Alone Together [HG Fanfic, PG13]

[Maria]

“Jessamine?”
I wake up to see my mother, Holly, towering above my meager cot. Her mousy hair is in an elaborate twisted style and she is clothed in a dress. A dress. A dress isn’t harvest clothing. Harvest clothing is maybe some old jeans and a durable shirt. And, obviously, nighttime glasses. If you’re up at nighttime.
“Jessamine, it’s an hour till the reaping. You have fifteen minutes to get dressed and then, we’re leaving.”
The reaping. I’m only thirteen, so my chances of being chosen aren’t too big. But I did sign up for tesserae. Between me, my mother and father, and younger sister Silvi, I really did need tesserae. A consolation is that tons of kids sign up for tesserae each year, so I’m not the only thirteen-year-old with my name in fifteen times.
I quickly brush my hair, not bothering to do it up, and change into my reaping outfit, a simple white dress, and shoes. I watch Silvi getting into her reaping outfit. It used to be mine. Light blue long dress, with a matching ribbon. She’s wearing her regular shoes.
We’re only a year apart. This will be her first reaping where she is eligible to become the District 11 girl tribute. She took tesserae, just like me.
Our house is thirty-five minutes away from the town square, where the reaping always takes place. By the time we finally get there, most of the crowd is subdued. It’s time to say goodbye to my mother, father, and Silvi. I watch Silvi trudge off toward the twelve-year-old area. I stay put where I am.
“Happy Hunger Games!” the capitol woman who draws the names, who we call Annabelle Cantarin, says cheerily. Her hair is dark green and she has tattoos on...her chest. She’s wearing a low-cut, frilly dress and high heels. I have never worn high heels.
The past victors stand on the stage as well. There are five. Two women, Azalea Vanderstrauss and Clematis Melebelle. Three men, Rowen Core, Rush Kerr and Linden Zaner. Linden Zaner won only eight years ago.
“Ladies first!” Annabelle Cantarin chirps in her frilly Capitol accent, after the mayor, Reed Severbold. She makes her way over to the dreaded glass ball holding all the girls’ names. Not me. Not me. Not Silvi. Not Silvi. Not me.
Annabelle Cantarin withdraws a crumpled slip of paper. She smooths it out with her surgically altered fingers and manicured nails...not me. Please. Not me.
She clears her throat. “Jessamine Asher.”
Not possible. It can’t be me! Why wasn’t it Aspen Berkeley, the girl who needed so much tesserae for her big family her name was put in fifty-nine times? Why wasn’t it one of the eighteen-year-olds, who know they are the most likely to be picked? Why me?
Slowly, I make my way to the stage. My hands are frozen to my sides. I feel numb as I stand on the outside stage, wind whipping my body and hair, taunting me.
I find Silvi’s eyes in the crowd, somehow. They are wide and brown. I can see that she’s scared, but she won’t step up and take my place. Siblings in District 11 rarely do.
“Volunteers?” Nobody moves. I’m not surprised.
“And now for our boy tribute!” Annabelle Cantarin squeaks excitedly. She fishes her hand into the reaping ball. She takes a slip of paper out and uncrumples it. She takes a deep breath. “Elon Macer.”
Elon Macer. I’ve seen him before. He’s sixteen. He always has a gaggle of girls following him around in the fields, eager to pick plums for him or hand-feed him grainy bread. Those girls make me sick. I’ve never actually spoken to Elon before, because he’s three years older than me, and I’m not exactly part of the crowd he’s in at school.
Elon slowly, stiffly, makes his way to the stage. His usually neat brown hair seems slightly disheveled today, which is strange, considering today is the reaping. I doubt he had to buy tesserae, considering his family has a lot of money because they sold a lot of their land. But who knows.
“Any volunteers?” Annabelle Cantarin asks once more. And once more, nobody moves.
“I present to you the tributes of District Eleven, for the ninety-first Hunger Games!” she squeals. “Jessamine Asher and Elon Macer!”
Elon and I shake hands. His hand is warm and kind of comforting. As Mayor Severbold starts reading the long-winded Treaty of Treason, me and Elon sneak glances at each other. I’ve seen Elon with a knife before, during harvest. He once tried to impress Leilani Valor by throwing a knife into a tree from twenty, thirty yards. Needless to say, he succeeded. And now they’re locking Elon and me in the arena, where he can kill me anytime he wants with that knife.
The Treaty of Treason is nearly finished. I gulp. The brutal Peacekeepers haul us off to the Justice Building, where people can say there goodbyes. It’s pretty clear Elon and I will both be murdered in the arena.
Murdered. I sit up straight in my wooden chair, causing, by back to get splintered from stray bits of wood. There is no way I want to have a slow, painful death, be murdered by someone who will most likely get murdered anyway.
First, my mother, father and Silvi come in, their hair and faces wet from rain and tears. We make idle talk for about five minutes before a Peacekeeper hauls them away. “Please win, Jessamine!” Silvi says, frightened, as the Peacekeepers pull her away. “Please try!” I open my mouth to respond, but realize it’s futile. The Peacekeepers have slammed the door and I am alone.
Next, my friend Casadi. She comes in, hugs me, and tells me she’ll pray for me and Elon. Kind of ironic that she’s praying for both Elon and I, when we’re supposed to be enemies. She drops a small bag of something on my lap when her five minutes are up. I’m not exaggerating when I say the Peacekeepers drag her out of the room, she’s so determined to stay.
I finger my necklace. Expensive. A shiny small pendant with three stalks of wheat painted on it, fastened onto a silver, metal chain. This will be my district token in the arena.
Last comes Avrilli, another friend. She looks nothing like anybody else in the district; her grandparents were Capitol runaways. Her blond hair and green eyes make her stand out. Avrilli sits down next to me and places another package on my lap. I slowly open it, still yet to open Casadi’s gift.
It’s Capitol money. I finger the coins in my hands. “Thank you,” I finally say. Maybe I can become one of my own sponsors. Have this money go toward parachuted items that will assist me in the arena. They are no use in District Eleven.
“You’re welcome. Good luck,” Avrilli says quietly, before tiptoeing out of the room. She knows I will not return. I can feel it.
