Every day seems even longer and more exhausting. Hudson often accompanies me at whatever station I happen to find myself at but when he decides to try his hand at archery, I excuse myself to go to the camouflage station. It's comforting, getting to paint and layer various mediums and materials from paint to mud to moss. It's similar to decorating cakes at the bakery and helps make me a little less homesick.

"Care to teach me a thing or two?" Sawyer watches me out the finishing touches on my arm. "Wow." He grabs my arm, inspecting it closely. "That looks so real."

"It's all about the layering. Here, you try." I spend the next hour showing him how to camouflage himself. Sawyer is a natural, picking up everything I teach him quickly and soon he's camouflaging different parts of his arm into all kinds of different terrain. I might even go as far as to say he might be better than me.

"That's really good," I tell him after he shows me a section he painted to look like rocks. He even manages to get the speckling just right. "You're a natural."

He smiles, his entire face lighting up at my praise like it's worth everything in the world. I look down at the table to hide my creeping blush. "Maybe I'm a prodigy. Or maybe I just had an amazing teacher."

I shake my head, wiping off my own arm before handing him the towel. "You're ridiculous."

"Well hey," he bumps his shoulder with mine. "If the arena is one big cake we might both be set."

I entertain Sawyer at the knives and it's clear that neither of us are particularly accurate in our throwing. I try to avoid the other tributes as best as I can, which is easy enough considering the careers minus Hudson have all seemed to form an alliance. I've definitely picked up some skills that will be useful in the arena but I don't feel prepared in the slightest on our last day of training when we're all brought into a small waiting room so we can show off our best skills specifically for the game makers so they can announce some kind of scoring for the sponsors.

Why did we have to perform for them when they've already been watching us all week? Shouldn't they already know what we're capable of?

"Willow," Sawyer calls out right before I walk in. "Shoot straight."

"Thanks." I appreciate the sentiment regardless of his motivations.

The room feels almost cold as I walk in. Up on the balcony, I recognize Seneca Crane, the head game maker, surrounded by a bunch of other men and women who I've never seen before. I'm given the go ahead to start and I pick up the bow, slings the quiver across my back and walking over to my spot to aim at the target. The bow is metal, and much heavier than the one I used in the previous showcase. I nock my arrow, pull back, and release but the weight of the bow and the thickness of the arrow messes with my aim and I barely hit the edge of the target. There's some snickering from the game makers and when I look up, none of them are paying attention to me anymore. They've started to bring in food including a large pig that would be big enough to probably feed about half of the Seam. They all gather around it, and I'm forgotten below.

The whole situation only works to fuel my anger at them even more. They're going to design an arena meant to kill me and they don't even have the decency to give me five minutes of their time. This time, I'm much more confident as I nock another arrow, aiming straight for the game makers and shooting right through the apple of their pig. There's a scream and one of them knocks over the drinks, crashing to the ground. It's silent as they all stare at me, in awe or in horror, I'm not sure. I drop the bow and the quiver, staring dead straight at Seneca Crane, bending over and sticking out my arms. They wanted a show? Well, I hope I've given it to them.

"Thank you for your consideration."

The second I step out of that room, the gravity of what I've just done hits me. What was I thinking? I shot at the game makers! What's to stop them from making my life harder in the arena?

"I think I messed up, Haymitch," I regrettably tell my mentor while we wait for Sawyer.

"You couldn't have done that bad, sweetheart," he pats my shoulder. He's been drinking considerably less since our little incident and I'm grateful he's much more coherent these days.

"Yeah but-" I don't get a chance to tell him what I did because Sawyer walks out, accompanied by a peacekeeper looking pleased with himself.

"How'd you do boy?" Haymitch slaps his back.

"Okay, I think," Sawyer's response is humble and every bit of what I expected from him.

"Well let's see just how 'okay' you did, shall we?"

We all gathered in front of the monitor in the living room, Effie, Cinna, and Sawyers stylist, I think her name was Portia, included. The game makers were broadcasting the scores to all of Panem so I knew my family would be watching too. The scores usually gave us a good idea of who might be the favorite to win and Haymitch said it was important for the sponsors.

