.

"And there you have it," says Kylin, scooping the breads back in the basket.

"You certainly know a lot," I say.

"Only about bread," he says. "Okay, now laugh as if I've said something funny."

We both give a somewhat convincing laugh and ignore the stares from around the room.

"All right, I'll keep smiling pleasantly and you talk,"says Kylin. It's wearing us both out, Kano's direction to be friendly. Because ever since I slammed my door, there's been a chill in the air between us.

But we have our orders.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I was chased by a bear?" I ask.

"No, but it sounds fascinating," says Kylin.

I try and animate my face as I recall the event, a true story, in which I'd foolishly challenged a black bear over the rights to a beehive. Kylin laughs and asks questions right on cue. He's much better at this than I am.

On the second day, while we're taking a shot at spear throwing, he whispers to me. "I think we have a shadow."

I throw my spear, which I'm not too bad at actually, if I don't have to throw too far, and see the black girl from District 1 standing back a bit, watching us.

She's the twenty-year-old, the one who reminded me so of Khal, however, the black and grown-up version. She held two golden Kobu Jutsu Tonfas. She stared at us with a certain look in her eyes. I pick up another spear while Kylin throws. "I think her name's Tawna," he says softly.

"What can we do about it?" I ask him, more harshly than I intended.

"Nothing to do," he says back. "Just making conversation."

Now that I know she's there, it's hard to ignore her. She slips up and joins us at different stations.

Like me, she's clever with plants, climbs swiftly, and has good aim. She can hit the target every time with her golden tonfas. She can also use them in hand to hand combat. A boss in my eyes.

Back on the District 2 floor, Kano and Mileena grill us throughout breakfast and dinner about every moment of the day. What we did, who watched us, how the other tributes size up. Cinna and Portia aren't around, so there's no one to add any sanity to the meals. Not that Kano and Mileena are fighting anymore. Instead they seem to be of one mind, determined to whip us into shape. Full of endless directions about what we should do and not do in training. Kylin is more patient, but I become fed up and surly.

When we finally escape to bed on the second night, Kylin mumbles, "Someone ought to get Kano a drink."

I make a sound that is somewhere between a snort and a laugh. Then catch myself. It's messing with my mind too much, trying to keep straight when we're supposedly friends and when we're not. At least when we get into the arena, I'll know where we stand.

"Don't. Don't let's pretend when there's no one around."

"All right, Takeda," he says tiredly. After that, we only talk in front of people.

On the third day of training, they start to call us out of lunch for our private sessions with the Gamemakers. District by district, first the boy, then the girl tribute. As usual, District 1 is slated to go last. We linger in the dining room, unsure where else to go. No one comes back once they have left. As the room empties, the pressure to appear friendly lightens. By the time there is only Tawna and Jade, we are left alone.

We sit in silence until they summon Kylin. He rises.

"Remember what Kano said about being sure to throw the weights." The words come out of my mouth without permission.

"Thanks. I will," he says. "You ... shoot straight." I nod. I don't know why I said anything at all.

Although if I'm going to lose, I'd rather Kylin win than the others. Better for our district, for my mother and Khal.

After about fifteen minutes, they call my name. I smooth my hair, set my shoulders back, and walk into the gymnasium. Instantly, I know I'm in trouble.

They've been here too long, the Gamemakers. Sat through twenty-one other demonstrations. Had too much to wine, most of them. Want more than anything to go home.

There's nothing I can do but continue with the plan. I walk to the archery station. Oh, the weapons! I've been itching to get my hands on them for days! Bows made of wood and plastic and metal and materials I can't even name. Arrows with feathers cut in flawless uniform lines. I choose a bow, string it, and sling the matching quiver of arrows over my shoulder. There's a shooting range, but it's much too limited. Standard bull's-eyes and human silhouettes. I walk to the center of the gymnasium and pick my first target. The dummy used for knife practice. Even as I pull back on the bow I know something is wrong. The string's tighter than the one I use at home. The arrow's more rigid. I miss the dummy by a couple of inches and lose what little attention I had been commanding. For a moment, I'm humiliated, then I head back to the bull's-eye. I shoot again and again until I get the feel of these new weapons.

Back in the center of the gymnasium, I take my initial position and skewer the dummy right through the heart. Then I sever the rope that holds the sandbag for boxing, and the bag splits open as it slams to the ground. Without pausing, I shoulder-roll forward, come up on one knee, and send an arrow into one of the hanging lights high above the gymnasium floor. A shower of sparks bursts from the fixture.

