My heart is still racing when the chariots enter the Training Center. We can still hear people screaming our names from the City Circle. Peeta jumps off the chariot and holds me by the waist spins me in circles.
"That was amazing!" he says, practically screaming.
Before I could say something we're engulfed by the prep teams, who are nearly unintelligible as they praise us and make us stay still while take off our capes and headdresses.
The mentors get off the elevators to find their tributes, and we get to see some familiar faces. Finnick Odair, one of the youngest victors in the history of the Hunger Games, and a walking tabloid headline. The girls in my school often spend the very little money they have buying pictures of him. Johanna Mason, who fooled the other tributes and maybe even the producers into thinking she was a fragile little girl. When they realized how deadly she was, it was too late. She even killed her own District partner.
"That's Gallio Thrasea," Peeta whispers in my ear, looking at the middle-aged man that just left one of the elevators. "He's the father of the guy from District 2."
Gallio's game happened long before we were born. Unlike the most of the other mentors, who let themselves go after years of drinking and morphling abuse, Gallio looks like he's ready to go back to the arena. And if his stares are any indication, Peeta and I would be the firsts he'd hunt.
"That was a marvelous performance!" Effie gushes, beyond herself. We are the first team she works with that manage to draw some attention during the Chariot Ride. She continues to bombard us with compliments, and I look around and notice the other tributes staring at us, while their mentors talk with them. Some look at us with sadness, others envy, but the careers look at us with pure hate.
"Let's go to our floor," Haymitch says, also looking at the other tributes.
Each district gets their own floor. 12, being the last, gets the penthouse. The elevator ride to our floor is exhilarating. I grew up climbing trees and learned to love the sensation of being on high places. Seeing through the elevator's crystal walls the people shrinking and the top of the Capitol's buildings is amazing. I'm tempted to ask Effie if I could ride it again, but that seems childish.
"Welcome to your new home!" Effie exclaims. The Training Center it's where we'll eat, sleep and train. The only time we'll leave this place will be when we make the Farewell Ride, a parade where we'll ride to the hoverport on convertibles and wave at the Capitol people, who will send us their goodbyes before we enter the arena.
"Come on. I'll give you the tour," Effie says. The apartment is huge, my house alone could fit in the living room. Effie explains to us that all apartments have the same floor plan. There are six bedrooms, two for the tributes, one for the escort, two for the mentors and one for the mentor in training, the new victor. In our case, I guess we'll have a few empty rooms.
After the night on the train, Peeta and I decided to share the bedroom in the Training Center too. We didn't really talk about it, but this will be our only chance to live as a normal couple, and we want to enjoy those moments for as long as we can. Someone seemed to notice that and put all of our clothes in one bedroom. Effie didn't mention anything, but I think she had something to do with that.
Our bedroom looks like a bigger version of the one on the train. There are so many gadgets that we lose track of time pushing all the buttons. The closet has a screen where I can choose an outfit, and a moving image of me shows up in the clothes. I pick one and all to clothes hanging in the closet move until the one I picked shows up in front of me.
"Hey Katniss, come here!" Peeta yells from the bathroom. I lay the clothes on the bed and found Peeta looking dumbfounded at the panel that controls the shower. "Do you have any idea how this thing works?"
Comparing with the wooden bathtub and the bucket of water we use on 12, this, as most things at the Capitol, looks like something from another planet. Peeta presses a couple of buttons, but nothing happens. I see a blue button with a drawing that looks like rain and decide to give it a try. Water starts to pour from all the sides of the shower. Peeta and I are bombarded with hot water, freezing cold water, cinnamon scent soap, mint scent soap, and some other things I have no idea what they are.
"Turn that damn thing off!" I scream to him, with soap in my eyes. I'm starting to think I'll be the first tribute to ever be killed by a shower when Peeta finds the right button and ends this nightmare.
"Are you two okay? I heard you screaming." Effie has a worried look on her face, but it takes her only a second to realize the problem. "Don't worry about the other bottoms, just press those two for warm water, this one for soap and the blue one to turn it on and off." She takes a look at us head to toe, completely wet and embarrassed, "but I guess you figured that one out."
"Thank you, Effie," we say, and I don't know about Peeta, but that's the first time in a while that I felt like a child.
"All right, try to not be late for dinner, but remember, you're two aren't alone," she says as she points to her ear, reminding us of the earpieces the prep team implanted into our ear canals. They're tiny metal circles so light you can easily forget they are there. They're supposed to be our way to communicate with our producer. But so far he, or she, didn't say a word.
"Okay, I feel like I had enough of the shower experience," Peeta says, leaving the shower and taking off the soaked unitard. I can't help to notice how different he looks without chest hair. It seems to accentuate his muscles. Peeta notices me staring, and gives me a crooked smile, "Or maybe you want some company?"
"Maybe," I say with a fake tone of bashfulness, "but we're running out of time and we shouldn't start something we can't finish."
"We can finish fast, trust me," Peeta says, as he goes back to the shower, unzips my unitard and starts to kiss my neck.
