the 19th Hunger Games

Chapter 6

That night, the night before the games, I had a hard time sleeping. My face was still burning because of my harshly cleaning the make-up off my face. And as I lay there, my mind kept racing, anticipating what to expect in the arena, then discarding the idea and continuing to another. I kept telling myself it was useless, all that thinking, but it was no use. I got out of bed, took a shower, tried sleeping in my underwear but nothing did me any good. I was just too nervous, to afraid. All the events of the past days passed before my eyes. My easy nature before everything, how I stood at the reaping, trying to figure out who’d be reaped. How my names was picked. How Ahm pulled me up the stage in front of the Justice Building. His brilliant smile blinding me. His hatred towards us tributes. Yune with her sparkling angel wings. Hers and Maces brilliant costumes. I saw myself tying lassoes like crazy, showing the kids from 5. I remembered swinging from them while throwing axes during the private session. The ten appearing on the screen. I could nearly feel myself walking up the stage in my hotpants and cowboy boots. I got out of bed again, started pacing around until finally I ripped my blankets of my bed, threw them on the ground and settled there. Finally my eyes closed and while breathing fast and shallow, I sunk away into sleep.

   Approximately five seconds later, at least it felt like that, a knock on the door woke me up. It was Yune, announcing with a soft voice that it was time to go. She gave me simple jeans and a blouse to wear, with my own boots and jacket. She herself was dressed all fancy with the back of her dress dipping low enough to see the wings tattoo. Every time the light caught her piercings she sparkled like crazy. To my tired brain it was too brilliant, too much for comfort. It hurt my eyes.

   She escorted me towards the roof of the building where out of nothing a hovercraft appeared.

“They’ll give you a tracker so they’ll always know where you are,” Yune told me. “I won’t tell you to hold still because you won’t be able to move.” A ladder lowered to pick me up and as I grabbed onto it I understood what she meant, cause immediately I was frozen. I rose high above the capitol but there was no way of seeing all that was going on below because I couldn’t move. When I got inside the hovercraft a woman approached me with a long needle. While Yune didn’t officially tell me to not move, she did anyway.

“Don’t move, so it will hurt the least,” she said. She stuck the needle into my arm and a sharp, stabbing pain rushed through me as the tracker settled. Lovely.

   When Yune was retrieved too an odd looking girl came to take us to breakfast. She wore the same white clothes as I’d seen earlier. The funny thing was, those kids never said a word. Maybe they weren’t allowed to.

    During breakfast, every time I tried to eat my throat tightened, making swallowing hard. Yune ushered me to try anyway but it was no use so I just took my time to shower and brush my teeth. No use in pushing myself if that would only make me sick.

   As I stood there, watching myself in the mirror, brushing my teeth, I realised how weird it was to see I’d gone from a confident girl herding with her parents, enjoying the idea of helping cows give birth, to a girl who was now so nervous and desperate to safe someone else she couldn’t even eat anymore. I was afraid how I’d respond to the arena. Would I die at the bloodbath? I really should’ve talked to Oscar about our tactics in there. The only thing we’d agreed on was I’d find or a make a lasso and he’d get knifes. We’d talked for hours straight but never even thought about the cornucopia. Did I have to run and put a distance between me and the horror of the bloodbath, or did I need to see if I could find anything in there of use?  

   Before too long my last bit of free time was up. This was it. This was the end of everything.

   Just after Yune tied my hair into a tight bun she opened the package that contained my arena outfit. Whatever was in there could tell me what to expect in there. Not that it would be help me now, all I could to was mentally prepare. For all the rest, I just had to hope my training had been enough.