It's excellent shooting. I turn to the Gamemakers. A few are nodding approval, but the majority of them are fixated on a roast pig that has just arrived at their banquet table.

Suddenly I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don't even have the decency to pay attention to me. That I'm being upstaged by a dead pig. Ooh, this'll be fun. I pull an arrow from my quiver and send it straight at the Gamemakers' table. I hear shouts of alarm as people stumble back. The arrow skewers the apple in the pig's mouth and pins it to the wall behind it. Everyone stares at me in disbelief.

"Thank you for your consideration," I say. Then I give a slight bow and walk straight toward the exit without being dismissed.

Chapter Eight

As I stride toward the elevator, I fling my bow to one side and my quiver to the other. I brush past the gaping Avoxes who guard the elevators and hit the number twelve button with my fist. The doors slide together and I zip upward. I can hear the others calling me from the sitting room, but I fly down the hall into my room, bolt the door, and fling myself onto my bed. Now I'm annoyed.

Now I've done it. Now I've ruined everything. If I'd stood even a ghost of chance, it vanished when I sent that arrow flying at the Gamemakers. What will they do to me now? Arrest me? Execute me? Cut my tongue and turn me into an Avox so I can wait on the future tributes of Panem? What was I thinking, shooting at the Gamemakers? Of course, I wasn't, I was shooting at that apple because I was so angry at being ignored. I wasn't trying to kill one of them. If I were, they'd be dead!

Oh, what does it matter? It's not like I was going to win the Games anyway. Who cares what they do to me? What really scares me is what they might do to my mother and Khal, how my family might suffer now because of my impulsiveness. Will they take their few belongings, or send my mother to prison and Khal to the community home, or kill them? They wouldn't kill them, would they? Why not? What do they care?

I should have stayed and apologized. Or laughed, like it was a big joke. Then maybe I would have found some leniency. But instead I stalked out of the place in the most disrespectful manner possible.

Kano and Mileena are knocking on my door. I shout for them to go away and eventually they do. It takes at least an hour for me to sulk myself out. Then I just lay curled up on the bed, stroking the silken sheets, watching the sun set over the artificial candy Capitol.

At first, I expect guards to come for me. But as time passes, it seems less likely. I calm down. They still need a girl tribute from District 2, don't they? If the Gamemakers want to punish me, they can do it publicly. Wait until I'm in the arena and sic starving wild animals on me. You can bet they'll make sure I don't have a bow and arrow to defend myself.

Before that though, they'll give me a score so low, no one in their right mind would sponsor me. That's what will happen tonight. Since the training isn't open to viewers, the Gamemakers announce a score for each player, and a rank. It gives the audience a starting place for the betting that will continue throughout the Games. The numbers, which is between one and twenty four, one being irredeemably bad and twenty-four being unattainably high, signifies the promise of the tribute. The ranks show what chances against other tributes they have.

The mark is not a guarantee of which person will win.

It's only an indication of the potential a tribute showed in training. Often, because of the variables in the actual arena, high-scoring tributes go down almost immediately. And a few years ago, the boy who won the Games only received a three. Still, the scores can help or hurt an individual tribute in terms of sponsorship. I had been hoping my shooting skills might get me a six or a seven, even if I'm not particularly powerful. Now I'm sure I'll have the lowest score of the twenty-four. If no one sponsors me, my odds of staying alive decrease to almost zero.

When Mileena taps on the door to call me to dinner, I decide I may as well go. The scores will be televised tonight. It's not like I can hide what happened forever. Once again, I simply pull on a jockstrap and head out.

Everyone's waiting at the table, even Cinna and Portia. I wish the stylists hadn't shown up because for some reason, I don't like the idea of disappointing them. It's as if I've thrown away all the good work they did on the opening ceremonies without a thought. I avoid looking at anyone as I take tiny spoonfuls of fish soup.

The adults begin some chitchat about the weather forecast, and I let my eyes meet Kylin's. He raises his eyebrows. A question. What happened? I just give my head a small shake. Then, as they're serving the main course, I hear Kano say, "Okay, enough small talk, just how bad were you today?"

Kylin jumps in. "I don't know that it mattered. By the time I showed up, no one even bothered to look at me. They were singing some kind of drinking song, I think. So, I threw around some heavy objects until they told me I could go."

That makes me feel a bit better. It's not like Kylin attacked the Gamemakers, but at least he was provoked, too.

"And you, babe?" says Kano.

Somehow Kano calling me babe ticks me off enough that I'm at least able to speak. "I shot an arrow at the Gamemakers."

Everyone stops eating. "You what?" The horror in Mileena's voice confirms my worse suspicions.