Elon and I meet up at the train station, where the Capitol train speeds into place. Annabelle Cantarin ushers us into one room, telling us she assumes we’ll want to watch the recaps of the eleven other reapings. And we do. I dig out a notebook, and Elon asks a Capitol attendant for two bars of chocolate. Don’t ask me why he wants chocolate. And why he got one for me too, no less. He’s just trying to be nice. Most likely.
First, District One. Volunteers clamoring to the stage. Finally, after a fair amount of shooing away by the Capitol person, there are two tributes. Their names are Sequin and Dollar. I feel like I have heard the word dollar before—some North American word. I just can’t put my finger on what it means.
District Two. Two seventeens, Fradella and Torin. District Three. Krista and Eleji. Four, Sheen and Xander. Both twelve, most scarily. Five, Rhenna Smokebreeze and Salt Cidivi. Six, someone named Jette Menria and a guy named Sailor Grovewood. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. The girl from Nine sticks in my head. Flaming red hair. Thirteen years old. Like me. I might want her for an ally. Her name is Calla. The girl from Ten is twelve. Brown hair. Her name is Emily Terrintale.
We watch ourselves being reaped. The lights have only emphasized how pale my face is...Elon, however, looks intimidating. Finally, just one more to go. My chocolate bar lies untouched.
Twelve. A girl named Berit and a boy named Swift. Berit looks around sixteen and Swift is twelve. Berit looks kind of like a grubbier version of Avrilli. Swift? He...looks like a boy version of Silvi. I might want him to be my ally. Who knows…
Annabelle pops her head in as I am writing down a possible ally list and tells us it’s time for dinner. She leads us down the long, velvet (yes, velvet) hall and ushers us into a large room. Who knew a train could be so big? Azalea, Clematis, Rowen, Rush and Linden are all seated. Someone called an Avox, which I learned about in school, brings dishes to the table. First, something called caesar salad, which is basically lettuce with sauces, spices, and toasted bread cut into small pieces. Croutons. After just the salad, I feel stuffed, but have to eat more after I see the main course, baked potatoes with something called sour cream and turkey. Dessert is pumpkin pudding. At least I know what that is. I’m sincerely glad I didn’t eat the chocolate bar Elon asked for.
“So,” Rush begins as we’re sipping tea (or, in my case, watching everyone sip tea), “Do you two have any skills that you think may help you in the arena?”
“Elon can throw a knife,” I announce.
Elon turns to me. “What?”
“Didn’t Leilani Valor ask you to throw a knife, last harvest? You got it in from, like, ninety feet!”
“That was chance. I usually miss my target.”
I shrug. “Well...I can use spears pretty well. There’s something about knifes though, I just can’t bring myself to stab someone. Throwing spears into people’s backs...well, I prefer that approach.”
“Elon, do you have any skills that might come in handy in the arena?” Azalea asks. Again.
“No. I can harvest wheat and put nighttime glasses on.”
“So can everyone else,” Azalea says dryly. Geez, can’t she take a joke? It’s the Hunger Games. Can’t we pack an ounce of fun into our lives before we die some sadistic death? The train is moving fast, and I feel like my dinner may reappear soon.
Elon continues. “I guess I’m okay with a knife, though. With practice.”
“I can give you lessons,” Clematis offers. “You don’t want to give away your strengths in group training. The other tributes will take note of it, I assure you. Their mentors will make sure of that.”
I remember that these people can kill me in the blink of an eye. That they will. That I will. Kill or be killed. Say I won. I’d be a murderer.
I sit up straight. A murderer! I don’t want to be seen as a murderer. I want to be seen as...well, Jessamine Asher. My stomach starts churning again.
“Jessamine?” Clematis looks at me concernedly. “Are you okay?”
“Um, yeah. Just...nervous. I mean, it’s the Games,” I stammer.
Rowen looks at me. “Don’t worry. You’ll do fine.”
You’ll do fine? Yeah, what’s fine, getting down to the final eight before getting killed? In Panem, in the Hunger Games, there is no “fine”. You win and live with the nightmares and artificial limbs, or the last air you breathe is in the tainted arena before getting a knife in the face. Yeah, and that’s just fine with the Capitol. And, apparently, with our mentors.
In District Eleven, nobody really refers to it as “dying”, even though I bet a lot of people think of it that way. Only six of our tributes have become victors. Obviously, one is dead. What’s the Capitol’s idea of “fine” and “fun”? Locking teenagers up outside and watching them kill each other and cheer on their killer? The whole system is so disgusting that I tune out Elon and our mentors unless they ask me a direct question. I have a feeling they like Elon better. Nobody asks me anything until Clematis makes a point of striking up a conversation with me.
“Did you watch the reapings?” she asks me, having already asked Elon the same question.
“Yeah.”
“Any ideas of who you want for allies?”
“Based on their looks?” I ask, scraping my empty bowl of pudding, even though I’m stuffed. “Isn’t it a bit early?”
“Well, you want to decide quickly. The good stuff will be snapped up by the Careers and gone,” Linden chimes in, sipping his tea.
“I don’t really want...strong allies. Can’t I have people that remind me of home? Like Emily Terrintale, Calla and Swift?”
Rush sighs. “You’ll want the strong ones. People like Emily, Calla and Swift will get killed off quickly.”
He’s walked into his own trap. “Yeah, like me, then?”
Rush sighs again. He has a tendency to sigh. “If we acted quickly, we could get one of you in with the Careers.”
“No,” Elon and I say together. Not that the Careers would take a thirteen-year-old from District Eleven anyway. They might take an eighteen or seventeen, like Elon. Not me. Anyway, the Careers are detested by all of District Eleven. I don’t want to be hated by my home.
After sitting in silence for awhile, Clematis jumps up and points at the window. “Oh, look. We’re in the Capitol!”
Elon and I clamor to the windows. We’re in the legendary Capitol. It’s nothing like I imagined. Technicolor trees that look like what I can only describe as spun sugar, a treat I’ve had once. Everything is bright. I catch sight of Capitol citizens. I would expect them to simply be beautiful, nothing more. I had assumed Annabelle Cantarin just looked like a freak. But no, all Capitol residents had on wigs and tattoos and some had even colored their skin. Grotesque. Elon and I exchange glances. This is not how I thought it would be. Not how Elon thought either, apparently. I wonder if Elon or I will end up killing the other.
