AN: Sorry it's so short. That's just the way it turned out.

"Jill Pole, District 7," said the Gamemaker who was seated at the very middle of the table, an even number of other Gamemakers at both of his sides. "You may begin whenever you're ready."

That would be never, I thought. But I knew that wasn't what they meant.

Slowly, I approached the smaller table where rows of weapons were spread out. I reached for the bow and arrows straight-off.

The bow was made of a fine, glossy, finished wood so well polished I could almost see my reflection in it. It was the nicest I'd ever seen. There was even a crimson leather strap for my hand, so I wouldn't drop it if my fingers sweated.

Oh, if only there was some guarantee of getting a weapon just like it in the arena! I thought miserably, knowing full well that even if a gorgeous bow like the one I was holding in my hands was in the arena, someone else would be likely to grab it before I could.

Unless, that is, I out-ran the other tributes (those that could shoot anyway-Edmund, for instance, wouldn't bother with a bow) and got to it first then took off like the wind.

Which wasn't impossible, of course, but was most certainly a plan with too many slippery faults and holes to take into account.

What would the Gamemakers think of me? They'd seen so many tributes already. It was too bad, really, that the room was not built at all like a forest, that there wasn't much way to show them how I excelled at woodcraft.

My archery would have to stand largely on its own, I realized, sobering up even more, if that was possible.

I could feel my fingers trembling, and I steadied them as hastily as I could. They would have time enough to tremble later, but I couldn't let them fail me then-not right then-and embarrass me in front of the Gamemakers. People-rich persons, sponsors-would be watching the scores when they were televised. A good score could persuade them to offer the girl from District 7 a helping hand in the arena.

My now still fingers curled tightly, as did the sides of my mouth-turning upwards into a smile, or a grimace. It hardly mattered which. My forehead creased in concentration and my eyes stung slightly as I squinted at the tiny red dot in the very center of the target. Swallowing hard, I fitted an arrow in the bow-string. I clenched my jaw and lined my shot, releasing both my aching, grinding teeth, temporarily dashed against each other, and the arrow at the same time.

The arrow struck its target perfectly. But I was perplexed by the fact that, while the Gamemakers clapped politely, they didn't seem all that thrilled. One of them even shrugged.

Didn't they realize they could jolly well be shrugging off my chances of winning, of coming out of this alive? I knew they were cruel-natured; they had to be, after all, given all the horrid things they came up with. The only time their tricks were used for the so-called 'greater good' was on occasion when a tribute was so mad that their winning fair and square would have been detrimental to society, usually when said tribute actually tried to eat their human kills or do something else frowned upon to the corpse just because their deranged minds were so mixed up they couldn't tell how disgusting it is to us viewers, or simply didn't care. An avalanche or a landslide to kill them off was always forthcoming, courtesy of the Gamemakers. But to ignore a sane, perfectly stable tribute like this? How could they? How dared they? I wasn't even in the arena yet. They were going to kill me, those heartless brutes!

I felt panic gripping me, like cold hands at my throat, posing ready to squeeze. How could I win them over?

I looked back at my arrow, embedded in the target. An idea hit me. I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew what to do. I would be memorable yet!

I fired off another arrow. It, too, hit the target-the bullseye. So well, in fact, that it snapped the first arrow in half.

There! They couldn't miss how exceptional that was, could they?

Polite clapping. One of them coughed.

I frowned. This was ridiculous. How did one get these stony-faced monsters with their clipboards and table full of food to take notice when it mattered? Was it really this hard for all the tributes? Had Edmund gone through this, too? I (angrily) thought the Careers must have done all right for themselves, because they were from the 'better' districts.

It wasn't fair.

So I put another arrow in the bow-string and shot again. It split the second arrow, in-between the first, in half too.

If there had merely been more clapping and coughing, perhaps I could have kept my self stable-for a few moments longer, anyway. If one of them hadn't been rude enough to yawn...