"I wouldn't be so proud of that if I were you," I say. Peeta's muffled laugh tickles my collarbone and sends shivers all over my body. I guess we're going to be late for dinner.
To my surprise, Peeta and I weren't the last people to show up at the table. Our stylists Cinna and Portia were also late. We're finishing the soup when they come in apologizing. After our smashing success at the Chariot Ride, all the news channels wanted to get an interview with them.
"Everybody is talking about you two. The kiss was whose idea?" Cinna asks. I try to recollect the event, it was just a couple of hours ago, but only some moments stand out in my memories.
After Cinna set our capes on fire, we enter the city and are immediately overwhelmed with the pounding music and the screams of the people of the Capitol. At first, I'm frozen in fear and anxiety, holding on Peeta's hand as my life depended on it. But then I start to realize what they are screaming, my name, and Peeta's, and our district's. They throw flowers and gold coins at us. They're going to love you! Cinna's voice comes back to my mind, he was right, people love do us, the star-crossed lovers from the outline district.
Peeta looks breathtakingly beautiful, the firelight flickers off his blue eyes, making them glow like stars. He looks at me, and I think he sees something similar in my eyes because his smile fades into an expression of awe. I don't know who leaned in first, maybe we both did at the same time, but for a few moments, the Capitol and even the Hunger Games didn't matter. At that moment there was only the two of us in the world.
I look at Peeta, who has a shy smile on his face, and I know he remembers it the same way I do. "I guess the idea was from both of us," I say to Cinna.
"That's genius, just the right touch of rebellion these games need," Haymitch says. Rebellion? I didn't even consider that angle. But comparing to the other tributes, who didn't even acknowledge each other, Peeta and I look like the perfect rebel lovers, unwilling to conform to our fate.
The dinner goes on uneventful. The food is as terrible as the one on the train. After the soup, they serve us portions after portions of things that I can't pronounce or care enough to remember the names. The only thing that makes me excited is the cake. A young blonde girl, dressed in a white tunic, brings it to us a gorgeous white cake that she promptly sets on fire. "This is beautiful. Thank you," I say, and she nods silently.
"Who did you make this?" Peeta asks, and the girl nods again and hurries away from the table. "Did I said some wrong?"
"Peeta, you can't ask her questions. She's an Avox," Effie says, and we look at her shocked. "Go back to the kitchen," Effie orders her, the Avox nods again and leaves.
Every child on District 12 grew up hearing about the Avoxes. They're part of the collection of tales about the Capitol's cruelty we tell as kids when we want to make each other scared, like the pasty white mutts on the sewer, or the people buried alive on District 13. After you grow up these things became just stories, starvation is the real horror you have to fight. Except during the Hunger Games, everything else the Capitol does loses its importance. But right now, looking at the other five young men and women serving us, all wearing the same white tunics, those stories feel all too real.
After dinner we go back to our room, I get ready for bed and Peeta finds a remote control that changes the view of the windows for different settings. A starry night, a snowy plane, a city landscape, he stops at a forest. We sit on the bed staring at it.
The sounds of the birds chirping take me back and I can almost smell the pine trees and damp soil from the woods outside District 12. I wish I enjoyed more the last time I was there, to went after that deer like Gale wanted.
"You know, I keep thinking about how are things back on 12," Peeta says. A grim expression crosses his face, but he quickly puts on a smile. "One thing is sure. They're talking about us. And this time the story is actually true."
The gossip is the only thing I truly detest about District 12. It's a small place, and rumours run fast there. I think it's because people seem to forget their own misery when they talk about others. Peeta and I were the targets of this rumours a few times. Once that I was pregnant with his child, which is practically impossible since all the girls get a birth control shot on vaccination day as soon they became eligible to enter the Hunger Games. No one wants to see a pregnant teenager dying on tv, and if being pregnant made you ineligible, there would be dozens of pregnant girls. There was the rumour that Peeta was using me to get a cheaper price on the game I hunt. Some envious merchant probably started that one. But the absolute worst one is that I'm cheating on Peeta with Gale.
I met Gale when I was thirteen. He's two years older than me, and at fifteen he looked like a man. We didn't get along at all when we met. It took us a couple of months to see that we could gain a lot more by working together than competing for game. When we started to show up at the Hob to make trades together, the rumours began. Unfortunately, Peeta found out about it before me. We talked about it, and I stated that I wasn't going to stop hunting with Gale over some dumb rumours. He said he was okay with that, but I think that even after all these years, it still bothers him.
We got to bed and lay there in silence, my head on his chest, where I hear the strong and steady beats of his heart. Him, drawing circles on the back of my shoulder with his thumb. "I love you. You know that don't you?" I say.
"Of course I do." He pulls me closer, and we kiss.
It's still dark outside when I wake up. My heart races inside my chest and my head aches. I have no idea what I dreamed about, but I know it must have been something horrible. Prim and I started to have nightmares after our father died, and even after we found stability in our lives again, they never fully stopped. She still wakes up screaming. I still wake up trembling and tasting blood on my mouth. We rarely remember what happened, and when we do, we wish we didn't.
