CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
Atoka Menzies
"So," a towel-wrapped and shirtless Anura pauses in the doorway, leaning on the frame. "When would you like to begin?" I look him up and down, curious to find that he's fit: perhaps not as fit as Cor but fit. I catch his eyes twinkling and scowl.
"When you're dressed." He nods and disappears. I'm still plotting when and how to kill him, but after seeing him vulnerable like that, I'm a little distracted. No one used sex in the arena, so it is not a memory I can draw on for inspiration. That's a shame.
After my shower, I dress plainly and go to the sitting room. Anura is fully dressed and lounges on the couch. He knows how to dress in green, though today he's not as odious as last night. Today, the trim green suit he's wearing is fitting, his cream colored shirt and green bowtie – I hesitate to admit – becoming. He stands as I enter and offers the same chair as last night. Deliberately I take a different seat, farther away from him. "Suit yourself." He says, sitting again. "I've got twenty minutes before they call us down to the viewing room, at which time I'll sponsor whichever Tribute you choose. First, I want to start by asking you questions about your Games and see how much we cover. Is that okay?" I nod, planning to waste the time. Anura takes out a pen and a journalist's pad of paper, crosses his legs and looks over at me. "Great. So, tell me, when you went to the launching room, how did you feel?"
"Awesome," I say, very sarcastically. He gives me a condescending look.
"Describe what you mean by 'awesome', please." I roll my eyes.
"Just awesome. What else do you want?"
"To me, 'awesome' feels like something very incredible has happened or is happening, and I'm awestruck. Is that how you felt in the launching room?"
"Honestly?" I begin. "There's nothing awesome about the launching room. It's drab. The tube we go up is also dull, and it's a long and slow lift up to the surface." Talking about it brings the room to mind, and how unfeeling it is for the last place I'm going to see in life… or at least that was how I saw it at the time. Like it or not, I'm there. "All you can hear is the hum of the pad launching you slowly toward the light. The whole time you're never sure of what to expect. You've had many chances to guess and prepare for what it might be like, but the reality that strikes you while you're on the pad is simple: you have no idea what the arena will be, and it's really an awful feeling. There are so many other thoughts going through your mind too: what you learned in training, what you remember from watching other Tributes train, their interviews, what persona you're playing, what your mentor said. What your District is going to see…"
"District 10 never had won the Hunger Games before you," Anura interjects softly as my voice trails off and my mind wanders to the longing feeling I had for my brother, Duncan, who had perished in the 6th Annual Hunger Games. I remember how awful it was seeing him appear in his arena, and less than half an hour later, being forced to watch him die in agony at the mouth of the Cornucopia. I shudder. "Who was your mentor?" Anura asks, still gentle.
"The guy who reaped us; I don't remember his name. Niro, I think it was: Niro Coriglia." I nod my head slowly as the name floats into my psyche. I remember seeing it on a piece of paper or maybe on the T.V. at my Ranch house in the Victor's Village. Or maybe it was Rodrego Burliss, the handsome cowboy everyone at the Ranches was insistent upon me marrying, who had mentioned his name in passing. If I recalled it correctly, it was a mention in regards to a funeral. "I think he died. He wasn't that old."
"What had he told you?"
"Don't die." Anura chuckles: I said it so matter-of-factly that I chuckle too. It seems absurd to think that I'd ever chuckle over that useless piece of advice, but I had managed to heed it… with help, of course.
"Sorry. That's not funny," Anura apologizes. I look at him differently. Maybe it's because he looks good today, or maybe it's because I know more about him than I did. Or maybe it's because this year I am actually trying to bring a Tribute from District 10 back to the Victor's Village with me. Whatever the reason, I look at him on the heels of his apology, and he's not so odious to me anymore.
"Thanks," I say softly. "But it's not helpful either." He grins, his golden teeth gone today, somehow. "What else do you want to know?"
"What did you think the instant you saw the arena for the first time?" I close my eyes and drift back to that moment.
