Jill and I meet in the hallway outside our rooms and head through a small door and up three flights of stairs onto the roof. The breeze is pleasant and natural and outside noise is fairly audible now, hopefully masking hushed conversation from unwelcome ears. There are several separate gardens on the rooftop with well-tended plants in them, probably another job of the avoxes. It's probably one of the more pleasant duties they have, I think as I catch sight of Thresh and Stara emerging from behind a synthetic tree. We meet at one of the railings which rings the roof, and stare down at the panorama below. People can be seen moving about and transport vehicles can be glimpsed driving around the streets, tiny figures from this height. My gaze fixes on a sprawling building that is larger than most houses, but smaller than most of the multistory complexes nearby.
"Snow's mansion," Thresh says, his eyes on the house as well, a scowl on his face. His voice has lost most of the tendency to grunt now, though he still sounds like he could regain the grunt at any time. After seeing him on guard, it is honestly kind of cute, but I decide to refrain from telling. Snow is the Capitol's president and is very involved in overseeing the games every year. At home, I often thought that his eyes were looking right at me through the TV screen. His mansion seems to cast a shadow over everything, as if the spirit of the president is hovering over the entire city. Unsettled, I turn away.
"I understand," I say to Stara, forsaking preamble. "I get what you meant. We are remembered by the crowd according to the actions we do and the things we say in the arena. We must make sure that they reflect what we want on us."
"How did you figure that out," she asks simply, nodding approval, her elusive facial features transforming into an illusion of a smile. For several minutes, we simply observe the scene outside the training center, saying nothing. Finally, I move toward one of the gardens, where I can hear the tinkling of wind chimes. The others follow me as I sit down, stretched out comfortably, next to a row of flowers.
I don't know why, but I relate the memory of my last days with Old boone, for the benefit of the others as well as Stara. Their faces are slightly impressed, especially Jill's ,who seems to have taken the idea of self-abasement deeply to heart. I try to remind myself she will die soon so I don't think about how depressed she looks right now, but I don't entirely succeed. I mentally reprimand myself and turn away from her problems, towards the games looming large for all of us. "I don't want to be like the 73 other district 10 males," I say. And even though I realize that this is a generalization, it has the desired rhetorical effect. "And I don't think you want to just be a copy off the mold either," I say, pointing at each of the others in turn.
So for the next hour we share our knowledge of previous hunger games, our skills, our strengths, and to a lesser extent, weaknesses.
"It's tough living in District 5," Stara begins hesitantly. She probably hasn't revealed herself to anyone with such candor. "Food is hard to come by, especially if you're poor, like me. I have to steal it a lot of the time. And I can't steal much because otherwise people will know it's missing, and the peacekeepers will punish thieves harshly. We aren't able to hunt either; anything you have that is made of wood or paper is destroyed because with all the light and heat around, it could start a fire. We learned that back in the early days of the games, rebels would often set fire to buildings to decrease visibility as they made their escape or to trap enemies inside them. Yes, our homes are made of brick. They take longer to build, but at least they're fireproof. Tables? Synthetic wood imported from the capitol, I think district 3 makes it in their factories.
"I've read a few books about hunting, and I don't think I'd be too bad at it. But with no wood, there's no chance at making a bow or even a simple snare. The fields outside the district boundaries are teeming with animals-if only I could get a weapon and kill them. I've snuck out past the fence before to watch them and they seem so carefree and sometimes I yearned for that freedom as well. I tried to catch them with my bare hands after studying their feeding patterns, but I was far too slow. The library is pretty sparse too; the district leadership has been banning books for years and years because people distracted themselves reading when they were supposed to be working on the newest lighting technology, and now there's little more than books about light left there for research. I was able to save a few before they were all confiscated and most likely burnt." She sighs.
I imagine living life trapped inside a brick house, my three-shelf bookcase barely a quarter full, reading the same book over and over because I've read everything else too recently and remember it. There are no ranging grounds, no cows, no freedom, only lights that burn the eyes and unyielding brick houses and the sight of carefree animals to capitalize on the sense of impotence that I have. Stara's life sounds so stifling that I want to hug her, but she recoils back when I move toward her. So much for that idea.
I tell them about my enhanced ability to communicate with the cows and my increasing prowess with the spear. Jill says that she might get lucky with some knife throws if she is even able to get a knife in the cornucopia, then sighs, shoulders slumping. Thresh's intense gaze looks back toward the steps, and he mumbles something that we can't hear. When we ask him to speak up, he refuses outright. He doesn't speak again while we are together on the rooftop.
After revealing so much about ourselves, there is no way we cannot be allies in the arena. After all, each of us knows key information about how the other three work, even brooding Thresh, that rejecting the alliance now is tantamount to asking to be killed at the earliest opportunity to ensure silence. As we head back down the roof stairway, waving goodbye to Thresh as he turns into the hallway on his floor, I wonder how we even built that mutual trust in the first place. A few silent glances in the elevators, a few muttered orders during lunch this afternoon. He had done it. I still did not know why Thresh wanted me, but he did.
