Chapter 8
I don't do any dancing except ballroom in public.
The celebration is big as always. More than half of the citizens of the Capitol are here, all dressed up. There's a lot of food, singing and dancing. It's a wonder the tributes can't hear it.
"Want to dance?" Apollo says, taking my hand with any response and leading me into a crowd of people. Some musicians are playing an upbeat waltz. Apollo and I take the ballroom position and start dancing. He looks down at me and smiles
"Don't look at me like that," I say to him, trying to keep myself from smiling. He's much taller than I, me being 5'7 and he being at least six feet tall. He has to look down at me to talk to me, but sometimes the ways he does it makes the moment so awkward.
"I'm just looking at you," he says. I raise my eyebrows.
"Sure you are," I say teasingly, and brush some hair out of my face. He spins me.
"I think two of the tributes are watching us," he says while looking up. I squint to see them better, which is useless because I'm pretty much blind. They only way I could tell was from the blurred colors that didn't match the rest of the building.
"Want me to wave at them?" he starts to raise his hand. I pull it down and laugh.
"Don't."
"Fine. So what are you doing about school next year?" We resume our dancing position. School. My parents were thinking about sending me to "medical school", since I graduated in December and am going to be turning eighteen this January.
"I think I'm going to start working with my dad. I'm still going to be part of the theater, though. What about you?" His expression turns melancholy.
"I have no idea. I might stay in theater, but I have no idea about what I'm going to do for a living," he spins me again. His parents were never really supportive of his life plans.
"You could study fashion and be a stylist." He smiles. He knows I know he wants to be an actor. The music stops and everyone applauds the musicians. They thank the audience and start to play a slow song.
"You want to stop dancing?" Apollo asks. I shake my head and wrap my arms around his neck, barely able to reach. He gives me a little smile and wraps his arms around my waist.
"Don't get any ideas. I don't get to slow dance very often," I say warningly. He nods slowly and smiles again. The song is familiar. It sounds like something that my grandmother sang to me when I was really little. I don't feel any pain. A little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now...
"Les Miserables," he says, "A Little Fall Of Rain. The song where Éponine dies."
"I think you're ri-" I'm cut off by one of my old classmates. She grabs my arm and starts talking to me.
"Oh my God Hera! I haven't seen you in like forever! How have things been? Hi Apollo. What about you?" She manages to some how drag us both out of the dancing crowd and toward a group of Apollo's and my old classmates.
"As I was saying... Cassandra?" my friend Diana says. Her boyfriend, Caius, brushes a lock of her bubblegum pink hair out of her face. Diana is that type of dainty, sickly-sweet rich bitch that you sometimes want to slap in the face but you never do for some reason. Cassandra, the one with the hair that's shaped into a peacock and who pulled Apollo and me away from dancing, is rushing around, talking to almost every person she can. She stops and turns to us. Cassandra has a short attention span, if you haven't noticed already.
"I want a picture of the girls," she says, pulling a camera out of the bodice of her dress. She used to keep everything in there.
"Have you been carrying that the whole time?" a quiet boy by the name of Ceres says. He didn't talk much during class, but he was in a few productions with me. Cassandra smiles but says nothing. She makes Diana and me, and another girl with bright orange hair named Imogen squeeze together while she tells Apollo how to take the picture. She's always had a crush on Apollo, and she makes it pretty obvious. I'm not really sure if Apollo is totally oblivious about it or if he's choosing to ignore it. Cassandra finally chooses to join us.
"Okay. Smile," he says. We stay frozen until he says we can move. There is definitely enough light here for no flash.
"Oh my god thank you so much!" Cassandra takes the camera from him and hugs him. He hugs her awkwardly back. Yep, he's just ignoring it.
"What about the boys?" Imogen asks. All the boys look at her and she shrugs.
"I think we should get a picture of them," I say. I motion for Apollo to apply his lipstick, which he does happily. All the girls stand behind Cassandra as she takes the picture. All of the guys look nice, but strange with all the different colors of hair and the dyed and natural skin. I wonder if the tributes think we look as strange as I think we do.
