The tricky thing is yesterday we were just children, playing soldiers, just pretending, dreaming dreams with happy endings,
in backyards, winning battles with the wooden swords, but now we've stepped into a cruel world where everybody stands and keeps score.
-Eyes Open Taylor Swift
Chapter 1
I don't want to die.
That thought races through my mind unheeded as the platform raises me up through a tube into the arena. I can't push the thought of possibly dying away, I can't swallow it and forget about it, not like I would with Mama's lobster stew which everyone pretends to love. Just thinking of Mama makes my heart squeeze and I feel my throat tighten as tears build up. But I will not let them fall. I cannot afford to cry.
The platform comes to a stop and I turn my focus outward, blinking several times to adjust my eyes to the shift in light. I ignore the tributes around me and instead focus on the arena. My eyes take in a huge structure of stone encircling us, with archways cut in it all the way around the structure like hundreds of doors. There is no roof. The ground looks like it's made of wood, covered in a light dusting of sand. Tiered rows of seats stretch all the way around, almost like an amphitheater and we're inside it. Almost as if we were in . . . My mind races back to the history lessons at school, the great amount of time we spent learning about North America before it became our country of Panem, but also some other countries we learned about, something else, this structure we're inside has a name . . . And then it hits me: the Colosseum. Surely not the Colosseum. It has to be a replica.
But I can't dwell on this long. I have 60 seconds to plan what I will do once the gong sounds. I dare not run to the silver metal structure in the center, dwarfed by the surrounding Colosseum walls. It is the Cornucopia they said would be there with all the supplies you could ever hope to need for survival inside and around it - but won't everyone be trying to get there? It would be like a suicide mission; once the stronger ones get hold of a weapon, everyone else within range is done for. But I can't just immediately run out of this place, I need to leave with something. I spot a tan colored tarp and a heavy-duty metal bow with a case of arrows resting on top of the tarp to presumably keep it from blowing away. They are the closet things to me. I'm no professional with a bow, but I can make do. I can learn to shoot. I will have to grab those and run. That is, if someone doesn't get to them first.
Next, where do I run to? I don't know what's outside those stone walls. It would be easy enough to dash through an archway, but then what? I glance behind me, careful not to lose my balance. The last thing I want to do is step off my pedestal and be blown to bits by the mines around us. The people back in the training center informed us that the mines were only to ensure the tributes stayed on their pedestals for the length of the countdown, then they were immediately disabled when the gong sounded. What if they were faulty? What if the Capitol was lying and as soon as the gong sounded and we all stepped off, they wouldn't just blow us all up and get it over with? That would be one frightening message to the districts.
Another thought also occurs to me - what if someone were to deliberately step off, commit suicide? It might be better than waiting for your imminent death to come later on in the arena. But would someone actually do that?
As if in answer to my question, an explosion goes off from the other side of the Cornucopia. I don't know if it was an accident or suicide, and I see bits of wood and chunks of something I don't wish to think about fly into the air, only to descend and shower down on the tributes near it. This, in turn, triggers another explosion. I imagine every person cowering on their pedestals and covering their heads and ears, a few probably deaf if they were too close to the explosion. Thank goodness the Cornucopia blocked most of the scene from my view.
My heart pounds wildly in my chest, triple the speed of the countdown. 19, 18, 17 . . .
I don't want to die in this cursed arena.
It strikes me that that thought is unprecedented. Another numbing reminder that I am the first to participate in these Games. One of twenty four of the Capitol's guinea pigs, if you will. I hate the Capitol. Everyone does. That became apparent when the districts lashed out, rebelled against them, and now they are paying for it by witnessing their children fighting each other to the death. A televised event. Sick.
As the countdown strikes 10, 9, 8, I feel like I might lose the meager breakfast of one boiled egg and some cheese that I managed to get down before making the trip in the hovercraft to the arena. And then too soon it comes:
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Dong.