I just need to grit my teeth and kill, because if I don’t, I’ll be dead.
Soon enough, we’re in the train station of the Capitol, in all its technicolor glory. We’re ushered out and into what I can only assume is some Capitol version of the Justice Building. This suspicion vanishes when I see what I’m about to have done to me.
Clematis walks me up to a room, where two very colorful people greet me. They tell me their names are Andromeda and, most unusually, Taramadala. There is another, fairly normal, person. Her name is Lianna Belladon. I decide I like her the most. I’m not that into these Capitol beauticians.
First of all, they strip me of nearly all my hair and skin, shape my nails, trim my hair, and do more things I don’t even know what the outcomes of are. Finally, another person comes in. She has golden blonde hair with a pink streak, but is otherwise as normal as Lianna Belladon. She looks as though she is in her twenties. “Hello, Jessamine,” she says. She does have a Capitol accent, but not as much as, say, Annabelle Cantarin. “I’m your stylist. Fae.”
“Nice to meet you, Fae,” I say stiffly, feeling uncomfortable.
“I’ve brought your outfit for the opening ceremony. Your costume, that is.” She’s brought a box with her, so I simply open it, but she doesn’t let me look. “Close your eyes.”
I close my eyes, and when I open them, I am wearing a dress that looks like it’s woven of grass. I’m wearing a daisy chain in my hair, which is brushed and glossy. I’m wearing shoes that look as though they were constructed entirely out of things you can find in a meadow. I smell like lemon, and am wearing makeup. I don’t look like Jessamine Asher. But still, I like this. I have to admit.
“You like?” Fae asks. I nod. Because I do like. I represent District Eleven now. I need to make them proud.
I feel like I am. But the odds are roughly four percent that I’ll win. Roughly ninety-six percent that my body will be shipped back in a careless, unsanded pine box for my family to bury. Because the Capitol doesn’t care. They don’t care if my body gets destroyed any time.
These people are just despicable.
I blindly let Fae lead me down to where Elon and his stylist, Marcus, are waiting in front of the normal District Eleven chariot. Elon is wearing a similar outfit to mine.
We climb into the chariot just as the District One tributes’ chariot rolls out. The tributes (Sequin and Dollar) are wearing white gowns/suits, respectively, covered with jewels, glittering in the spotlight. Sequin blows kisses to the crowd, covering her hand with blood-red lipstick. Dollar sits there suddenly.
“District Two!” Being the people that make medicine for the Capitol, though they don’t get any high-tech medicine themselves, the clichéd idea for the district is for them to be dressed as doctors. And this year, they are dressed as doctors.
“Three!” Factories. Krista and Eleji. Dressed as...nothing, really, but simply in glowing jumpsuits and matching ridiculous little berets.
Four. The twelve-year-olds Sheen and Xander. The water district. They are dressed as...water. Sheen is wearing a sparkling blue gown. Xander, a matching shirt and pants.
I don’t really pay attention until Ten, when I have to because we’re next. The girl, twelve-year-old Emily, is looking nervous and dressed in a cow-print dress. As for the boy...I don’t know what he’s dressed as.
We’re up. The automatic chariot rolls out, and I hear the crowd, screaming as they always do. As Twelve rolls in, I scan the crowd, but immediately turn away, remembering that these people think it’s fun to see me killed.
The chariots roll through the whole city. My teeth begin chattering. Loudly. Finally, it is over, and an Avox shows me my room. Without bothering to change, I jump into the comfortable bed and try to fall asleep. When I do, there are nightmares about past Games.
Day two, I am woken by the same Avox and ushered down for breakfast. After gorging myself on poached eggs, potatoes with ketchup, orange juice, and a cinnamon roll, Annabelle Cantarin takes us to training. It starts at ten sharp. Because Annabelle Cantarin seems to have this phobia of being late, she takes us down at nine-thirty. Two other districts are already here. Two and Ten. The woman who has always run training, Atala, is talking up the girl from District Two, Fradella. Emily, the boy from her district and the boy from Two are just kind of idly sitting there.
Over the next quarter of an hour, all of the tributes except for districts Twelve and Four show up. Four shows up right at ten, but Twelve is nowhere to be seen. Atala doesn’t wait; she begins right on time. I head over to the archery station, hoping to learn how to send an arrow flying into somebody’s heart, and find I have company.
Emily’s picking through the bows and has found a sheath of arrows. We shoot targets together for awhile, silent. I feel like it’s my job to break the silence barrier. “Hi. So you’re from Ten, right?” I say.
“Yeah, I’m from Ten,” she says carefully, stringing a bow and sending the arrow through where a dummy’s heart would be. Wow. She’s twelve and better than...well, probably most of this year’s tributes. “Livestock keepers,” she continues, casually sending another arrow into the dummy’s eye. And into the stomach. I stand there, mesmerized. “Where in District Ten did you learn archery?”
Emily laughs. “School. There was this program that was for kids who took a lot of tesserae.”
Wow. I wish we’d had that. “Lucky. Then maybe I’d stand a chance of...winning.”
Silence. Then, “You think we’d be able to be allies?”
It’s so straightforward, I’m caught off-guard. But now I have an excuse to become allies with Emily. She wants me too. “I’ll ask Clematis.”
“Clematis?”
“My mentor.” Actually, she’s just one of my mentors. But Clematis is definitely my favorite.
“Oh.” She makes a clean shot through the neck of the dummy. My teeth practically stand on end. She sees me and laughs. “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you.”
“I’d rather you kill me than someone else...say, Eleji.” I point to the monstrous District Three boy hacking away at a dummy with a knife.
Emily’s eyes widen. “I’d rather kill myself than be killed by Eleji.”
I laugh. Then she laughs, and we’re both laughing, overcome by nerves and the whole stress of the Games. And the fact that both of us will probably end up dead. We’ve given up before we’ve started. And that’s not actually too big a surprise.
