Training

The training room was huge. Well bigger than huge, filled with dozens of weapons stations, obstacle courses and various other skill stations. Caden and I were the first two to arrive so we had absolutely no idea what we were supposed to do while we were waiting. A small girl came and pinned something on my back and as I turned and tried to read what it said I saw that she had also pinned the same thing on Caden's back: a number 12. After that it was a good ten minutes before the two tributes from six came down. The boy was about my height but his features seemed young, definitely younger than me, maybe fourteen or so. The girl must have been one of the three twelve year olds because she was tiny, barely reaching my shoulder. And when she came and stood near Caden I almost started laughing at the height difference, but then again he was four years older than her.

The rest of the tributes started coming down more frequently after that. Within five minutes at least half of us were standing around anxiously. When the two from nine came down I almost gasped looking at the boys face. His scar didn't look half as bad as it was when I saw it on the television the other day. It was a thick, uneven red line that started at the top right corner of his face then cut across his forehead, ran down in between his left eye and his nose then finished at the left corner of his mouth. I didn't mean to stare for so long but it was so horrific that I couldn't drag my eyes away from it. I didn't even realise for a few seconds that the boy and girl from one had just emerged from the elevator. When I saw him I did a quick turn on my toes to face Caden.

"Pretend we're having a really interesting conversation," I said fighting the urge to look over my shoulder and make sure the boy hadn't seen me.

"What's wrong?" Caden asked humorously.

"The boy from one."

"Oh, the one from the elevator."

"That's the one."

Caden looked over my shoulder, "its ok he's gone to talk to someone, you can turn around."

I sighed with relief and turned back around. Caden was right he had gone to talk with someone else, or more correctly some other people. He and the girl, Velvet I remembered Caden saying her name was, had gone to talk with the two from two and two from four. Trust. Districts one, two and four are the wealthier districts. It's technically against the rules for tributes to be trained for the hunger games before they enter but most of the time the ones from one, two and four will have had some kind of training. In district twelve we have a special name for them, the Career tributes, or just careers. The six of them were probably the least tense, except for maybe the girl from two, who looked like she was freaking out just a little bit on the inside. The last pair of tributes to come down were the two from three. This time I did gasp when I saw them because if I had thought the girl from six was tiny, then the girl from three must have been miniscule. She didn't look a day older than nine years old, let alone twelve. She was small and pale with long white, blonde hair and huge eyes. I couldn't help wondering why someone hadn't volunteered for such a cute little girl.

I couldn't help looking around and checking out the competition. I really wished I hadn't. Most of them were taller, bigger and stronger looking than me. I almost felt envious of the disgustingly bulky girl from four, ugly as she was; being that strong had to help here. At least the majority of them were a skinny as me, the exceptions of course being the careers.

Now that everyone was there, the head trainer, a tall, muscley woman who introduced herself as Atala, stepped up and explained the training schedule to all of us. She said there were a variety of different stations, some that will teach us survival skills and others to teach us fighting techniques, and we were free to move from station to station as we wanted. There were always going to be an expert of each skill manning each station. Most importantly we were never to engage in any combative exercises with any of the other tributes. That made me laugh considering they were throwing us into an arena to kill each other off anyway, so why did it matter if a few dropped off before we got there.

Atala eventually released us and, shock horror, the careers all headed for the stations with the big heavy looking weapons. Well all the careers except for the boy from one who instead headed towards the rope tying station.

"See you at lunch," Caden said as he took a few steps towards the weightlifting station. Before he left he turned back, smiled and whispered, "Good luck."

Then I was left all alone, with absolutely no idea where to go first. Looking around I decided not to go to the knives or any of the obstacle courses first off, but made a mental note to at some point. Eventually I decided to go to the hunting station. When I was there I learnt a lot that I thought would be really helpful when I got into the arena, like where I was most likely to find wild game and I spent a half an hour or so learning how to gut a fish. When I was done there I decided that I should probably go to the edible plants station next while I was on a similar kind of wavelength. While I was there I remembered I didn't tell Haymitch about my third secret skill, I have a photographic memory. Admittedly I didn't think it would really be helpful to me in any way while I was in the arena, but I proved myself wrong. Although I can only do it when I'm really concentrating or I'm completely hopeless, like when I couldn't remember anything about any of the other tributes. Within five minutes I had memorised the names and appearances of everything on the table. The instructor was so impressed with me that he had me playing a little game where he'd point at a plant, I'd name it, say where it is found and whether it would poison me or not.

