Tenzin and I spent most of training at the survival skill stations: knot tying and snares, fire starting, shelter making, identifying poisonous and edible plants.
I did my best to ignore the Career Tributes. Districts 1, 2, and 4. Each of them molded into machines with a single purpose of winning the Games. They spared against the trainers with knives and swords and spears, muscles obvious from across the room.
They weren't afraid of showing off. They didn't need to be.
Tenzin and I did.
Against the Careers, we needed the element of surprise.
They mostly ignored us too.
"Be average," Mai had told us, the first morning of training. "Too weak and they'll kill you just because they can. Too strong, and they'll feel they have to kill you. Make them think you're strong enough to need a little effort, but weak enough that you're not a threat and they can kill you once they've dealt with a few other Tributes and secured their resources."
We were average.
Not thin and malnourished like the Tributes from Districts 8 and 10. The boy from 10 had a limp, one foot pointing inwards.
Hunting had kept us fed, and fed on meat which built our muscles. We could spend the whole day hiking in the woods and not tire.
Not young like the thirteen-year-old boy from District 6. Like Rue.
Sixteen and seventeen, almost adult. I was tall for a girl, tall for my age, and Tenzin had grown an inch a month the past year.
But we were nowhere near the Careers' level and they knew it.
So for two days, we avoided any kind of fighting.
Until the Careers began to eye us on the morning of the third.
They eyed us the way a jackal eyed a lame rabbit.
I tugged on Tenzin's arm. "Come on."
A minute later, I'd shoved a slingshot into his hands and picked up the recurved bow I'd been itching to test.
"But Mai said -"
"Average, not helpless," I retorted. I inclined my head in direction of the watching Careers.
After a moment, Tenzin nodded and selected a round ball to tuck into the sling.
Whhooop. Whoooop. Whooop.
Miss.
Whhooop. Whoooop. Whooop.
Miss.
Whhooop. Whoooop. Whooop.
Crash!
I heard gasps. The ceramic target, a round disk the size of my palm, lay shattered on the floor the length of the gymnasium away.
"Again," I muttered.
Whhooop. Whoooop. Whooop.
Crash!
We had snakes in 12. Poisonous ones that had been bred by the Capitol and were more likely to attack than flee if you stumbled across them.
Even Tenzin, who went green if he had to watch me skin something, agreed killing them was okay.
Slingshots were easy to make, easy to conceal, and truthfully, the Peacekeepers didn't care. Bits of rock weren't going to make a dent in their armor.
Tenzin was good with one. Very good. I'd seen him nail a snake between eyes from thirty paces. Killed it instantly.
He stepped aside for me.
I fired nine arrows. None of them hit the bullseye or the first ring.
I wasn't aiming for either.
The first six had gone honestly astray, me getting used to the bow.
The last three, I'd aimed those for two, six, and eleven o'clock on the second ring. The six o'clock I hit in the third ring, the other two I hit dead on target.
Each time, I made sure to screw up my face and grumble. At the end, I threw the bow onto the nearest table as if in disgust.
When I checked, the Careers' expressions had turned considering. They lingered a little longer on Tenzin than me.
Not weak. Not strong. Something in between.
One by one, we were called to appear before the Gamemakers.
As always, Twelve was last.
The Avox came for Tenzin.
"Impress them," I said.
"You too," he murmured before following the Avox.
My palms sweated.
A good score could mean the difference between life and death.
The Capitol, they used the score as one measure of who might survive. Each Tribute received a number, one to twelve. Too low and the Gamemakers thought you might as well slit your own throat. Twelve was an impossibility, even the Careers averaged a nine or ten.
A good score drew more and better sponsors. Sponsors meant gifts - food, medicine, matches, clothing, even weapons delivered to the Tributes in the Arena.
I don't know how long Tenzin took.
The Avox returned for me.
The Gamemakers were bored. They chattered among themselves, tiny glasses of brilliant colors attached to their hands.
I cleared my throat. Some of them turned.
"Lin Beifong, District Twelve," I announced.
