A/N: Thanks to my one reviewer MockingjayFlying, it's much appreciated. Also thanks to elliehxyz for adding this story to your favourites and Almiaranger for putting it into your story alerts. Thank you all for your support and I hope you all enjoy this next edition of "They Called Me a Stylist" – don't worry, it gets better.
Past when I was just a little girl the next important yet bitter stage of my life flashes in front of me, burrowing into my heart. This was when I was a teenager, I don't know how old. Maybe fourteen, fifteen? No, I must have been older than that. Sixteen, perhaps. Probably, well, sixteen. Orly and I had been doing the usual downstage designing for a while, but only personal things. Nothing big, nothing huge. And certainly nothing anyone would pay for. A friend's birthday? What do you get someone that has everything? I suppose not even friends really, but in the Capitol a birthday is treated like a ritual and you're supposed to attend. So yes, we made little accessory clothes like scarves or hats or even gloves, just little things. But this day that sticks so clearly in my memory was something else entirely.
"Hurry up Lilac," Orly puffed, beckoning me into his house.
"No need to bite my head off, I'm just coming," I said, cracking open a tin of tuna on my way in.
"How can you eat that stuff?" gagged Orly, swiping his hand through the air to try and waft the scent of tuna away from him.
"It's dietary, anyway, that's not all I eat," I dismissed with a wave of my hand.
"Oh yeah, then what else do you eat then, moron?" Orly quizzed and I felt my face flush from the light purple, or rather, lilac, that I had dyed it to show off, to a rather deep shade of burgundy.
"Raw meat," I mumbled.
"Oh yeah? And that's better how?" Orly sighed at then, upon realising he was blocking my entrance, stepped aside to let me through.
"So..." I said as soon as I got inside, looking around Orly's pastel coloured hall as if scanning it for a speck of dust. Deciding with the affirmative when I saw a flake of the stuff fluttering in the air, I turned to Orly. I was about to point out that he has dust all over his house, but then decided against it with the gormless look he was using to gawp at something in the room behind me.
"What're you-" I caught my breath in the middle of my sentence when I turned around to see what, or rather whom, Orly was staring flabbergasted at. She was a rather short woman with streaky white and red hair with an uplifting feel about her, her freckled face all too familiar for my taste.
"You're..."
"Hayley Hazel," Orly finished off for me, covering up my excitement and pure bewilderment, only to display his.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, then realised how rude it sounded. "Not that I'm happy at all, I'm overjoyed and everything, but why?"
"I'd have thought you could have at least fainted," Hayley beamed and then bounced towards Orly and I. Then she held up a hand which turned out to be a light shade of toffee and used it to direct herself around both Orly and me, clawing at the air around us as if trying us out.
Hayley Hazel, the stylist for district ten in the hunger games and probably our least favourite. Her forte being cows for the livestock district, Orly and I often jeered at her outfits as they came onto the chariot track since they just didn't work at all. But, even if I wasn't the greatest fan, she was a stylist and she was in my house. Or rather, she was in Orly's house, but that wasn't exactly the problem.
"I'll lay it to you straight," said Hazel with a huff. "Two members of my prep team just decided to get married and leave the team altogether, and with a grand total of four weeks before I meet the tributes I definitely need to pull together a replacement in a snap. I don't expect anything to be done for district ten in time anyway, so I decided to do it for myself. Now, a little birdie told me that you two aren't half bad with a needle and thread, or the boy anyway, and that you, my girl, are a rather quick hand with a pencil on the designing front, eh?"
Judging by the pause she left for us Orly and I hurriedly nodded, desperately trying to keep up with what she was saying. Us? On her prep team?
"Well, not exactly what I wanted. I was looking for someone to do the makeup, not make the outfits – that's my job. But I realise now that whilst Yvonne, that's the current member of my team who hasn't abandoned me, may be okay at designing she has a real art for makeup, so she could pretty much handle all of that. So that means you, as long as you can handle some makeup, could be free to give me a hand once in a while. Putting pen to paper and coming up with new ideas, let alone stitching them out, is such a drag. You could help me out, you know?"
There's a brooding silence as Orly and I stand, paralysed, and engulfed by what she said. Me? Orly? On a hunger games prep team? The same hunger games prep team? It's like a dream come true, really. Sure it's district ten, not one, two or four, but we've got an opportunity we could have only created in our wildest dreams. And it's real. Wait a second...
I pinch myself.
And it really is real. This is absolutely flabbergasting, gobsmacking, phenomenal news. It's absolutely...
"Crap," says Orly and I stare at him wide-eyed until he speaks again. "I used all my cow print thread yesterday."
I don't know if it's a joke, a rejection, accepting or just statement of fact so I turn to Orly. Can you even get cow print thread?
"We'd be mad to turn her down," I hissed, pulling him aside.
"Maybe I am mad," Orly said with a glint in his eye.
"What?" I gasped.
"But not that mad," smiled Orly and soon i found his contagious smile spreading to my lips.
"We accept," I said gleefully with a proper smile and Orly nodded along with me.
"Great, err..." Hayley said, indicating for us to tell her our names.
"Orly," smiled Orly, and then they both turned to me. Embarrassed, my face flushed slightly.
"Just tell me you're not a lilac," sniggered Hayley, indicating to my lilac skin, hair and even clothes. Suddenly I felt an unexplainable panic to impress this strange woman, and my name felt even more stupid than it had ever seen before.
"Of course not," I smiled, gesticulating rapidly with my hands to Orly to get him to shut up while I held Hayley's attention with my gaze. "I'm called..."
I scanned the area for some sort of clue to hurriedly come up with a name, any name. Finally my eyes rested on Hayley's red and white striped hair, mainly red, a bit like bacon.
"Streaky," I coughed out and Orly raised an eyebrow as if to say 'really?'.
"Yes, really," I said hurriedly and then realised no-one had actually said anything. "I'd really find it funny if my name was lilac. Anyway, this was all... a dye mix-up, that's all. It was going to be red with white streaks after your amazing hair. I was just about to remedy it now"
No matter how farfetched the flattery was Hayley paused, shrugged, and then started to leave the room before picking up a drawing that was on a sideboard, next to the random floating piece of dust.
"Hey, you drew this?" she asked, nodding towards a bright red shoulder dress covered in shining pearls covering it like lights.
"Err... yeah," I mumbled.
"Well you're quiet the stylist," she shrugged as if that comment had nothing to do with her and then stepped out of the room, and then out of the house.
I remember her turning back momentarily to throw some sarcastic comment to Orly about his name, but everything just goes furry and fuzzy after that, like a blanket has been thrown over my memory to keep out the cold bits stirring back in. But that bit is stirring enough. She also called me a stylist; she was the second person to do so. But she was definitely not the last.