It was three in the morning, and the sky was still pitch-black. Everything was so silent, you could hear a homeless man digging through the trash can outside. Lorraine Padget flipped in bed, unable to sleep. She'd had a good day, but she was still restless. She couldn't quite put her finger on why, though. She slipped her leg out from under the sheet, but quickly pulled it back in. The cold New York air froze her foot. That's odd, she thought. It was almost summer. She gritted her teeth and climbed out onto the hardwood floor, slowly subjecting her toes to the freezing wood underneath her bed. Lorraine slipped on some slippers and padded into the kitchen. For an apartment, it had a rather roomy kitchen. There was a countertop on one side, with a huge fridge and a washing machine. In the middle was a bar table, with some tall stools pushed underneath neatly. As Lorraine tiptoed past the bar, her dog, Teddy saw her and started to whimper.
“Shhh,” she whispered, hurredly. “It's only me. You're going to get me in trouble, you stupid dog.”
Lorraine continued towards the fridge and got a glass of milk and a plate-full of strawberries, her favorite fruit. Barley balancing her phone, the stawberries, and her drink, Lorraine paced back into her room and sat down on her bed. Once she closed the door, she breathed a deep breath. She hated when her parents caught her doing things she wasn't supposed to be doing. They didn't catch her often, but when they did, it was no fun. She'd had her phone taken away a few times. Lorraine set herself up with her laptop, her milk, and her strawberries. She squeezed her eyes shut as the MacBook Pro turned on; it always made that annoying robot noise that sounds thousands of times louder when it's silent. As soon as it turned on, she opened her most visited websites, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and began to scroll through pictures of her favorite band, One Direction. Her favorite one was Harry Styles, the one with the curly hair, and the cheeky smile. Lorraine's hand shot up to cover her mouth as she giggled at a particularly funny gif. Then she scowled as she read another rumor about Harry's hooking up with another older woman. Lorraine's mother had a better chance with him than she did. But she could only hope.
Lorraine's eyes flew up to look at her bedroom door. She'd just heard a door down the hall open and close. The Padget family had just moved into the apartment, but Lorraine guessed that it was her parent's door that made the noise. She shut her laptop and quickly slid everything, milk and all, under the bed. Just as she was flipping over under the covers, her mom opened the door. She had come to wake her up. At three thirty in the morning.
* * *
“You missed!!” shouted Connel Wilson, the teenage hearthrob. “How could you?! We have only two hours until we have to leave, and here you are missing the target by two inches!”
“I'm sorry. I'm just not thinking straight,” Emma Pinsky whined as she walked up to the bullseye. She'd been training for the Games for months now, ever since the election, and she'd just missed the target for the first time in three weeks.
Nobody was supposed to know who was chosen, but Emma had a way with convincing people to do things her way. She was quickly losing friends because of her manipulation skills, but she was sure that as soon as she came back from the Games, everybody would want to be her best friend forever. And she'd be able to get back together with Connel. He's the only one she couldn't quite convince. The only reason they were working together to prepare for the Games was because two are better than one, and if you have somebody there with you, they motivate you a little more.
“Goddamnit,” Connel grumbled, reaching the target before Emma did and blocking her way. “We get called in two hours. What do you say to that, eh? You weren't thinking straight? That's ridiculous.”
“Give me a break, Connel. It's past midnight. We usually go to sleep at ten to become stronger for this event, you can't just expect me to perform my best on no sleep.”
