National Anthem//Clato

Chapter 1

When I was 7 years old, my mother laid a lean, cleanly wrapped gift in front of me. The shiny red wrapping paper popped against the soft white countertops of my kitchen counter. My emerald eyes lit up like a Christmas tree as a wide smile was painted on my face, my hundreds of clear brown freckles scattering along my cheeks and my nose. I looked to my parents with wide eyes as my mother, a lean blonde motioned me to open the box in front of me.

My tiny, tanned hands picked up the small box and lifted the top of it off, to reveal two shiny objects before me. My wide eyes blinked with confusion as I looked up to my grinning parents, whose grins were soft and urging. My father placed a hand on my small shoulder and patted it softly.

"What are these Dad?" I had asked him, my unknowing voice echoing throughout my home, which was the location of my 7th birthday get together earlier that day. My fingers lingered on the shiny objects, as I removed one from its holder which lied in the presence of the gift box.

That was the day my innocence deteriorated, like wood burning into ashes just to disappear into the air.

"From now on, you are going to be attending the academy just a few miles away. It will help you become strong and teach you how to use these," My father explained as he took the knife from my small hand. "You have a lot to look forward to Clove."

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The academy had become my home, my safe place, the only place where my mind had a completely clear slate aside from my variety of blades and the target that laid before me. My hand didn't feel complete unless a knife was in its presence, and my breathing didn't seem normal unless it was staggered and cautious, like my body which moved as swiftly as a preying leopard and cautiously like a night owl.

The moment I stepped into the academy a week after my 7th birthday, I barely left, and by the young age of 9, I was already at the top of my age group, and was training with the 12 and 13-year-olds, whom still couldn't throw a knife as good and as swiftly as Clove Kentwell.

My figure may have lingered smaller and leaner than the other trainees, but I was known as one of the most fierce and feared kids in all of District 2.

I tended to train more in the shadows, throwing my knives from all sorts of crazy directions with different levels of aggressiveness. But there was one thing that was the same in all my throws. I never missed.

Clove Kentwell never missed.

When I was 10 years old, my life changed quite drastically. I was walking to the academy in the soft winter snow and cold, my scarlet P coat wrapped along the crevices of my body at 6 in the morning, the average time I would make it to my morning training. I placed my ID card to the door, and it opened for me, showing a picture of my face and my name next to it.

"Welcome Clove," The monitors familiar monotone voice said, and I walked swiftly through the door.

There weren't many people in the academy that early, not like I really cared about anyone else in that place. Most were just arrogant snobs, who thought they were the best of the best. I trained best alone, as I didn't have to listen to the annoying laughs and taunts of the other trainees at me. I had become a target of teasing pretty early in the journey at the academy of the elite. I was smaller and more introverted than the majority of the children there, and better to say the least. I could kill any of them from clear across the academy corridor, and everyone there knew it.

My whole life, I had been taught to kill, to be a murderer. There was no room for compassion or love in District 2, or in The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games...