The Nem Panem

Chapter 5

*Fay

School's always the same. You go to all of your classes, because it's supposed to make a difference in your education. You deal with at least one pissed off teacher, one teacher lectures us about how bad our behavior is, and about once a month my English teacher Mrs. Ayers starts crying and mumbles about how she doesn't even know what she's teaching anymore.

At least I have my friends in most of my classes. My favorite is art class. I've always had a hobby of drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. I guess I get that from my dad. Joshua has always been good at everything. I mean everything. The only things I've seen him struggle with are the things I'm good at which is shooting a bow and drawing.

My art class is taught by Mrs. Martin. I think she's a genius. She can see what's inside a painting or drawing and what the artist was feeling. How it expresses their emotion it's amazing.

Today in class we were working on something simple, just drawing faces. We had to draw each one with an emotion that can clearly be seen but it's not the happy/sad kind of thing it's embarrassed, scared, disgusted, etc. You can only draw it in a face. You can't draw another person with a person or a scenery of some kind. Just the face.

I have this class with Alexander. That's how we met. In this class. On the first day of school he spilled orange paint all over me. He thought I was going to explode or burst out yelling at him, but he looked so scared and I knew he didn't mean to so I just started laughing. And ever since then we laughed about stupid things and became best friends.

And finally it came. The bell to let us out of school. Finally. Alexander was weird today so he asked after art if I would help him clean up his supplies. And of course I said yes. When we got out of class the hallway was deserted.

We started talking about Wendy Grants awful haircut and how if she just washed her hair with something special she would've been just fine. We laughed forever about how we were surprised she didn't just shave her own head and then all of a sudden Alexander stops.

He whispers, "I like you." And then he kissed me just like that. And then he smiles and walks away. I see him walk away, so tall and funny as he scratches the back of his black hair and I know he really does like me.

I start blushing uncontrollably and then walk out of school to find Joshua waiting for me in the courtyard.

"What took you so long?" He asks.

"Nothing," I say trying to hide a smile from my face.

As were leaving school I notice something weird there are people hanging around that I've never really seen before. There all hiding their faces and whispering to each other.

Then all of a sudden two of them come up to us. One of them whispers something to the other it sounded like long live snow and then left. The man approaches us.

"Are you the Mellark children," asks the man. He's wearing a dark brown hood covering his face.

"Um," Joshua clears his throat slightly and says,"yes we are. Why?"

"Prepare to die," is all he says.

In that instant he grabs me and I see him try to reach for a knife. Joshua grabs him and tries to pull me out of his grip but he can't. He's pulling and tugging and I'm screaming my head off but still he won't budge. Joshua still trying to get me free pulls down the mans hood. A deep large scar cuts across his face. It starts to the right of his chin and ends at his left ear.I gasp in surprise. Finally he let's go me and hits Joshua so hard that Joshua is on the ground out cold.

"JOSHUA!" I scream.

But he doesn't move. I can't move. Should I make a run for it? I can't just leave Joshua there. The man with the scar could kill him. The man looks over at me as I'm on my hands and knees stunned and he grins. He starts walking toward me and somewhere in this momentum I find the courage to get up and run. And I'm running back into the courtyard but he's faster. And tackles me. I'm on my back when he pulls out his knife and says,"This is for snow."

All of a sudden something comes flying through the air knocking the knife out of his hand. He stumbles backwards stunned. And he's tackled and I can't believe my eyes. Gale Hawthorne has just tackled this man and has just saved me.