Sorry for not posting a second chapter last week…listen, I'm going through it right now. Trying to get my life back on track and that includes posting chapters every Monday and Thursday so here I am, for better or for worse.
We're getting to that point in the story where I'm worried people are going to hate this…and seriously, if I got one hate comment I would probably just delete my entire account, that's how insecure I am. But I gotta get over that so I'm gonna keep posting whether anyone likes it or not!
I don't sleep well. I toss and turn half the night, unable to shut my eyes even though I know I'm exhausted. I think I'm thinking of Gale. We've hardly spoken, to the point that I miss him, even though we've been in the same place this whole time.
Part of me is expecting- maybe even hoping- that he'll show up at my door, but he doesn't.
I wake early anyway and dress. Today is the first day of training, the only real preparation we'll get for killing each other in the arena, and the uniform is a black and gray jumpsuit with a small embroidered tag that says "12" over my heart. It's more or less the same style as our fire costumes, but made of something stretchy and comfortable instead of pleather.
I'm the first one to the breakfast table besides Haymitch. He is red-eyed and droopy, sipping a spiked coffee like his life depends on it, and I guess it probably does. Still, I shoot him an irritated look. "Could you maybe cut back on the drinking? You're supposed to be focusing on keeping us alive."
Haymitch glares at me and takes another swig of coffee. "You know what they call people like me, sweetheart?"
I rattle off every word for 'drunk' I know, but apparently I still get it wrong. Haymitch pounds a fist on the table with every word, for emphasis, I guess. "High! Functioning! Alcoholic!" He pauses to take another drink. "And you know what that means? It means I drink to function! Trust me, sweetheart, you wouldn't like me sober."
"Well, don't hold back on my account," I mumble, rolling my eyes. I don't know why I even try.
Peeta is the next to sit down, in a jumpsuit just like mine. "I see we're starting early," he says, buttering a piece of toast. "Any words of advice, Haymitch?"
"You want my advice? Stay alive."
"That's not anymore helpful than when you said it to me, Haymitch," Gale says snappishly as he joins us at the table. Everything that comes out of his mouth is snappish, these days. I don't greet him- I know we're supposed to avoid each other, regardless of how hard that is- and focus more on the bowl of fruit that is calling my name.
Effie shows up and hugs every single one of us before she sits down. She's still riding the high of the parade. Haymitch slowly perks up as breakfast goes on and after his third cup of not-just-coffee, he seems ready to carry a conversation. "So, it's your first day of training. A big deal. Your first chance to really interact with the other tributes. I want you to seek out the Careers right away- I assume they'll already be moving in a pack."
The thought of teaming up with the Careers still fills me with dread, but I give a slight nod.
"What makes you think they'll even want us as allies?" Peeta asks. "Compared to years of training, we don't have much to offer."
Haymitch shrugs. "They might be curious about you, because Twelve took first and second place last year, not to mention the splash you made at the parade. Of course…they might hate you for those things, too…"
"That is not helping," I complain.
"I thought someone like you would appreciate the truth," he snips. I have no idea what he means by that. "I'm not saying you have to be attached at the hip, for crying out loud- it's the first day! Just get your foot in the door, and learn as much as you can from training."
Get our foot in the door with a group of ruthless killers. Great.
Gale's scowl deepens. "I still think this is a bad idea. When I was-"
Haymitch shakes his head dismissively. "You need to get your Games out of your head. This is the Quarter Quell, and it's a completely different game. Unlike you, no one this year is going to win by luck."
Effie hem-hems, glaring at Haymitch. "That's not quite fair, don't you think? Gale demonstrated plenty of skill and strategy, and that's how he won."
"Plus, he had great sponsors," Peeta adds, meaning him and I. Gale shoots him a look that I know means he wants to punch him in the face.
"And a fantastic mentor…" Haymitch muses. He gets lost in dreamland for a few seconds before snapping back to the matter at hand. "Right. Training. The Careers. When you're not making friends-"
"We are not making friends," I complain.
"- I want you to focus on learning new skills. You need to keep your established talents as a secret weapon for the arena," our mentor says sternly. "So Katniss, no archery. Peeta, no…"
He struggles to come up with anything about Peeta that might be useful in the Hunger Games.
"I can bench two-fifty," Peeta offers.
"Peeta, no weight-lifting," Haymitch finally finishes. "Glad we had this talk. I'm switching to hard liquor. Gale will walk you down."
"My pleasure," Gale says flatly. I wonder if he's daydreaming of switching to hard liquor too. I itch to talk to him, to get him alone and try to connect before it's too late. But I can't. We might be closer physically these days, but mentally, Gale is farther away from me than ever.
