6. The Opening Ceremonies

I took quick action in trying not to look at the crowds around me as the horses pulled the chariot out into the City Circle. The other twelve districts filed in behind us, soon to get their taste of the spotlight that Bane and I currently had as we became exposed.

I looked straight ahead, focusing on one point of the president's mansion. I stared at the balcony, where President Snow would appear and give her mini speech like she always did every year. There was never a need to have a long speech for the Hunger Games.

At times, I stole glances in my peripheral. I couldn't catch cameras watching me. Hell, I couldn't tell if they were even trained on our chariot. For all I knew, the cameras could be on the other districts and not us. Of course, if the cameras weren't on us, peoples' eyes were. I was never one for center of attention.

The horses trotted merrily, lugging the chariot along happily. I felt happy, like the horses probably did. I was living my dream, after all, being in the Games.

Our chariot was the first to pull in just in front of the president's mansion. District 2's pulled alongside us, and so on until District 7 had to pull in behind us. I kept my focus on the balcony, not looking at Bane, or the crowd of cheering people, or other tributes in chariots around me.

As the crowd began to quiet down—just a little—President Renata Snow came to the edge of her balcony. She was flanked by two Peacekeepers, though I didn't see why since nobody would ever dare think of trying to assassinate her. All of Panem was too in fear of her to even think about trying to kill her just so that Panem could possibly have a different order of things.

Snow's gray hair was thinning, straight, and at chin length. It didn't frame her slightly wrinkled face well. She stood up straight, but I could tell she didn't look comfortable. She probably had back problems and standing stick-straight aggravated them. She basked in the crowd's cheering for her more than us tributes now, looking around the City Circle with tired, sea-blue eyes.

"Welcome, tributes!" her voice boomed. She sounded strong for a woman being in her fifties and looking older than her real age. The crowd quieted down, but murmurs could still be heard. When the president talked, everybody got silent and listened. "We are gathered here today to see all twenty-six of you who have been chosen—or volunteered—to participate in this year's Hunger Games. We all honor your sacrifice. And, we wish you happy Hunger Games! May the odds be ever in your favor!"

That was getting to be an old, annoying phrase. It was said every year. It was supposed to give tributes some hope, but really, it was becoming more of an annoyance.

The crowd picked up its momentum once again, cheering for the president as she waved to the crowd. I stumbled back a step as the horses jerked our chariot forward to the Training Center. The crowd's cheers were still echoing in my ears. They were rambunctious, those people.

Once the horses pulled our chariot in and halted, Bane leapt off the chariot, holding a hand out for me to take. Hiking up my dress with one hand, I let Bane help me down. Ross and Sienna had been waiting for us. Sienna was stroking one of the horses as we found them.

"How did we look?" I asked, looking at Ross. I decided to stroke one of the horses myself.

"I'd say okay," Ross reported.

"What do you mean 'okay'?"

"Performance wise, you two were opposites. You never paid attention to anything, did you?"

"Not even Bane."

"He was playing up the crowd."

"Really?" I looked to Bane. He nodded.

"I didn't want to just stand there and do nothing. What's the fun in that? It's best to take this time to win over people," Bane explained, shrugging.

"He does make a point there," Sienna piped. "The next chance you've got is the interviews."

I shifted uneasily, leaning against the jet black horse for support. These heels were starting to kill my feet. Sienna noticed immediately.

"I think it's time we got settled onto our floor," she said.

Patting the horse goodbye, Sienna, Ross, Bane, and I headed for our apartment on the first floor. I wouldn't have minded having the penthouse, but that was District 13's lucky room. Still, regardless what floor we were on, the apartment would probably look elegant.

Stepping into the threshold, the floors were wood. There was a small kitchen to my right, no table. A little ahead of me, on my left, was a hallway, probably leading to a bathroom or a room or two. Ahead of me, once I took a small step down, was the den area. There were long, spotless windows that had long, velvet red curtains that could be pulled together. Squished between the windows was a fireplace, and above the mantle, a huge TV. The horseshoe couch looked fluffy with its red cushions and fancy throw pillows. The apartment's ceiling was high, because a crystal chandelier dangled above, glittering in its lights.

"Fancy," Sienna cooed, her heels clacking on the wood floor, like mine did.

"Well, we are the luxury district," I mused. "I guess they wanted to make us feel right at home."

"I don't know. This seems too...fluffy," Bane said. "The furniture seems that way, anyway."

"I bet your room will have fluffy everything just to annoy you," I sniggered. Bane snorted. "Does every floor somewhat represent the district?"

