Thank you for all of the positive comments. They make writing a lot more fun. Of course, this is a pre-typed chapter. I have a lot more to go and the story still isn't completely typed yet. Please enjoy.
This is jail. It's official. The only thing they're doing to observe me is watching the feed through a small set of cameras in each corner of the room. The room, hah, it's more like a cell. It's a simply four wall room with padded walls. All of it is white, a blinding bland white. It hurt my eyes the first couple of days, but I've learned not to care. I've been in here for three weeks (well, maybe four). The only person I ever see is a nurse who brings me food and asks me random sets of questions that may or may not have to do with a growing file they're making of me.
My only entertainment is a small black ball that I can throw against a wall. It's not even a bouncy ball though. It rolls back to me eventually, so at least I don't have to go and get it every time. The nurse, on good days, will toss it with me. Apparently, she doesn't have many good days. Who would when their job was to come visit a crazy girl with a peach-fuzz-head?
Oh yes, all of the medicines the Capitol has and I still only have a fourth of an inch on top of my head. However, the Capitol probably never encountered a woman who had had her head shaved and wanted all the hair back. Most probably wore a wig and went along pretending she had the hair. That wasn't me though. I was content with my state. It had helped me stay alive, hadn't it?
"Maxine?" The door cracked open and I looked up suddenly cocking an eyebrow at my intruder. It was the nurse. She was wearing her white outfit that was form fitting, but why not? She was Capitol which meant she was stylish no matter the occupation which was her reason for her red velvet colored hair. "You have a visitor." I stood immediately brushing off my clothes that matched my white room. I nodded to her and she vanished out the door while the man slipped into the room in her place.
"Hey Max," he smiled at me and immediately a smile crept to my lips almost mirroring his movements.
"Hey Gale, you've been gone forever. Thought you went to go save more Trial girls." I sat down on my small bed and waited for him to join me by sitting next to me, but he stayed leaned against the far wall. "What's up?" I asked leaning forward with my elbows on my knees to show him that I was taking him seriously. I could joke all I wanted to, but he had that look of business stuck on his face just like when he had saved me from the Cage.
"I came to relocate you. We're going to move you out to District 2 because I need to talk to you about the Hunger Trials." I must have look confused because he pulled something from his pocket and tossed it to the floor. The cube rolled a few time and then began to project a map of what some people called the Boons as their official name. It had started with the word boondocks because there was nothing out there between the districts other than small roads and train tracks. "We've raided these." He pointed to the hologram and five spots popped up red. "We're aware of this one." One blue dot popped up closer to the Capitol than normal arenas for the Hunger Trials, and suddenly I knew what he wanted me to do.
"You want to know where the main event is." I looked over the hologram at him and he nodded.
"So, you understand you would be on our side, and if you check out then you can join the raid crew. We're just asking for some information. If you want we'll even just let you into a normal life inside District 2." Gale's offers swam in my head, but I found something wrong with each of the offers. I only voiced one.
"Why can't I live in a different district?" I acted as if it made me angry that I would be stuck in District 2.
"We just want to make sure that you're safe and living in an outer district where you don't know anyone could cause…"
"Relapse." I finished for him since he couldn't seem to find the word. "I understand." I looked down at my hand which had been deadly weapons for so long and now only clutched a small black ball that had been my entertainment for weeks on end. My fingernails weren't lined with blood, and I wasn't training everyday. I didn't go to bed every night with bruises from my sisters and brothers who had trained with me when my father thought I needed a challenge.
Being the youngest of seven, I was more like the dummy for the older kids until I started to win. That's when my father started putting me in fights. When I won those too and started climbing the ladder to victory the others became the dummies. I was his prized...child? Possession…? Pet.
"…Max?" I looked up at Gale who was waiting patiently. He had the door open and his foot was propped in the way to let me out. "You ready to go? We've got a hovercraft on the roof ready to go so that we don't have to ride in a car very long." All I could manage was a nod and he sighed seeing my slip back into silence. I would say little or nothing along our journey because I was drowning; my thoughts were smothering me and I wasn't even trying to surface.
In a fog of thoughts that didn't make sense, we headed up through the hospital where I got stare after stare. I was no normal sight. I wasn't trying to be beautiful, and I wasn't hiding in shame because of it. After enough of me blushing because of it Gale dug for something and pulled out a beanie which I pulled onto my head gratefully. It felt warm against my scalp and I welcomed the feeling and the relief of stares from the folks around me.
"They won't bother you now. That beanie makes them think you're a Peace Keeper," the thought of me working as the law made me laugh. I had spent my whole life escaping it so that I could fight. Or, I suppose it was my father who worked outside of the law my whole life. He had been around for the Hunger Games and used his children to satisfy the thrill of death.
Gale got me into the hovercraft before himself. When he did he headed into a lobby like area where they offered drinks. After accepting a beer he sunk into a chair where he seemed to finally relax. It was the first time I had actually seen him relax since I had seen him a month ago. His age seemed to finally hit me in that moment. He wasn't as old as I thought he was. I must've thought he was forty-five, but I could see now he was probably only in his mid-thirties. He was still so old though. Most kids in the Trials didn't last until they were in their late twenties. Whatever brain and other damage had been caused was unattended to and we depleted into nothing.
