"The fire in that girl..."
She lights up the place, literally! No one is breathing, Clove is talking to me but I can't hear her. I look up at the screen as it zooms in on Everdeen, her face lit up to perfection, and she is the girl on fire. Right then the boy from her district takes her hand, the capitol goes insane.
I look away and say to myself, "That bitch."
Clove is more furious than I am; Clove thrives in the spotlight and can't stand it when it is taken away from her.
As our stylists come to congratulate us I look over at Everdeen, even without the flames engulfing her, she is still radiant. Haymitch started to nudge her and the boy from her district towards the elevator, probably trying to get them away from me, which is not a bad idea because both Clove and I desire to kill them.
I watch as they walk to the elevator, Everdeen takes one glance back at me, and smirks. I clench my teeth resisting the urge to slap that smirk off her face. She laughs to herself and turns back around, obviously amused at how easily she could get under my skin.
I lose my temper. She steps into the elevator and I watch as their escort presses the button to go up to their rooms. I get to the elevator just as the doors are about to close, I stop them with my hand and they retreat back. Haymitch looks like he is about to vomit, their escort looks like she might slap me across the face with her fan, and the boy from Everdeen's district just looks at the floor. I give them a nice smirk. My eyes run over Everdeen who does not look amused. Her strong voice startles me slightly.
"What do you want?"
"I just thought I would tell you that it's not polite to smirk at people."
"Oh yeah, because that is totally not what you were doing just five seconds ago!"
"If I could kill you right now-" suddenly I felt a strong hand grip my shoulder. I turn to see Brutus standing behind me, and he tells me calmly: "Come on Cato, we should go." I don't protest. I just glare at her as the elevator doors close between us.
I am not surprised to see Clove screaming and throwing a tantrum when I get to our room on the 2nd floor. Clove, like usual, has a knife in either hand and is thrashing around screaming, "That fucking bitch is going to get it!"
I just sit down on the couch and enjoy the show. I smile and shake my head, laughing to myself as Clove continues her rant about Everdeen. I let her go on for about a minute then I tell her, "Wow, I almost forgot how immature you are until this very minute."
"Shut the fuck up, Cato!"
I laugh at her and say, "Well, I guess someone is on her period."
That pisses her off; she turns around and throws a knife at a wall. The knife goes into the wall as if it were only made of butter. I figure that Clove and Enobaria probably made an agreement that she would not try and kill me, at least until the games, which is fine by me. I say to her causally, "I've seen better." She turns around sharply to face me, her eyes tell me she wants to kill me right here and right now, but I don't care; she can't actually kill me even without the agreement; I am just better then her.
"Cato, why do you have to be such a fucking bastard?"
"Sunshine, if you like me just say so."
Clove glares at me, and I grin at her. She tells me, "I wish I could just cut that smile right off your fucked up face."
I pause, smile, and add, "I wish I could cut the smile right off of Everdeen's face!"
Clove sneers, a very unsettling sneers, and she says evilly, "Finally something we agree on, but I still get to kill her."
I look at her as if she were insane, "Who said you can kill Everdeen?"
"I did!"
I want to hit her so bad, I want to just kill her now, and get it over with. I resist the urge and stand up to look her in the face and say, "Clove, let me say this slowly so you understand me: I. Am. Going. To. Kill. Everdeen. And. You. Can. Go. Fuck. Yourself." That makes her snap.
She swiftly grabs one of the pillows that is on the couch and throws it at me. I trained in Swordsmanship and Clove has trained Knife Throwing. I started when I was only six and Clove started at the normal age of seven. I am eighteen and she is only fifteen, but she still has an amazingly strong arm. So when she throws the pillow at me, its force almost makes me lose my balance, but only briefly.
"Our mentors are not going to like that!"
"My deal with the mentors is that I can't kill you! How the fuck could I kill you with a shitty-ass pillow?"
"Well it would be great if you could find a way to kill Everdeen by throwing a pillow at her before the games start, because then we probably would not get in as much trouble as cutting her up into bits with a sword. "
"Or a knife!" I shake my head at Clove. There is no way I am going to let Clove kill that girl. If she tries to without me giving her the okay, I might just have to kill her. I sigh and tell her, "Look Clove, you're just a small immature little girl, killing that girl is going to take someone older, more mature, and well, just better in general, which is me."
She rolls her eyes at me and she opens her mouth, probably to say some snide remark, but she never gets the chance because our mentors and Athena walk in right then.
They look at the two of us, wondering what happened. Then they see the pillow at my feet and the knife in the wall behind Clove.
Enobaria spoke, "I don't even want to know!"
I knew I had to take the chance, so I said it, "Don't worry, I don't think Clove will get pregnant!"
I wasn't even trying to piss Clove off; I was just trying to break the tension from the shrapnel that was left from Clove and mine's fight. Either way Clove was pissed, per usual. I was not the only one noticing Clove's anger rising, because Lyme quickly said, "Well, whatever happened, we don't want to know. Now the two of you need to get ready for dinner."
Clove stormed off to her room, screaming and then slamming her door shut. I just laughed to myself.
These games were going to be a piece of cake.
It's late at night but I go down to the tributes' lunch room. I don't really know why, but something just told me that I need to be there. I sit down at the Career table and lay my head down. My mind is running around mine and Clove's fight. I smile to myself, Clove is fun, and so easy to annoy, it makes it all the better.
All of a sudden I hear the table creak under someone's lightweight. I don't really feel like talking to anyone, I don't even feel like being here.
"Whoever you are; go away!" I say to the mystery person with my head still down. They don't say anything. I look up, thinking that no one is there and I had just imagined the noise, but she is still sitting there staring at me.
"Staring at people is rude, Everdeen."
"You are such a hypocrite; you stare at me, and then tell me not to stare! Oh, and you tell me not to smirk, but that doesn't stop you!"
I ignore everything she says and say to her, "Why are you even here? Are you following me? Well, I really shouldn't be surprised, considering that I am amazing." She smiles slightly, and shakes her head, silently telling me, "Whatever makes you happy." I shake it off and ask again, "What are you doing here?"
"I couldn't sleep and I needed something to eat, so I thought there might be something here, but apparently not. What are you doing down here?"
I open my mouth to say some lie, but I stop, "I guess because there aren't any people here to tell me what to do, and where to be." She looks at me and our eyes meet. It's then that I see it again, the hunter in her eyes.
"So Everdeen, what's your specialty?" She looked a little taken back, she probably thought I didn't give a crap, but I did, more so I know her weaknesses. She looks down at the table and says, "I don't know what you mean...I don't have any 'specialties'...I'm from District 12, remember?" Her face shows no emotion, she knows how to hide how she feels and if she is lying or not. I know from her eyes though that she is lying so I say, "I'm not an idiot you know, I have been trained for 12 years, and I know you can hunt." Her eyes shoot straight up at me.
"You don't know anything about me, Cato, and you never will, because you will die before you get the chance."
She gets up and starts to walk away. I jump up from the table, and quickly grab her wrist and turn her around. I pin her against the wall; one of my hands is on her shoulder to keep her against the wall. My other hand is still gripping her wrist to make sure she doesn't try and hit me. She struggles a little trying to get free, but I am too strong.
I lean in, my lips so close to touching her ear, I whisper, "You're stupid to think that I am going to be the one dead! You won't make it five minutes in the arena and I will make damn sure of it." I release her and head to the elevator.
I can feel her eyes burning holes into my back but I don't dare turn around and let her have the last word.
