Johanna Mason- 68th Hunger Games (EDITING- ON HOLD)

Chapter Four

  We ate dinner- a huge feast, as always- and we are now going down to the place where they get you ready for the ceremony. I keep up with them fast in my training suit that I hadn't bothered to take off, being surprisingly comfortable. We walk inside a huge room with curtains separating each person. I peek behind a green curtain that Alicia tells me to go into. Cetus enters into the one next to me.

   There were four Capital people, brightly colored and obvious of where they originated from. All of them female except for a guy called Grentea.They make me change into a short, open gown. I stared down in disgust.

    "What is this thing?" I asked. "I wouldn't wear this going into fire."

   "Just lay down, Johanna," one of them orders me. She has curly orange hair down to her shoulder blades. They put me down on a bed covered with paper, and went to work after one of the guards outside the curtain threatened to put a tranquilizer in my arm. First they hosed me down with rather cold water, and they put some weird wax-feeling kind of stuff on my legs. I try to glance down, but they make me lay my head back down. They attach something that feels like a large Band-Aid on my calves. I wanted to see what they were about to do, but the guard stands awfully close to the bed.

   Next thing I knew a shearing pain came to my legs as they ripped it off fifty miles an hour. I clutch the sides of the bed, clenching my teeth as they did it again to the other side of my same leg. I look up at the ceiling and force myself not to let the threatening tears seep out of the sides of my eyes. This feels worse than that time I cut myself with the axe all down the inside of my arm. Long, stupid story from when I was nine.

   When that was all over, they comb my hair. Hard. I could feel it ripping it out as they tugged the mats out of it. They then spray some stinky stuff onto it, and more gel.

   "Almost done, sweetie," one of them said to me. I only nod as they sat me up. One of the women had a large powered puffball in their fingers. They sprinkled and powdered my face until I couldn't hold my breath anymore. They add black stuff to my eyes and eyebrows that feels like coal. They plucked those, too. It was as bad as the combing.

   "Finished!" they say, after a long, excruciating hour. I look at myself in the mirror. I am beautiful. But I don't want to be. I feel like I don't even know who was standing in the opposite side of that mirror.

   "Now we should take you to Sellia," one of them tells me. She walks beside me to a room. "Can you take off your gown for me?"

   "What?" I say, shocked. "You want me naked?"

   "Yes. So Sellia can see every part of what you look like," she smiles, like it's perfectly normal. I reluctantly take of the thin gown. I step into the room, self-conscious. I wait in the center and cross my arms over my chest. I look around the bare room, exposed and embarrassed.

   A girl walks in. She's wearing a very poofy black dress with yellow stripes all across the front. Colorful feathers sprout from back, hanging over her shoulder. Her hair is a plain yellow that hangs in a straight line down to her mid-back. It was too neat to be normal hair.

   She walks to the front of me and sticks out her hand. "Hello, Johanna. I'm Sellia, as you may know. I am going to be your main stylist."

   I don't volunteer to shake her hand. She grasps my hand and shakes it anyways. "I will be deciding your costume tonight, as well as Frula, Cetus' mentor. You can put your gown back on if you'd like." I did like. I snatch it from the floor and slip it on. I tie the string behind my back and I face Sellia. Her eyes are kind and almost regretful.

   "We can go out and meet them, right now. We will show you your costumes for the tributes parade." She walks out the door and holds it open for me. I gratefully walk past her, into a room with Cetus and another female with curly, high, blue hair. I step beside them, away from Cetus.