The push to the arena is annoyingly slow, harrowingly relentless, and cloyingly nerve-wracking. I never fashioned myself a sentimentalist or a spiritualist, but as the pad creeps its way up to the surface, I can't help wondering if Duncan felt like this a year ago to this day. Don't die, I think. District 12 female is the Tribute to beat. Let someone else kill her, I remind myself. Stay away from Denton, I shudder. The tube closest to the surface is flooded with blinding light. I think I can hear water as I get closer, but maybe my eardrums welcome any noise that isn't the mechanic hum of the launching pad. If that is so, it could be any noise up there on the surface and I would hear it for what I wanted it to be. I'm beginning to go nutty from the hum of the launching pad, and I'm keenly aware that if I have to hear it for much longer, I will go mad. Combine that maddening noise with the increasingly blinding light toward which I am moving and it all comes out to one humongous headache.
Don't die. Fight 12. Avoid Denton.
Don't die. Fight 12. Avoid Denton.
I repeat it over and over and over again as I'm being pushed through the blinding shaft of light and into the arena. I blink: sand blows into my face and my mouth, forcing me to cough. I squeeze my eyes shut again.
Don't die. Fight 12. Avoid….
Don't die. Fight…. Avoid…
Don't…. Fight…. Avoid….
I have a strategy as I open my eyes and listen to the countdown over some invisible loudspeakers that surround the arena. The physicality of the arena comes into sharper focus: glittering blue water laps at the white sandy shoreline a few feet from the base of my pod. About a mile away is another large white sand island with a magnificently golden Cornucopia throwing sunrays in all directions (No wonder the light at the surface was so blinding!), but beyond it I cannot see anything. Behind me, I'm keenly aware that there are trees and there might be running water somewhere directly behind me, but I'm too scared to move for fear that the pod will detonate beneath me. I have only one thought as I take in all the sounds and the sights of this deadly, beautiful arena, and that thought is Run!
"Interesting," Anura responds. "Your first instinct was not to fight, but in fact to flee." I nod, the aesthetics of the arena evaporating from my memory slowly."Did you see Denton?" He asks. I shake my head.
"Even after the countdown expired, I couldn't see anything except for the Cornucopia in the center of the arena, and the jungle surrounding me. I didn't know that he was on another island: I thought we were all on the one island and we had to swim to the center island and the Cornucopia in order to get our weapons. I did think I could use the trees somehow, but as weapons… that thought didn't come to me until later. No, at this very moment, at this very beginning of the Games, I knew only one thing: I was alone."
"And your island had a jungle, right?" I nod. "But you weren't prepared to use the vines as a weapon just then?" I nod. "So might you say that the moment you stopped feeling alone and the moment you began to seek out other Tributes was the moment that you stopped fleeing the Games?" I feel like his question is pointing to something hidden deep inside me, something I've not had the chance to explore in these last twelve years, and yet it is there all the same. My mind shifts away from the Games and I'm propelled back into the sitting room of the Training Center. I frown.
"Why do you want to know so much about the Hunger Games? What is so special about them for you?" He nearly grins.
"I want to know how Tributes see, feel, smell; it's their senses I'm interested in, how they experience the Games, so that my gifts to them will help them survive." I think about his answer. Does it make sense? On the one hand, no, because who in the Capitol actually cares about the Tributes' wellbeing? On the other hand, well maybe. Maybe his interest is only a sickening fascination with how one can draw out pain and suffering before the victim capitulates or is destroyed. That's the only way I can wrap my head around his step-by-step approach to the Games through his questions to me. He did say something about wanting to help me get my head out of the Games, but he seems to be more interested in trapping me back in that arena, and for what cause? Oh yes, to feed his sick obsession. Maybe there's something else behind this? Maybe he has a different goal in mind?
"What were you thinking just now?" He asks, and with the precision of a predator seeking its prey, I detect a slight vibrato in his voice: apprehension. "Your expression changed for a moment." He adds, qualifying his question. I shake my head.
"I'm deciding if I trust you, still."
"And?" He adds a nervous smile, the first sign of weakness he's gifted to me.
"I don't." I return a killer smile. His expression changes, now, and I revel in this moment of his unraveling: the power dynamic has changed in our relationship, and I hold it all. A pair of escorts appears to take us to the viewing room.