Here's Chapter Seven! Yippee!

Disclaimer: Me no own Hunger Games. Verdad? (That's Spanish)

Chapter 7: Training

We enter a large, sandy area, with various stations lining the edges. In the middle is a sloppily painted blue circle. Thresh grabs my arm and half-drags me to the left end of it. A woman whose entire body is dyed a sickly shade of magenta stands on a wooden box just in front of the circle. Only the Careers, the tributes from 1, 2, and 4, are already sitting in the circle.

I sit down, and only now realize just how tiny I am. Compared to my sisters, I'm the biggest. Poppy is really the only other child I was close to, both physically and emotionally.

A large clock on the large wall surrounding the area reads 9:45. In 15 minutes, all the tributes will be here, the lady will bore us to tears with a speech, and we will go train.

All the tributes except District 12 are here. A man come around and pins a bit of cloth with each tribute's district number to their shirt. When he reaches me, he's already pinned twenty numbers to shirts, so he's less careful. The needle on the end not only pierces my shirt, but causes a sharp pain in my right shoulder. I reach to the spot where it hit me, and when I look at my finger, it has a small drop of blood on it. Compared to the amount of blood I'll be seeing and losing over the next few days, this is nothing, so I can't let it get to me.

All of these tributes probably have at least a hundred pound on me. Possibly more, since at 12, I weigh about 60 pounds. The largest tribute, the boy from District 2, is easily 250 pounds. Four times my weight.

District 12 finally gets here, and the pink-skinned woman, whose name is, surprisingly, Magenta, begins talking.

"Okay, let's get started. Um, no fighting with other tributes. There will be experts there at each station if you want to practice. You'll come inside for lunch, and the training lasts three days. So, go practice!" She finishes by punching a fist into the air.

Everyone scatters to different stations. I have no idea where to go, so I play with a slingshot for a while. This takes almost no effort, so I have time to think to myself.

I need to stay busy until lunch; when the Careers go in for lunch, I can spend a few minutes with some real weapons before I'm told to go inside and eat. I could go try some weapons now, but the risk of being not-so-accidentally speared keeps me from it.

Far away, I can see many trees. Just out of a walking distance, or I'd ask to go see them. Aspens and willows, my favorite trees. It's not hard to guess why.

I'd taught Aspen and Willow to climb the smaller trees outside the orchard before they'd turned three. Each girl had picked one apple, and happily eaten it on the way home.

"What else can we pick? Is there more?" They'd asked eagerly. I'd promised that in the fall of when they turned seven, both would see and collect the many fruits of the orchards. Three more years needed to pass before that came. Three years that I would not get to live.

Only then do I realize that all the other tributes are gone. They are having lunch, so now is my time to test some real, pain-inflicting weapons. I briefly attempt throwing a spear, but it's longer and probably heavier than me, so I sigh and go to eat.

The lunchroom here is not like the ones we had in the schools at home. There, everyone belonged to a group of friends. Here, however, no one knows each other. The Careers and District 12 are the only groups not sitting alone. I find a table in a corner and sit at the edge of it to watch everything that goes on here.

At one point, Thresh ends up talking to the Career group. The girl from District 1 asks him something. Thresh shakes his head. They all look disappointed, but they leave him alone after that. Were they asking him to be part of the Career pack? Sometimes, if one tribute seems really good at something that they have no strength in, the Careers will take in someone from another district.

The next day, I decide to kind of slip up and meet District 12 at random stations. Either the boy, Peeta, is very observant or I am not good at secretively following them, because Peeta whispers,

"I think we have a shadow." Katniss, the girl from 12, looks around at me. Her face relaxes when she realizes it's me following them, and not another tribute. After seeing her with that spear, though, I don't want to get her angry.

"I think her name's Rue," Peeta tells Katniss. Well, he thought correctly.

More carefully now, I join them every now and then.

Katniss is a lot like me. She has great aim, climbs well, and breezes through the edible plants test.

The next day is lot like that, me meeting up with them every now and then. After that, it's time to show the Gamemakers our special talents. No one else will know what I show them unless I decide to tell.