"I shot an arrow at them. Not exactly at them. In their direction. It's like Kylin said, I was shooting and they were ignoring me and I just ... I just lost my head, so I shot an apple out of their stupid roast pig's mouth!" I say defiantly.

"And what did they say?" says Cinna carefully.

"Nothing. Or I don't know. I walked out after that," I say.

"Without being dismissed?" gasps Mileena.

"I dismissed myself," I said. I remember how I promised Khal that I really would try to win and I feel like a ton of coal has dropped on me.

"Well, that's that," says Kano. Then he butters a roll.

"Do you think they'll arrest me?" I ask.

"Doubt it. Be a pain to replace you at this stage,"says Kano.

"What about my family?" I say. "Will they punish them?"

"Don't think so. Wouldn't make much sense. See they'd have to reveal what happened in the Training Center for it to have any worthwhile effect on the population. People would need to know what you did. But they can't since it's secret, so it'd be a waste of effort," says Kano. "More likely they'll make your life hell in the arena."

"Well, they've already promised to do that to us any way," says Kylin.

"Very true," says Kano. And I realize the impossible has happened. They have actually cheered me up. Kano picks up a pork chop with his fingers, which makes Mileena frown, and dunks it in his wine. He rips off a hunk of meat and starts to chuckle."What were their faces like?" I can feel the edges of my mouth tilting up. "Shocked. Terrified. Uh, ridiculous, some of them." An image pops into my mind. "One man tripped backward into a bowl of punch."

Kano guffaws and we all start laughing except Mileena, although even she is suppressing a smile. "Well, it serves them right. It's their job to pay attention to you. And just because you come from District Two is no excuse to ignore you." Then her eyes dart around as if she's said something totally outrageous."I'm sorry, but that's what I think," she says to no one in particular.

"I'll get a very bad score," I say. "Probably 20 in rank, and that's if I'm lucky."

"Scores only matter if they're very good, no one pays much attention to the bad or mediocre ones. For all they know, you could be hiding your talents to get a low score on purpose. People use that strategy," said Portia.

"I hope that's how people interpret the four I'll probably get," says Kylin. "If that. Really, is anything less impressive than watching a person pick up a heavy ball and throw it a couple of yards. One almost landed on my foot."

I grin at him and realize that I'm starving. I cut off a piece of pork, dunk it in mashed potatoes, and start eating. It's okay. My family is safe. And if they are safe, no real harm has been done.

After dinner, we go to sitting room to watch the scores announced on television. First they show a photo of the tribute, then flash their score and rank below it. The Career Tributes naturally get in the eight-to-ten range. Most of the other players average a seventeen. Surprisingly, Tanya comes up with a eighteen, and an 11 in rank. I don't know what she showed the judges, but she's so tiny it must have been impressive.

District 2 comes up, as usual. Kylin pulls an eighteen and a 7, so at least a couple of the Gamemakers must have been watching him. I dig my fingernails into my palms as my face comes up, expecting the worst.

Then they're flashing the number twenty-one on the screen.

And a 5!

Mileena lets out a squeal, and everybody is slapping me on the back and cheering and congratulating me. But it doesn't seem real.

"There must be a mistake. How ... how could that happen?" I ask Kano.

"Guess they liked your temper," he says. "They've got a show to put on. They need some players with some heat."

"Takeda, the boy who is now on fire," says Cinna and gives me a hug. "Oh, wait until you see your interview dress." "More lights?" I ask. "Of a sort," he says mischievously.

Kylin and I congratulate each other, another awkward moment. We've both done well, but what does that mean for the other? I escape to my room as quickly as possible and burrow down under the covers. The stress of the day, particularly the sulking, has worn me out. I drift off, reprieved, relieved, and with the number twenty-one still flashing behind my eyelids.

At dawn, I lie in bed for a while, watching the sun come up on a beautiful morning. It's Sunday. A day off at home. I wonder if Jin is in the woods yet.

Usually we devote all of Sunday to stocking up for the week. Rising early, hunting and gathering, then trading at the Hob. I think of Jin without me. Both of us can hunt alone, but we're better as a pair.

Particularly if we're trying for bigger game. But also in the littler things, having a partner lightened the load, could even make the arduous task of filling my family's table enjoyable.

Being out in the woods with Jin ... sometimes I was actually happy.

I call him my friend, but in the last year it's seemed too casual a word for what Jin is to me. A pang of longing shoots through my chest. If only he was with me now! But, of course, I don't want that. I don't want him in the arena where he'd be dead in a few days. I just ... I just miss him. And I hate being so alone.

Does he miss me? He must.

