Trust Me

The first thing I was aware of when I woke up was the weight across my waist. It felt like an arm, but I couldn’t imagine why there’d be an arm around me. I then noticed the sound of soft snores coming from right next to me, and I could feel my legs tangled up with someone else’s. I slowly and carefully rolled over, being careful not to make too much movement, and saw Finnick lying next to me. At some point in the night he’d crawled under the covers and had fallen asleep next to me.

I decided that this was my last opportunity for revenge. I still remembered all those times he’d purposefully made me uncomfortable when we first met, and I wasn’t going to let it go. I slowly climbed out of the circle of his arms, untangling my legs from his as I crawled onto my hands and knees. I leaned down, my lips hovering over his ear, and yelled, “Morning, sunshine!”

Finnick bolted up, his eyes searching the room for any sign of danger. “Whu…” He stammered. His eyes fell on me, and he blinked a few times to wake himself up. “You’re despicable, you know that?” He muttered.

“Is that any way to treat me on today of all days?” I teased.

“It is when you nearly give me a panic attack,” Finnick hissed, running his fingers through his now messy hair.

“Oh, boohoo.” I said with a laugh. I pulled my knees into my chest and curled my toes as I watched him struggle to wake up. “That’s my revenge for all those times you screwed with me when we first met. You got off easy, too.”

“You’re an evil little child.” Finnick grumbled, stretching his arms and legs out before straightening up. He’d taken off his shirt before he’d gone to sleep last night, and I was suddenly extremely uncomfortable being so close to him in his current state of undress.

“I’m going to go have breakfast.” I said, leaping out of bed. I heard Finnick’s footsteps padding behind me after a moment, and I peeked out of the corner of my eye to see that he’d pulled on a shirt.

We both sat down at the table, which had already been set up with piles of food. I wasn’t sure if Kip had already eaten, or if he was still asleep, but Finnick and I ate alone without any sign of Kip or Georgina. The good mood I’d had when I first woke up was gone now, replaced with a bleak sense of hopelessness. Finnick didn’t look up at me once, and I wondered if he was angry that I’d made him stay with me last night. When he was done, he stood up and left the table without a word, walking into his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

I sighed and let my fork fall from my hand onto my plate with a loud clang. It was a refreshing break from the bone-chilling silence.

It wasn’t long before Shalim and my prep team burst into the room. Some of them were in tears, others looked like they’d already been crying half the night. Shalim was the only one whose face showed no emotion. They whisked me out of the room and down to the prep area, where they scrubbed my face clean and placed my hair into two small French braids. It was the best they could do with my short hair, I guessed. They worked on me quickly, sniffling and blubbering occasionally. I was too numb to react. I wondered why they were crying; it wasn’t like I’d been incredibly close with my prep team, after all.

After about forty five minutes, Shalim lead me down through a network of hallways, leaving my prep team behind. We walked into a large room that was empty apart from a large cylindrical tube that stretched from floor to ceiling and a clothes rack that held only one outfit. Shalim unzipped the cover from the outfit to reveal a black outfit made of some thick material. The outside looked warm and soft, while the outside seemed to be enforced with some kind of rough lizard skin.

“Wherever you’re going, it looks like it’ll be rough terrain. Probably cold, too.” Shalim offered after taking in the outfit. He helped me into it, trying to make small talk, but he seemed to understand that my head wasn’t in the right place for idle chit-chat.

“60 seconds,” Declared a voice through the speakers.

Just as that announcement blared through the room there was a knock at the door. Finnick walked in, and he gave a solemn nod to Shalim, who gave me a wave goodbye and walked out.

“Finnick! I thought you weren’t going to come!” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth. “I can’t do this.”

Finnick walked to me and cupped my face in his hands. He angled my face up to his and pressed his lips against mine. As a reflex I kissed back, though my brain was working a mile a minute trying to figure out what was going on. The voice came back on the PA and announced, “30 seconds.” Finnick didn’t stop kissing me. “20 seconds.” He still didn’t stop. “10 seconds.” He finally broke away from the kiss and looked down at me with a smile on his lips, though his eyes showed immense sadness.

“You’ll be great. I know it. Knock them dead, literally.” He said, opening the door to the cylindrical tube and gently nudging me onto the silver platform inside it. He shut the door behind me and held his hands up to the tube. I placed my hands over his, fighting back the urge to try and break back out of the tube, but there was no doorknob on the inside of the door.