Since I was doing all the survival things anyway I thought I might as well learn to build a fire while I was at it. Obviously I had no idea how to do this so I kind of expected that this would take a little bit longer. Luckily I was the only one at the station at that point so the instructor was only too happy to give me his full attention. I'm serious when I say too happy, he was one of those perky people who always smiled and giggled and laughed and encouraged you. It was so frustrating, although he was patient with me as I was hopeless at starting a fire. It took half an hour for me to get the hang of it with him helping me. Eventually he asked me to give it a go by myself. When I had everything all ready to go I went to grab the matches to light the fire but I couldn't find them. Then I heard him.

"Looking for these?"

I knew who it was before I even looked around. His voice, strong with just the smallest touch of arrogance, was exactly how I would have imagined it to be. I turned around to see the boy from one standing over me, the box of matches in his hand. He handed them to me and I said a quick, "Thanks," before turning back to look at my soon to be fire. He sat down next to me and started building a small bonfire, waving the instructor away as he came to help him.

"You're Eora right?" he asked looking up at me but still building his fire at the same time. I gave a small nod but refused to look up at him.

"I realised I didn't introduce myself when we last bumped into each other," he said with a grin.

"Oh ha ha," I said sarcastically looking up to glare at him. He laughed and then said,

"My name's Jett," he said as I lit my match, "I'm from-"

"District one," I cut in. I put my match into my small stack of twigs and kindling and it was out before it even looked like it was going to catch. I cursed inside my head and got out another match.

"Yeah," he said smiling at my flameless fire.

I tried again with the same result, causing the boy, I mean Jett, to smile even wider. I looked down, my face flushed, and decided I'd try one last time before I moved on. This time looked more promising and I was starting to get excited when I could smell smoke. But once again my fire had not caught on, so then where was the smoke coming from? I looked over and saw that Jett's fire was now ablaze, huge and magnificent. I stared at it with an awed expression. I hadn't even given him the matches; he had lit that from scratch. He turned and smiled a warm smile at me.

"Here I'll show you," he said and he took the matches and lit one, "You need to put the match further under the kindling so it doesn't get blown out and that it can spread faster."

He took the flame and put it right under the centre of my fire and sure enough within seconds it was alight. I was frustrated and amazed at the same time. He smiled, handed the matches back to me and started to build another fire.

"How did you do that," I asked sceptically, "You didn't even need matches."

He turned back and smiled playfully, "Practice."

I rolled my eyes. Of course he'd practiced.

I stood up and said, "Well I concede." I turned to Jett and said sweetly, "So nice to meet you," Then walked off and said quietly, "Not."

I decided to get warmed up for fighting later by going to the sword station. I picked a relatively small sword but before I could start the instructor insisted that I put on some protective gear. While I was being padded up I noticed that Caden was at this station as well, bashing the crap out of a very well protected assistant with his broadsword. He was amazing, moving quickly and yet still he was still able to swing the sword with uncanny precision and strength. It couldn't have been easy, I mean I doubt I could even pick that thing up let alone swing it.

"He's not bad."

Jett had snuck up behind me with such light steps that I had no idea he was there until he spoke. I turned back around.

"No he's not bad at all," I said.

I had one clasp still to tie up but I couldn't reach it. Jett smiled and said politely, "Let me," as he did it up tightly.

"You're not following me are you Jett?" I said playfully.

He smiled at me but didn't falter, "Of course not. You and I must simply have a very similar station route planned out because I had always intended to come here next."

I couldn't help smiling. "Sure you did."