I think of the twenty-one flashing under my name last night. I know exactly what he'd say to me. "Well, there's some room for improvement there." And then he'd give me a smile and I'd return it without hesitating now.

I can't help comparing what I have with Jin to what I'm pretending to have with Kylin. How I never question Jin's motives while I do nothing but doubt the latter's. It's not a fair comparison really. Jin and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive.

Kylin and I know the other's survival means our own death. How do you sidestep that?

Mileena's knocking at the door, reminding me there's another "big, big, big day!" ahead. Tomorrow night will be our televised interviews. I guess the whole team will have their hands full readying us for that.

I get up and take a quick shower, being a bit more careful about the buttons I hit, and head down to the dining room. Kylin, Mileena, and Kano are huddled around the table talking in hushed voices. That seems odd, but hunger wins out over curiosity and I load up my plate with breakfast before I join them.

The stew's made with tender chunks of lamb and dried plums today. Perfect on the bed of wild rice. I've shoveled about halfway through the mound when I realize no one's talking. I take a big gulp of orange juice and wipe my mouth. "So, what's going on?

You're coaching us on interviews today, right?"

"That's right," says Kano.

"You don't have to wait until I'm done. I can listen and cat at the same time," I say.

"Well, there's been a change of plans. About our current approach," says Kano.

"What's that?" I ask. I'm not sure what our current approach is. Trying to appear mediocre in front of the other tributes is the last bit of strategy I remember.

Kano shrugs. "Kylin has asked to be coached separately."

Chapter Nine

Betrayal. That's the first thing I feel, which is ludicrous. For there to be betrayal, there would have had to been trust first. Between Kylin and me. And trust has not been part of the agreement. We're tributes. But the boy who risked a beating to give me bread, the one who steadied me in the chariot, who covered for me with the redheaded Avox girl, who insisted Kano know my hunting skills ... was there some part of me that couldn't help trusting him?

On the other hand, I'm relieved that we can stop the pretense of being friends. Obviously, whatever thin connection we'd foolishly formed has been severed.

And high time, too. The Games begin in two days, and trust will only be a weakness. Whatever triggered Kylin's decision — and I suspect it had to do with my outperforming him in training — I should be nothing but grateful for it. Maybe he's finally accepted the fact that the sooner we openly acknowledge that we are enemies, the better.

"Good," I say. "So what's the schedule?"

"You'll each have four hours with Mileena for presentation and four with me for content," says Kano. "You start with Mileena, Takeda." I can't imagine what Mileena will have to teach me that could take four hours, but she's got me working down to the last minute. We go to my rooms and she puts me in a big flamboyantly gold suit gown and high-heeled shoes, not the ones I'll he wearing for the actual interview, and instructs me on walking. The shoes are the worst part. I've never worn shoes with heels and can't get used to essentially wobbling around on the balls of my feet. It makes no sense how Capitol guys can do it.

But Mileena runs around in them full-time, and I'm determined that if she can do it, so can I. When I finally conquer walking, there's still sitting, posture — apparently I have a tendency to duck my head — eye contact, hand gestures, and smiling. Smiling is mostly about smiling more. Mileena makes me say a hundred banal phrases starting with a smile, while smiling, or ending with a smile. By lunch, the muscles in my cheeks are twitching from overuse.

"Well, that's the best I can do," Mileena says with a sigh. "Just remember, Takeda, you want the audience to like you."

"And you don't think they will?" I ask.

"Not if you glare at them the entire time. Why don't you save that for the arena? Instead, think of yourself among friends," says Mileena.

"They're betting on how long I'll live!" I burst out."They're not my friends!"

"Well, try and pretend!" snaps Mileena. Then she composes herself and beams at me. "See, like this. I'm smiling at you even though you're aggravating me."

"Yes, it feels very convincing," I say. "I'm going to eat." 1 kick off my heels and stomp down to the dining room.

Kylin and Kano seem in pretty good moods, so I'm thinking the content session should be an improvement over the morning. I couldn't be more wrong. After lunch, Kano takes me into the sitting room, directs me to the couch, and then just frowns at me for a while.

"What?" I finally ask.

"I'm trying to figure out what to do with you," he says."How we're going to present you. Are you going to be charming? Aloof? Fierce? So far, you're shining like a star. You volunteered to save your sister. Cinna made you look unforgettable. You've got the top training score. People are intrigued, but no one knows who you are. The impression you make tomorrow will decide exactly what I can get you in terms of sponsors," says Kano.

Having watched the tribute interviews all my life, I know there's truth to what he's saying. If you appeal to the crowd, either by being humorous or brutal or eccentric, you gain favor.