Peeta is sound asleep, and I don't want to wake him. So I sneak out of bed and head to the shower. I press the buttons the same way Effie demonstrated, and this ends up to be actually pleasant. We don't have showers on the Seam, only bathtubs that need to be filled with buckets of water, and they don't feel nearly as nice as this. After it, I put my hair in the single braid down my back and take the clothes the tributes are supposed to use on the training section. Tight black pants, a shirt with the number 12 embroidered on the sleeves, and leather shoes.
Haymitch didn't say what time we have to meet him for breakfast, but the routine of eating every other hour Peeta insisted on is turning my stomach into a bottomless well. So I head down to the dining room, hoping there will be food.
Effie is already there with a pile of folders in front of her and a mug on her hand. Her hair is now in a light violet shade, that goes with her outfit and makeup. That probably takes hours to put it together, and yet she seems like she's going over this papers for a while. When does she sleep?
"Oh Katniss, I'm glad you're awake. I need to talk with you about something." She motions for me to sit on the chair next to her, she snaps her fingers, and an Avox seems to materialize practically out of thin air.
"More coffee," she says and turns to me, "Would you like some?"
I never had coffee before, only a few merchants on 12 can afford it. To me, it doesn't look any different from tea, but people on tv talk about it like is the greatest thing on Panem, so most out of curiosity, I accept it. The Avox comes back right away with a mug for me and a coffee pot. My mug gets filled with a shiny black liquid, that smells a lot stronger than tea. It has a sharp bitter taste, and it isn't terrible, but I can't see why people love it so much.
"So, we got offers," she says. Her eyes grow as she stares at the table full of what I assume are contracts. "We got deals for books, movies, tv shows, among other things. After last night every producing company in the Capitol wants a piece of the hottest couple in the Hunger Games!"
A piece of us. As if forcing us to fight to the death for entertainment wasn't enough, they want to profit from us long after we're dead. There's an odd feeling going through my body. It feels like anxiety but is coming in a lot stronger. There's a pressure on my chest, and I need air. I get up and leave the room almost running, while Effie shouts my name behind me.
I walk aimlessly through the corridors, if before I thought this apartment was big, now the walls feel like they are closing in on me. I find the staircase by accident, I don't know if I'm allowed on it or not, but I don't care. At the end of it, there's an unlocked door. Behind it, the rooftop of the Training Center.
The coffee I drank comes back unannounced. It tastes even worse mixed with the acidity from my stomach, and the mess I make on the floor looks and smells disgusting. At least the feeling isn't as bad as before. The rooftop doesn't look off-limits, there is even a garden in it. I sit down on one of the benches, taking deep breaths to try to calm myself down.
After a while the effects from the coffee seem to start to fade away, my breathing slows down, and the pressure on my chest starts to dissipate. People must be crazy to drink this every day.
"Effie is trying to help, you know," a voice on my head says, and it makes me jump out of my skin. I'm gasping, and the voice lets out a polite laugh. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm Lavinia your producer."
So she's the one Haymitch told us not to trust.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't talk with you sooner. We had a problem with the devices. It took us all night to get them to work." I think that's a lie, but I can't tell for sure. Growing up trading and making deals made me very aware of when someone is lying. But with sound only, it's ten times harder. "But now I'm here, and I just have to say that what you did for your sister was the bravest thing I've ever seen."
"I promised that I wouldn't let anything bad happen to her," I admit.
"I know. I have a daughter, and I would do the same thing for her in a heartbeat." Like she'll ever have to face this decision, her daughter will probably have a long happy life watching other people's children die on tv. "You're probably thinking, what does she knows, right?"
"Something like that." I let out a small laugh.
"Yes, it's true that I would never know what you are going through, but I do know what's like to love someone so much, that you're willing to sacrifice everything for that person," she says.
"And that's your daughter?" I ask, but my mind goes back to Prim.
"Yes, after I lost my husband, she became my whole world." Lavinia's voice is a mixture of tenderness and sadness, "I would do anything to keep her safe, no matter the cost."
The Sun rises illuminating the Capitol's buildings. Prim is probably up by now, taking care of the goat or getting ready for school. Unlike me, she's actually a good student, who wants to be a healer like our mom. It breaks my heart to think of her starving, or having to take tresseares, or worse, become one of the girls standing outside of our head peacekeeper's door ready to sell their bodies to him.
"You think I should sign Effie's papers," I say. Maybe that could make all of this worth something.
"Most Tributes don't get that opportunity, you know?" she says. "This way even if you die, your family will never have to worry about money again."
I have to admit, she's right. I'm ready to go back inside and sign the papers when Haymitch's words come rushing through my mind. Do not trust her. And I stop. "I'm going to talk with Peeta first. Since is also his family."
"Of course. It's your sister's future, you definitely should run it by with your boyfriend," she says, and it may be my own distrust acting, but I have the intense feeling that she just tried to manipulate me.
A/N: Hey guys, sorry about the delay. This ended up being one of the longest chapters so far, and I wanted to get it just right. So leave a review and let me know what you guys think!
Chapter 8 will [hopely] be out next Sunday.