Glimmer
It's a bit of a tradition here in the Capitol that the Career tributes have breakfast together on the first day of training. Personally I think it is a silly tradition, considering we'll be slaughtering each other in just over a week. We have no choice though, it's clear in the expressions of many of their faces.
Still, I have very little say in this as the Avox pours more water into my cup and a plate of toast and fresh fruit is set in front of me. I eye it for a moment before slowly taking small bites. I need enough to make it through training today but not enough that I become ill. That's the last thing I need right now.
Our mentors have decided not to eat with us, instead choosing to have breakfast after we leave for the day. Now they sit in the living room and speak softly. Personally, I think this is the time they take to place their bets and make wagers on which of us will win.
I wonder if my name ever comes up?
Glimmer, pretty airheaded Glimmer who survives solely on her looks. Not that my own mentor can judge me.
Cashmere won on a technicality her year, selected by a mob of sponsors who choose her over the ugly and scar covered tributes that plagued her arena. The same might be said about her brother, though he is not joining her as a mentor this year. The Victor from last year is learning the trade of mentoring for the 74th annual Hunger Games.
His name is Marvel, winning last year by spearing his last opponent straight through the heart.
The District Two mentors are also mixed up this year. You see, usually it's Enobaria and Brutus, District Two's more popular Victors. However, they've decided to take this year off and let an older Victor, Lyme, do the job. Along with her is the Victor of the 72nd Hunger Games, Cato. He, like Marvel, won the games in a violent and grotesque way. His last kill was drawn out and bloody, before finally ending it in a violent- and literally gut wrenching- finale.
I show no outside reaction to these things, but on the inside my stomach churns.
Enough that I stop eating and instead sip my water quietly.
District Four is a curious case, to me anyway.
There's Finnick Odair, the sex symbol of the Capitol who lounges on the couch with his legs kicked up and his throat exposed as he keeps his head tilted back. Sometimes I think I see bite marks but I'm not entirely sure. Sitting in a Capitol bar like that? He'd have all the sponsors he wanted. Just as well to, considering his fellow mentor is a raving old one who won her games, like, a hundred years ago.
Realizing I am abnormally quiet amongst my allies, I quickly throw my two cents in on who we should kill first.
There is a sudden clarity in this though, one that's always been there but is finally revealing itself fully to me. Which one of them will be the first to realize they don't need the blonde with them? Which of them will become trigger friendly and kill me because they can? It is the Hunger Games after all.
Would it be my own District Partner, Ammolite?
More than likely one of the District Two Careers; Clove or Mace.
Or maybe District Four might just pull it off. The quiet girl or the scrawny boy beside her. They say District Four won't be a Career District much longer. I believe it.
We finish up our breakfast before leaving for the Training Center.
It's watching the backs of the Careers walk away that for the first time in a long time, I drop my fake smile and wonder what it would be like not to be a Career myself.
And maybe, just maybe, I begin to pull away from them.
I never really was a Career was I?