Remus Flickerman appears on the screen and starts the announcements. As always, all of the careers get varying degrees of scores of eights, nines, and tens. I can't help but feel a little proud of Hudson when I see that he's scored a nine. The little girl from eleven, who I learned is named El, scores a six, fairly high for a twelve year old. I smirk at Haymitch's disbelieving face, while also wondering what she did to earn such a score. Sawyer is next, with a score of eight, which earns congratulations from the crowd.

"What'd you do?" Haymitch finally asks.

Sawyer just shrugs. "I just showed them a couple of snares. Didn't think it was anything too impressive."

"Well, I think we can get you a sponsor or two with those scores," Haymitch tells him and Sawyer nods in thanks.

"Oh! It's Willow's turn!" Effie gathers our attention forcing us to watch the screen again.

"From District twelve, Willow Mellark. Eleven!""

I can hear the congratulations around me but all I can feel is dread at the announcement of my score.

"I don't know what you did, sweetheart-"

"I messed up, Haymitch." I turn to my mentor, panicking at the possible repercussions of my actions.

"Well obviously you didn't mess up as much as you think you did if you scored that high. That's really good, Mellark," Sawyer is trying to be encouraging but he doesn't understand.

"No, you don't get it. I messed up. Big time. And now they're gonna hurt Dani."

At the mention of my sister in danger, Haymitch starts to become suspicious. "What are you talking about?"

"I…" I take a second to gather my thoughts knowing full well everyone is waiting to hear what I have to say. "I shot at them, Haymitch."

"You what?" His expression isn't angry like I thought it would be. Instead he looks shocked. Then, suddenly he throws his head back and cracks up, his laughter being the only sound to film the silent room.

Everyone is still looking between the two of us with similar confused expressions so I feel the need to explain myself.

"Well, it's just that, they were paying attention to me, and I just got so mad that this dead roasted pig was getting more attention than someone who they're going to send to her death and I just though about everything they were doing to us and taking from us and they didn't even have the decency to give me one minute of their time and I just snapped. So I shot an arrow through the apple in their precious pig's mouth," I finished, flopping back and crossing my arms over my chest.

"Why I've never!" Effie places a hand over her chest looking offended.

"Nice one sweetheart," Haymitch praises. Now it's my turn to look shocked.

"So you don't think they'd hurt Dani?"

"Please," Haymitch waves me off. "The Capitol is quite taken with the little one. She'll be fine. As for your score, after they got over the fright you probably gave them, I'm sure they realized they had gold for this year's games. I wish I could have seen their faces!"

"One of them did fall and knock the drinks over," I tell him, smirking. Now that the threat of my little sister being hurt was gone, I could take some joy in scaring those gamemakers and giving them a fraction of the fear Sawyer and I would go through.

Haymitch laughed even harder at that, much to the chagrin of Effie. Remus closed out the broadcast by reminding Panem about the final interviews tomorrow before the games before signing off.

"Haymitch, could I talk to you?" Sawyer asks as soon as the screen goes dark. "Alone please." I narrow at my eyes on him, thinking it must have something to do with what we just saw. Why else would he want to talk to our mentor alone?

"That actually works out well," Cinna stands up. "I need to get a couple last minute measurements for your outfit tomorrow" he tells me.

Haymitch nods, standing and following Sawyer into the kitchen. I want to follow them, or at least get close enough to eavesdrop or something but it's no use. I'm dragged off by Cinna and Portia to my room so they can make me try on a couple things and make adjustments. By the time they announce that I'm done, Haymitch and Sawyer are both back in the living room.

"Anything I need to know about?" I demand, standing in front of them. I was not about to be put at any kind of disadvantage for the games.

"Not really," Haymitch tells me, glancing at Sawyer. They were definitely hiding something and I hated the feeling of being left out. "But tomorrow, I'll be working with you and Sawyer separately on your strategies for the interview and the games."

"What? Why?" I look over at the boy but he refuses to meet my eye. "I thought we were doing it together." We both wanted to survive so why wouldn't we be hearing the same advice.

Haymitch just shrugs. "I'll work with you both one on one tomorrow morning."

I'm frustrated as to why Sawyer no longer felt like he could trust me. Was he planning something against me? Did the scores bother him that much?