Beauty and a Beast

Chapter 3

"How's your family?" I ask Lily as I stroll with her, Hal, and Marius to the Training Center. The four of us have already agreed to be allies.

"About the same as when you lived in Four. They're sad about me, of course. Finnick especially. He cried all the time while we said goodbye. You should see how much he's grown up since you left."

I remember little Finnick, Lily's youngest brother. She has four other siblings, too, but if she had to pick a favorite, I know it would be him. He's eight years old, if I'm counting the years correctly.

Lily smiles half-heartedly. "I'd just started teaching him some basic trident stuff, and he loves it. Dad made him a trident to practice with."

Aw. A pint-sized killer. Gotta start them while they're young.

We all work together at tons of stations over the next few days. Along the way, we gain two more allies: Link and Andrea from District 1. Link favors archery, it seems. Andrea, on the other hand, favors an axe. I wonder if she's ever used one that I made.

"Absolutely not," she tells me when I ask this, flipping back her fiery red hair. "I know you're from Two and all, but I make sure that my axes are created by pros. Not entry-level masons."

Snob.

I decide to navigate climbing a net, going from one rope to the next. Andrea is just a few paces ahead, and I have to say, she's good. Fast. But I keep at it until I surpass her.

Then Andrea nudges me with her elbow. At first, I think it's accidental. Until she does it three more times, harder. I'm on the edge of the net now. I try kicking her but I miss, and she gets another push at me. My face lands on the mat first. I roll to my right before I suffer any real damage.

I wipe blood from my nose, staring up at Andrea. "Yo, District One, what happened to following rules? Don't you know we're not supposed to pick fights when we're training?"

"I like doing what I want," she says. "And I wanted you out of my way."

"I'll be out of your way when I'm dead!" I shout.

Andrea lets go of her ropes and drops down in front of me, on her feet. "Then I don't have long to wait."

Oh, now she's done it. I grab her by the ankles, pulling her to the mat. Andrea delivers an uppercut to my jaw. I kick her stomach, and she clutches it in pain, wincing. But then I see her elbow dig into my ribs. There's something animal inside of me as we fight, bursting to get out. I had no idea it would feel so good. Normally our pretend fights in District 2 are with majorly- padded suits, resulting in the tiniest injuries. Here, I don't have to hold back.

So I bite her wrist.

"Get up!" the lead instructor exclaims behind us. She yanks me away from Andrea. "This is unacceptable, ladies. I don't want any more rough-housing until you enter the arena. Can you behave yourselves just a little while longer?"

"Yeah," Andrea and I agree grudgingly.

Still I whisper to her, "We may be allies, but that won't mean anything once it's down to just our group."

"Oh, I'm gonna enjoy decapitating you..."

"We'll see about that."
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Exhibition time approaches, and boy, am I ready. This is why I've toiled for hours in my family's basement, year after year. To get the perfect rating. A perfect rating equals the most sponsors. Nobody's ever scored higher than 10, but maybe I can shake things up today.

"Enobaria Golding," I tell the Gamemakers. "District Two."

It's my time to shine. I pull out all the stops with a sword, trying to defeat as many robot dummies as possible within sixty seconds. How do you fake kill a robot? They 'die' when you amass a certain amount of damage points, based on how hard and how much you strike them. But it's definitely not one-sided. The robots strike you, too, and keep track of your damage points. Get to fifty points, and you're 'dead'.

I don't gain any more than ten damage points, while I decimate four robots. Four robots in a minute. Awesome!

So it comes as no surprise that I earn a rating of ten.

"Your old man's taught you well," Phoebe remarks as we sit in our Capitol suite, listening to the tribute scores.

"Thanks." Yeah, I'm polite when I want to be.

What surprises me, more than anything, is that no other tribute scores as high as me. They all get nines or lower.

You're going down, Andrea, I think.