The 53rd Hunger Games- Two Words

38. Facing Fears

“Oh, jeez. The water’s freezing!”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

The water reflects the grey early morning light. It isn’t clear like it was yesterday. Instead it’s murky and foreboding.

I lower myself slowly down into the water. The cold makes me gasp as it passes my shins, my thighs, my waist.

Hadrian’s already wading out, the chilled lake reaching his shoulder. “It isn’t cold enough to be dangerous,” he concludes, “but it could be warmer.”

“Yeah. That’d be nice,” I say. I can’t wade all the way out to him, as I’m half a foot shorter than he is. I’m forced to swim, and I feel the unitard pulling me towards the surface. The buoyancy of the material is something I’m grateful for. Running is easy for me, but swimming tires me more, as the water offers far more resistance.

“Right. The faster we start swimming, the less cold we’ll be.”

“Nice logic,” I mutter. He starts swimming after raising his eyebrows seductively at me. I follow him. Thankfully, he’s swimming at a speed more my pace. I’ve seen him go incredibly fast, and he’d lose me in no time if he swam at his top pace.

In the water I still don’t feel entirely confident. I was able to swim from the Cornucopia remembering my swimming in the lake in District Eight, and from the rush of adrenaline. My moral is particularly high at present. I’m cold, and have only had one swimming lesson from Hadrian.

After almost no time at all, I ache all over, just like I anticipated. It feels like the pain goes right down to my bones. I’m out of breath, but looking back, we must have only swum a kilometre or so. I would have stopped longer ago if it weren’t for the unitard. My earlier suspicion about the buoyancy helping me out was correct.

“You know,” I gasp after Hadrian, “I think...this plan...would have been brilliant...if I...actually swum well.”

He looks back, and sees what state I’m in. He treads water as I swim over to him.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ve changed...my mind again. I hate swimming.”

Hadrian bites his lip. “We don’t have to swim far. Just far enough to be sure we’ve lost the Careers. Then we can go back to travelling overland.”

I sigh, or attempt to sigh. Instead I end up choking on water, and Hadrian laughs.

“Thanks a bunch,” I say, punching his shoulder, “Anyway, before I started choking and required mouth-to-mouth, I was going to ask for your definition of far.”

He keeps laughing. “If you want me to kiss you, you can just say. Choking isn’t really necessary. Oh, and the definition of far?”

He bursts into a fresh peal of laughter, which means whatever his answer is, it’s not going to be what I want it to be.

“Far as is in...only halfway around the arena?”

“You’re such an idiot!” I yell at him. I almost start choking on water again. “I can’t ruddy swim that far!”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how much choice we have. We still have to swim a little way, at least. It’s either that, or marching up to the Careers and handing them your axe.”

I instinctively go for my axe. I’m not holding it; I used a length of rope to secure it to my side. It isn’t particularly streamline, but the alternative was to leave it lying around somewhere. Or have me losing my grip and it ending up at the bottom of the lake.