“Anyone else you might want in an ally-group?” I ask her. She shrugs, so I say, “I was thinking maybe Sheen, Xander, Calla, and Swift.”
“In other words, all the younger people? No offense, but just say we took all those people. Half our alliance would be dead by nightfall.”
As much as I hate to admit it, she’s right. “Okay. So just us two? I’ll ask Clematis.”
She smiles. “Okay. I’ll ask my mentor, Raea.”
We visit all the stations together, over the next three days. I ignore Elon, for the most part, although I can see him sneaking glances at me throughout the training period.
After our second-to-last day of training, I spring on Clematis. “Can you request to Raea that Emily and I can be allies?”
Clematis, I can see, is surprised, but curtly nods. I tell Emily the next day, and we celebrate by going to the edible-plants station, which will help us in the Games. A lot. We master it within three hours, which is an accomplishment, considering how much there is to learn. Emily tries to use the plants to determine where we’ll be headed, but she can’t find any significant clues.
Later today, training is cut short because we need to do our private Gamemaker sessions. These help determine what our score is, and the score helps the Capitol people decide who to sponsor. I decide to throw some spears.
True to tradition, Elon, the boy of our district, goes in before the girl, me. After twenty minutes, I’m supposed to go in.
The Gamemakers—the majority of them, anyway—are not paying any attention. Most of them are guzzling alcohol. I suppose this makes sense, me being from the second-last district. I try to pretend it doesn’t other me. I grab five spears and throw them at five targets. Each hits the inner ring. Not the center, but the closest after.
One Gamemaker is watching me. The rest are beet-red, laughing with slurred voices, clinking their sloshing beer bottles against each other’s. I grab another spear and throw it at the dummy, piercing it dead center of the neck. I grab another. Heart, eye, vital places. I take a bow and arrow and shoot it, where the lungs would be. I lodge a spear in the ceiling above me, before it loosens, slips and I neatly catch it in my outstretched hand.
More Gamemakers are watching me now. I chuck spears into the ceiling and each falls, neatly, in my hands.
“You may go, Miss Asher,” the Head Gamemaker says. Relieved that I don’t have to risk cutting my hand off before the Games start, again, I make my way to where Fae and Clematis are, in our sitting room. Elon is nowhere to be seen.
"Where's Elon?" I ask.
"Quarters," Fae replies in her soft Capitol accent.
"Oh." I suddenly feel like a huge idiot.
We basically sit in silence until dinner, me reading in a Capitol magazine about who Capitol residents think will win the crown. Most of them show Fradella, the tough, tall girl from District 2, and Eleji, from 3. A few of the polls show Dollar may have a chance. I also read up on past arenas. There is no revelation of this year's. Finally, a Capitol person comes into the room and tells us it's time for dinner and leads us downstairs, where we will eat and see everyone's scores.
Dinner is a mysterious green broth with mini vegetables in it, topped with a dollop of thick sour cream. On the side, sourdough bread, much more expensive and delicious than the moon-shaped bread at home, and buttery corn. When we have corn back in District 11, it's never buttered. Butter is a rare delicacy we haven't had since Linden Zaner won the Games, when it got delivered to us on Parcel Day.
"Time for the scores," Annabelle Cantarin says in between an obnoxiously large mouthful of corn. She presses a button on the remote and the large flat screen pops to life.
The first few minutes are the man who interviews the tributes talking about what may come in with the wind in this year's Games. Caesar Flickerman. He always wears a white base of makeup with a “feature” color on his eyelids, lips, and hair. This year, it’s a kind of burnt caramel color. Even though it’s a natural hair color, his hair looks like a totally horrific wig. It seems like the Capitol’s mission is to make everything as gross and ironic as possible.
Finally, he gets down to business. The screen flashes our headshots, names, and training scores.
First off, Sequin. She scores a nine. Dollar gets a nine also. Fradella, ten. Torin gets a six. I wonder how he got such low a score, given he’s a Career. Krista pulls an eight, Eleji a ten. Uh-oh.
Sheen and Xander both get a five. Rhenna Smokebreeze gets an eight, somehow. Salt is not so lucky and pulls a mere four. I wonder what he did.
Jette gets a nine. I guess the Gamemakers were feeling sentimental toward some non-Careers this year. Sailor Grovewood wipes away this speculation by pulling a three. The District 7 tributes, Belanina and Jumo Leeden, who appear to be siblings, both get a six.
District Eight. Two tributes named Maria Coyne and Pixie Greybone. Maria gets a six and Pixie a seven.
I’m surprised by how high the scores are. I wonder what mine will be. Nine. Calla gets a four, as does the boy from her district, who is inexplicably named Mena. Ten. Emily pulls a seven, to my relief. The boy, Hacane, gets an eight. Well, if a twelve-year-old got a seven, the Gamemakers probably had waaay too much beer and wine.
Me. My name, my headshot, my score are flashing on the screen. A...I got a seven too. Good enough, I guess. I console myself by telling myself I got a higher score than one of the Careers.
Elon gets a nine. I bet he threw his knife into a chandelier or something. Berit and Swift both get a six.
“Congratulations, you two!” Clematis says cheerfully, sawing the kernels off her cob of corn.
I voice my thoughts. “Did the Gamemakers drink too much or something? How did a twelve-year-old get a seven?”
Fae laughs her Capitol giggle. “I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Gamemakers had too much alcohol!” Like there is such a thing in the Capitol, where the only rule is to have fun while the neighboring sections of the country starve to death. While the residents drop like flies.
Fae talks again. “Tomorrow are the interviews. This will help determine many of your sponsors. So you have to be your best.”
Elon and I silently nod. Fae continues. “You’ll meet separately with Clematis and I. Clematis will help you come up with your angle. I’ll help you with body language. Jessamine, you’ll meet with Clematis first, from seven in the morning till lunch. Elon, you’ll be with me first. Then you’ll switch from after lunch till seven in the evening. Eight-thirty the interviews start.”
“Tomorrow’s gonna be jam-packed. You’d better get some sleep. In two days...arena,” Rush says dryly.
Two days.