"What's Kylin's approach? Or am I not allowed to ask? Oh, and are my whips ready?" I say.

"Likable. He has a sort of self-deprecating humor naturally," says Kano. "Whereas when you open your mouth, you come across more as sullen and hostile." He thinks a second. "Bladed whips, yeah? They're comin' in."

"I do not!" I say.

"Please. I don't know where you pulled that cheery, wavy fool on the chariot from, but I haven't seen him before or since," says Kano.

"And you've given me so many reasons to be cheery," I counter.

"But you don't have to please me. I'm not going to sponsor you. So pretend I'm the audience," says Kano. "Delight me."

"Fine!" I snarl. Kano takes the role of the interviewer and I try to answer his questions in a winning fashion. But I can't. I'm too angry with Kano for what he said and that I even have to answer the questions. All I can think is how unjust the whole thing is, the Hunger Games. Why am I hopping around like some trained dog trying to please people I hate? The longer the interview goes on, the more my fury seems to rise to the surface, until I'm literally spitting out answers at him.

"All right, enough," he says. "We've got to find another angle. Not only are you hostile, I don't know anything about you. I've asked you fifty questions and still have no sense of your life, your family, what you care about. They want to know about you, Takeda."

"But I don't want them to! They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!" I say.

"Then lie! Make something up!" says Kano.

"I'm not good at lying," I say.

"Well, you better learn fast. You've got about as much charm as a dead slug," says Kano.

Kano must know he's been too harsh because his voice softens. "Here's an idea. Try acting humble."

"Humble," I echo.

"That you can't believe a little boy from District Two has done this well. The whole thing's been more than you ever could have dreamed of. Talk about Cinna's clothes. How nice the people are. How the city amazes you. If you won't talk about yourself, at least compliment the audience. Just keep turning it back around, all right. Gush."

The next hours are agonizing. At once, it's clear I cannot gush. We try me playing cocky, but I just don't have the arrogance. Apparently, I'm too "vulnerable" for ferocity. I'm not witty. Funny. Sexy, though I'd give a few a run for their money. Or mysterious.

By the end of the session, I am no one at all.

Kano started drinking somewhere around witty, and a nasty edge has crept into his voice. "I give up, babe. Just answer the questions and try not to let the audience see how openly you despise them." I have dinner that night in my room, ordering an outrageous number of delicacies, eating myself sick, and then taking out my anger at Kano, at the Hunger Games, at every living being in the Capitol by smashing dishes around my room. When the girl with the red hair comes in to turn down my bed, her eyes widen at the mess. "Just leave it!" I yell at her. "Just leave it alone!"

I hate her, too, with her knowing reproachful eyes that call me a coward, a monster, a puppet of the Capitol, both now and then. For her, justice must finally be happening. At least my death will help pay for the life of the boy in the woods.

But instead of fleeing the room, the girl closes the door behind her and goes to the bathroom. She comes back with a damp cloth and wipes my face gently then cleans the blood from a broken plate off my hands. Why is she doing this? Why am I letting her?

"I should have tried to save you," I whisper.

She shakes her head. Does this mean we were right to stand by? That she has forgiven me?

"No, it was wrong," I say.

She taps her lips with her fingers then points to my chest. I think she means that I would just have ended up an Avox, too. Probably would have. An Avox or dead.

I spend the next hour helping the redheaded girl clean the room. When all the garbage has been dropped down a disposal and the food cleaned away, she turns down my bed. I crawl in between the sheets like a five-year-old and let her tuck me in. Then she goes.

In the morning, it's not the girl but my prep team who are hanging over me. My lessons with Mileena and Kano are over. This day belongs to Cinna. He's my last hope. Maybe he can make me look so wonderful, no one will care what comes out of my mouth.

The team works on me until late afternoon, turning my skin to glowing satin, stenciling patterns on my arms, painting flame designs on my twenty perfect nails. Then Venia goes to work on my hair, spraying gunk and stuff all up in that, putting my fabric back on it. They erase my face with a layer of pale up and draw my features back out. Finally, they cover my entire body in a powder that makes me shimmer in gold dust.

Then Cinna enters with what I assume is my dress up, but I can't really see it because it's covered. "Close your eyes," he orders.

I can feel the silken inside as they slip it down over my naked body, then the weight. It must be forty pounds. I clutch Octavia's hand as I blindly step into my shoes, glad to find they are at least two inches lower than the pair Mileena had me practice in. There's some adjusting and fidgeting. Then silence.

"Can I open my eyes?" I ask.