"No," Ross said. "If that was the case, District Twelve's place would be covered in coal dust and dirt."

"Ick, I can't imagine staying in an apartment if it was in that bad of shape."

"Hey, are you up for watching the recap of the ceremonies?" Bane asked me.

Now that I thought about it, I was a bit curious to watch. "Sure, why not?" I shrugged.

Bane went and clicked on the TV. Lucky us, it was just music and different camera shots, no commentary. Bane sat on one of the arms of the couch while I actually sat on the couch. Ross stood behind the couch; Sienna took a seat next to me. All eyes were transfixed on the TV.

There was a long shot, showing all thirteen districts and their chariots, tributes attached. There wasn't much that stood out to me, costume wise. District 2 looked like they belonged in older times, with togas on and leaf crowns nestled onto their heads. If they had wanted to, they probably would have been wielding swords, but I bet the Peacekeepers wouldn't have liked that too much.

District 4 had the boy dressed up as a fish, the girl a fisherwoman. District 7 was once again trees, like they always were. District 10 was dressed up like cowboys. Poor District 12 wore the traditional coal miner outfits.

They got a few close-ups on some tributes' faces, Bane's and mine included. They started from the back of the pack on up. District 13's girl seemed to try and play up the crowd. District 12's boy had that look in his eye, saying that he was determined to win these Games. Well, nobody is more determined than me, I thought. If he wants to be victor, he'll have to kill me for it.

The boys were more on the quiet side as the girls tried to play up the crowds, waving like royalty, blowing kisses to the crowd. When the cameras got onto Bane and me, they focused on our chariot first. I didn't know how either of us hadn't caught it before. It had to have been Demi's idea, because stars lit up all around the chariot, making it as though we were up in the night sky.

Bane was smiling, probably trying to knock a few ladies unconscious just by looking in their direction. When the camera went on me, I wasn't interacting with the crowd at all. I was like a lone wolf, independent, only paying attention to what was ahead of me.

"I didn't know our chariot did that," Bane murmured.

"You wouldn't have, you were too busy with showing yourself off," Ross said.

"Whose idea was it, the starry chariot?" I asked curiously.

"It was between your stylist and Bane's."

"Hmm, I bet this will be our theme for the Games." The next time I saw Demi, if she was willing to tell me, I'd ask her what dress she had in store for me next.

"You know when I saw you both out there, I was thinking astronaut and goddess of the moon," Sienna said dreamily. "Total opposites, but they looked so great together!"

"They say opposites attract," Bane purred.

"Yeah, but that doesn't always happen," I retorted lightly. I stripped myself of my white, heeled shoes. I rubbed my feet. "These hurt when you're in them for a bit."

"I wear heels all the time," Sienna sang.

"You can have them if you want." I dangled the shoes in front of her.

"I doubt your feet are the same size as mine. You keep them." But I could see in Sienna's eyes that she admired the shoes. She'd probably find a pair similar to mine sometime in the future.

I yawned, suddenly feeling wiped out. How can I be tired when all I did was stand in a chariot for fifteen minutes? The horses did all the hard work.

"I think it's time you two got some sleep," Sienna chirped.

"I like that idea," I said tiredly, stretching.

"You're going to need all the sleep you can get. The next three days are in the Training Center," Ross said.

"I'll deal with tomorrow and the next two days when they get here." I rose on slightly shaky legs but managed to slip into the hallway and into the first room on my right.

Tiredly, I shrugged out of my moon-goddess dress, wiped off all the makeup, changing into another fancy nightgown my mother would never approve of me wearing, and soon slipped into bed. This bed was bigger than the one on the Tribute Train. I noticed the ceiling was lower than the one in the living room, but it was still high.

On a nightstand to the right of my bed was a remote. A little curious, I inched over and pressed a button. I looked around and saw nothing had changed. Shrugging, thinking the remote was useless, I tossed it back onto the nightstand and snuggled back into bed, only to realize that my ceiling was no longer a ceiling. It was, in fact, the night sky. My ceiling opens up?

Wait, that was stupid. If it did open up, I'd be looking at District 2's apartment. This remote changed what the ceiling looked like.

The ceiling was lit up with stars. There was no moon, and I was okay with that. Fake moonlight would screw me up in trying to help me get to sleep.

I put my arms behind my head, staring at the illusion before me. I wished my ceiling in my room back home in 1 did this, or even opened up to show me the real thing. I'd have a view every night to fall asleep under. It'd be the last thing I'd see every night, a calming sight.

I stayed up for quite a while, looking at the stars in the sky, eventually sleeping under the stars.

