Brooke Langston, a determined and resourceful young woman, volunteers as tribute to spare a sickly little girl who holds a special place in her heart. Little does she anticipate that her closest friend, Ray Adhira, would also be chosen, forcing them...
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Brooke's skin burned with the strange after sensation of being waxed all over. Personally she was never a fan of body hair, therefore her more sensitive parts were saved from the vicious waxing attack the prep team had given her, but her stomach and her legs and her arms and back were now completely hairless and her skin was red from the onslaught. Her face burned too, her eyebrows had been plucked, and her ears and nose ripped off any hair.
The Prep team had gushed about her silky smooth hair, light brown but filled with honey highlights and dark brown streaks. They had brushed their fingers over her skin, marveling at the softness. Brooke could give her thanks to the ocean air. They marveled at her eyes, brown with golden flecks like a doe.
Yet, even as they ran their fingers through her hair, and ran their fingers down her bare arms, she kept still despite the discomfort, just like she'd kept still when the hands at the train station reached out to touch her, she let them, heeding Finnick's words, not wanting to anger them. Her compliance and slightly false kindness worked their charm on the Capitol puppets she met, they gushed about how their tribute was so obedient, so open-eyed with wonder at their magnificent world.
Brooke felt strange when she talked to these people, she had never before needed to fake kindness, it had come naturally to her, helping a stranger up from the ground, giving starving children the food they needed, comforting people when they cried, she pitied the bullies, and she pitied the Capitol for their naivety, the only real hate she had ever mustered was for President Snow, however now, as she sat among these dense, stupid people, Brooke found it difficult to be herself, to be likable. She supposed the Capitol just had that way of working on people.
She had been separated from Ray once they had reached the Remake Center, and Maddox had led them inside. Then she had been thoroughly scrubbed and plucked by the prep team in her own personal salon, before being led to a private room to meet her stylist, only a thin sheet given to her to wear. Now she sat in the silence, thinking as one does when they're left alone.
She tried to try to keep her thoughts from straying to her District, her family, and Ray's family, to the small group that made up the kind Odair's.
She now knew exactly how they had felt, huddled in the Langston's living room four years ago, watching the games while their son and nephew fought to survive inside that arena, only fourteen at the time. Brooke wondered if her own family huddled inside the Odair's lavish Victors House as her mother sank into her father's arms, and Sky paced back and forth, one hand on her forehead. She could picture the scene so clearly, and she wondered if her mother would be taking in the home and hoping they would be living in a similar place soon.
With a pain, that brought her thoughts to Ray.
Raymond Adhira, the boy she had met when they were just kids, no more than seven, they had been down on the docks at sunset, Brooke holding onto her mother's hand as they waited for the return of the men on the boats. Ray had been sitting alone, waiting for the return of his Grandfather, not his father. He had died a few months ago when the latest storm had hit the group of boats out on the sea. Now Ray was the only one to welcome his Grandfather back, his baby sister too little to accompany him, his Grandmother wrought with sadness from the death of her son, and his mother having left weeks after birthing Jules. Ray came alone, always, and he was known as the boy whose father died, so therefore everyone avoided him like the plague.