"Yes," says Cinna. "Open them."

The creature standing before me in the full-length mirror has come from another world. Where skin shimmers and eyes flash and apparently they make their clothes from jewels. Because my suit, oh, my suit is entirely covered in reflective precious gems, red and yellow and white with bits of blue that accent the tips of the flame design. The slightest movement gives the impression I am engulfed in tongues of fire.

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.

For a while, we all just stare at me. "Oh, Cinna," I finally whisper. "Thank you."

"Turn for me," he says. I hold out my arms and spin in a circle. The prep team screams in admiration.

Cinna dismisses the team and has me move around in the dress and shoes, which are infinitely more manageable than Mileena's.

"So, all ready for the interview then?" asks Cinna. I can see by his expression that he's been talking to Kano. That he knows how dreadful I am.

"I'm awful. Kano called me a dead slug. No matter what we tried, I couldn't do it. I just can't be one of those people he wants me to be," I say.

Cinna thinks about this a moment. "Why don't you just be yourself?"

"Myself? That's no good, either. Kano says I'm sullen and hostile," I say.

"Well, you are ... around Kano," says Cinna with a grin. "I don't find you so. The prep team adores you. You even won over the Gamemakers. And as for the citizens of the Capitol, well, they can't stop talking about you. No one can help but admire your spirit." My spirit. This is a new thought. I'm not sure exactly what it means, but it suggests I'm a fighter. In a sort of brave way. It's not as if I'm never friendly. Okay, maybe I don't go around loving everybody I meet, maybe my smiles are hard to come by, but I do care for some people.

Cinna takes my icy hands in his warm ones. "Suppose, when you answer the questions, you think you're addressing a friend back home. Who would your best friend be?" asks Cinna.

"Jin," I say instantly. "Only it doesn't make sense, Cinna. I would never be telling Jin those things about me. He already knows them."

"What about me? Could you think of me as a friend?" asks Cinna.

Of all the people I've met since I left home, Cinna is by far my favorite. I liked him right off and he hasn't disappointed me yet. "I think so, but —"

"I'll be sitting on the main platform with the other stylists. You'll be able to look right at me. When you're asked a question, find me, and answer it as honestly as possible," says Cinna.

"Even if what I think is horrible?" I ask. Because it might be, really.

"Especially if what you think is horrible," says Cinna."You'll try it?"

I nod. It's a plan. Or at least a straw to grasp at.

Too soon it's time to go. The interviews take place on a stage constructed in front of the Training Center.

Once I leave my room, it will be only minutes until I'm in front of the crowd, the cameras, all of Panem.

As Cinna turns the doorknob, I stop his hand. "Cinna..." I'm completely overcome with stage fright.

"Remember, they already love you," he says gently. "Just be yourself."

We meet up with the rest of the District 2 crowd at the elevator. Portia and her gang have been hard at work. Kylin looks striking in a black suit. While we look well together, it's a relief not to be dressed identically. Kano and Mileena are all fancied up for the occasion. I avoid Kano, but accept Mileena's compliments. Mileena can be tiresome and clueless, but she's not destructive like Kano.

When the elevator opens, the other tributes are being lined up to take the stage. All twenty-four of us sit in a big arc throughout the interviews. I'll be last, or second to last since the girl tribute precedes the boy from each district. How I wish I could be first and get the whole thing out of the way! Now I'll have to listen to how witty, funny, humble, fierce, and charming everybody else is before I go up. Plus, the audience will start to get bored, just as the Gamemakers did.

And I can't exactly shoot an arrow into the crowd to get their attention.

Right before we parade onto the stage, Kano comes up behind Kylin and me and growls, "Remember, you're still a happy pair. So act like it." What? I thought we abandoned that when Kylin asked for separate coaching. But I guess that was a private, not a public thing. Anyway, there's not much chance for interaction now, as we walk single-file to our seats and take our places.

Just stepping on the stage makes my breathing rapid and shallow. I can feel my pulse pounding in my temples. It's a relief to get to my chair, because between the heels and my legs shaking, I'm afraid I'll trip. Although evening is falling, the City Circle is brighter than a summer's day. An elevated seating unit has been set up for prestigious guests, with the stylists commanding the front row. The cameras will turn to them when the crowd is reacting to their handiwork. A large balcony off a building to the right has been reserved for the Gamemakers. Television crews have claimed most of the other balconies. But the City Circle and the avenues that feed into it are completely packed with people. Standing room only.

At homes and community halls around the country, every television set is turned on. Every citizen of Panem is tuned in. There will be no blackouts tonight.