That had all been fixed within my month of being stuck in the hospital. The first week I spent there was me being pulled in and out of darkness. Inside the darkness I went through operations and when I woke up I felt even worse. The final one left me in bed for two days before I finally found the strength to get up and do anything. After those initial two days I was fine and able to do anything I wanted. Then again, I wasn't allowed to do anything I wanted.
When I was offered a drink I denied it and sat in a chair across the room where I could look out a window. The land moved rapidly by them and soon there was no more land to see because they were so high in the sky there was only clouds and blue. It drew me to my feet and I walked to the window which was fed into the floor at one point. It flattened out, and I was able to walk out onto the glass and look down at the land below us where everything looked so small. My heart thudded in my chest so rapidly it scared me. My throat tightened up with the fear and I was ready to scream for the fall. It was invigorating, and I loved it.
"Are you trying to scare yourself?" Gale wondered as a girl walked into the room dressed similarly to him. She didn't face me at all, but I didn't care. All she did was ask for Gale's signature and he began to flip through some papers.
"Only a few things scare me," I told him and my words finally seemed to draw the girl's attention who looked at me flatly. "Heights is one of them," I whispered and looked down again letting the world pitch and turn with the beat of my heart and the swirl of my stomach. The girl had red hair and she didn't speak at all. Come to think of it. She hadn't spoken ever, not even to Gale. She had simply handed him the papers and a pen. Her red hair looked more natural though. The nurse in the Capitol was obviously fake, but this girl's hair matched her skin tone and the splash of freckles on her nose and cheekbones.
When Gale signed the papers she immediately left tucking the pen behind her ear as if she used it often. He turned in his chair toward me taking another swig of his drink as I sat down on the glass and stayed there. I even found the need in the back of my head to pull off my shoes and let my toes wriggle against the cool glass. "Why do you like scaring yourself?"
"Because it's hard to do," I reminded him of my previous statement. "It's a different feeling, and I like it." I set my chin on my knees curling into myself as I made a ball out of me.
"You can't go look off a high building where you come from?" Gale wondered leaning forward as he questioned me though he didn't mean to take it as an interrogation. It was just the fact that he worked for the law that made everything seem so pivotal and so violating.
"No, I can't." I gave a small smile and thought back to where I came from. "You guys call it the Boondocks. We call it Home; I guess. It's just a small town built up by some folks that left the Capitol when Paylor took over. I don't think it's fair." I shrugged letting my shoulders fall back into place. When they slouched a little lower than usual I straightened up quickly. You don't slouch; slouching is weakness.
"You don't think what's fair?" Gale asked truly curious. He had never considered the fact that maybe some of us were more comfortable in our lives than he thought. That's why so many people didn't survive rehab. The change was too much. We'd rather die then become weak like the rest of them.
"Everything." I turned around to look at the moving ground. My heart started to pump hard in my chest and my vision pitched wildly. "When Paylor moved into office my father and mother left the Capitol. They weren't themselves anymore. Then when I turned three, I think, I caught my dad training my brother to fight. I told him the Hunger Games were over. We didn't have to worry…"
My parents were from the Capitol, but when we moved I had been scared that we were going to have to start to compete in the Hunger Games. The announcement came on the radio that the Hunger Games were ending and I jumped for joy. My older brothers and sisters cheered! My mother sat there, shocked; she wouldn't say a word. So, I snuck outside to tell my dad. I wanted to tell him that we didn't have to worry because I knew he was.
My eldest brother had his hair cut short and he was running sprints between two posts. I told my dad that it was over. We didn't need to worry. There weren't going to be anymore games. Brother didn't have to train anymore, but he did.
"I caught him again, training I mean," I continued not looking up from the ground which had gone out of focus a long time ago. "When I told him we didn't have to train he told me we did because survivors win. 'If you can't win in a fight then you can't win in life. That's how it's always worked for the poor.'" My dad's quote was always stuck in my head. "When he started training me I let him. Do you know how he convinced me?" Gale didn't answer so I turned around to look at him. "Do you?"
"What did he say to convince you?" Gale asked with intent eye on me waiting for this monumental moment.
"He told me that the new President hated people like us: people that left the Capitol," I put my chin on my knees as I hugged them close to my body. "They were hunting us…" Tears began to collect in my eyes and I ducked my head away into the darkness.
"That's not true. We only go after people breaking the law—,"
"They broke into my house Gale." I looked up at him swallowing the lump of tears that had already bursted and were linking down my face. "They took my brother. They told my dad that he couldn't train anymore. He couldn't train his kids. They put a gun to my brother head because his head was shaved…" Gale opened and closed his mouth looking for words, but he found none. A tremendous sob wracked my frame and I went back into hiding mumbling into the darkness I had created: "They killed him, in my front yard, right in front of me…"
I hope you liked the chapter. Please review telling me what you do and don't like. Thank you! Talk to you all later.
Sincerely,
wisegirlindisguise
