These Scars

Chapter Nineteen

"Hey," Ian says softly beside me. "You still up for dinner tonight?"

I nod my head and gulp down the rest of the water bottle. Gary calls for us to get back on the pedestals. We've been rehearsing the opening Cornucopia scene for this past week and we haven't even started filming. My ankle is better, obviously, and Ian's face is no longer purple.

Gary calls go and I sprint off the pedestal to the first backpack on the ground. I dig through it and pull out the semi-sharp knives, looking around as if I'm afraid someone might attack me. Basically with these knives, I can throw them at the people with protective gear on under the costumes. So that's everyone except Jennifer right now. They're going to edit that part where I'm supposed to throw the knife at her head. Though they aren't really sharp, they're sharp enough to hurt someone.

I throw one of the bendy knives into the back of one boy. He falls to the ground, the knife buried in the protective vest he had on his back. I fake a throw at Jennifer, and she holds up the backpack. She gets up to run away and I run after her for a short distance before returning to the other people that are my targets. I have to throw at the chest of one girl and the neck of a boy. Since there's no gear on the boy's neck, I can't actually throw at him.

Then Alexander makes the final "kill" and Gary calls cut. He dismisses us for the day and says that we might begin filming tomorrow. There's cheers of joy from around the plain.

I go to wardrobe to change out of the very hot costume and get back into the clothes that I wore here. We all file into cabs to head back to the hotel. Leven got in a cab with me but neither of us say anything the whole drive. Once at the hotel, I rush up to my room to shower. Afterwards, I change into semi-nice clothing to go to dinner with Ian.

As he said he would, he's at my door at 6:00. He's wearing a flannel shirt that's a size too big but he still looks nice. He flashes a smile before I walk out of the door.

"So I was thinking we could go try that pizza place around the block?" he asks.

My stomach drops. Although it's been over a week, I still get upset when I see Alexander and realize that none of that happened and it wasn't real. He hasn't even talked to me since we fought in the hallway that night. I wish he would. Even if there would never be anything between us, I still miss talking to him. I just miss him.

"Can we go somewhere else? I'm not really in the mood for pizza." I ask, sudden feelings of nausea creeping in.

Ian cocks his head to one side as if he's thinking for a second and then recommends another place. We decide to go there and head down to the lobby.

Ian recommends that we just walk since it is so nice out. I agree and we start to walk in the direction of the café. Ian starts to talk about something and I feel bad for tuning him out. I do that a lot lately.

We get to the café and get a table. I just get some kind of soup that I had no idea how to pronounce. It sounded good though. I'm not sure what Ian gets. As usual, I wasn't listening. After we both order, Ian stares at me.

"What?" I ask, my cheeks beginning to turn red.

He smiles and shakes his head. "Nothing. Just glad I get to spend time with you."

I nod my head in agreement though I'm still not sure I really agree. The food comes and I eat some of it. I guess I wasn't really hungry. We finish quickly before Ian pays and we both walk out of the restaurant.

"It's nice out." Ian tells me as soon as we walk out of the door. "I wish it was like this when we were rehearsing."

"Really." I agree with him. It's terribly hot and humid when we film.