We are herded into the room where we ate lunch. All 24 tributes have a chair, and when they leave to go to their private sessions, they don't return. Why would they want to come back and watch us sit here? I wait somewhat patiently for the 21 tributes before me to perform. The sessions go in order of district, boy then girl. District 10's girl tribute has just left the room when I start to feel very nervous. My knees bounce up and down with anxiety.

Thresh is called, and I begin to shake. But I put on a brave face for the cameras anyway.

A male voice calls, "District 11, Rue Vera!" I stand up slowly, glad that none of the other tributes besides District 12 can see me. My steps now are similar to the ones I took on the way to the stage at the Reaping. Now I demonstrate what Flora calls flying.

My feet barely touch the ground as I leap from obstacle to obstacle soundlessly. I've perfected this skill in the orchards. I need to be able to move quickly to reach more distant fruits, and do it silently so as not to disturb the people working below me.

The Gamemakers that are watching, instead of slurring some sort of song, look interested enough. I take that to mean I'll get about a five on a 1 to 12 scale. The Careers usually get between eight and ten; those are the highest scores I've ever seen awarded. Luckily, only the high scores are remembered. The low and medium ones only matter to the district they are given to.

I feel bad for District 12; by the time they are up, the Gamemakers will be too bored to pay any attention.

I push the 11 button in the elevator of the Training Center building. Mirrors line its walls. The girl staring back at me from them looks tired, but well-fed and has a rare, healthy glow radiating off her skin.

That girl is me. I'm in the Capitol, ready to go fight to my death, but I'm happy now. I wish I'd had the sense to be glad here before. Now I only have a few days…. I think ruefully. That is one of my favorite words, since it contains my name. When I was younger, people made jokes about how they'd "rue" the day they met me.

Now I have the rest of the afternoon and all of tomorrow to rest and eat before my interview. Interviews are our chance to nab sponsors in the arena. They will pay otherworldly amounts of money just for the pride of picking a winner. The money pays for food, medicine, or anything else the tributes need.

I return to my room, telling everyone who knocks on my door to go away, and they do. Right now, I want to be alone. I pick up the pen I used to write my letter on the first training day and sketch designs on my arms and legs. Just like the people here do, but theirs are permanent.

These designs will wash off when I take my shower. I draw a long line of flowers on my leg, winding them up and around my knee, them back down. The other leg I cover in my family's names. Rue, Lilac, Rosie, Aspen, Willow, Lavender, Jasmine (my mother), and Solran (my father).

My father is the only one in my family not named after a flower or plant. This is partly because he is the only man, and partly because his family were some of the richer people, who named their children differently. His parents being richer meant they had that District 11 city look about them. Pale brown hair, green eyes, and tan skin. This explains why my dad, Willow and Aspen have much lighter hair than the rest of us, and more hazel in their eyes.

When I finish drawing swirling patterns on my arms, I turn on the shower, a great improvement over the first day. I invent a game of pressing random buttons, just to see what will happen. After a stream of vanilla suds targets my eye, though, I stop. Turning around and walking to the sink, I let cold water run over my eye until the stinging goes away.

At dinner, I decide to be social again. Violet asks how Thresh and I think we did in our private sessions. Neither of us has a clue. She asks if we want to find out, so we nod and let her lead us to a room with a large TV screen in the middle of it. The program on is the televised training scores. A picture of each tribute shows up, then a number from one to twelve.

My name and picture are shown, and I can't help but realize how young my picture looks. I don't remember posing for this picture, or wearing that shirt recently. Flora tells me that they have pictures from many events, and choose one to represent us. The shot on the screen is from about a month ago, when they filmed us in the orchards.

But other tributes had pictures of them in clothes I've seen them wear. I remember the first day being here, when I slept in very late. Maybe they had a photo shoot then.

Now the number seven is flashing on the screen. I got a seven in training! So they were paying attention. I know a seven isn't much, but I was expecting a five, so I'm happy. Thresh gets a nine, and Katniss from District 12 got an eleven! That is the highest score ever given. What did she do to get that high of a score?

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