I have no appetite after that. I pick at my food while Effie goes on about what gossip magazines Peeta and I made it into overnight. I try to imagine anything less relevant she could talk about but come up with nothing.
Soon enough, Effie's discussion of gossip turns into worry that we will be late. Gale doesn't seem worried about it, nor does Haymitch, although he's reached the "sloppy" stage of drunkenness so I doubt he's worried about anything, but off we go. Down the elevator, through a series of hallways that Effie navigates effortlessly. She hugs me again before Peeta and I enter the Training Center, something that catches me completely off-guard.
"You'll do wonderfully," she promises. "You already have!"
I still feel like everything I've "done" has more so been a series of things that happened to me, but I take the compliment anyway. I'll let her think I'm good at this, at least for a while. Peeta says, "thank you" and manages to actually sound sincere.
Effie turns to leave. I desperately try to catch Gale's eye before he does the same, but he avoids my gaze. I didn't think I could possibly be more frustrated, but I was wrong.
"Well," says Peeta. "Are we going in?"
I don't see any other option. I push the heavy door open, revealing a large gymnasium that contrasts sharply with the claustrophobic hallway. How did they hide all of this underground? It's wide and spacious, with stations for every weapon and survival skill, oh, and a whole bunch of people, proving that Effie was right and we are, indeed, late.
Peeta and I join the crowd of tributes. We might all be dressed alike, but it's pretty clear that separate groups have formed, just like Haymitch said. I recognize the dark-haired duo from Two, joined by a redhead and a blonde with blue stripes in her hair that I would guess are from One. Interestingly enough, that's not the only group that's formed. District Seven- I remember them because of their embarrassing birch tree costumes- seems to be palling around with District Eleven, and District Eight is hovering near them too. The rest of them are just standing around in pairs, which is what Peeta and I do. Regardless of what Haymitch said, there is a time and place for making allies, and this is not it.
In addition to the tributes, there are numerous older people, who I presume to be the instructors. Of them, a woman with dark hair and skin seems to be in charge. She sizes up the group, possibly counting to make sure she has all twenty-four, and then clears her throat. "Welcome to your first training session. My name is Atala and I will not be learning any of yours: since almost all of you will be dead within weeks, there is no point in getting attached."
Peeta leans over and whispers to me, "She seems charming."
I elbow him away, not wanting to seem like we're not paying attention.
"I want to make it very clear there will be no sparring between tributes," Atala intones, looking pointedly at the girl from District Two. I wonder if something happened before we got here. "Should you wish to practice with an opponent, attendants will be available at every station. I'm sure all of you will run directly to the weaponry stations, but I would advise you not to ignore the survival skills. In an arena with limited resources, natural causes can claim your life just as easily as another person."
I brighten at this depressing statement, mainly because I feel like I have one advantage over the other tributes: I know how to survive out in the elements. I've been doing it since I was eleven.
After a few more overall negative words of warning that nobody pays attention to, Atala dismisses us. As predicted, the Careers head straight to the neighboring stations of sword dueling and spear throwing. I look to Peeta and he gives me a tiny shrug I take to mean "now or never". We get in line for spear throwing too. As soon as we take our place, the girl in front of us turns around and starts chatting. "Oh, hey! District Twelve, right? What's your name?"
"Katniss," I say.
"Oh, that's a plant."
"Yeah, I know."
I instantly regret being so blunt- we are here to make friends, after all- but the girl doesn't seem to take offense. "I'm Turquoise," she offers.
"Like the color?"
"No, like my hair, silly!"
I think that gives me permission to stare at her hair for a moment, gold mixed with the color of the ocean, done up in space buns. I've never seen anyone with colored hair that wasn't from the Capitol. It's an attractive look, I suppose, but so dreadfully impractical that I could never see myself doing the same, no matter how much money I had.
Peeta introduces himself, and Turquoise suddenly points at him quite aggressively. "I remember you!" she exclaims. "You were on fire last night!"
"Well- it wasn't actual fire," I feel the need to explain. I'm glad the illusion was so well-received, but it concerns me that she seems to have actually believed it.
"Of course it was actual fire!" Turquoise chides me. She tugs on the sleeve of her district partner, the redheaded boy who is built like a cement mixer. "Thunder, look! It's the fire kids!"
Up until this point, the huge redhead who is apparently named Thunder has been ignoring our chatter completely and focused on the spear-throwing instruction. When Turquoise insists, he turns for a moment, says "huh", and then turns back to the lecture on properly weighting a spear.
"He's kind of a moose sometimes," Turquoise says, oddly apologetically. I nod along with her although I'm mostly just confused. "Hey! Have you ever seen a moose in real life?"