I looked back over to Caden just as he swung a huge outwards stroke and sent his assistant crashing to the ground. Caden quickly rushed to help him up and make sure he was ok. After that he put down his sword and turned around to come take off his protective gear until he saw me. His olive cheeks were a little flushed and a few beads of sweat trickled down his face. But his eyes were alight and joyful, that was until he saw me and his cheeks got much redder and his eyes took in the shock. A smiled and his cheeks got even redder and he smiled back shyly, modest as always. He walked over towards us and I noticed Jett looking back from me to Caden his mouth attempting to hold in a grin. I frowned at him quickly but then Caden was there.

"I never would have pictured you with a sword," he said and my face must have shown my confusion because he nodded towards the small sword in my hand.

"Back at you," I said teasingly, "You're kind of scary with that huge sword of yours. I guess you took Haymitch seriously with that whole 'find something big and heavy' idea of his."

Caden smiled, "I wish I could say the same for you. I know you're not big but I think you could have chosen something bigger than that over grown dagger you've got there."

Jett gave a conspicuous cough right at that moment causing Caden and I to quickly avert our eyes from each other to him.

"Oh sorry," I stammered, "Caden this is Jett, Jett this is Caden."

They shook hands and both mumbled a greeting.

"I should probably try and fit in one more station before lunch," Caden nodded politely to Jett and smiled at me with a quick, "See you later," then he was gone.

Jett turned to look at me, holding in his laughter as hard as he could. I had no idea what he found so funny but in all honesty I really didn't care. He brushed it off and held out his sword, which wasn't quite as big as Caden's but still not small.

"Could you hold this for a second," he asked sweetly batting his eyelashes at me. I tried my hardest not to smile but I couldn't and reluctantly held out my arm to hold his sword. It was much heavier than it looked and with only one arm trying to hold it as soon as Jett let go I didn't have the strength to hold it and it quickly crashed to the ground. This time Jett couldn't control his laughter and as he did his final strap up he picked up the sword with ease and was still laughing as he walked into the fighting area.

"Just in case you wanted to know," he said as his laughter died, "That 'overgrown dagger' of yours is actually called a rapier. I thought it was a very good choice."

"I didn't want to know but thanks anyway."

He laughed again and went off to face his assistant.

The instructor came over and tried to help me. Sword fighting was another thing I was not very good at at all. The instructor tried his hardest to show me how to block and to strike but I just felt like I was hacking at his all the time. Eventually it got tiring and I still really wasn't getting it. And to make things worse every time I looked over at Jett he seemed to be effortlessly attacking his opponent. He didn't look quite as natural or as strong as Caden had but he looked much more technical and he could predict almost every move that his assistant made. It was depressing. That made two things he was better than me at. I quickly gave up and decided to move onto another station. It was almost lunch time but I thought I had just enough time to fit in one last activity and since I was so horrible and sword fighting I thought I'd give archery a try.

The archery station was empty so I had the instructor all to myself. She tried to get me to follow her lead, she'd shoot one arrow and then I'd try and copy what she did. While she flawlessly shot and never missed the very centre of the targets I would hit the targets but never anywhere near the centre. I was happy that I could at least do that. After I'd shot a dozen arrows or so we had both wound up to shoot another and as the arrows hit the targets I heard three 'thumps'. One arrow, the instructor's white-tipped arrow, had, once again, hit the centre of the target. My arrow, the red-tipped one, had hit the second most outer ring of the target. Then the third arrow, a blue-tipped one, had hit the target only an inch or two from the white-tipped arrow. I turned around and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see Jett standing there, bow in hand and a quiver of blue-tipped arrows over his shoulder.

"Now you can't say that you're not following me because once might be a coincidence but twice isn't," I said mischievously.

He smiled innocently, "Ok so maybe I'm following you."

I smiled and looked back at where his arrow had hit the target, "Tell me, is there anything you can't do?"

He grinned slyly and whispered in my ear, "Please, you haven't even seen my actual skill yet."

I rolled my eyes and put down my bow.

"Well you have fun amazing yet another instructor but you're too late, I've already declared myself hopeless at archery as well."

"You hit the target. That's much more than I could say for most people."

"Talented or not I'm starving. Make sure you don't impress too many people or you might find yourself labelled as a threat." And with that I walked off towards the gymnasium's dining room feeling very pleased with myself.