***

It was eerily and dangerously quiet in the maze. The hedges were feet tall, much taller than me. You couldn't climb over the hedge walls, not unless you wanted to get eaten by them. It was possible, because I had seen a twelve-year-old girl get swallowed up by one, a cannon went off five seconds later. These hedges were man-eating and deadly, just like everything else in these Games.

I had no weaponry, only my wits. There was no way out of this maze. Three times I had found dead ends and backtracked. I didn't want to know what I would face if I stuck around in the dead end for too long. The only way I'd live is if I kept moving in this maze, praying to find some source of relief.

Ross wasn't able to get me a sponsor. You'd think he would, being that I was a Career and that a lot of people were betting on me to win. I wondered how we tributes looked on TV, running around in an endless maze with no way out but to outlast all the competition. If people thought this was easy, they were wrong on so many levels. No Hunger Games was considered easy. You didn't have to be in the arena to know that, watching the Games every year was enough.

I treaded along the ground carefully, very tense and flighty. Normally, I would be on the offense, but I had no weapon, and right now, I was afraid of the maze. If the arena was anything but this, I would be fearless and tearing up the arena, taking out the competition. I bet the Gamemakers put us in here just to see how many days they could get the Games to be this time. It definitely wouldn't be months or years. So far it was two weeks—I assumed. You lost track of time in the arena, you'd lose it easily when you couldn't tell if it was night or day.

A loud yell made me scream. I clutched at my frantic heart. I gulped. The yell hadn't sounded close, but it felt like it. Who was killed this time? A pack mate of mine that I hadn't seen for days? Was it Bane? Was it someone I didn't know? Hell, I couldn't keep track of who was still alive in these Games, so it could have been anybody—anybody except for me, of course.

In flight mode, I sprinted forward, or wherever I decided to go. There was no way out, so there was no point in making a route for myself. There had to be some safe zones if there was no exit. If there wasn't, we'd be dying off like flies—dying from starvation, thirst, going insane to the point where we'd want to end the misery ourselves. I didn't want to do that—and I couldn't do that. I had my parents to return to.

I tried my hardest to not brush up against the hedge walls as I made sharp turns and hoped to not run into any traps or remaining tributes. I wanted to be isolated, so long that the others could pick each other off, and my final competitor would die by the hands of the Gamemakers' maze. There was a lot of hope I still had left in me as I ran through the maze.

Nobody wanted to win these Games more than me. I had to prove to my dad that all his training wasn't for nothing. I wanted to come home to my mother so that she could have me the rest of her life without worrying about me going back into the arena—unless a future Quarter Quell called for it. I wanted to finish living my dream on a positive note, and nothing's more positive than coming home and being crowned victor.

I skidded to a halt when a hedge wall blocked my path; I stopped just in front of it. I backpedaled only to hear another hedge wall box me in behind me. I whirled around. I was surrounded by hedges, boxed in, with only one way out—if it was possible.

"No!" I screamed, grabbing hair in my hands. "No, no, no!"

There was only one chance for me to continue on, or two maybe: either Ross would come through with sponsors, or I crashed through one of the four hedge walls and hoped I didn't get eaten. I needed to escape, because for all I knew, I could be standing on a trap door. I could fall through the ground to my death.

It looked like my odds were slipping away from me with each moment I was trapped in the hedge box.

***

I jumped out of bed, literally, rolling off it onto the ground. I hissed, rubbing my butt. Some spooky dream. Now I regretted watching Ross's Hunger Games, they gave me nightmares. If it gives me nightmares, I can only imagine what it does to Ross. He lived through that, I reminded myself.

I looked around. I was in no hedge maze; I was in the safety of the bedroom on our assigned district floor. I hoped I hadn't screamed during the nightmare like I had when dreaming, because the last thing I wanted was someone to complain about the noise.

I knew now that what Ross went through in his Games was definitely not what I wanted to encounter in mine. For all I know, the Capitol is somehow looking into our minds, gathering our worst fears and putting them into the arena. I smacked my forehead. That sounded like a ridiculous idea.

Yet...it could be true. The Capitol had advanced technology that could probably probe into a tribute's mind and see what they feared.

Okay, let's not freak ourselves out now. Just get back into bed and try to focus on happy thoughts. I wasn't sure how well that would work out. Well, what else could I do? I wasn't about to stay awake all night. I needed my rest for training tomorrow...or today. It could be the next day, just the very early hours of it.

Feeling groggy, I slithered back into bed, keeping my thoughts on positive things as much as possible.