A Knife in the Dark | ✓

Nineteen

We didn't care about the tributes' training. Jake, Saylee, and I trained hard. Since Clove wasn't going to be volunteering for the Quarter Quell (if she would've had the opportunity), Saylee was going to volunteer, and to do it, she wanted to be at the top of her game.

The second day the tributes were training, she begged Jake and I to teach her other styles of fighting besides her darts and the axes she'd grown fond of in the past year. We willingly agreed, and we spent nearly all day teaching her everything we knew. The next day, because Saylee had gotten the hang of most of the things quickly, we spent really teaching her the basics and building on some of them. We were in the Training Center from an hour before sun up until hours after sundown, when Lyme finally kicked us out and told us to get dinner. We raided Jake's kitchen and hung out in his room, and by the time we remembered to check the tribute scores, it was too late to watch it. Luckily, Bell had been watching, and she was proud to report that Cato and Clove had each received a score of ten, though they came behind the girl from 12, named Katniss.

"She got an eleven." Bell said. "I wonder what she did."

Jake seemed frustrated by this, and I knew that Cato would be, too. "What the hell could some outer-district trash do that could top Cato and Clove?"

"Sleep with a Gamemaker?" Saylee suggested, and when we both shot her quizzical looks, she shrugged, chomping hard on her lollipop stick. "What? Gotta do what you gotta do."

"Ew, that's gross." I said. "She's like, our age. And they're all like, the same age as our dads."

"Well, I never said it was morally sound." Saylee scoffed. "It's always a possibility."

"Doubtful." I said. "She's probably familiar with something. She must've been doing something to survive."

"Knives?" Jake suggested. "Always a possibility."

I shrugged. "Maybe..." But it didn't sound fitting.

"Spears? Those can be used to hunt things, can't they?" Saylee looked between us for confirmation.

"Can be," Jake said. "But she's not built like someone that uses spears. She'd have a stronger upper body, like her partner. Maybe she uses a bow."

"That sounds fitting," I said, "but you can't buy bows, no matter what district you're in, even off the black market. She would've had to build it, and bows are hard to construct."

"How do you know?" Saylee asked.

"I was taught how to make one." I shrugged. "It was part of a training exercise. Those of us that were interested were taught how to build our own weapons. You were either sick or you didn't care."

"She probably didn't care," Jake said, "because I really didn't either. Didn't only you and Cato go to that one?"

"Clove came too," I said. "But she left after we learned how to build knives. I think she went and did something to you after that."

Jake shrugged. "I think I was sleeping."

"You probably were, lazy ass." Saylee said, still in the same awkward-looking position on the couch. Jake glared down at her. "Anyway, who cares how she got the eleven? She got it, now Cato's pissed, and he's probably going to hunt her down and eliminate her first."

"Nice euphemism." Jake snorted.

"Shut the fuck up, Trebius. Nobody fucking likes you anyway."

"Plenty of people like me." Jake said pleasantly. "If Clove were here, she'd have something that's probably rude to say in response to that statement."

"If Clove were here, she'd probably high-five me."

Jake made a face. "I guess you're not wrong there."

"Now that that's settled, can we go train now, or are we going to be lazy all day while we wait for these interviews? I want to kick some ass."

✗

"She's getting good," Jake said, watching as Saylee put away our spears. He had a bruise forming on one of his biceps, and his lower lip was split. His jaw was already swollen from where she'd landed a hard hook earlier.

"Good's a bit of an understatement." I took a swig of my water, testing my tender ankle. Jake had taken me down, and my ankle had twisted in the messy process. It was a sloppy mistake, and I was disabled for a few minutes while a trainer was running to get me some pain meds.

He shrugged. "She's not bad, and she's learning fast." He grinned sideways at me, bumped his shoulder against mine. "We're pretty good teachers."

"Hell yeah we are." I smiled up at him. "We make a pretty good team."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Just not as good as you and Cato. You two are full-on dynamic duo."

"Eh," I shrugged. "I think I prefer a group to a pair."

He didn't seem to think I was serious at first, until he got a better look at my expression. But before he could reply, the trainer was back with two little pills, and Saylee had returned from putting away our weapons. She grabbed Jake and forced him to run the Gauntlet with her, and so I didn't know what he would've said, had he had the chance.

✗

We sat, once more, on a couch under a blanket, all squished together. This time, it was at Jake's house, rather than Saylee's, which we had been staying at a few nights to watch updates and broadcasts (as well as the gossip stations, because we loved hearing the ridiculous shit they said about the tributes and the Victors).

But the interviews were boring. Cato and Clove did as we had known they would, and while we were leaning on the edges of our seats, eager to see them once more and eager to find any hidden messages, their interviews were only three minutes each, and then we didn't see them again. There were no hidden messages, either, no little gestures or meaningful looks or words or phrases that would've given us any impression other than they were doing what everyone believed they should have been doing.

Jake assured us that it was fine, that it was a good thing that there were no secret messages--that meant that everything was going fine, right? Everything would be okay.

Saylee and I weren't so sure.

We didn't sleep that night, knowing that the next morning, our friends would be going into the arena.