"Uh, no, have you?" Peeta asks.
Turquoise shakes her head. "No, never. It'd be neat though, right?"
There's a thwack as Thunder throws his first spear. Right on the bulls-eye.
"I guess so?" I reply. Could this be some kind of Career mind game she's trying to play? I was expected to be greeted with hostility. Not asked about my opinions on moose.
Thwack, thwack.
"I'm still more of a reptiles person myself, though," Turquoise continues.
"Good, uh, for you," I tell her. If it's a mind game, it's working. I am confused.
Maybe this is a good sign? Perhaps she's not a ruthless killer like the Careers usually are.
Thwack.
"It's your turn, Turquoise," Thunder says flatly, stepping away from the spear range. "Have you been paying attention at all?"
"Yeah, obviously." Turquoise grabs a spear and lobs it at the target without taking even a moment to test the weight of it. "Woo! Bulls-eye!"
My heart sinks a little more with every perfect shot she makes. Obviously she's quirky, but she's deadly, too. Regardless of the reptile obsession, Turquoise will be an asset in the arena, and we need to find a way to get her on our side.
The tributes from District One move on right after that, so there's no time to work on reaching an alliance. That's fine- Peeta and I really need to talk more about that, anyway. We try our hand at spear-throwing. I struggle with it, but I get better after a few sloppy throws. Peeta is a natural. He somehow has the balance of it all down perfectly, and he has so much upper body strength that he can easily get twice the velocity as I can. The attendant won't shut up about his talent, and I'm oddly jealous, so I suggest we go to the fire-making station next.
I've made a lot of fires before, so I don't pay much attention to the instruction. It's more than anything a chance for us to talk about the events of the first thirty-minutes. I'm unsettled by Turquoise; I make that abundantly clear, but Peeta doesn't seem to share my reservations. "She's just one of four Careers. It's good if there's a weak link."
I flash back to Turquoise repeatedly nailing the bulls-eye with six different spears. "She doesn't seem like that weak of a link."
"Then it'll be all the better to have her on our side," Peeta reasons. "Maybe we'll like the others."
I frown when he says that. We can't like the others- we can't like anyone except each other, because they all have to die if I want to survive. And I do. I want it more than anything.
"We promised Haymitch, remember?" Peeta reminds me. "We need to at least make an effort. Let's talk to the kids from Two."
He is annoyingly persuasive. We abandon our fires (mine is crackling pleasantly) and follow the dark-haired duo to the ax station. They are not, of course, taking up lumberjacking. They are dismembering foam dummies while a coach yells out stuff like, "THE HEAD! THE HEAD!" and "Quit tilting your wrists or I'll break them for you!"
I glance at Peeta, wondering if he's also thinking that we should run as far and as fast as we can. If he is, he's not showing it. He calmly- literally, how is anyone calm about any of this?- takes the ax one of the attendants offers him and listens to the lecture about proper technique. I listen too, but only sort of- I can't help staring at the Careers, both forces of nature in their own right. Those dummies don't stand a chance.
The boy is quick for his size, which is large. I mentally size him up with Gale, who I also consider to be large, and conclude that this boy is even taller and bulkier. He is silently efficient, spinning and swinging the ax, switching hands when needed for a more efficient stroke.
The girl is not silent. She lets out a battle cry with every strike, until it becomes a high-pitched keening scream of rage. She is even faster than the boy, aided by her comparatively smaller stature, but there seems to be no compromise in strength. Her swing is just as powerful, gouging chunks off the dummy and sending them flying every which way.
A chunk of the bicep hits Peeta in the ear. He is visibly horrified and I know exactly what he's thinking: is it better to have this girl on our team, or as far away from us as possible? In theory I'd like to never see her again, but I'm aware that, now more than ever, I don't always get what I want.
I figure there's at least some merit to befriending the person who's most likely to kill you, so I try to strike up a conversation with the girl as she walks by, having hacked her dummy to pieces. "Hi, I'm Katniss, I'm-"
She sneers at me- I'm not sure what I expected. "I'm Storm Get-the-fuck-out-my-way. Nolan! Let's go shoot some crossbows!"
She pushes past Peeta and I aggressively. The boy- Nolan- comes through a moment later, shiny with sweat from the exertion of swinging the ax. I can't help but notice how attractive he is, with sea-green eyes and muscular Career build. "Sorry about her," he says, sounding more irritated than apologetic. I nod in acknowledgement but say nothing, stunned into silence by what we just witnessed.
"I guess there's no weak link," Peeta says, once both Storm and Nolan are out of hearing range.
