Taken

First Day of Training

I wake up to Chase entering my room and speaking extremely loudly about my first day of training. I look over at the clock in the bedside table, which is the only type of decoration my room has, and I see it's 5:30 am. I groan and pull the covers over my head and say, "Oh right, training. Yeah so excited. I'll just close my eyes and paint a mental picture of stunts. Goodnight." He chuckled and I got about two extra minutes before he got tired of waiting and pulled my covers off the bed. I look at him groggily and say "I don't think you understand. School starts at 7:30 and I barely wake up for that." He throws the sheets aside and tosses me a fresh pair of clothes. He stares at me and says, "You have five minutes to get ready. Hurry up and get dressed, the sooner we get started the more training you'll get. I'll be right outside the door. " When I hear the door click shut I groan and begin to get dressed. My outfit for the day was all black which came as no surprise. It was a black round neck t-shirt that I swear scooped even lower than yesterday's shirt and black jeans. On the floor next to my bed were the black army boots but instead I pulled on my converse. I took a deep breath and opened the door. True to his word Chase was outside the door along with the other mentors waiting for their trainees. He gave me a once over and smiled once he saw my shoes. "Are you the one who picks out my clothes?" I stutter. He gave me a crooked smile and replied, "Yes. Do you have a problem with my style?." I looked at him and say,"Maybe go a little easy on the cleavage next time okay buddy.". He nods and escorts me to the training room. Well if you could call it that. This "room" of theirs was about the size of three football fields with weapons hanging everywhere you looked. There were also blue mats on the floors and dummies you could use to train with. I was admiring the archery station when Chase grabbed me by the arm and stated,"Lets go Katniss Everdeen.". "Hey" I shouted as he dragged me away. "I can't even look?". He stopped and turned to me when we got to the knives. There were targets across the room. That's when I I chuckled and said, "I hope you don't expect me to hit those targets. I can barely drive myself to a target." He glared at me and I took that as my cue to shut up. "This is your first session so I don't expect you to get it right away but that's no excuse not to try. Now grab a couple knives and try to hit the target.". To my surprise it came pretty naturally to me. My first throw was at the edge of the target but after a few more rusty shots I was hitting the center almost every time. I turned to Chase expecting him to tell me I did a good job but instead he just nodded and walked off in the opposite direction. I stood there for a few seconds not knowing exactly what to do but when it was clear he wasn't coming back I put the knives back and jogged over to were he was. "Thanks for the warning cinnamon stick! I turned around and you were gone!" The opposite was actually true. He was tall but was also muscular to match. He must have known this because he took no offense to my comment and pointed at a long rope hanging from the ceiling and said "climb". "What is this, I grimaced, eighth grade gym class." I groaned as I walked over to the rope. I was always bad at this part of gym. Everything else I was great at. I was on the cross country team so I new I was fast but I could never master rope climbing. I grabbed hold of the rope and felt the straw like material as I whispered to myself, "You got this Becky. You're a Changtem. You can do anything." I was doing good and I could see the button I had to press that was up on the ceiling. It was only about a few feet away when I made the horrible decision to look down at Chase. I didn't realize how high up I was but then I saw Chase talking to another trainer and they were laughing and talking as if they've know each other forever. This was the first time since I met Chase that he was relaxed and honestly it worked for him. His blue eyes glistened and he looked like he didn't have a care in the world, that is until he saw me just hanging there chilling on the rope. His face grew angry and he walked over to my rope and screamed up at me, "Who told you to stop climbing. You climb until you hit that red button. You thought climbing the rope was easy? Fine." He then grabbed hold of my rope ad started shaking it furiously. Climbing the rope was bad enough already and this was making it worse. A bead of sweat dripped down my forehead as my hands began to loose their grip. "Stop shaking it. " I yell down desperately at him but his eyes are cold and he doesn't look like he's stopping anytime soon. Instead he shook it more vigorously and stated coldly,"What are you waiting for. Hit the button. I won't stop until you hit that button." I looked around and everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and stared at me clinging to the rope for dear life. I took a deep breath and continued climbing until I pushed the red button. An alarm blared but Chase wouldn't stop shaking my rope. I made my way down the rope slowly but I lost my grip and fell. I closed my eyes and screamed. I never liked heights. I was greeted by Chase at the bottom. He had stopped my fall and held me in his arms he stared at me for a few seconds as to make sure I was okay and then set me down, hard. His eyes were cold as he said, "Now do it again.". He stared into my eyes and gave me a look as if I disgusted him. I couldn't take it anymore. Everyone had dropped what they were doing and had surrounded the rope I had just climbed. I could feel tears swelling in my eyes and I new there was no stopping them. I refused to cry in front of them all, to show them I was weak. Instead I gave Chase the most hateful glare I could muster up and I began to walk out of the training room. "Don't you dare take one more step" shouted Chase as he turned to face in the direction I was walking. I stopped, took a deep breath and grumbled, "I'm a Changtem. Try and stop me." With that I burst open the door of the training room and made my way back to my room. Once I was in my room I changed into my owl pajamas and lay on my bed crying angry tears and listening to my iPod. How dare he humiliate me like that! I'll show him! I stared at my hands and the blisters that had formed. I had cuts going up and down my hands and it hurt to grab anything for too long. The rest of the day I left my room only to go to the nurse and the cafeteria. Chase didn't dare approach me during lunch but he sat at the table across from me so he stared at me the whole time. I was so uncomfortable that I ended up just dumping the remainder of food from my plate and walked back to my room where I slept and dreamed of the almost normal life I had before this nightmare that was now my life.