The Head Gamemaker, robes edged in gold, gestured for me to begin.
Then he turned to refill his goblet.
A handful of others kept watching. I heard my mother's name whispered.
I chose a bow, the same recurved style I'd used that morning.
Notch, draw, release. Notch, draw, release. Notch, draw, release.
I hit the bullseye on the third try. This time, I had been aiming for it.
Most still ignored me.
I clenched the bow. My teeth ground.
Maybe they needed something more realistic.
I forced my grip to relax. I picked another target.
Notch, draw, release.
Thwack!
Dead in the dummy's heart.
No reaction.
Thwack! Eye. Thwack! Throat. Thwack! Eye. Thwack! Mouth.
No reaction.
I couldn't stand it.
Those people, up there in their damned purple robes, were more interested in the arrival of a roasted pig than in me. Me who they were going to kill.
I deserved better from them than to be ranked below a roasted pig.
I fit another arrow to the string.
Notch, draw, release.
They screamed.
Juice dripped onto the fine carpet.
My arrow quivered, skewering the apple - the apple from the pig's mouth - into the wall.
I had their attention now.
I curtsied.
Then I caught and held the Head Gamemaker's gaze.
His blue eyes might have been pretty if they hadn't reminded me of a man I'd known in Twelve. A man who'd sold out a fellow miner to eliminate the competition for a plum position.
Gamemaker Tarrlok was cut from the same cloth. Thought he was smarter than he was, smart enough to climb over other people to get what he wanted.
The man in Twelve? He'd died in a mysterious accident. Mines are dangerous places.
"Lin Beifong, District Twelve," I said.
I couldn't hope for a similar accident for Tarrlok.
But at least I'd forced him, for a single moment, to recognize me as something other than a pawn.
…
They paid me back.
An eleven.
A higher score than the Careers.
They made me a target.
"Fucking damn it!"
Grasping the arm of a chair, I hauled myself upright. I teetered on the heels, checking the skirt of the practice gown for rips.
"Are you planning to use that language in your interview?" Mai asked, cool as you please. Seated on the loveseat, she looked up from her handheld screen.
"No," I snapped.
"Good." She returned her attention the screen.
"Aren't you supposed to be helping me?" I demanded.
"If you can't figure out how to walk on your own…"
I sneered at her.
She sighed and tapped the screen thrice. It went dark.
"Fine. Keep walking." She tossed the screen onto the table. "How are you going to play it?"
"Play it?" I started tottering again.
Escorts did decorum and posture and all the niceties of behavior. Mentors did the coaching, at least that's the way it normally worked. Tenzin and I got four hours with each, me with Mai first while he got my mother.
Escorts didn't coach Victors on strategy. Not normally.
"You're too brash to go for shy and demure. You don't have the body or the flair to pull off sexy. You're too old to be a little girl," Mai dismissed options. "Not sly and secretive enough to be mysterious."
"So what do you suggest?"
"Try not to show how much you hate us."
I halted and stared at her.
"Did you think you were hiding it?" she asked idly. "You weren't. Keep walking."
I resumed my trek back and forth in front of the windows.
"You hate us. You have nothing but contempt for the Capitol." Mai smiled, waving a hand to indicated what was beyond the windows. "Out there, you can fool most of them. They can't see beneath your fake smiles. You haven't fooled me."
"Well, what do you expect? Do you want me to chat about how wonderful it is to be here? What an honor it is to be a Victor?"
"No, I don't think you could fool anyone if you did that."
"Then what?"
Mai considered, sunlight flashing off the gold in her otherwise inky eyes.
"Talk about your family," she said at last.
"My family?"
"Stop repeating me. It's boring," Mai ordered. She selected several cherries from a bowl on the table and ate them one at a time.
I continued pacing, irritation humming under my skin.
"Well?" I asked when she finished.
She wiped her hands with a napkin, dabbing at her lips.
"You will be asked about them, you understand that. You're a Victor's daughter and you volunteered for your sister. It'll be the second or third question, after asking you about how you like the Capitol," Mai explained with the air of a teacher talking to a particularly slow student.
