Here is chapter 7! Enjoy and review!

It's time. Us victors crowded together in a small room, the same room every year at this time. In a few minutes, a woman with neon orange hair who helps run the parade would be leading us to one of the best seats of the whole parade.

"How's it going, babe?" a voice behind me said. I immediately knew it was Finnick when he wrapped his arms around my waist and placed his hands on my stomach.

I rolled my eyes and wormed my way out of his grasp. "Joke's over, Odair," I said, fighting the impulse to slap his face.

"Hey! Katniss! Over here!" Johanna Mason shouted from across the room. She was holding a large cup of a sizzling, snapping drink, called "soda," and two paper plates of nachos with cheese. She fought her way to me and handed me one. "Sit together?"

I took a bite off a chip thick with warm, dripping cheese. "Definitely."

As if on cue, the woman I saw every year for the past ten years, wearing a bright red polo tucked into skinny khaki pants decorated with swirls of pale blue and gray (the plainest uniforms I have ever seen in the Capitol), came in and began to escort the victors out district by district. However, I knew we could sit wherever we wanted on the victors' reserved bleachers. The cameras just wanted to get a close-up of us. I felt depressed when I realized I would be the only victor from District 12, since Haymitch died.

No one even mentioned a funeral planned for him anytime soon.

I leaned against a wall, frozen, as Seeder, who was going to be the only mentor from 11 this year, was lead out.

How was I supposed to mentor properly in this condition?

I pushed my frantic thoughts from my mind when I caught sight of bright orange: the woman. I sucked in a breath and followed her out the door and up the stairs of the bleachers, carefully avoiding looking into any cameras. Johanna and Cecelia, who were sitting near each other, waved me over.

"Are you okay, dear?" Cecelia asked me as soon as I took my seat between them. I just shook my head firmly, nonverbally indicating that this wasn't the time to explain. Johanna thumped me on the back in a friendly way.

"Whoo! Camera!" a victor, probably from a career district, shouted. Sure enough, I turned around to see that it was Brutus. That comment made the small red light go on on the video camera facing us. I groaned. That meant we were being taped live all over Panem; something I've always absolutely hated.

After the red light went off, things were pretty mild. Johanna and Cecelia discussed many topics, such as the pros and cons of their current tributes and whether or not huge fairy-like wings would stay in style in the Capitol throughout the Games or not. They tried to include me in their conversation but I just tuned them out most of the time. I wasn't in the right state of mind to complain about Capitol fashions.

All the other bleachers on our street were quickly filling up. I've seen the prices to get a seat here: a baffling amount for every person. I couldn't fathom how the people in charge of the Games could do with so much money, even after the expenses such as building new arenas, paying stylists and prep teams, organizing Hunger Games events like Tribute Parades, and probably a ton more. I've been told that a whole quarter of the profits go to our new president Kritzty, daughter of the former president Snow, and her family, but even with the leftover money, it's still staggering.

Gamemakers and other people who work for the Hunger Games must get a very pretty paycheck.

Mentors, such as I, have a laughable salary compared to them. What do the Gamemakers do? They sit around, having little to do since there's so many of them. They eat, drink, crack jokes, and occasionally order a bear to attack a vulnerable tribute in the arena. What do we do? Well, most of us work our bottoms off, trying to save our tributes, and end up being depressed all over again when they're killed. Our friendships, which we worked on so hard to create, collapse when there's two tributes left and we're both rooting for the other. We have to face this freaking mandatory job every single year.

Talk about underpaid.

My furious thoughts died down a notch when Brites, a recent victor from District 5, turned to face us and declared that it was two minutes until the tributes came out. That reminded me that the rules had changed; mentors weren't allowed in the horse stable, the gathering place for tributes and stylists, anymore. Instead, we were stuck on the bleachers. I've gotten used to this rule change, since it's been around for ten, fifteen years, but sometimes I get this weird nagging feeling that I wasn't doing my job. I smoothed my glowing clothing to relax myself.

Maybe taking yoga and meditation classes, as Prim suggested years ago, would be good for me. I made up my mind to sign up as soon as I returned to my district.

All of a sudden there was cheering and applauding and shouting when District 1's chariot came out. My mind was so out of space that I hadn't even heard the introductions from Claudius Templesmith. Darn.

I pinched myself to fully wake myself up. I needed to make sure that I saw my tributes' costumes. Since 12 wasn't up yet, I studied all the other districts' costumes. Some were pretty classy, such as District 8's over-the-top sophisticated outfits that included latest and old trends put together that would have put many of the Capitol citizens to shame. More than half of the other districts's costumes were moderate. I felt an annoying twinge in my stomach when I realized District 1 was the favorite so far. They had worn so many jewelry and rare stones on their shiny clothing that they were practically just two big hunks of diamond. And their hats! It was huge and decorated to the extreme with fancy sequins and shiny things that I could not believe my eyes. After that, the other districts didn't seem as dazzling as they actually were.

But then District 12 came.

The effect it caused to the Capitol was exactly like what happened when Peeta and I came out twenty years ago. Everyone was silent, stunned, for a split second, then everyone began screaming. "Faye! Floyd!" was all you could hear. Then the crowd began chanting in unison, "District 12! District 12! District 12!" I jumped up to my feet and joined in the cheering, something I don't normally do. That caused everyone to stand up as well.

My costume had been a fire. According to some young men in the Capitol, I wasn't just the Girl on Fire. They had nicknamed me "Hottest Girl," "Flame For The Night," and things like that. I was so furious when I heard all these names, but then I calmed down as the years went by and President Snow never used my body as a reward. When he died a few years ago, I was positively free from harm.

Now it was unquestionable that if one of my tributes became a victor, they were in trouble. Their costumes were so marvelous and seductive that there was no denying their fate. Both were sporting almost identical super-tight rubber-ish athletic clothes. The colors were mind-goggling: purple and blue and gray and bits of orange and a hint of green all swirled together, colors of some kind of galaxy. Silver makeup covered their bare skin, which showed a little all over their bodies. And best of all, an electrical zapping sound went off whenever lightning struck around them. Yes, lightning. I couldn't see any wires around them at all, but somehow the stylists made little lightning shapes zing here and there all around them.

They were sensational.

I couldn't decide who looked better, Floyd or Faye. I don't know how Faye's stylist made her incredibly curvy and feminine, or how Floyd could look so smashingly manly. Wasn't he just another skinny boy from the Seam only a few hours ago? Wasn't Faye just a fairly pretty girl, not a definite candidate to be a bikini model?

Johanna was screeching in my ear to get my attention. I faced her and mouthed "WHAT?!" knowing that she could never hear my voice in this crowd anyway. She yelled at the top of her lungs, "WHAT ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO BE?"

My stomach dropped. Sure, District 12 looked stunning, but this had nothing to do with our district's industry... did it? I thought hard. Peeta's and my costume was inspired by the idea of burning coal. So what else happened with coal besides being burned? What was it used for? Then the answer came to my head in a brilliant flash. "ENERGY!" I shrilled. Coal was used for energy! Johanna grinned as it dawned on her and gave me a thumbs-up.

I screamed my bewitching tributes' names over and over until they rounded the corner, out of my sight. Once they did, I could hear roars from that street. I grinned gratefully and accepted slaps on the back in congratulatory from the other mentors. The only ones who didn't share my happiness were the mentors from Districts 1 and 2. They stayed rooted to their seats, irritated to the extreme and giving me looks that could kill. I raised my nose up in the air in a sort of snooty way but in reality was actually sneaky. Tonight gave me spirit and hope for my tributes, because now their chances of winning the Games have risen incredibly.

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