A/N: Let the Games begin! I really hope I described the arena well enough to visualize.
Goodbyes are just as hard the second time around. It seems like it should be easier because I've had a week to prepare for this, and I haven't known these people very long. What makes it worse is this is the last goodbye. When I left District Four, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I had a while to cope with everything before I would be thrown into the arena. That time has come and gone, and now I am hit with the full impact of finality. Kai and I could both be dead within hours.
Lilith just gives a small wave and walks off. She isn't exactly one who expresses any emotion besides discontent or anger. I will see her in the morning, anyway. Stylists stay with tributes until the start of the Games.
Isidora hugs Kai and I tightly and says she will miss both of us. Kallan gives me a one armed hug before Alec comes over and lays a hand on my shoulder.
"Please try to win, Mags." It seems like a hollow goodbye, but what else is there to say?
I nod and give him a hug. Then I walk over to my cousin and wrap my arms around him. I rest my head on his shoulder and stare and the wall behind him.
"No cornucopia, right? Just you and me," I say desperately because I don't know what I would do if he says "no".
"Right," he agrees.
I pull myself away from him and retreat to my room. As I pull on a nightgown and lay in bed, I become aware of an uneasy feeling inside of me. Part of it is grief, but the overwhelming majority of it is terror. Pure fear. For once, not even tying and untying my rope and thinking of home can calm me. Eventually, I just close my eyes and try to ignore the horrific scenarios playing out in my mind.
After forty minutes with no success in falling asleep, I start feeling cold. I'm colder than I have ever been in my whole life. It's a different kind of cold, though. Instead of coming from around me, the cold is inside of my body, piercing every bone and extending to the tips of my fingers. My whole body begins shaking uncontrollably, and it's a scary feeling.
I pull myself over to the bathroom and sit on the floor with my head between my shaking legs. I can't help but think that this is how I will die: here on the bathroom floor before the Games even start. A smaller, more sane part of my brain tells me it's probably just a panic attack. I grab all of the towels out of the bathroom and pull them over to the bed. Then I put on two more layers of night clothes and grab and extra blanket and form a cocoon of warmth. And I'm still freezing.
There's nothing I can do except try to fall asleep. I'm vaguely aware of hours passing. Sleep must eventually fall upon me because I wake up later screaming. The coldness is gone and I'm a sweaty mess. A glance at the clock tells me its 4:07 in the morning.
I haven't cried since that first day on the train, but I'm dangerously close to it now. I'm just about to give in when my door swings open and I see Alec entering my room. He has a sketchbook in his hand and dark circles under his green eyes. I must look like a crazy person curled up in a cocoon.
He takes in the scene. "Rough night?" he asks, and I nod.
"What are you doing up?" I ask, my voice shaky.
"I had a rough night, too. Let's go to the living area."
I wrestle the layers off of me and tear off the extra pajamas, relieved to feel cool air hit my hot skin. Rather than question him, I follow Alec out of the room and down the hallway.
He directs me over to the sofa and I curl up on it. I don't protest when he drapes a blanket over me, even though it is too hot. Alec walks down the hall and softly whispers something to a servant.
Isidora told me they are called avoxes and they can't talk because they had their tongues cut out on punishment for the Rebellion. It looks like we're both being punished for the Dark Days. The servant for fighting to end oppression and me for…well, playing with dolls by the fireplace as the war dragged on.
I feel too drained to peer around the sofa to see what they are doing. My ears pick up the sounds of pouring, stirring, and, strangely, chopping. After a few minutes, Alec walks over with a mug of hot chocolate. He hands it to me and sits on the opposite edge of the sofa.
"Thank you," I get out. Even though it's hot and I want something cool, I love the sweetness of the drink. Why is Alec doing this for me?
"What do you want in the future?" he asks. "Let's pretend all this mess never happened and you were never reaped. Where would you be in twenty years?"
His question surprises me. I don't know what I expected. Something about the Hunger Games, I guess. Not this. Despite that, the question intrigues me.
"I suppose I would want to get married to a man who loves me and have kids," I say, and the scene dances before my eyes. "We would all live in a house with an ocean view. My husband and I would teach the kids to swim and fish and steer a boat. We would stay in that house until we were grey-haired and all the kids had kids of their own. Then we could spoil the grandkids."
"You like to take care of people," Alec says. It isn't a question.
"I guess so," I reply, and I'm aware of my eyes beginning to droop. There must have been sleeping tablets in that milk.
"You can still have that future," Alec tells me. "You just have to win. If you don't do it for yourself or the district, do it for your future family," he says.
His words swirl around my head as I feel myself nodding off. I can still have that future. I just have to win. I'm about to ask Alec what he wants in his future when sleep overpowers me.
