Clove

Chapter 2

After just two weeks I was already back in the program, and the minute the boys started to laugh at me, Cato was there to defend me.  

We became good friends throughout our training. He would always look out for me, and some nights I would show up at his doorstep and he would take me in for the night and comfort me.  

He improved his sword skills, as well as his spear throwing. I found myself having a genuine liking for the throwing knives. It seemed to be one of the few things I was really good at. Cato noticed it, too. He would always tell me how much I was improving, and I would smile and compliment him back.  

The years passed this way until the year of the 74th Hunger Games.

I wake up at eight o'clock in the morning, way later than the usual six-thirty to get to training. Most people sleep in today, even later than me, but I just couldn't sleep anymore. I sneak out of bed and put on a pretty yellow dress that I found in my closet. I don't particularly like dresses, but if I volunteer today, or if I get picked, I want to look nice. All of Panem will see me. 

With a comb I brush out my bed head and put it in a simple ponytail and look through my jewelry. I almost chose my blue bead necklace until I saw the white necklace with an orange jewel in the center. Cato got me this last year for my birthday. I finish it off with a white flower in my hair with my white sandals and look in the mirror once more. I look very well-dressed, much more than my usual jeans and t-shirt with my leather jacket, but thankfully nothing like the Capitol kids with their puffy chartreuse dresses and obscene makeup with the hideous colorful wigs. I like to be a little more ... natural.  

Quietly leaving the house, I quickly walk to Cato's house. It makes sense that nobody's on the streets. They're probably all sleeping, still. Quietly knocking on his door, hoping not to wake his siblings, I wait. He opens slowly, and smiles when he sees its me. His eyes sparkle a little when he sees the necklace I wear. He invites me inside, and I slowly walk into the house over to his table where we sit. 

"Do you want to volunteer this year?" He asks right away.

It was always our plan to volunteer this year, but if I don't want to, he says its okay for us to wait. He's also leaving it up to me. If I volunteer, he promises to as well.  

"Yes. I plan on it," I say with every ounce of pride I can find. 

He smiles at me, "okay. We'll go, then." 

Suddenly my confidence breaks and I hug him tightly. "I'm just so scared."

Letting go, I look at him to see his face suddenly filled with sympathy. "I know, it'll be okay." 

"How do you know that? How do you know we won't die?" Standing up now, I pace the room in anxiety. "How do you know that it's going to be alright. If we both volunteer, obviously one of us will die. And it's going to be me." Tears are pouring down my cheeks now, and I sit back down next to him. I lean my head on his shoulder, his arm on mine, "I just don't want to die."  

"And you won't. You're going to come back, and you're going to live in the victors village, away from your parents, and you'll have the money to get your father sent to jail for your abuse. You're going to win this." 

By now his siblings are awake, and as they come down the stairs I get up and leave. He follows me instantly, and we walk off together to the reaping, where we will volunteer to kill and be killed.