John Carlton, or Johnny Cage, the man who has hosted the interviews for more than forty years, and thankfully, our mayor, bounces onto the stage. It's a little scary because his appearance has been virtually unchanged during all that time. Same face under a coating of pure white up. Same hairstyle that he dyes a different color for each Hunger Games. Same ceremonial suit. They do surgery in the Capitol, to make people appear younger and thinner. In District 2, looking old is something of an achievement since so many people die early. You see an elderly person you want to congratulate them on their longevity, ask the secret of survival. A plump person is envied because they aren't scraping by like the majority of us. But here it is different. Wrinkles aren't desirable. A round belly isn't a sign of success.

This year, Johnny's hair is white and his eyelids and lips are coated in the same hue. He looks freakish but less frightening than he did last year when his color was crimson and he seemed to be bleeding. Johnny tells a few jokes to warm up the audience but then gets down to business.

The girl tribute from District 1, Jade, looking provocative in a see-through green gown, steps up the center of the stage to join Johnny for her interview. You can tell her mentor didn't have any trouble coming up with an angle for her. With that flowing brown hair, emerald green eyes, her body tall and lush ... she's sexy all the way.

Each interview only lasts three minutes. Then a buzzer goes off and the next tribute is up. I'll say this for Johnny, he really does his best to make the tributes shine. He's friendly, tries to set the nervous ones at ease, laughs at me jokes, and can turn a weak response into a memorable one by the way he reacts.

I sit like a lady, the way Mileena showed me, as the districts slip by. 12, 11, 10. Everyone seems to be playing up some angle. The monstrous boy from District 2, Raiden, is a ruthless killing machine. The fox-faced girl from District 10, Kira, sly and elusive. I spotted Cinna as soon as he took his place, but even his presence cannot relax me. 9, 8, 7, 6. Then the Kytiin come up.

Now, the Kytiin aren't human, just humanoid, but they owned their own District when the rebellions happened. They helped the others survive, so the must do the Games too. However, lots of them win, mainly because they are essentially a collection of bugs, so they know nature, plus, their blood is slightly toxic. Godmodded.

My palms are sweating like crazy, but the jeweled suit isn't absorbent and they skid right of if I try to dry them.

D'Vorah, the first Kytiin, who is dressed in a gossamer gown complete with wings, flutters her way to Johnny. A hush falls over the crowd at the sight of this magical wisp of a tribute. Johnny's very sweet with her, complimenting her nineteen in training, an excellent score for one so small. When he asks her what her greatest strength in the arena will be, she doesn't hesitate. "I can feast on other tributes to maintain health," she says. "My children can go inside. Burrow deep. Inside them they will grow. Knaw their innards. It will be easy to win. So never think I am not to win."

"I wouldn't in a million years," says Johnny encouragingly.

They bring out Skarlet from District Three, who is a small, unspoken girl. Rumors are she can control blood, and can turn into the stuff, as well as power herself with others'. If so, she will be a badass. She scored eighteen in score, and 9 in rank.

The boy tribute from District 3, Reiko, has the same light skin as Skarlet, but the resemblance stops there. He's one of the giants, probably six and a half feet tall and built like an ox, but I noticed he rejected the invitations from the Career Tributes to join their crowd. Instead he's been very solitary, speaking to no one, showing little interest in training. Even so, he scored a twenty and a 3 and it's not hard to imagine he impressed the Gamemakers. He ignores Johnny's attempts at banter and answers with a yes or no or just remains silent. He wears nothing but a loincloth, showing off his muscles and abs, and he looks really fit for his age of 43.

If only I was his size, I could get away with sullen and hostile and it would be just fine! I bet half the sponsors are at least considering him. If I had any money, I'd bet on him myself.

And then they're calling Takeda Takahashi, and I feel myself, as if in a dream, standing and making my way center stage. I shake Johnny's outstretched hand, and he has the good grace not to immediately wipe his off on his suit.

"So, Takeda, the Capitol must be quite a change from District Two. What's impressed you most since you arrived here?" asks Johnny.

What? What did he say? It's as if the words make no sense.

My mouth has gone as dry as sawdust. I desperately find Cinna in the crowd and lock eyes with him. I imagine the words coming from his lips. "What's impressed you most since you arrived here?" I rack my brain for something that made me happy here. Be honest, I think. Be honest.

"The lamb stew," I get out.

Johnny laughs, and vaguely I realize some of the audience has joined in.

"The one with the dried plums?" asks Johnny. I nod.

"Oh, I eat it by the bucketful." He turns sideways to the audience in horror, hand on his stomach. "It doesn't show, does it?" They shout reassurances to him and applaud. This is what I mean about Johnny.