When I wake up, I am in my bed and Lilith is handing me a robe to put on. Hadn't I fallen asleep on the sofa? Did Alec carry me to bed, or was that all just a dream? It seemed pretty real. I want it to have been real, but there's no way to know for sure.
"Hurry up, child. We're already late!" she screeches. Her black hair isn't curled yet, and that makes her look a lot different. I pull the robe over me and walk outside with her. A ladder from a hovercraft drops down and I reach out for it. The second I touch it, an electric current runs through my body, paralyzing me as the ladder lifts off the ground. Once I am inside, a woman walks over to me and shoots a needle into my skin.
"This is your tracker," she explains.
I don't like it at all, but I guess the tracker should be the least of my worries. The windows are tinted so dark that it's impossible to tell where they might be taking me. I'm scared I'll have another panic attack, so I put all of my attention into eating breakfast and shut out the rest of the world. It works to an extent.
After what must have been around two hours, the hovercraft lands, and Lilith and I are escorted to my personal launch room. Right above me is the arena that twenty-three kids will die in. As Lilith digs through the bag that contains my outfit, I fiddle with the little seashell on my necklace. My father's last gift to me. It reminds me of the words of wisdom he left me with: Don't let the Games make me forget who I am and what I stand for.
"I won't forget who I am," I say to no one in particular. Lilith looks at me like I have lost my mind. For all I know, I might have.
"Time to get dressed," she says almost calmly as she holds out my outfit. The short-sleeved shirt is a pale yellowish-green, and the pants are only a shade darker. They both appear to be made of a stretchy material that feels more like a bathing suit than cotton. Also included are a pair of brown tennis shoes made for running and a thin raincoat of the same color as the shirt.
"Ugly color," Lilith notes. I really couldn't care less about that.
"Do you think this means there with be water?" I ask hopefully.
She scrutinizes the outfit for a minute. "Hard to say," she replies. "There will probably be rain. The material of the shirt and pants looks more like its designed for not holding sweat than swimming. But, then again, that's only speculation."
Water could be my saving grace in the arena. I pull on the garments and notice they don't feel as much like a swimsuit as I originally thought. However, they are thin and definitely won't hold much water or perspiration. Not long after I have put on the shoes, a mechanized voice informs me that I have one minute to walk into the tube.
I don't want to. There's no going back after I take that step. I stand there, readjusting my seashell and attempting to control my breathing. The panic is rising again, and I start trembling lightly. My heart is racing a mile a minute.
Thirty seconds. I still haven't moved. Lilith walks over to me and grips my shoulders. I have to look up to meet her gaze.
"Get a grip, girl. All of Panem is watching," she says harshly, but I feel like that's exactly what I need right now. She walks me over to the tube and I reluctantly step inside.
Ten seconds. Is it possible that my heart just got faster?
"One more thing," Lilith says. "If you die, die with style. Make them remember you."
I swallow hard and try to say "okay" , but it comes out unintelligible. Suddenly, the wall is closing around me and I begin the ascent. It's so dark that I can't see my own hand. I want to get out of the dark, but I'm in no rush to reach the arena, either.
The brightness makes it impossible to see for a second when I reach the outside world, but I feel the heat immediately. It wraps around every inch of my skin, and I feel like I have been stuck inside an oven. This I can deal with. Seasons are practically a myth in District Four, where the heat of summer shines down year round. I'm much better equipped to deal with heat than cold. Those from northern districts might have a problem.
My eyes adjust just as the sixty-second countdown begins. A vast sea opens before my eyes. Only, it's not the type of sea I know. This is a sea of grass. It's tall grass, but not tall enough to conceal a person. It reaches up to about my mid-thighs and is the same pale color as my clothes. It barely reaches the knees of some of the taller tributes.
The next thing I see is the giant golden Cornucopia. Its insides are overflowing with weapons and neon colored bags. There's no way to tell what is inside the bright packs, but I assume it must be food and survival materials. All twenty-four tributes are spaced equidistant from each other in a circle around the golden horn. I can see Kai about five tributes over from me.
45, 44, 43, 42 …
The tall grass stretches far out into the distance. Its only interruption is a large lake several hundred yards out. What scares me about the lake is that it is surrounded on every side by about twenty yards of hard packed dirt, without so much as a blade of grass covering it. A horrible thought strikes me. This could very well be the only source of water in the arena, and you must walk out there in plain sight. It's the perfect trap to get tributes killed. I think I can make out some rocky mountains in the distance, but it's too blurry to be sure.
25, 24, 23, 22 …
The sea of grass is not nearly as wide as it is long. A five-minute run to either the right of left of where I'm standing now would bring me to something resembling woods. I'm not sure if it could really be called woods, though, because it is not nearly as dense as I would like. Nonetheless, there are trees, shrubs, and rocks. It's not optimal coverage, but it's the only option. This grass is not meant to be a hiding place.
