Training in District 2 halted during the games. The instructors reasoned that the students learned more from watching the games than they did from theoretical lessons in strategy and warfare.
Sixteen year old Enobaria wished they continued training as usual, but she spent the afternoon the way everyone expected her to—loafing about in the square, watching the big screen that showed the District 2 tributes tracking other kids through the arena. They seemed to enjoy it.
Enobaria remembered watching the pair in training. While she spent her time avoiding questions about volunteering, they flaunted their intentions and joined the group of wannabe tributes in promising to kill each other. It didn't surprise her to hear them comparing kills during the blood bath and brainstorm ways to kill other tributes.
She knew she could kill any of them if she wanted to, but listening to them turned her stomach. Terrifying dreams plagued her during the nights after the bloodbath. The same dreams that came every year for as long as she could remember. Nightmares no one could ever know about. No one besides little Pawn. Her little sister always woke up with her and cuddled close while Enobaria forced the images out of her mind. Pawn would never tell her secret.
At dinner time, her cluster of friends broke up, promising to meet again the next afternoon.
Enobaria got home at the same time as her father. She considered hiding for a few minutes until he got settled in, but hesitated a moment too long. He saw her and raised his good hand in greeting.
"Hi," she said, a sullen attitude drawing over her like a cloak. She sunk her hands into her pockets and slouched.
"You done any more thinking 'bout volunteering next year?" he asked as she drew nearer.
"I already told you," she mumbled, "I ain't volunteering."
"And I told you that you'd better change your mind."
Enobaria's chest tightened as details from her dreams flashed through her mind. She remembered blood spurting from a slit throat during the first Hunger Games she could remember. She saw tributes going stiff with cold and freezing to death one year and desperately trying to free arms or legs from the teeth of mutts another.
She could tell her father how much the games bothered her, but he wouldn't care. It would waste her time and leave her far more vulnerable than she wished.
"I'm not volunteering, Dad." She turned and headed toward the house.
It didn't surprise her when her Dad's good hand snatched at her shoulder, his fingers digging into her. As soon as she turned her back on him, she'd thought of several ways she could avoid him, break his hold, or turn his action into an advantage. She didn't carry through with any of them.
He spun her around to face him, his eyes smoldering.
"I don't know where this smart mouth came from." He let go of her shoulder to backhand her across the face. "But it better go back where it came from."
Enobaria backed away from him, resisting the urge to drop into the fighting stance so engrained in her muscles.
"Your instructors say you've got talent. That you'd bring the district honor in the arena."
"Or I'd die," she said.
He waved the suggestion away. "In the arena you'd bring the district honor. Here you bring the family shame."
"More kids don't volunteer than do. It's not a big deal."
He jumped forward and slapped her again. His voice shook with anger. "Fine. Next time kids at school make fun of Pawn because her clothes don't fit, that's your fault."
"Don't bring Pawn into this." If her father knew her, he'd recognize the warning in her tone. He would know not to keep pushing. But he didn't know her.
"When your brother cries because there's not enough food, that's your fault."
Enobaria knew the ache of hunger as well as Pawn and Jax. "It's not my fault."
How could he blame her when it was his crippled hand that prevented him from doing a man's work in the quarry? She even managed to work an hour or two every day between school and training at the academy.
"It's your fault because you could win. You're expected to win. And then we'd be rich." He sneered at her. "But you're too much of a coward."
Enobaria doubted her father knew she had moved until he was yelping in pain from the arm she had twisted behind his back. "I am not a coward."
She waited until sweat beaded on his forehead from the pain before shoving him away and stalking to the house.
That night she woke with a stifled cry in her throat. This time it had been her slitting the tributes throat and the vicious mutts had her eyes.