I shake my head, hoping to clear it, but have no luck. I step up to the platform, where new dummies have already been furnished, and I ready my ax. We should try to learn something here, I guess, but I'm unable to focus. The ax is not a good weapon for me, first of all. I'm not tall enough to wield it properly, and the nature of the weapon means none of my actual talents- treading lightly and precision- do any good. Peeta fares somewhat better, again coming in clutch with the upper body strength. I catch Turquoise looking at us once from across the room, a smirk on her face, and I seethe. She's underestimating us right now; I'm sure of it. I wish more than anything to rush to the archery range and prove her so incredibly wrong, but instead, I do my best to ignore her. I can't let the pressure get to me on the very first day. Things are only going to get more difficult from here.
Peeta and I spend the rest of the morning at the natural camouflage station. Once again, he outshines me, which I find frustrating. He effortlessly colors his arm to look exactly like oak bark, citing his experience with mixing frosting for the bakery as the reason for his talent. I, on the other hand, struggle to make my hand look like dirt even though dirt is the main material available to us. I simply am not good at this. I'm going to drag him to the plant identification booth next just so I can be better than him at something.
That plan is foiled by a mandatory lunch break. After washing the dirt off our arms, Peeta and I shuffle into the lunch room, feeling very much like we're back at school. The meal is served cafeteria-style, and it is simpler than any of the Capitol fare we've had so far, but it comes with the added challenge of deciding where to sit. There are more seats than there are people- a good choice, considering how likely it is that a fight will break out if close proximity is enforced- but what I really want (a separate room without any people in it) is not available.
"We should probably sit with the Careers," says Peeta, before I can make a case for a corner by ourselves.
I sigh. He's right. Conveniently (or inconveniently, depending how you look at it) there are two open spots near them, one next to Nolan and one next to Storm. Thunder, the redhead, is there too, but Turquoise is oddly absent from the group- or at least, that's what I think, until I notice her under the table, grabbing at something. Ignoring how weird that is, Peeta and I take the two open spots.
Neither of the boys looks up from their sandwiches, but Storm scowls at us fiercely. She has an extremely pretty face; even her hateful look doesn't mar it. "What made you think you could sit here?"
"Didn't realize we needed anybody's permission," says Peeta. His mouth is already full of sandwich. I'm glad he's taking the lead here- he's always been better at making friends than I am, and it seems like the Careers might be a tough case. Maybe even an impossible case.
"Oh, leave them alone, Storm," Nolan huffs. They act quite familiar with each other- more than they would be if they had only met each other three days ago. I file that one away for later. He turns to Thunder. "They're probably better company than the nut job from your district."
Thunder groans. "Stop acting like I'm responsible for her!"
"Well, someone has to be!"
"SHUT UP!" Turquoise yells from under the table.
I glance at Peeta, wondering if this could be our "in". Not waiting to see his reaction, I jump in. "We want to join your alliance."
Storm yells "NO!" at the same time Nolan says, "Great!" Thunder just shakes his head.
"We are not taking these idiots from Twelve under our wing!" Storm declares.
I launch to defend myself, but Peeta holds me back, digging his nails into my bicep.
"Come on, Storm, are they really worse than her?" Nolan asks, gesturing to Turquoise, who is scrambling out from under the table. Maybe there is a weak link.
"I'll go along with whatever you guys decide," Thunder states. He goes back to his sandwich and I have to listen to the tributes from Two decide how much Peeta and I suck.
"We don't need more allies!" Storm insists. She shoots a pointed look at Thunder. "If anything, we need less."
Now Thunder reacts, his freckled face turning as red as his hair. "Okay, listen, I am not the problem here! Stop associating me with her!"
"I know you're talking about me," Turquoise announces, but she doesn't seem bothered by it even though they're really not being very nice.
"Yeah, we're doing it in front of you for a reason," Storm snaps. She slams her water bottle on the table aggressively. "We are not teaming up with them. I'll kill 'em in their fucking sleep. End of story!"
I look to Peeta, gnawing on my lip worriedly. Overall, I would say that this is not going well.
That rejection seemed pretty final, and honestly, I'm relieved. Maybe we can go back to my original plan of me and Peeta against the world, picking them off with arrows one at a time. Of course, that involves me getting a bow. Which involves the Cornucopia and the bloodbath. Which involves…oh, fuck, we do need allies.
Honestly, I don't know why I'm so insecure. This chapter is hilarious. I hope you guys like the OCs- my friend and I made them up in middle school and I dug them out of the archive for By Your Side. So if you ever find this account, K, I AM SORRY. And to everyone else…does one of them seem a tiny bit familiar?
If I was rewriting this story I'd probably put OCs in the 74th Games and have Cato & Co. in the Quarter Quell since I loved writing those guys so much, but obviously it's too late for that now.
