Hope and Nightmares - A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The District 1 tributes get the first floor of the Training Center.

We have an entire floor all to ourselves - entirely a luxury suite. I've never seen anything like it before: high ceilings, funky furniture, metallic walls that seem to shimmer, oddly shaped sculptures, and vast floor-to-ceiling windows and paintings.

My favorite room is my bedroom. A massive plasma television screen covers almost an entire wall, and next to the shower is a customizable closet that you can program to your tastes. The shower is spectacular. You control it with a panel of a thousand buttons, where you can modify water temperature to the degree, water pressure, scents, oils, and soaps. And when you're done taking a shower, you step onto this pressure-sensitive mat and driers blast you from all angles.

After I'm done showering and drying my hair, I throw on a simple satin nightgown that comes to my thighs and climb into bed, enveloped by the silken bedspread and half-dozen pillows.

Once I have enough time to actually think, it's starting to hit me that I'm actually going into the Hunger Games. I'm going to have to kill twenty-three other kids to come out alive. I will spend weeks on my own, hunting for food and water and shelter and hiding from people who want to kill me and come out alive just as badly as I want to.

What were the odds? What were the odds of Scarlet being reaped, then me? It's not impossible. It happened with a brother and sister a couple years ago - Cashmere and Gloss. Gloss was a volunteer, but Cashmere wasn't. Unlikely, but not impossible.

A knot of anxiety resurfaces in the pit of my stomach, although now it's not as bad now that I've been reaped. There's no overpowering fear of it anymore, because I already know what's going to happen.

And then I slowly, very slowly, drift off into a hazy sleep...

"Morning, princess."

I groggily turn over in my bed. "Whaa?" I'm still half-awake, half-asleep when I notice a figure leisurely approach my bed.

"Wake up! We've got a big day ahead of us."

I prop myself up on my elbows and blink my eyes into focus. Maximus Fairbain is standing next to my bed, already drawing the curtains on the window with a remote control.

I rub the sleep out of my eyes and then start to sit up fully in bed. I have always been a heavy sleeper and a horrible waker, which I know is going to come back and bite me in the butt in the Games.

"I hate to break it to you, princess, but you've got a bit of a bed head."

I can't believe this guy is cracking jokes at seven o'clock in the morning only days before I go into the Hunger Games.

I roll out of bed and barely land on my feet, shooting him a scowl.

"Someone's not a morning person," Max says, taking a sip from his drink.

Fancy that. Maximus Fairbain - the dreamboat of the districts and darling of the Capitol, is standing in my bedroom in a bathrobe. Only a bathrobe.

"You clean yourself up, sleeping beauty," he says. "Breakfast is in five."

I shuffle into the bathroom and slam the door behind me.

The hot shower sure woke me up, and I do make an effort to look as presentable as I can, carefully combing my hair and scrubbing my face clean of any leftover makeup from last night. Today is the day we start training.

"And she's out of the den!"

Max, Flint, Chiffon, Crassus, and the stylists are all at the table, already eating breakfast, some of them almost finished.