He tries to help you out.

"Now, Takeda," he says confidentially, "When you me out in the opening ceremonies, my heart actually stopped. What did you think of that costume?"

Cinna raises one eyebrow at me. Be honest. "You mean after I got over my fear of being burned alive?" I ask.

Big laugh. A real one from the audience.

"Yes. Start then," says Johnny.

Cinna, my friend, I should tell him anyway."I thought Cinna was brilliant and it was the most gorgeous costume I'd ever seen and I couldn't believe I was wearing it. I can't believe I'm wearing this, either." I lift up my jacket to spread it out. "I mean, look at it!" As the audience oohs and ahs, I see Cinna make the tiniest circular motion with his finger. But I know what he's saying. Twirl for me.

I spin in a circle once and the reaction is immediate.

"Oh, do that again!" says Johnny, and so I lift up my arms and spin around and around letting the ribbons hidden in plain sight but blended, ribbons that glow and sparle red, orange, and yellow light fly out, letting them engulf me in flames. The audience breaks into cheers. When I stop, I clutch Johnny's arm.

"Don't stop!" he says.

"I have to, I'm dizzy!" I'm also giggling, which I think I've done maybe never in my lifetime. But the nerves and the spinning have gotten to me.

Johnny wraps a protective arm around me. "Don't worry, I've got you. Can't have you following in your mentor's footsteps."

Everyone's hooting as the cameras find Kano, who is by now famous for his head dive at the reaping, and he waves them away good-naturedly and points back to me.

"It's all right," Johnny reassures the crowd. "She's safe with me. So, how about that training score. Twony-one," he says in an Asian accent, gaining a few laughs from the crowd. "Give us a hint what happened in there." I glance at the Gamemakers on the balcony and bite my lip. "Um ... all I can say, is I think it was a first." The cameras are right on the Gamemakers, who are chuckling and nodding.

"You're killing us," says Johnny as if in actual pain. "Details. Details."

I address the balcony. "I'm not supposed to talk about it, right?"

The Gamemaker who fell in the punch bowl shouts out, "He's not!"

"Thank you," I say. "Sorry. My lips are sealed."

"Let's go back then, to the moment they called your sister's name at the reaping," says Johnny. His mood is quieter now. "And you volunteered. Can you tell us about her?"

No. No, not all of you. But maybe Cinna. I don't think I'm imagining the sadness on his face. "Her name's Khal. She's just twelve. And I love her more than anything."

You could hear a pin drop in the City Circle now.

"What did she say to you? After the reaping?" Johnny asks.

Be honest. Be honest. I swallow hard. "She asked me to try really hard to win." The audience is frozen, hanging on my every word.

"And what did you say?" prompts Johnny gently.

But instead of warmth, I feel an icy rigidity take over my body. My muscles tense as they do before a kill.

When I speak, my voice seems to have dropped an octave. "I swore I would."

"I bet you did," says Johnny, giving me a squeeze. The buzzer goes off. "Sorry we're out of time. Best of luck, Takeda Takahashi, tribute from District Twelve." The applause continues long after I'm seated. I look to Cinna for reassurance. He gives me a subtle thumbs-up.

I'm still in a daze for the first part of Kylin's interview.

He has the audience from the get-go, though; I can hear them laughing, shouting out. He plays up the baker's son thing, comparing the tributes to the breads from their districts. Then has a funny anecdote about the perils of the Capitol showers. "Tell me, do I still smell like roses?" he asks Johnny, and then there's a whole run where they take turns sniffing each other that brings down the house. I'm coming back into focus when Johnny asks him if he has a lover back home.

Kylin hesitates, then gives an unconvincing shake of his head.

"Handsome lad like you. There must be some special girl. Come on, what's her name?" says Johnny.

Kylin sighs. "Well, there is this one... um... person. I've had a crush on them ever since I can remember. But I'm pretty sure he didn't know I was alive until the reaping."

Sounds of sympathy from the crowd. Unrequited love they can relate to. And by the sounds of it, homosexual. Homosexuality was quite rampant in the Capitol, so no one cared. If anything, admitting it got him more points.

"He straight?" asks Johnny.

"I don't know, but a lot of boys like him, same for girls," says Kylin.

"So, here's what you do. You win, you go home. He can't turn you down then, eh?" says Johnny encouragingly.

"I don't think it's going to work out. Winning... won't help in my case," says Kylin.

"Why ever not?" says Johnny, mystified.

Kylin blushes beet red and stammersout. "Because... because... he me here with me."