After strawberry shortcake, Clematis and Rowen respectively whisk me and Elon off to bed. Once we get to my quarters, Clematis leaves me in the care of a blond Avox who looks about twenty.
I don’t want to go to bed just yet. I haven’t even pressed any of the thousands of buttons in my quarters, and might as well take advantage of it while I’m here, given I’ll never get another chance.
I press random buttons on the wall near my huge closet and end up with an outfit that Sequin, the District 1 tribute, might wear. Finally, I find a suitable outfit and hop in the shower. I press a random button and the water starts streaming out of the showerhead along with lilac-scented bubbles, and they gather at my feet before disappearing down the drain. Gone forever. Like me. In a few days.
I punch more buttons. It becomes more steamy. A waterproof TV screen pops out. It suddenly smells strongly of artificial strawberry. I am drenched in thick green foam. My hair suddenly parts, straightens and shines. It grows five inches in two minutes. I wonder if there’s a button that makes me invincible. There might be, given that there might be, like, five thousand of these buttons just in the shower.
The Avox beckons me out and tucks me into bed. I still strongly smell of lilac and strawberry.
I think about Emily again. What’s her angle going to be? Will people be singling me and her out to kill? No, I doubt it. They’ll probably want to take down crazed bodybuilding lunatics like Eleji before they kill us.
The next thing I know, Clematis, and not an Avox, is shaking me awake. The lame sense of security I felt, having the blond Avox tucking me into bed like I was their own kid, vanishes as Clematis says, “Get up and dressed. If you want to survive you’ll need a good angle!”
Way to rub it in, Clematis.
We sit in my quarters to come up with my angle and think about how to play it. Humble. Clever. Sneaky. Sly. Sullen. Quiet. Shy. Cowardly. Bubbly. Clematis tells some special mouthpiece a food order, and, without even an Avox coming to deliver it, it simply appears on a plate in my room. Testing me out and eating green olives with stuffing.
Finally, we decide on bubbly and complimentary. Maybe with a few witty jokes thrown in. Compliment the Capitol. Giggle. By the time we finally finish this, it’s lunch and despite the fact we ate enough green olives to feed the whole District 11 for a month, we head down to the dining room anyway.
Fae and Elon are already there, eating caesar salads. “Progress?” Fae asks airily, scraping aside her croutons.
“Her angle is a mix of bubbly and witty,” Clematis replies.
“That’ll go good with her dress,” Fae replies. I really am too tired to ask what my dress is, and try and gain a few pounds by gorging on some tangy meat called teriyaki chicken. It looks kind of like a thin groosling drizzled with sauce and sesame seeds.
After a dessert of sugar cookies swirled with elaborate frosting designs, I go with Fae to the sitting room to work on body language. Hand gestures, sitting, walking, facial expressions. About eight hours of agonizing repetitions of things I already know and then, finally, she’s unzipping the bag that holds my dress and shoes, in front of my prep team and I.
“Close your eyes,” she instructs me, and I do. She slips my clothes off and my dress on. She holds my hand while I step into the shoes I judge to be heels, and does my makeup with my eyes scrunched together.
“You can look,” Fae says.
I open my eyes and blink. I’m wearing a shimmery pink velvet dress, black wedge shoes, and my makeup is otherworldly. I look like a Capitol girl. A pretty Capitol girl. No tattoos. No dyes. Just beautiful me.
“Oh my God,” I squeak. “Thank you.”
Next thing I know, they’re leading me to where the interviews will take place. I catch sight of some other people and remember them from previous Games. Fiona Nebeneca, from District 4, who all the Capitol men practically stalk whenever she’s in the Capitol. Alice Faschairi, a District 9 stylist. And the next thing I know, Caesar Flickerman and his burnt caramel/white color combo are taking the stage. Sooner than I’m ready for, Sequin walks onto the stage in five-inch white heels and a gorgeous flowing gown. Her thick, wavy blond hair and piercing blue eyes draw the audience in from the start. She’s manipulating everyone with her fake-eyelash-batting, her beautiful makeup, and her sneaky smiles. Then the buzzer sounds and Dollar is up.
I only pay attention for Emily’s interview. Her angle is clear. Young, innocent, cute. She smiles her winning smile at the audience. Her dress is pretty and spunky, black-and-white diagonal stripes. Strapless. It’s hard to achieve that look, but her stylist did.
Too soon, it’s my turn.
“So Jessamine, how did you feel once your name got drawn in the reaping? Excited to represent your district in the Games?”
“Yeah, very!” I try to sound all bubbly, but there’s a sullenness behind it.
“What are some of your favorite things you’ve seen in the Capitol?” Caesar Flickerman asks. Geez, it’s all about the Capitol.
“Um…” I think. “I don’t know. It’s just all so amazing!” Pretty shallow.
He asks me a few more questions, and finally, “Could you tell us about your family back home? Your mother, father, any siblings?”
“My mom is named Holly. My sister is named Silvi. She’s twelve. My father—” the buzzer sounds.
“Sorry, we’re out of time,” Caesar says like usual. “Good luck, Jessamine Asher, District Eleven tribute.”
I make my way back to my seat silently. I sucked. Enough said. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be in the arena. Dead.
Tomorrow morning arrives all too soon.
I sit in the Launch Room, silently, while a Capitol person injects the tracker into my arm. I occupy myself by trying to dig it out. It doesn’t work, and I’m bleeding before the Games even start. I’ll need to slice my arm off to get it off. And I’m not going to slice up my arm.
Too soon, the plate is rising. My hair is getting whipped around my face. It’s snowing hard, and I can barely make out the shiny gold horn, or Cornucopia, but run towards what I can see of it once the gong sounds. I can see Emily, running too. I grab a backpack and a spear, a bow and sheath of arrows, and clear out before the bigger tributes, particularly the Careers, can hunt me down.
Emily catches up to me. She has a bow and arrow and a full water bottle. “Allies?” she asks, panting. The tribute outfit has short sleeves, and somehow she’s panting from cold. The shoes offer little way in protection from snow, and my socks are already getting wet.
“Allies,” I reply. “Let’s keep walking.” Emily seems preoccupied with something, and is glancing at her arm. “The tracker?” I finally ask.
