What if the odds were in our favor?

A warning

As I'm walking down to the dining hall for breakfast, I have bags under my eyes. I barely slept a wink after that realization. TWINS!? Seriosuly! There's no way that's an accident! Now, I'm starting to get extremely infuriated at the capitol! I feel like punching something. I try to push these thoughts away but the image of Siren and Clive at the reaping haunts me. Ther parents, who are going to lose, two if not all of their children.

I push a loose strand of my hair behind my ear, and start to remember the purpose of me being here, besides eating. I need to talk to Pearl. I look around at the table, and besides for the career pack, everybody is eating in relative silence. I eye Pearl at the far end 2nd table and plop down next to her with my French toast. As I take bites I think about how awesome capitol food is, and how I've never tasted anything like it. Pearl keeps stealing glances at me, trying to figure out how many knives, if any, I'm sharpening behind my smile. But I think she realizes there are none, so she talks.

"Hi" She says in a soft voice.

"Hi, I'm Iris Goldenstein, District 7." I tell her. I don't think all of the other tributes know everyone's names, unlike me.

"Pearl Sevina, District 6" she shakes my hand, clearly unaware that I already know this.

"So uh- shame about this whole hunger games thing, right?" I say, and then internally slap myself for saying something so dumb.

"Yup. Shame." She says, not looking at me. How do I make an Ally?

"Yup. Yup." I reply.

I was never good at making friends, and honestly I never really wanted to. I had Lavender and Lily and a lot of other duties with foraging and taking care of Lily and logging. Plus, everybody in school avoided the kids from the community home like the plague. So yeah, I didn't think that prepared me for making allies in the hunger games. But I have to try.

"So Pearl. Allies?" I decided to get straight to the point.

There is silence for a long time. Why did I say that? Now she is probably going to put a target on my back. I'm so stupid.n

"Yes Iris. Allies." She says and puts out her hand for me to shake. I shake it. I've made an ally! Hopefully I don't end up having to kill her. Or her killing me. No, don't think about that Iris. Me and Pearl spend the rest of the breakfast time talking, and I learn some stuff about her.I learn she's great at foraging and climbing trees. We talk about our chariot parade experience and then start to discuss strategy.

"Okay, so in the games. Once the gong goes off, we should immediately run away. We'll catch each other's eye before the gong goes off and decide which way to go." Pearl says

"That would make a lot of sense, I think that's the best way to do it." I reply, pushing my blond hair out of my face.

"What do you think you'll go for in your interview strategy?" Pearl asked.

Hmm. What should I go for? What will win me sponsors? I don't think my weak, afraid little girl self will win any. Iris Diana Goldenstein will not gain many sponsors. And I've never been good at pretending to be someone I'm not.

"I don't know." I say

"Oh." Pearl frowns, and for a second I think she doesn't want to be allies with someone who is this unprepared, but then she says "I was hoping you'd know, because honestly, neither do I!"

I laugh, and then Atala comes into the dining hall and tells us to change into our training uniforms and head to the training center. I quickly head back to my apartment and change and then meet Pearl and all the other tributes in the training center.

"In two weeks, 23 of you will be dead. One of you will be alive. Who that is depends on how well you pay attention over the next 4 days, particularly to what i'm about to say. First, no fighting with the other tributes. You'll have plenty of time for that in the arena. There are four compulsory exercises, and the rest will be individual training. My advice is don't ignore survival skills. Everybody wants to grab a sword, but most of you will die from natural causes. 10% from infection, 20% from dehydration. Exposure can kill as easily as a knife." Atala says to us, then releases us to go train

I stare at the room, full of more weapons I've ever seen in my life. I don't know where to start. I glance at Pearl and we both eye the spear throwing station, and start to head there, but then I see Clea, the vicious girl from 2, there, immediately running away in fright and dragging Pearl with me. We head towards the ax throwing station, which I see Leaf at. I smile at him and then grab an ax, ready to throw at the dummy. I aim, position myself and throw. I miss it, and I try again. And miss. And again, and miss. And another time, miss. And then I made it. I hit the dummy right in the heart, and pearl cheers for me. I miss a few more times and make it two more times and then we switch off, with pearl being the one with the axe.

But I can't help but think that when I hit that dummy in the heart, It was real. It was a real person, even the thought makes me shudder with guilt and despair. I am not a killer, and I don't want to be. Even in the 0.00000000000000000000000000001% chance I become a victor I don't know if I could live with the guilt of murder. Taking someone's life. Watching the light go out of someone's eyes and knowing that I was the cause of that. I just couldn't handle it. I couldn't live with myself.

Pearl misses a lot of times but makes it a few times. The trainer for the station comes and adjusts her and my form, making us get better, but still not good. We finish, and decide we'll save the rest of the weapons for tomorrow. We head over to the edible plant station and Pearl shows a quick aptitude for it, getting everything right. I go next, and you would think my vast foraging skills would help me more, and they sorta do, but not enough. I get a pretty good score, but it's not nearly as high as Pearl's. We move away from that station quickly, as we have no need to practice at it as we're both quite competent in it. We wonder what we should do, when I realize it.

We need to do knot tying. If we manage to make it past the bloodbath, we need to be bale to sleep, and we need to sleep in a tree. And we can't fall out of the tree. So we need rope, and knot tying skills to tie up.

We head to the station, and clearly the trainer is surprised she actually has some students, as normally this station is empty. People really take this station for granted. And I won't make that mistake.

The trainer flashes a warm smile at us and teaches us multiple different knots, and we quickly get the hang of it. We tie many knots, ech one more efficient than the last. The next one is fish hooks, which neither of us seem to be able to do. After staying at that station for over an hour, desperately trying to make it work, we move on.

I notice the careers seem to be ignoring survival skills, in favor of weaponry, all of the careers except Autumn Memon and Misty Shore, the girls from 1 and 4, who definitely were more reluctant in volunteering. I continue going on to the fire starting station, trailing pearl, when I bump into Autumn, and we both fall to the floor.

"Sorry, I'm so clumsy." I say, scrambling to my feet

"No, it's okay, it's my fault."Autumn replies, with an amount of compassion that startles me. "You Okay?"

I nod, and start to walk away, but then Autumn grabs my arm,and I flinch.

"Good luck Iris. And a tip, avoid the bloodbath. Run. climb.and whatever you do, Stay away from Clea Blossom" She says, and with that she drops my hand and goes to join the rest of the careers, her sleek red hair tied up in a ponytail. Surprisingly, Autumn's warning sounded much less like a threat and more like genuine advice, which leads me to believe she's legitimately telling me and warning me. Clea seemed scary to me before, but now, she seems even worse. And I think Autumn's words are a confirmation. If one of the fellow careers is afraid of her, who knows what she could do? I shiver in fright, and before I even have the chance to think about this more, or head to the fire station, atala calls the tributes to go back to their apartments for dinner, leaving me and my thoughts