10, 9, 8, 7 …
I position myself to run to the right, as it's a little closer than the shrubbery on the left. Hopefully, Kai will follow.
4, 3, 2, 1 … "Ladies and gentleman, let the twelfth annual Hunger Games begin!"
I am running before my mind can even register the fact, leaving a very obvious trail of trampled grass behind me. I'm making good progress when I turn around to make sure Kai is following me. What I see makes me stop so suddenly I fall into the grass.
Kai is heading straight for the Cornucopia. He agreed not to do this!
Scrambling to my feet, I try to decide what to do now. Everything around me is pure chaos. It's one thing to see the bloodbath on T.V. Watching it in person is infinitely worse. I can't bare to look towards the spewing blood and flailing limbs and tortured screams, and every instinct screams to run the other way. Run away and never look back. But I can't. Kai is there.
As a result of my internal dilemma, I am left frozen like an idiot. Part of me knows that standing still is the absolute last thing I should be doing now, but here I am. Here I am with my mouth hanging open standing on the edge of a bloodbath. Something flies in front of my face with a whoosh, and I realize I have just narrowly missed being hit with a hatchet.
The weapon flies past me and lands somewhere in the grass. I can see now that the source of the attack was the girl from Six. She clutches a pink bag and watches in despair as her weapon flies out of her reach. We stare at each other for a moment, neither knowing exactly what to do. Then she rushes to me and jumps on top of me. We are both pretty small, but she might have a bit of weight on me. Without thinking, I kick her as hard as I can in the gut and she recoils, grasping at her midsection in pain.
Within two seconds, I grab her neon pink bag and take off running to the trees. Adrenaline kicks in and my feet are moving faster than I ever though possible. I don't dare look back to see if she is following me.
It is not until I reach the relative safety of the trees that I remember Kai. I abandoned my own cousin. The thought is so despicable that I hate myself for it, but I know turning back is not an option.
How had this gone so wrong?
Even though I am tempted to run as far as physically possible away from the Cornucopia, I stay in close proximity. If Kai does make it out and tries to meet up with me, he needs to be able to find me. I try not to dwell on the fact that the chance of that is slim.
For the next few hours, I occupy myself by making camp. I find a spot between two big boulders that I'm just small enough to fit inside and cover the outside by uprooting shrubs and replanting them in front. I examine the contents of the pink bag: one bottle of water, water-purifying drops, flint, three apples and some meat, binoculars, and medicine that we use back in Four to treat sunburn. Not bad. The pink of the bag is about ten times brighter than anything in the surrounding area, though, so I stick whatever I can fit into my pockets and start making a grass bag for the rest. I tear off pieces of wood and sharpen them against rock until they resemble knives.
Even with all this to keep me busy, all I can think about is Kai. I jump when I hear ten consecutive cannons. The bloodbath is over. Ten kids who where interviewed last night are dead on the ground. Knowing that Kai might be one of them brings a crash of guilt and anxiety over me.
I'm sure my aunt and uncle hate me. Marilla and Hallie, too.
"I'm sorry," I say to the sky. "I'm so sorry."
The sound of footsteps alerts me. I push back the shrub and curl up in the little space between the rocks. I dig around my pocket until I find the pair of binoculars, then I position them over me eyes. My whole body tenses up when I see someone's feet.
"Mags? Where are you?"
I know that voice! "Kai! Kai, oh, I'm so happy you're alive!" I say as I jump out of my hiding place and run until I crash into him. I'm vaguely aware of tears of relief flowing down my face. "I was worried sick!"
"Don't worry. We're alive and I explained to the group why you ran," he says in a very serious tone.
The group? I'm about to ask what he means when I see Osten, Kim, and Blade come up from behind. All three of them have a few scratches and the blood of other tributes plastered on their clothes, but other than that, look well. When I lift my head off of Kai's chest, I notice he's in the same condition.
"Yeah, Kai said it was all a misunderstanding," Kim says, but her eyes are cold and piercing and she's grimacing at me. She has a long sword in her hands and multiple neon packs strewn over her shoulder.
"It was," Kai says. Then he turns to me. "Your mentor was lying when he said District Two asked to break the alliance."
His words are complete nonsense, but I go along with them. I have a feeling I won't survive long if I don't.
"It was? I didn't think he would lie to me," I say innocently.
"Well he did. There's no use questioning it now. Let's go back before someone steals our supplies," Blade says. I'm a little surprised because I've rarely heard the buff fourteen year old speak.
Osten is still glaring at me. "Yeah, let's go back. I hope you make yourself useful to make up for this little misunderstanding, Four."
I collect my belongings, and the five of us make it back to the Cornucopia in the warm dusk. I couldn't escape becoming a career and at least two members of the group already want to kill me, but Kai and I are alive, and that counts for a lot. At least for now.