The remaining days of training are dull and monotonous. I pretend to be back on good terms with Glimmer and she pretends to forgive me for hitting her. Cato helps me use heavier weapons and I help the others in our alliance improve their long distance aim. By the end of it, we're a highly skilled team.
I guess I'm glad I have allies; it would be even more frightening going into this alone, but it feels kind of ridiculous – acting like I'm friends with these people when we're going to have to kill each other in the end. Or at least watch as someone else kills them. Marvel and Cato seem to have become good friends but I imagine Glimmer wouldn't bother with the alliance if she had any chance whatsoever on her own. But she doesn't, and as she's from Marvel's district, we're stuck with her.
I'll be relieved, in a way, when the games actually start. With the start of the games comes the looming probability of my death, but at least I won't have to spend any more time getting to know the other tributes before I have to kill them.
When we're alone, I can see even Cato having reservations about the murders he's soon to commit. He acts like a typical career tribute in public, rearing to go, not bothering with morals. I see his internal struggles though. It's written in his features, behind his showy attitude. Neither of us complains. It's not the kind of thing a career tribute does. We're not known for taking the moral high ground.
We barely even speak in our last days, Cato and I. We spend a lot of our free time alone together, just sitting in silence, wrapped in an embrace. It's as if we know nothing the other says will make a difference.
With each other we are quiet, miserable and self consumed. With everyone else we are loud, arrogant and dangerous.
The time passes quickly and I find myself waiting for my training score. In my private training session with the gamemakers I just threw some knives at the targets. Apparently it was impressive though because I score a very respectable ten. As does Cato, who tells me he sliced the head of a mannequin clean off in his session. Despite my depressed state I smile at our scores; good scores mean good sponsors, something I'm desperate for. Maybe the odds will be in my favour.
Marvel and Glimmer each manage a nine, although I've no idea what Glimmer did to deserve that. Maybe flirted with the gamemakers. The other tributes with good scores are the boy from Eleven, who also scores a ten, and the boy from Twelve, Peeta I believe he's called, who scores an eight. I feel certain that Cato and I, have received the highest scores and am enjoying a moment of smugness. Until the Fire Girl's face is flashing on the screen and with it, the number eleven.
I let out an involuntary gasp. She's done it again – outshone me. I feel a personal vendetta growing for this girl. As I wonder what on earth she could've done to get that eleven, I decide that she is the one to kill.