When I get home my mother has started to freak out. “Clove!” She freaks. “Where have you been?” She asks.
“I’m sorry, I stayed longer to meet my personal trainer.” I tell her. “You have a PT?!” She yells. “PT?” I ask. “Personal trainer is often shortened down to PT.” She explains.
“But that’s beside the point, only those who are planning on volunteering at the next reaping can get a PT-“ My mother stops when she realizes what she just said.
“Don’t you dare volunteer, young lady!” She yells. “I’m not.” I say. She looks at me quizzically.
I sit down on the couch and explain everything to her, about Cato planning on volunteering and me just trying to scare him out of it. When I finish explaining she finally smiles and says it’s okay.
I sit on the couch reading a book until my mother calls us for dinner, she tells my father about me having a personal training and why but he doesn’t agree that it’s okay even though I’m not planning on volunteering.
“Even if you’re not planning on volunteering maybe someone else is and you end up being forced to volunteer.” He says. “I love you too much and I think you’re too young to go into the arena.” He adds.
The rest of the evening we eat in silence and when we finish dinner I go to my room.
I hear my father follows me but I close my door before he can come in. It doesn’t stop him, though, he just walks straight in.
“What do you want?” I ask him. “I want to tell you a secret that no one knows, not even your mother.” He says.
I don’t believe that my mother doesn’t know this because they keep telling me that couples should never keep secrets from each other so I’ve doubted for a long time that Cato and I should be together but I’ve never gotten myself to end it.
“When I was twelve, my fourteen year old brother volunteered and he was killed. He was a knife thrower like you, I still haven’t gotten over it and I still haven’t gotten the courage to talk about it with your mother. It’s taking a lot of my courage to talk about this now.” He says.
“Please go tomorrow and tell your headmaster that you’ve changed your mind and don’t tell anyone that.” He adds and walks out of the room.
I sit on my bed in shock at what my father just told me, I can’t believe that happened. I’m not going to change my mind, I want to learn more about Kaycee but I can promise him that I won’t go into the games and die.