The platform started to raise, and I began to panic. I tried to hold myself together for Finnick’s sake, but I couldn’t bring myself to look back at his eyes. The last memory I might ever have of him, and I would only be able to remember his sad face.

The platform continued to raise itself up until I was in the arena, and the platform settled itself in the base. I glanced around to see that the ground consisted of cracked rock, and I could see the outline of trees about 50 yards away from the huge Cornucopia. I knew I had to get my hands on some knives if I didn’t want the other Careers to kill me, and I made a mental map of where to go to collect the knives without having to run right through the center of where I knew the bloodbath would be. A voice was already counting down from 60 to announce when we could step off the platform, and I looked around to see the faces of the other tributes. Ingrid caught my eye first, and she gave me a wicked grin before sliding her index finger along her throat like a knife.

“You’re dead meat, 4.” She yelled with an insane-sounding cackle.

I shuddered and turned away, only to see Adri staring me down. He’d already hunched over in preparation to run at the sound of the buzzer, but he had a smile on his face as he took in my terrified expression.

The buzzer blared through the arena, and everyone around me took off. Without thinking about it, my legs instantly carried me at top-speed across the rocky surface. A few people took off to the cover of the trees, but the majority of tributes went to the Cornucopia. I snatched a pack from the ground and tossed it over my shoulder, ducking to avoid two tributes who’d gotten into a fist fight and had nearly fallen on top of me. An arrow that went whizzing past my head told me that Ingrid had found the bow and arrow, and if I hadn’t made the last-minute duck to avoid the other tributes, I would have been dead, but I didn’t have time to be scared over what might have happened.

I reached the Cornucopia and snatched as many knives as I could carry, stuffing them into the sheaths attached to my belt and stabbing a few into my pack, hoping they’d hold. I turned around, expecting to find my allies already assembled behind me, but they were still out in the bloodbath. Parq sliced one girl’s head clean off her shoulders, and it landed with a sickening thud on the ground next to her body. Terra was fighting with another girl, who was trying to push Terra off her as she tried to push a dagger through the girl’s heart. A sickening scream told me that Terra had succeeded, and as she stood she wiped the blood from the blade onto the leg of her pants.

I took off running again, clutching a knife in each hand. My knuckles went white from squeezing with such force, but I didn’t care. I heard something fly past my head, and I looked up to watch as an arrow hit Terra square in the chest. She collapsed to the ground, choking for breath as she tried to pull the arrow from her chest, but the damage was done. Ingrid smiled at me as she loaded her bow again and aimed for me, but Jill ran up from behind her, locking an arm around Ingrid’s neck as she tried to suffocate her. I turned to run again, but I tripped over Terra’s body. I got back to my feet and heard Jill let out a loud scream of frustration. I turned around to see that Ingrid was trying to bite a chunk out of Jill’s shoulder, and I instantly raised my hand, poised to fire the knife at Ingrid.

Suddenly a thick arm wrapped around my waist and hoisted me up into the air just as I’d fired the knife. It landed a few feet away from Ingrid, my aim thrown off by being suddenly pulled off the ground, and it planted itself firmly in the grass. Both Ingrid and Jill glanced towards the knife then up at me. Ingrid’s face twisted into one of delight as she saw me floating several feet off the ground, one arm snaked around my waist to hold me up and another arm wrapped around my neck, cutting off my air supply. This brief distraction gave Jill enough time to grab the knife from the ground, but Ingrid grabbed her wrist just before the knife sliced her pale throat.

“Struggling is useless.” Adri’s voice, low and amused, crooned in my ear. I dug my elbow back into his chest – I’d been aiming for his throat, but I’d just barely missed. I’d probably broken a rib or two, though. I’d knocked the wind out of him long enough for me to let out a scream.

“Parq! Parq, help!” I yelled. My arms were pinned up in front of me, preventing me from reaching the knives stocked in my belt, and I knew I wasn’t going to get out of this alone.

Parq stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been running over to try and take on Tam, the boy from 10, when he saw me. His eyes widened when he saw Adri behind me, and I saw him mouth the word, ‘Sorry’ before he took off in the opposite direction, back on Tam’s trail. Nobody would save me now.

I felt Adri’s hand close back onto my throat, his thumb digging in to a spot just along where the back of my neck met my skull. Immense pain blossomed out from that spot, and it almost took my mind off the fact that Adri was crushing my windpipe. The world started to go fuzzy, and the last thing I heard before everything went black was Adri’s voice murmuring in my ear, “Sorry, sweetheart. It’s just business.”