But they did yawn. And another one loudly whispered to the yawning person, "Not bad. Lucy from District 1 was better, though. And she can climb and throw as good as a boy. My money would be on her over this one. But this one's all right, I suppose."

This one? That's all I was?

"Shh," hissed the Gamemaker on the opposite side of the whispering one. "She'll hear you."

I was glad one of them, at least, had some decency.

"These sessions are supposed to be private," they added warningly. "You can't talk about another tribute during somebody else's session. And this one's from a lesser district, too. She'll likely misuse anything she learns. And it would be our fault. We'd all lose our jobs, all because of your big mouth."

My stomach turned with fury. The 'kinder' Gamemaker wasn't defending my feelings, only their own job. And what did they mean 'lesser district'? Poorer district, yes. Non-Career, yes. But lesser? How was that even remotely called for? Never-mind that I had thought of us, us from 7, in the same way before-as less than the Careers. I was too upset to consider that.

District 7 was more beautiful, with all its woods, than 1 or 2 could dream of being! 4 had its creek, I supposed, and their fish, but they didn't have our kind of beauty. And yet we were the ones to be pitied? Us with the clean air and the overwhelming smell of rich pine? I'd take pine over fish, smoldering metal, or the kind of paste and glue they use on the luxury items in District 1 any day!

How could it be that we, from District 7, weren't worth anything unless we could throw axes like Johanna Mason?

Before my session with the Gamemakers I had never truly believed that people saw red before they became dangerously full of rage. I never questioned that cliché again after. Never.

Red flashed before my eyes. And I was fitting another arrow in the bow-string though I barely realized it, barely felt my fingers at their task. The tips of my fingers were numb, but somehow that did not make me clumsy. I didn't drop a single arrow.

Red, red, red. Not crimson, not scarlet, just plain red. My feet moved speedily under me. I was running. The room blurred but I didn't fall from dizziness. I wasn't dizzy, even with everything spinning. The world was too fast and too slow at the same time.

Sparks of yellow, white, and even electric blue burst through the red; like fireworks. This happened three times in a row.

Then I was standing, panting, as shocked as the Gamemakers, most of whom had their hands pressed to their hearts. One was quaking under a clipboard being used like an umbrella.

The room was much darker than it had been a few seconds ago.

I looked up. Two of the lights above were shattered. Shards of glass lined the floor I had just run the length of. (Millions of tiny pieces, some probably too small even to see.) The glass hadn't been there then.

Think, think, I told myself. Breathe. What happened?

I replayed it in my mind, this time without the red flashes. Without my uncurbed anger. Then I saw it. I saw myself, as if through the Gamemakers' eyes. And I knew what I'd done.

It was coming back more and more quickly. I had been running-to show them how fast I was, I suppose. But that wasn't all. Like an idiot showing off even under duress, I had taken out three overhead lights with my arrows. Those were my triple-coloured fireworks that had broken through the flashes of red.

When the Gamemakers realized I wasn't going to put out any more lights, they seemed to calm down a bit. Hands were lowered back down onto the table in front of them (one side of which was also sprayed with broken glass, same as the floor), as was the solitary clipboard.

One of them muttered, "Good gracious."

Thinking back, I probably should have been able to tell that, while I had frightened them, they weren't angry. I'd actually, albeit unwittingly, done what I set out to do-I'd impressed them.

At the moment, though, I could hear my heart pounding and my ears aching and nothing else mattered. I was scared to death. And angry at myself, no longer them so much.

The words, "Jill Pole from 7, you are excused," had bared died off their lips before I took off running out the door. (To be honest, I think I may have shown them my speed better with that than I had with my running light-breaking display, and I've wondered, from time to time, if that effected my final score, gave me extra points, or not.)

I didn't go back to training like I was supposed to. Instead, I took off for the elevator. No one was using it right then, since all the tributes and mentors were in the cafeteria, and so I rode up and down four times. By the fifth, I was starting to feel motion sickness-which had rarely ever struck me before, and it startled me so much that I withdrew deeper into shock, going to the 7th floor and walking slowly, extremely dazed, to my room.

