Author's Note: I'm going to try writing both from people's point of views and third person; I'm not sure which one I want to do or if I want to do a mix between the two.
Kurt's POV
"Wake up!" Kenneth jostles me awake.
"What the hell, Ken?!" I yell. I obviously don't care much for being woken up, but I better get used to it. I mean, I could very well be living with Kenneth for a few years. Oh joy.
"The schedule's here!" He waves a piece of paper in front of my face.
"Would you just shut up? If you're gonna talk don't yell in my face!" Wow, I'm a jerk in the morning.
"Both of you shut it!" Brendan says from an armchair across the room. "Well you're awake now; we might as well look at the schedule."
We huddle around the schedule, and Ken reads it aloud:
8:00- Breakfast- Dining Hall
8:30- Combat Skills- Training Area 11
11:30- Brunch- Dining Hall
12:00- Survival Skills- Training Area 11
2:00- Lunch- Dining Hall
2:30- Analyzing- Training Area 11
4:30- Capitol History- History Room
6:30- Dinner- Dining Hall
7:30- Free Time- Lounge Area OR Dormitories- Note: Note: Your district mentor may have an activity scheduled. These are always mandatory to attend. This will take place in your district's training room.
9:30- Rest- Dormitory
On the back is a map, neatly labeled, showing the location of every destination in the academy. Despite the fact that a few of the rooms are shared, most of them are designated only for the use of one district.
Brendan's eyes dart over to the clock on the yellow wall. 7:53. "We'd better get ready."
We slip into our new, Capitol-manufactured attire. I make sure to stuff the schedule into my pocket before leaving the room ; navigating the academy could prove to be a difficult task. Upon opening the door, we encounter Selena, Stacy, and Joan. We exchange pleasantries as we walk down the corridors to breakfast.
We are the last district to arrive to breakfast. An extra place is set at the remaining open table, at which Harris sits. In fact, every mentor is sitting with their tributes.
As I sit down next to him, Harris reprimands us. "You're late," he says while pointing to the clock. 8:07. Under it, the sign has changed to HUNGER GAMES IN 44 DAYS! "Get eating, you'll need your strength. This will be the hardest day of your life." Heeding his words with a twinge of nervousness about what's to come, I dig into my breakfast of ham, bread, and eggs.
After a while of eating, Harris gets up. "Come on, time to get to training room." He waves his hand, beckoning us. We follow him left down the hallway, and then right, until we go through a large, oak door.
A grass-covered field, archery targets, training dummies armed with wooden swords, and too many trees to count unfold before us as we set foot in training room 11. Harris proceeds to edify us with knowledge of each weapon that will be put into the Games, and how to correctly use them. I try my hand at archery, which everyone with the exception of Stacy fails at miserably. We spend the remaining half hour running around and around the grass field, with vulgar insults from Harris flung at whoever is unfortunate enough to fall behind.
"Move, you useless shitbrick!" He yells at Ken. I double over laughing from this, at which point Harris comes over and actually smacks me.
Our first combat training lesson concludes with Harris praising Stacy's archery prowess and Brendan staying steadily far ahead of everyone else during the running portion, and informing us that every day we will push ourselves, especially because the rest of us are awful at everything.
After brunch, we also spend survival skills in the training room. "The basic principle of survival," Harris says to us, "is to be able to outrun whatever is hunting you down." With that, he sends us running again, this time for the whole two hours of the period.
Kenneth is the first to vomit. Less than an hour into it, Ken puts his hands on his knees, bends over, and spews his lunch onto the field. "Wipe that puke off your chin and keep going!" That is probably the least encouraging motivation I have ever heard.
We continue on, and Stacy is the next one to throw up. Then Selena. After her, Ken does it again, which surprises me; I wouldn't think he'd have anything left after the first time. With only fifteen minutes left, I bend over, and the horrible-tasting vomit rushes out up my gullet and onto the ground. I desperately need a drink of water, both to alleviate my thirst and extinguish the awful taste in my mouth, but I keep running. Brendan, being seventeen, and Joan only a year younger, they are the only ones to get through successfully, despite that they are extremely tired.
We arrive late to lunch, because we are so exhausted that we plop down right on the grass and lie there for a couple minutes. When we finally show up, the other districts look significantly less tired then we are. If their first day of training was as rigorous as ours, they took it much better.
We report back to our training area for the last time today, to for analyzing. Rather than doing anything, we sit in a small, white room cut off from the rest of the training area, where Harris spends two hours explaining how we will analyze past Hunger Games as well as our activities during combat and survival skills.
After analyzing, we dart off as quickly as we can to our last working period of the day, Capitol history. This is the only time when every district's tributes are piled into one room together to learn. This class, taught by the Games Master, Lucio, also happens to be dreadfully boring.
I introduce myself to the short, blond-haired guy next to me. He says his name is Dominick Fowble, and he's fourteen. His brown, short-sleeved shirt says SEVEN across it.
"Look at her." Dominick says, pointing at an incredible looking girl sitting at a desk two rows in front of us.
"Wow," I say, my mouth hanging open a bit.
"I know," he says. "But try not to get any drool on the desk. Her name's Amy. She's from my district."
I have a feeling that Dominick and I are going to get along well. He seems cool, and now we have a common interest.
After dinner, we head straight back to our dormitories early, and fall asleep, hoping that next day will be easier to cope with.
Author's Note: I'm not sure if I'll publish another chapter today or not, but I'm definitely at least going to start the next one. Please review the story. Constructive criticism is appreciated, but please don't flame. Thanks for reading!
-Zach