“No,” she replies. “It’s nothing. Let’s keep going.”
“It’s not nothing,” I reply, grabbing her arm. There’s a shallow but long cut along it.
“What? Who?” I ask. I grab some snow to try and soak it up. It’s not bleeding that hard, but it’s good to take precautions in the Games. I’m not thinking clearly. The snow is freezing.
“The girl from Nine,” she replies.
“Calla?”
“Yeah, I guess. The red hair.” She throws the now reddened snow back onto the ground. We keep walking until we hear the cannon shot signaling the Bloodbath at the Cornucopia is over.
“How many?” Emily asks as I count in my head.
“Seven.” I wonder if any of them are Elon or Swift. I don’t even know why I should care about Swift. I certainly don’t care about Calla anymore.
“Let’s rest. We’ve been walking for awhile,” Emily suggests. So we sit down, but as soon as we get comfortable, the ground starts spinning. The wind is whistling in my ears. I fall down, as does Emily. Finally, the spinning stops. We’re in an entirely new place. No, wait. Not entirely new. Trees are in the same place, but...leaves are gently falling, coating the ground, which will make it hard to walk without making noise. The snow is gone. Emily gasps. “Oh, I get it.”
“Already?” I ask.
“It must be some replica of the seasons. That’s why I couldn’t find any clues at the plant stations.”
Amazed at Emily’s rationality, I’m silent. She continues. “I’m guessing it spun us to a new place. The best thing we can do is find a tree to stay in.”
We both climb the tree we find, which is hard with our bulk of supplies, but we manage. We’ve literally just finished when another dizzy tribute passes us. It’s Salt, from Five.
“That was close,” Emily whispers as he disappears, blood trailing behind him.
“Let’s look at our pack,” I suggest. Mine contains a packet of some sort of powder with no label, a pack of beef jerky, a blanket, and one can of fizzy Capitol fruit juice.
“Capitol juice?” Emily gasps. “Why would Capitol juice be in the arena?”
“I don’t know,” I say, just as we get spun into a sweltering zone where the sun is beating down on us, and wildflowers grow. My backpack plummets down, but gets snagged on a branch ten feet below. I climb down to get it, as I tell Emily, “You were right.”
She shrugs, trying to close her cut from Calla, which opened when we spun.
Emily’s sheath of arrows is especially large. Twenty silver arrows.
Night creeps in, and we spin to winter again. Snow. Cold. We shiver, even under the blanket, as the anthem starts playing, and we glance up at the sky to see who is gone.
The District Five boy, Salt. I guess his blood trails must have been a clue. The boy from Six. Both from Seven. Boy from eight. Two more. I gasp as Elon’s face takes over the sky. Then it vanishes and is replaced by Berit’s.
“He was your district partner?” Emily asks. I nod stiffly. I can’t pretend I knew Elon well, but I thought he had a chance. And, well, I knew him. Kind of.
We’re both hungry, but don’t want to indulge in the jerky or Capitol beverage, so we eat snow and flavor it with a clump of berries that fell into Emily’s hair during the anthem. I’ve seen them at home, and they’re safe to eat. It tastes like sherbet.
We try to stay awake, but Emily nods off right after we spin back to autumn, so I take over the watch. I don’t see anyone though. When it’s late morning and we’ve spun three times, I wake Emily.
“I slept the whole night?”
“I’ll sleep now.”
She nods, and I wake to screaming and a new season. It’s not Emily, but she’s staring below us. Again. Below us and about twenty yards to the right, the Careers are taking out an already injured victim. Fradella grins as she sinks the knife into Xander’s chest. Twelve-year-old Xander. His blood spills out rapidly, choking him.
His cannon fires. Emily simply watches. It’s all I can do not to scream. Fradella clearly takes no mercy on her opponents. If she knew we were here, she could throw her knife and stick us both through the neck.
Emily’s gnawing on her nails. She’s scratching at her arm and reopening the wound, and blood is dripping down. I’m choking all the words I want to scream at Fradella back. They condense into a sort of waning squeal. The Careers don’t hear it and move on, leaves crunching under their killers’ feet.
We watch as the hovercraft moves in and takes Xander’s bloodstained body. And then he’s gone, along with the bloody knife embedded in his body.
“We can’t stay up here forever, you know,” Emily says softly. So we softly climb down the tree and keep moving. We spend all afternoon walking, and by the end of the afternoon, we need water, but we know it won’t be a danger. We can melt some snow tonight. There’s an advantage to these Games. How could the Gamemakers have overlooked that?
Maybe they didn’t, I think as the sky projects Xander’s face onto the sky. Then it hits me that Xander was a Career. But he was twelve, maybe they just didn’t have a use for him.
We watch as Calla limps by. I’m guessing the arena is pretty small, if we’ve seen so many tributes in this small a stretch of time. Her forehead has a deep gash in it and is dripping blood. She looks near dead. We could pick her off with an arrow now if we wanted. But we let her pass.
“The arena must be small,” I whisper to Emily. We run in the opposite direction that the Careers and Calla went.
Bad idea. The District Six girl is waiting for us. Jette Menria. She has a bloody gash on her right leg, but is otherwise not wounded. She stares at us and then starts throwing spears, looking bored, as if it’s second nature to kill.
The first one grazes my shoulder. The second one reopens Emily’s arm wound again. The third embeds in my hip. I yank it out and throw it at her before sinking down. The last thing I see is the spear hitting Jette in her right leg.
When I wake, Emily is above me. It’s winter, I’m guessing, and I passed out. Or something.
“Back from the dead?” Emily asks me, dabbing my hip with the blanket.
“Apparently,” I say. “How long has it been?”
“A day,” she says. “I’m guessing the Careers killed Sheen off, too, because she’s dead.”
“Oh. Is Jette dead?”
“No. I went back to where she threw the spears a few hours ago. She’s gone, but there wasn’t a cannon and her face wasn’t in the sky last night.”
So Jette is still out there. I’ve accomplished nothing. It’s winter now, and the first glamorous, beautiful snow is now slushy and bloodstained.
“I tried to melt some snow for water,” Emily says.
“And?”