"I get it."
Mai raised a single eyebrow. "I don't think you do. That's your play."
I thought it over.
"You're the girl who loves her sister so much you volunteered. Maybe you thought you'd have a better chance of winning than her, but mostly you love her enough to die in her place." Mai had grown focused, her voice calm and clear. "You're the daughter who loves her mother and didn't want her to have to bury her baby girl. You couldn't let her watch your sister die so young."
I slowed, then stopped.
In the window, I saw Su.
Su smiling with a missing tooth. Su snuggling into my side as rain and thunder roared. Su arranging wildflowers in a vase because she thought we needed more color in the house.
Su and Mom playing cat's cradle.
"The best part about it," Mai remarked, "Is it wouldn't be a lie, would it?"
"No."
"There you have it. You haven't tripped in a while either."
I hadn't.
For the first ten minutes, I fidgeted and Mother glared at nothing.
"Let's go," she declared abruptly, springing to her feet. "Get out of here."
There was only one place we could go - the roof.
She took my elbow and we went up the one level to the rooftop.
Up there, the wind screeched. We found a nook, surrounded by concrete planters filled with bushes shaped like animals.
There was no one else on the roof, the rest of the Tributes busily concocting characters to please the Capitol.
"You could tell them I'm a terrible mom," my mother said suddenly. "Might buy you some sympathy."
I shook my head. "No."
She wasn't a terrible mom. She was just broken. Broken and patched together with a few pieces still missing.
When I had a nightmare, she would wake me up and sit on the end of my bed until I fell asleep again. When I was sick, she would let me have the music player in my room, and would bring me cold compresses if I was feverish and hot ones if I was coughing. When I did something wrong, she might yell but she never raised her hand to me.
In snowstorms, the three of us would drag a mattress in front of the fireplace. We'd pile on blankets and pillows. Mother would buy peppermint sticks and chocolate for Su and me - although she hated spending the Capitol's money - and we would curl into our nest, the three of us together.
The brokenness, that was why she had never before told me she loved me. Why she kept Su close to her and didn't seem to care if I was gone for hours. Why she always took Su's side, no matter whose fault it really was.
Mai said I hated the Capitol.
How could I have done otherwise?
I hated them for what they had done to my mom.
And for what they had taken from me - the mother she might have been.
"I won't do that," I told her. I tore leaves from the bush. "`Sides, you're their beloved Victor. They might take offence."
"Yeah, maybe."
Time passed.
"You could have grown up here. Safe," she blurted, gesticulating wildly. "I could have - if I'd named - my claim against one of them -"
"I know."
I tried to picture it.
"I didn't want you to, I couldn't stand the thought, of you, of my daughter becoming one of them," she confessed. "It was worse than you growing up in Twelve."
I wasn't the only one who hated the Capitol. I pictured being one of them - gaily betting on children's lives - and shuddered.
"It's okay that you didn't," I said in a small voice.
More time passed.
Shredding leaves, I watched the birds that darted across my view and envied them their wings. I imagined one of them flying, flying, flying all the way to Twelve. It perched on the windowsill of Katara and Aang's house; it was close to dinner time there and stew would be simmering on the stove. Su would help set the table, folding the napkins into neat triangles and spacing the plates out just so.
No one would mention the number of plates, or how the table had extra space. How no arms would be bumping like they did when all eight of us crammed around a table built for five, six at most.
Instead, Bumi would tousle Su's hair and Katara would nag her to make sure she finished her share. Aang would talk about negotiating a fix for the leaking roof of the one-room schoolhouse. Kya would tell them that Rizu had picked a name for her baby.
They wouldn't talk about us. Some things, talking doesn't help.
I ached to be that bird on the windowsill.
Not even inside with them, just watching from outside would be enough.
"Lin?"
I started, so did Mother.
"Here," I called, standing to see Tenzin coming towards us.
Afternoon had slipped into evening.
"It's time for dinner," Tenzin informed us.
We returned inside.