"Good night," Jill says, as she enters her room.
"Sleep well," I say back, and she closes her door. I hear the slight rustlings of her getting ready to sleep as I head away to my own room. The male avox assigned to me is just finishing up making the bed when i enter. He quickly averts his eyes from the door, which he must have turned to instinctly as he heard it open. I brush past him as he leaves, and as I enjoy the cocoon of blankets I've created, I fall into a refreshing, dreamless sleep.
The other days of training pass similarly to the first one. Besides Jill, I make sure I spend time with Stara and Thresh, sometimes alone, sometimes in a three- or four-person gaggle. The game makers sit on an elevated balcony, eating food, taking notes, chatting amongst themselves and, every so often, looking at us. Besides spear mastery, I learn how to identify typical edible plants that are found in the arena, build a fire using matches, climb a tree. I wonder how many skills I'll actually remember when the pressure is on and I am simply trying to stay alive.
"Look," Stara says suddenly to me on the third day. We are together at the camouflage station, unsuccessfully trying to replicate Pita, who has managed to paint and daub himself with branches and mud until he looks indistinguishable from one of the small tree stumps nearby. I can only tell which one is him when he points at my left pant leg, where my sloppy spreading makes the cloth clearly visible amid everything else. That would probably be worse than no camouflage at all. I look questioningly at Stara.
She points toward Katniss, who is looking around trying to find something to do. Eventually Pita drops his camouflage gear to follow her to the knife fighting station. "Yeah, she's the girl from 12, right," I say lamely. It's all I can think of.
"No, no, you missed it. Her eyes. I've noticed her during the previous training days. Whenever she is browsing the arena for a new station to visit. She checks each one for about a quarter of a second and then moves on, clockwise or counterclockwise-it seems kind of random which-until she finds one."
"ye-e-es," I say slowly, drawing the word out as a question, because this all seems pointless and today's the third day and we have less than an hour before lunch and our private sessions with the game makers. She doesn't seem to be overly worried about missing time for some last-minute cramming.
"Whenever her eyes hit the archery station, they snap away more quickly than usual. She's obviously been ordered to not use that station. Have you seen her go there? Because I have not."
"So, you're saying that you think she's an expert shot and doesn't want to show us?"
Stara nods, and I consider the implications of this. The girl from 12 might be just as dangerous than the careers. Even more so, because they usually don't learn archery, preferring the more violent clashes of close-range fighting as it's more exciting to watch. It's too late to try to set up an alliance with her-it's the third day. Plus I'm still bitter about her chariot ride costume, because I barely know anything else about her. There's nothing I can do, so I focus on doing some last minute practice against the spear training dummies before lunch, and our private sessions.
Our names are called one by one, the boy first and then the girl. As the room empties out and my time draws nearer I become more and more nervous about what I'll do. Misgivings enter my mind and I fight to hold them off. They've just called Stara away. If she's smart she'll hide her cunning behind a low score; I know that's what I'd do in her place. The girl from 8 walks unsteadily out of the room as her name is called, staring at the ceiling and occasionally bumping into things on her way out. It's so quiet-we're so nervous-that the thumps are clearly audible even though she's 15 to 20 yards away. No one is at ease enough to laugh or point or anything.
"Dallas Mooer," a voice booms around the dining room. I get up, trying to hide the sweat from my palms, and smile nervously at Jill as I reach the door. She gives me a halfhearted thumbs-up. Thresh just stares stolidly at the table. Katniss and Pita whisper to each other, knowing that their time is not far in coming.
I enter the gym. It's spotless, everything in its right place, so that it's impossible to guess what the other tributes before me showed them. I grab a spear and head for a dummy. With perfect technique, I stab into its chest and rip the weapon free, hearing the satisfying scream of pain issue from it.
I look up at the game makers. A few of them nod approval. Most of them continue eating and chatting among themselves. Annoyed that most of them are ignoring me, I move along the line of dummies, stabbing each one in a similar manner, as fast as I can, while still practicing the technique I learned. My chest heaves with exertion after I'm finished. More of the game makers are at least looking at me now, but they are still not interested enough. I can see it in their expressions, in their faces which keep turning back toward their platters of food. I lunge toward the balcony, attempting to use the top of the wall to vault up on to the balcony floor to show them that I can, but my hand slips off and I fall, just managing to land on my feet. I have at least grabbed their attention: Now they're laughing at me; I can hear the bellow of anger and humiliation rising up in me, like a bull that has been provoked one too many times. I fling the spear with all the force I can muster toward the dining table, but its weight causes it to fall. It clatters against the wall.
"You are dismissed," one of them says. "Put the spear back where it belongs," he orders to a nearby avox as an afterthought.
My score will probably be in the negatives. Hanging my head in shame, I leave for my room. The game makers return to their food as one of them calls Jill Pailor's name, as if nothing has happened.