Dew of the Sea [Finnick Odair]

[15. The Start of a Bad Joke]

Day Seven

Rosemary

Kyler really was a blessing. As they roamed the arena, he spoke mindlessly about a lot of stuff and Rosemary stayed quiet and listened intently. She learned a lot about him within the first seventy-two hours of their allegiance. He was the oldest child; if he hadn't volunteered for the Games, he would have gone to the training school for Peacekeepers; he used to be pretty popular in school but after his sister died, he and his friends fell out; he thought that grape juice was better than apple juice; he thought about the other districts a lot, and what the people who lived in them were like, and he really liked math.

"Math?" she had asked him, almost in disbelief. Had she ever met a person who enjoyed math? She was excellent at all types of math, yet even she didn't like it much.

"I don't like open-ended answers," he explained. "At least equations have firm, final answers."

"So does science," Rosemary understood his appreciation, having the same one for science being her favorite subject. "And there are way more types of science than math."

Kyler laughed at her and poked her right cheek. "If you're trying to make science sound better than math, you're going to fail, nerd."

"You're a nerd."

"A hot one at least," Kyler winked at her; Rosemary's cheeks flushed and she looked away with a shake of her head. He chuckled under his breath like he always did when he flustered her. He didn't do it to be mean, but rather to control his own feelings fluttering around in his chest.

"That's science, you know," Rosemary recovered more quickly than in the beginning, getting used to his banter. "High levels of dopamine go off when you see someone attractive."

"Dopamine?"

"It's a chemical released in your brain that allows you to feel motivated, be attracted to something, or feel pleasured." she rattled off a definition she kept stored somewhere in her brain.

"Like adrenaline?"

"Sort of, I guess."

It was a blessing getting to know Kyler, but also a curse. Rosemary found herself liking him. Confusion with her sexuality aside, she was in the Hunger Games. Nothing would come out of her relationship with Kyler, but they could still be friends and allies. That's when the curse came in; they were probably both going to die and the odds were really not in their favor. Maybe in the afterlife they spoke to each other about, they'd be able to try out a real friendship, but while in the arena, they had each other and they couldn't exactly label it anymore than that.

It was comfortable being in an alliance with Kyler. At first, she thought that it would be rather one-sided, with him protecting her more than she could help him. It didn't turn out that way; Kyler was horrible with getting food and without her, Rosemary was sure he would have starved within the third or fourth day of the Games. He had also almost swallowed poison berries on two separate occasions and was not good at recognizing edible plants that Rosemary picked to show him. He was very much the more physical of the two, but he strove to help her with the throwing knives he picked up for her. Being taught by Kyler how to throw a knife was infinitely easier than learning from Haymitch.