“It wouldn’t melt. I even lit a fire and threw some snow into it. It didn’t melt. It just sat there.”
“That’s weird.” I’m guessing the snow is some trick on the Gamemakers’ part. Maybe it’s even poisoned. But me and Emily ate it and we’re alive. Plus, poisoning doesn’t include bloody murders, so I doubt it.
“Want to eat?” Emily asks, tugging the beef jerky and Capitol juice out of our pack.
“Let’s not eat the beef yet. I bet I could find some roots…” I can move slowly. I don’t find roots, but I do find some raspberries. In winter? We mince the raspberries with snow and about a tablespoon of our precious Capitol juice. It tastes, again, like sherbet.
As we’re licking the last granules of ice off our fingers, the cannon fires. Then, scarcely five minutes later, another. We stop. And suddenly it’s springtime. The snow is gone. The grass is stained with blood.
Suddenly, the sky goes black and the anthem starts. I don’t even know why I should care too much. Emily and I are alive, that’s what matters.
Sequin is dead. Already? But she was a Career! District One! I can hear Emily’s gasp as well. Krista, from Three. And the Capitol seal is back up. The anthem still blares.
“My guess is,” Emily informs me slowly, “Krista attacked the Careers and killed Sequin. But then the Careers killed her.”
“I wonder if Eleji was there,” I muse.
“I never saw him with Krista during prep time at the Capitol,” Emily says. “I doubt he knew her too well.”
It’s so unjust, this whole thing. Elon is gone. Eleji and Krista never knew each other. Twelve-year-olds reaped instead of experienced eighteens.
Suddenly, we hear pounding. I’m on my feet, wielding a spear, and Emily’s got her arrow ready to fly. It’s Calla. She’s limping, she’s wounded, and she’s grinning. She’s also holding a knife.
Reflexes kick in and I throw my spear right at her heart. She partway dodges it, but it sticks in her upper arm. She yanks it out and throws it back at me. I catch it. Emily’s hands release her arrow, and it gets stuck in the same wound.
Arm mangled and mind clouded, Calla slips to the ground. She’s not dead. Yet.
Emily sends a second arrow into her eye just as Calla sends her knife flying at Emily. It hits her left hand.
A last-ditch attempt to save her own life, Calla yanks the arrow out of her body and lies there, blood streaming down her face as the cannon fires.
Emily stands there, gaping, as though this was a violent television show on the Capitol’s high-definition screens. Which it is.
“I just killed her,” Emily says.
Way to state the obvious.
As we walk away, Emily doesn’t bother to retrieve the arrow. She yanks the knife out of her hand and throws it on the ground. We watch from ten yards away as the Capitol hovercraft takes Calla’s body. Then we sit, in silence, as the season changes and the sun starts beating down.
“We can’t stay here forever, Emily,” I say finally.
“True,” she says. “Let’s go.” I figure the sooner we’re away from Calla’s death scene, the better.
As we walk, I pick some long leaves from a fern to wrap around Emily’s hand. We’re trudging on crispy leaves, trying not to make a sound, when the anthem starts blaring. There’s one face in the sky tonight, and that face is Calla. I see that Emily deliberately avoids looking at the sky.
“Feeling guilty?” I ask finally. “It’s the Games, you know. You killed her for a reason.”
“Still,” she says. I wait for a more elaborate explanation, but none comes.
As Emily falls asleep, I think. About Calla’s body being shipped back to her mourning family in District 9, her friends, how they want Emily to be killed. Maybe I should kill her now…
Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody. That’s who. I haven’t killed anyone so far, and if I do, it won’t be Emily, my ally. Why am I thinking about all this anyway? Why am I even considering killing Emily?
And before I know it, I am slipping away, into the darkness. Of sleep. And, for once in my life, I awake to peacefulness. Snow is falling again, and Emily is plucking berries off a nearby bush.
“You’re up,” she says. “Are these berries safe?”
I almost laugh at her cluelessness. “Of course they are! Raspberries. I don’t think you have these in Ten, right?”
“No! Do you expect the livestock keepers to have berry bushes on every square inch of its land?” She’s laughing, which is quite a turnover compared to the fact that she was all quiet yesterday.
“No, I don’t. Of course I don’t.” I’m smiling too, as we indulge in a day of peace and raspberries, and not an iota of gore. Sealed by the fact that there were no deaths, the day would be better than an average day at home, if we weren’t in the Games. Our stomachs stuffed with berries and minds wiped of unpleasant thoughts, Emily takes the watch and I fall asleep. But all too soon, Emily is shaking me awake.
“The Careers passed twice already. We need to go!”
“What, and they didn’t see us?”
“Apparently not, but...can we just go?!”
Go we do. We pack up all our things and scale trees adjacent to each other, where we can whisper. The Careers pass again. And again.
“I think they know we’re here,” Emily hisses.
And, apparently, they do know, because once dawn arrives and the snow disappears, they appear at the bottoms of our trees, grinning and barely wounded. “Okay up there, Emily?” they hiss. No, just one of them hisses. Fradella.
“Should we attack her?” the boy from Fradella’s district asks. “She’s alone, after all. And I don’t think she’s that great with a bow and arrow.”
So they don’t see me. Just Emily. They think Emily is alone. This would be an ideal time to kill all three—Fradella, Torin and Dollar.
A cannon fires. Then another. I’m hoping it’s the Careers, but it’s neither them nor Emily. All five of us are alive.
Impulsively, I throw a spear in their general direction. Emily shoots me a warning look. It hits Fradella in the leg. I don’t really care.
Fradella doesn’t even wince. She just tugs it out like it’s a knife in a loaf of bread. Then she smiles. “So Emily can throw a spear? Well, so can we.”
“That wasn’t me. I swear!” She’s trembling.
“Sure. It’s not like anyone would take a twelve-year-old as an ally,” Torin smirks. Dollar nods.
“Yeah? What about another freaking twelve-year-old?!” Emily’s practically screaming. “What about Swift?”
I nearly drop out of my conifer’s branches. Swift? Then I realize she’s covering for me.
“Oh, so Swift’s up there too?” Fradella grins, not paying the slightest attention to the warm red substance staining her leg. “Well, the Careers’ kill list in the Capitol will be two up tonight. If you come down.”
