The 55th Hunger Games

Chapter 6

        Krissy meets us at our carriage and ushers us away. We ride another elevator, a glass one this time, to the seventh floor, which will be ours before the games. On the elevator ride, Krissy is full of nothing but praise for our stylists, which only irritates me. I can tell that it irritates Samantha as well, but we both know better than to say any different. The elevator door opens, and we step out onto our floor, which is by far the most extravagantly decorated place I have ever seen. Everything looks new and shiny and gleams as though it was cleaned only moments before.

        My compartment alone is very large. The shower on the train is only a shadow of this much larger one in my quarters, and fit with only a fraction of the buttons. The bed has a remote control, which I can use to recline it and fold it into any number of positions to fit my fancy. The wardrobe too is fit with a screen which I can navigate to select an outfit to my taste. There is also a menu set next to a device which you can speak into to receive any meal from the menu you want. I decide to try it out, and order from the menu a small fruit platter.

        In less than a minute my meal arrives, the fruit still cool and sprinkled lightly with water droplets. In the minute it took my meal to arrive, I dressed from the shower I took beforehand to wash off all the face paint. The outfit I selected is a pair of black pants and a blue tee-shirt.

        I nibble on strawberry slices- which I seem to have grown quite fond of- and gaze out the enormous window at the Capitol spread out like a model city before me. Slowly, I watch as it grows darker until the buildings are cloaked with black and little lights like stars begin to shine, illuminating the city once more.

        I am soon called to dinner and make my way out.

        It occurs to me as I head towards the dining room that there is no one I particularly want to see; not Samantha, not Seamus, not Krissy, and not Liza, who seems to be of a similar mindset to Seamus. But when I get out there, I am greeted by two people who I want to see even less than the people in my current list: Marigold, and her stylist partner.

        As they see me enter, Marigold turns to me with a sickly sweet smile on her face.

        "And here he is!" she shouts exuberantly, bustling over in her many skirts to greet me.

        I try not to shrink away when she touches me again.

        "Come this way dear," she says, leading me over to a table, which I am once again the last to arrive at. It seems as through Samantha is not slightly deterred by the ill relationships she has built with everyone at the table.

        Marigold sits me down then claims a chair across from me, beside Seamus and her partner who I have not met, but I believe is named Teal. This I learned of by watching the mandatory broadcasted interviews of the stylists.

        I had not been aware that I would see my stylist again until the final interviews, but it seems I am sorely mistaken.

        As dinner is started, it becomes plain to me that dinner is not simply a time for eating, but for discussing tactics. And much to my annoyance, Marigold and Teal also seem to play a role in this.

        The meal progresses very slowly, and idle chit-chat is passed around, mainly between the adults. Liza, the stylists and Krissy mainly do the talking, while Seamus sits back enjoying his food. But disinterested as he often appears, I am beginning to think that he is much more calculating than I had first thought. He could pretend so easily to appear calm, but inside his brain could be buzzing with thought. He says that preparation, knowledge, and patience are what he most values. That surely must mean that he is a cool thinker, not relaxed and easy going as he seems.