Once there, I realized I was still carrying the bow. No arrows-I'd used them all up. Yet that hardly mattered.

Maybe now, I thought, the Gamemakers think I'm a thief as well as a lunatic. Great.

Oh what did it matter? I flung the bow into a corner and threw myself onto the bed sideways. I was going to get a terrible score-out of spite-and no one would sponsor me, and I'd be one of the first killed off. I might as well just go for the blood-bath at the cornucopia, get it over with quick. In all the noisy confusion, perhaps I wouldn't even realize I was being killed till the world went black around me. And it likely wouldn't hurt by then. At least, I hoped it wouldn't.

There was a forceful knock at the door. "Jill Pole, what do you think you're doing?"

Johanna Mason. "Go away!" I called, my tone-I realize, now that I reflect on it-extraordinarily bratty.

"Gel, this is no time for a nap."

Pug. I winced. There was no need to dignify his presence with a response.

I heard Johanna bark "Shut up!" at him. To me, through the door, she ordered, "You get out here right now. You have a lot of explaining to do."

After a few minutes of ignoring her, I eventually had to obey. I got up, pouting, thinking very differently than I had been when I'd first run into the room.

It wasn't my fault at all, I thought sullenly, they had no right to ignore me like that. No right at all to compare me to another tribute. I'm every bit as good with a bow as Lucy from District 1 is! I'm sure I am. And if I'm not, then they shouldn't have said anything. It was mean, mean, mean. Oh, it wasn't my fault! And I'm going to be punished. How unjust! If they hadn't been so cruel I wouldn't have taken out those lights and all would be fine right now. Oh, if only they'd not jabbed at me so! There are some things no one can be expected to bear patiently.

I opened the door, my face red, puffy, and tear-stained.

"And just what do you have to say for yourself?"

My lower lip trembling, I blurted out the whole story. "And I...I didn't mean to hurt anyone...I can't pay for the lights, either, you know..."

Johanna rolled her eyes. "Is that all you were blubbering over?"

"What do you mean all?" My own eyes narrowed. Didn't she know how dreadfully serious this was? How could she not?

"It's nothing to fuss over," she snapped, glowering at me. "And nothing to pull a disappearing act on account of."

"How can you say that?" My eyes stopped narrowing and widened with shock instead. "They might even say I attacked them. What if they want to...want to kill me in the arena now? They're the Gamemakers, they can do that. Or maybe they'll kill me now and replace me..."

"Nonsense." Johanna rolled her eyes. "Jill, it would be too much trouble to replace any tribute after the opening ceremonies. Anyone with half a brain knows that. If anything, they'll probably think you have anger problems. They might even like that."

I began to feel hopeful.

"And if they don't like it, it's your own fault."

The feeling faded.

"But," she added, "out of twenty-four tributes, you can't be the only one they dislike. There won't be any vendetta against you. You aren't that important. Stop acting like you're the only one in there. Do you think the Gamemakers liked me? I cried through half my session! Well, on purpose, of course, but it still annoyed them."

There was a grudging kindness in her voice that puzzled me. "Why are you being so kind?"

"I'm not being kind," she told me, laughing darkly. "I simply would like to have a victor to bring home to District 7 this year."

"What about Edmund?" I squeaked out.

"That would be all right, too," she said, shrugging. "Either one of you. But he didn't run off after his session, now did he? I don't have to focus on him now, because he's all set. He's not the one in need of reining in at the moment. Now stop crying and get your bottom in that elevator. I'm your mentor, not your babysitter."

Pug opened his mouth.

"Pug," said Johanna, turning to him. "Think about what you're going to say-and then don't say it."

His mouth closed with an almost audible click.

"So, tomorrow afternoon, we find out our scores, right?" I asked Johanna.

"Yes," she answered impatiently. "And then, tomorrow night, your interview."

Then, I added in my head, in the morning after that, the Hunger Games!

AN: Please to review.