“I won’t come down.”
“Then we’ll come up.” Fradella starts climbing, and Emily starts shooting. I cover my eyes, too terrified to look. Then a cannon fires. Is it Emily? No. Torin’s lying dead at an awkward angle on the ground, blood streaming out of his chest. Emily’s still shooting, this time at Fradella, and sticks her twice, but Fradella merely ignores them. Geez, what is up with her? I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up the victor.
Fradella is five yards away from Emily’s place in the tree. Emily is still shooting.
Three yards.
Two.
One. That’s three feet. And Fradella plucks Emily from her perch and carries her down the tree as I watch, horrified.
Emily is screaming. She’s kicking Fradella in the back, but it’s like Fradella doesn’t notice or register it. She has Dollar pin Emily down on the ground.
Emily kicks Dollar in the face, and he’s down on the ground. Blood streaming from his nose. It’s actually not too serious, but hey, he’s District 1. He’s spent his days handling platinum for the Capitol.
Fradella tugs another spear from Torin’s pack, having rolled his body onto his chest. The hovercraft has not arrived, because all of us are still here.
The next thing I know, I’m scampering down my tree, in plain sight. Chucking spears at Fradella, hoping they won’t hit Emily.
Fradella squints at me. “Oh, District Eleven? We’re going to crush you like we’ll crush Ten here.”
Emily is still flailing.
I throw a spear that misses Fradella but hits Torin’s body. I’m so disoriented I can’t even throw straight. So I aim at Torin’s body, and this time I hit Dollar. Crap. Why am I not hitting Fradella?
I throw one that does hit her. Just as the spear sinks into Emily’s neck. Emily’s screaming stops, and mine starts. I’m screeching like there’s no tomorrow. Which there might not be, realistically.
Next thing I know, I’m climbing down the tree, grabbing the spear from Fradella’s hand, and sinking it into her back. No cannon has fired. Not Emily, Fradella, or Dollar. But Dollar looks like he’s on his way out. Fradella’s stabbed Emily, and the cut is narrow. But deep.
Fradella digs a nasty serrated knife out of Torin’s pack and stabs Emily again. Not me, Emily. There’s this slow, whining, quiet cry that slowly wanes off.
The cannon fires and I stand, motionless.
Emily is dead. That’s all I know. Then another cannon fires. I’m hoping it’s Fradella, but no, it’s Dollar. Fradella is still here. I scale the tree. She doesn’t bother to follow me. She just leaves. She doesn’t even get Torin and Dollar’s packs.
I slowly wiggle the packs off the Careers’ backs, and take Emily’s sheath of arrows, but leave her bow and empty water bottle. I have no use for either one.
I just leave so the three bodies can be collected, trying not to think of the two Careers and Emily lying on the ground. I’m hungry, but all I see are raspberries, and I really can’t eat raspberries without thinking of the day before with Emily. I’m trying to act indifferent to her death because of the cameras but, now that I think of it, it seems kind of insulting to Emily’s memory. I decide I’ll not try to act all stiff as soon as I can undo it without being obvious.
Soon, I’m starving. Without little choice, I pluck raspberries from a dense bush. I’m still feeling pretty stiff, and am barely watching while I go. Which is why I don’t notice the season change again, or Swift bumping into me dizzily until it actually happens.
“Sorry,” he says hastily. Sorry? He’s sorry he bumped into me? We’re supposed to be killing each other right now. I can just hear the Head Gamemaker’s groans. The Capitol people will be bored, maybe even annoyed at him. He’ll probably send some monster to kill us both. This I know from watching past Games. So I try to keep the game going before the Gamemakers press a single button that could take both of our lives.
“Do you...want to form an alliance?” I ask haltingly. I can just see Silvi in those wide brown eyes. The already huge eyes widen at my suggestion.
“You want us to form an alliance?”
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?” I’m just rewording a conversation I recall from the reruns of the phenomenal seventy-fourth Games, between two tributes from Eleven and Twelve. Like us.
“Guess not. So...allies, then?”
“Okay…” He’s speaking haltingly.
“I’m not going to stab you in your sleep, Swift.”
He staggers back even at the suggestion. “You had better not make jokes like that all the time.”
“I just have a dark sense of humor.” Avrilli told me I did once and it sounds impressive. I remember now I never opened Casadi’s gift. Nor did I ever use Avrilli’s. Now I regret it.
So we take off walking. We don’t really talk until Swift says, “I wonder who all those cannons earlier were.”
His words hit me with the force of a hammer hitting my skull. I’ve been trying to forget what happened a few hours ago. Was it really just a few hours ago that Emily was alive? It feels like ages. I try to ignore the question, but he says it again, like I didn’t hear. So I answer. “The three people I know are dead are Torin, Dollar and Emily.”
This time it’s him that doesn’t answer. Then finally, “So Fradella’s the only Career alive?”
“I guess.” I haven’t bothered keeping track of the Careers. “It’s not like she’ll be easy to kill, either. I threw a spear at her and it stuck in her leg and it’s like she didn’t notice or care.”
“Wow,” Swift murmurs quietly.
“Have you had any awkward run-ins with any other tributes so far?” I ask.
“No, I basically stayed in a cave near the Cornucopia and ate raspberries and meat of mostly rabbits. I just came out to find food, the bushes and rabbits near my cave were just gone when I woke up this morning. I looked for hours. That’s when the seasons changed and I ran into you.”
“Gamemakers. The food was gone probably because of the Gamemakers.”
“That’s what I thought.” Swift is twelve, but still alive. “Who’s still alive?”
I’ve been keeping track and tick them off on my fingers. “Me, you, the boy from Three, Eleji, the girl from Five, the boy from Six, the girl from Eight, the girl from Nine, the boy from Ten.”
“Hey...the final eight. But two of them are dead?”
That means Emily was part of the final eight. I swallow. “Yeah. There were five cannons this morning…” Secretly, I'm wondering if I should simply kill Swift now and get it over with. An alliance is unwise if there's only a few people left. Everyone knows that.

TBC! Opinions please! <3