"Thank you!" she says. We spend the rest of the time talking about out life plans. Ceres was recruited to be a Peacekeeper, Cassandra plans on attending the University, Caius and Diana are searching for government jobs, Imogen is going to take over her parent's candy store, and I'm becoming a "doctor", otherwise known as a work monkey.
"What about you Apollo?" Diana says. He does his best not to hesitate to answer.
"I'm going to go to school to become a... stylist," he says, pretty convincingly in my opinion. We're sitting at a table, drinking what I'm pretty sure is champagne. It's disgusting.
"Cassandra, do you know what the theater production is this autumn?" Diana asks. She really likes ones with girly female roles.
"The only thing I know about the theater this season is that Adriana is directing," Cassandra curls a strand of peacock blue hair around her finger and places it delicately behind her ear. Imogen shifts in her seat. The majority of our high school was in some type of theater production for all three years. It was required for the first two years, and it was easiest to just continue with it. That meant that all seven of my classmates were in just about every theater production at the Sabathia School of the Arts. Most of us went to the same elementary school, Pennington Elementary.
"I like this one the best," she says. We all stand up and crowd around her to look at it. It's a picture of the us four girls on the last day of school last year. I like it, too. Not just because it's a picture of the last day I'll ever be in high school, but of the diversity of clothing. Diana, being the prima donna she is, is wearing a her favorite pink sundress and lots of jewelry; Cassandra, with her hair done up to look like two cupcakes, is wearing a white polo shirt and a lavender skirt with an old-fashioned apron; Imogen, her bright orange hair curled, and wearing a matching orange dress and white boots; and of course, me wearing jeans, and a black shirt. Nothing fancy, really, or at least not fancy compared to the others. I'm wearing a necklace and earrings, but that's really it.
"Oh Diana I love that dress on you," Imogen says. "Do you have any more of the boys, Cass?"
"Yeah let me just..." Cassandra scrolls through more pictures. "Here. When we took the class trip to that lake from the Sixty-Ninth Hunger Games." Yep. Since our class only had the nine of us, that the seven of us plus Caliban and Priam, we got to go on our own trip. "These are the ones that Hera took." Pictures of all of us. Without make up. It's really odd, actually. Cassandra with her natural short black hair streaming down the sides of her face and neck, Apollo without his lipstick, Diana without her face powder. Times like this are very, very, rare.
"Find one of these with Hera in it," Diana says, leaning onto Caius's chest. Cassandra chuckles and shakes her head. I always took the picture. I hate having my picture taken.
"I don't think I have any... wait," she stops at one where we're all jumping into the lake. It's a timed picture, and a pretty good one, too, because the nine of us are all jumping at the same time.
"You have to send that picture to me, and the two from tonight," Ceres says. All of us agree. It makes me so happy to be with my friends again. We sit down at a table which is strangely grouped with others in the middle of the street. I'm guessing, and hoping, that they blocked the road. Usually, on a normal day, this street would be crowded with cars and people trying not to get hit.
I don't know where the Capitol gets all this alcohol. I've never seen this many drunken people in my entire life. Especially this many people I know.
"Hey... you know if you tilt your head to the left and squint, Hera really looks like that District 1 girl. Except you know, she doesn't..." Ceres pokes my cheek and Imogen laughs. This is why I have no intention of drinking this heavily until I am old, alone, and depressed. I don't know what they were drinking when I turned my back. Whatever it was, they drank a lot of it.
"Come on, Apollo, let's get you home so you can't keep poisoning yourself," I help him up slowly. He stumbles over the first few steps, wretches a little bit, but we finally get out of the crowd of loud people.
I don't drink, and Annie doesn't like talking about it so I was left to guess how drunk people act.
I am really proud of this chapter. I must admit that I did not spend that much time on it though... so please tell me if it sucks.
I'm sorry if I don't post again for a while. School really does get in the way of everything,
Johanna