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THE STYLISTS
It isn't that bad. It really isn't. Jack's been through worse in his life, and he knows it: bruising falls from the power scaffolding, an accidental shock that threw him twenty feet and broke his arm on impact, a fight behind the district schoolhouse that left him almost as black and blue as the other guys. Compared to that, getting stripped and scrubbed and plucked and sanded raw by a flock of featherheaded Capitol fashion-plates is a walk in the park. Right?
There's just a sterile curtain between his prep room and his little sister's, and he can hear them talking to her, murmuring in soothing tones. He can't help feeling relieved when he realizes her attendants are all female, too - not that he's exactly comfortable with the trio of Capitol girls fluttering around him, but for Emma's sake, he can deal.
When he catches the smallest fashionista sneaking a curious glance at him as she trims his hair, he gives her a brilliant smile. "Hey," he says, for all the world as if he was dressed in his best and she was the prettiest girl at the harvest dance. "What's your name, anyway? You do have names, right?"
The young woman flushes pink right up to her glittering hairline, and nearly drops her scissors. She doesn't answer him - one of the other girls snatches the scissors and takes her place, giving her a look that sends her flitting off to dump bottles of frothy white chemicals into a basin instead - but Jack feels smug all the same. Her blushing retreat is a tiny confirmation that he's still a person, for all their attempts to trim and reshape him like an inanimate garden hedge.
He hasn't the slightest clue what's in that basin, but he lets them guide him into a chair and tilt his head back into it anyway. It's cold when it hits his skin, so cold that he gasps out loud, and it stings when the glittery girls rub it into his scalp. Even their mother's homemade lye soap never stung like this stuff. "Ow! Hey!"
"Jack?" His sister's voice is muffled by the curtain, but he can hear her distress, and it stops his struggles short.
"I'm fine!" he calls back. "Water's a little cold, that's all!" He can hear her giggle over the splashing of gloved hands in the basin, and the sound loosens a tight knot under his ribs that he had forgotten was there.
They're already rinsing the chemical stuff away, and the smallest attendant is back, helping him into a soft white robe. "Thank you," he tells her, with audible relief, and she actually smiles. "So, are we done yet, or what?" He can't think what else they could do at this point, short of actual plastic surgery...
"Actually, we're just getting started," says a bright, cheerful voice.
Jack turns around, and chokes on a yelp of shock. The attendants look almost normal compared to this woman. She barely comes up to his chin, but her tropical rainbow of hair and sparkling false lashes flood the room with color and light. "Bring his sister in, girls," she orders, and stands tiptoe to push her face uncomfortably close to his. Her eyes are enormous, the irises colored a freakish bright pink. "How did you keep your teeth so nice?" she coos. "I was afraid we'd have to bleach them, you see the most awful smiles sometimes from the districts, but..."
She chatters on, but Jack isn't listening anymore, because Emma has just stepped shyly through the curtain. His sister is scrubbed pink and clean, wrapped in a matching robe. Her mouth falls open in an 'o' of shock when she sees him. "Jack?" she whispers, as if she hardly recognizes him.
The sparkling stylist's smile dies an abrupt death at the look on Jack's face. "Now, don't get excited," she says, reaching up to pat his shoulder. Her fingernails are lacquered in the same glistening green as her dress. "I know it's a little extreme, but it's all the rage in the Capitol these days, and I thought it would look very fierce -"
"What," Jack demands, "did you do to us?"