Chapter 13

"Do I have to teach you how to talk and how to dress?" Parion threw her hands into the air and walked to the other side of the room. It was as far as she could get from me.

I sat side-by-side with Rue. Danting began to pace in a circle around us. We only wore our undergarments, so Parion could dress us when she was ready. I didn't like my sister being almost naked, but she didn't look upset.

The interviews were that night. No one was calm. Seeder wove a length of rope at the table where we ate. Chaff drank from his bottle next to the window.

At the interviews, Tributes talked for the first time in the Games. The stylists, Gamesmasters, and the Tributes all came to the interviews. Caesar Flickman asked questions about the Tributes' lives, scores, and anything else he wanted to ask. Interviews made the Tributes liked or hated.

"Thresh." Danting's voice was cold, but his eyes darted from Chaff to me, to Seeder to me. "The audience is supposed to like you. You want the audience to like you. So don't mock them with your voice and they'll like you."

"Back home, this is how I talk. This is how I act."

"I've never met any other Tribute from District Eleven who acts or talks the way you do. People will not like it."

"We were raised to talk this way," Rue protested.

"Listen to reason!" Danting slammed his hands on the table. I looked back at Chaff, but Chaff just sipped from his bottle and stared out the window.

"For once, the puppet is right. When people saw you before, they did not hear you. Now you want to be heard and liked. You don't sound like everyone from District Eleven."

Seeder's voice was as quiet as the whisper of wind through the trees after Harvest. When Nana started teaching us to talk better, she warned us about this. Back home, the Whips didn't like the way Rue and I talked. Fieldhands, even the ones who respected Nana, avoided us. Because we didn't talk the way we were supposed to—because we talked the way we were raised to—Rue and I might not have many sponsors.

I couldn't let the Games take that away from me.

"I can take care of myself."

"Me too." Rue chimed in. I almost laughed at the look on her face. She was trying to glare at Danting, like she was strong and deadly, but she only looked like her eyesight was ppor.

"You, people will like," Danting replied, "but there's only so much Parion's creations will do for Thresh."

No one said anything against his words. Chaff and Seeder had stood for me, for Rue, whenever Danting walked over us. Their silence meant they agreed with him, the man they insulted and hated. Did they really believe I was that cold?

I had to prove them wrong.

Chaff remained at the window and drank, while Seeder helped Rue and I talk like people back home talked. We had to learn to drag our R's and drop certain sounds. We had to simplify our words. If we made a mistake and said things that were uncommon to District 11's dialect, Seeder snapped her newly woven rope over our bare arms and legs.

By lunchtime, Seeder declared, "You talk good enough for now. For the rest of the day, don't stop talking like that."

The table was empty when we sat down, but two girls walked in, carrying our food on heavy metal plates. One of the girls was almost as tall as me, dark, and had beautiful braids down her back. The other one was Rue's height with braids down her back too. Something was wrong with them; I could see it when they placed our food before us but didn't know what it was.

"I didn't know we had servants," Rue said when the shorter girl brought her food.

"Where did you think the food we've eaten during your regrettable stay came from? How was it cleared away? Did you think it only walked onto and off the table?" Danting replied.

Rue smiled at the smaller girl. "Thank you for serving us." The servant girl smiled back and nodded.

"Avoxes are the best servants of all: They don't talk. If only the same could be said of Tributes."

"The Avoxes must be trained by serving you, Danting? They'd never get a word into any conversation."

Danting smirked. "No, you simple boy: Avoxes are trained into silence in the best way possible. Because of their disobedience, the government removes their vocal chords. They are some of the most egregious offenders against the state."

I stopped eating, surprised. The girls left the room as smoothly as they had come in. If Danting's words had affected them, I couldn't tell. "Those are children. What crimes did they commit?"

"There's a lesson in that. Consider yourself lucky to be a Tribute. Even if you die, you have an intact body."

Chaff laughed. It was a short laugh and it felt wrong. Did he agree with Danting? Why did it matter to me if he did?

I stood and glanced at Seeder. Chaff laughed harder and did not stop. Seeder gave a slight nod of her head, and I returned to my quarters. Nothing about this day, the day of interviews, felt right at all. I wrestled with the comfortable sheets and fought the soft headrests until I fell asleep.

When I woke, Parion and her stylists were in my room. They blocked the door, and Parion flashed her animal-like teeth at me. If she meant to be friendly, she failed again. Those teeth would only scare me. "It's time to dress you for the interviews," she announced.

Juno and Cissus surprised me with their strength. They hauled me from the bed like Hands hauled crops at Harvest and dragged me to the bathroom. After four long hours in lessons on how I talked, I wasn't scared of what they could do to me.

They showered, plucked, shaved, scrubbed, and shaved me. Cissus and Juno rubbed something on my skin that felt smooth, smelled good, and made it shine like a precious metal. They painted something onto my face, which felt disgusting. "No matter how you present yourself in the interview, you must be attractive to the audience," Parion said as she trimmed my mustache.

After they dressed me, I looked at myself in the mirror. I wore a simple brown shirt that fit tightly on my torso; it showed the muscles I'd developed from Fielddancing and from years of work in the fields. My pants were somewhat looser. Juno and Cissus had trimmed my hair and facial hair, and I looked different than back home. My face didn't look like it was my own.

I was taller. My eyes, thanks to the makeup I wore, looked knowing and plotting. They had made me more attractive and closer to Rue's color. Did I always look like that?

"You're a ripe stalk of wheat, ready for harvesting." When Parion stuck her face into the mirror, I didn't jump back.

"When wheat is harvested, we kill the plants and take their seeds too. Nothing is left for the future."

"I didn't know that! It sounds so beautiful! Exactly what I was going for."

Parion handed me a pair of shoes. They were almost the same brown color as my shirt and pants. I shook my head, but she tried again. I pushed the shoes away. "Are you going without shoes?"

"Yes."

"That's madness!"

"I'll walk there on my own two feet."