Trust Me

Even with me over his shoulder and only one hand free, Adri managed to get us a fox. I was not so pleased to have him sling the fox over his other shoulder, and I grimaced every time I bumped into the fox carcass. It didn’t help that the fox’s lifeless face was looking back at me as if it were watching me.

Adri set me down back where he’d set up camp. He tied me to the tree again and untied my arms before handing me a pack of matches from the pack I’d grabbed earlier. “You start a fire, and I’ll clean the fox.” He instructed.

“I’m not good at starting fires. I could clean the fox instead,” I offered.

Adri burst out in a dry laugh. “Oh yeah, that’s a great idea. Give the girl a knife and expect her to behave herself. I know you better than you think, 4. You’re not the easiest creature to tame.”

“You wouldn’t be, either, if someone called you a ‘creature’,” I grumbled as he started to collect branches and dry leaves, tossing them in a pile in front of me.

“Just try and start a fire unless you feel like eating raw fox meat for supper.” Adri said, raising an eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes, but obediently began working away at starting a fire. I set up a ring of stone to stop the fire from spreading and had made a bed of leaves, moss, and twigs to kindle the fire on, but that was the best I managed to do. I couldn’t seem to get the fire to catch.

By this point, Adri was almost done cleaning the fox. “You still haven’t started a fire?” Adri demanded.

“Oh yeah, I started the fire half an hour ago. I just put it out so I could experience the fun of starting it all over again!” I muttered.

“No need to be so irritable,” Adri said, leaning over and snatching the pack of matches from my hands.

“Forgive me, I’ll make sure to engage in all the pleasantries next time I talk to the boy who kidnapped me and plans on using me as bait.” I didn’t know why I was so crabby. I figured it was a combination of being sore, tired and hungry.

“See? Irritable!” He pointed a finger at me and grinned smugly, pleased with himself for proving his point.

“Shut up.” I grumbled as he threw more dry leaves onto the fire and managed to light it.

“You’re also a lot more incompetent than I’d imagined.” He said.

“That was why Jill was in our alliance! We figured that she’d have a pretty good mastery of the survival skills and she could look after shelter and food for us.” I said. I figured there was no point in keeping the secrets of my alliance now – it was already as good as broken.

“What would you do for her in exchange?” Adri asked.

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“If she’s working so hard to keep the rest of you alive, what are you going to do for her? Or did you expect her to carry the three of you?” He clarified.

“That’s a very harsh assumption.” I hissed.

“It’s not an incorrect one.” He said simply. “Unless you actually had something to offer her.”

“We would protect her. There’s safety in numbers, and there’s not a lot of tributes who’d be dumb enough to try and attack the entire pack of Careers all on their own.” I said.

“So you’re insinuating that she wouldn’t be able to protect herself? She’s good with weapons. Not incredible – she’s not good enough to guarantee a kill every time. But she’s good enough to wound someone badly enough for her to get away or have an advantage. She didn’t need you for that.” Adri said.

“Okay fine! I’m incompetent and I’m irritable. I’m glad I have someone who knows me as well as you do to point this out. I mean, really, you’ve known me for 4 days now, so naturally you’re going to know all my secrets. Is there anything else you want to tell me about myself?” I yelled, the words spilling from my mouth before I could think them through.

Adri remained silent for a few moments and we both stared into the fire. I wasn’t sure what had shut him up, but I could tell that he wasn’t finished with the conversation. He was either trying to come up with something to say, or he was waiting for me to calm down.

Sure enough, after a few more moments of listening to the crackling fire in silence, he spoke again. “Let me ask you one thing. Do you think you can kill any of these people? Any one of them. Even someone as vile as Ingrid. If she was right in front of you, no weapons and no way to escape, and you had an endless pile of knives in front of you, could you bring yourself to kill her?”

“Of course,” I said instinctively. I didn’t think about it, I just knew it was the right thing to say in front of a potential enemy and in front of all of Panem. Whether or not it was truthful was another thing entirely.

“Really?” He asked, raising his eyebrows.

I curled my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around them, pulling myself into a ball and watching the fire. I didn’t nod but I didn’t deny it either.

This seemed to be enough for Adri, who chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”

We hardly spoke another word to each other for the next few hours. We cooked the fox meat in silence, each devouring as much as we could manage, not knowing when we would have our next meal.

Night had already fallen when we both seemed to decide we couldn’t eat any more. I leaned back against the tree, rubbing circles over my full belly which was swollen with all the food I’d stuffed myself with. Adri laid back on the ground a few feet from me, doing the same. Our stomachs seemed to gurgle in unison, and I almost wanted to laugh. Being so full and under the beautiful starry night sky seemed to give me a sense of euphoria.

“It’s really beautiful.” I said to break the silence.

“It is. I don’t know how they manage to recreate the night sky so well.” Adri murmured.

I had forgotten it was all an illusion. The beauty of the sky seemed marred now, as though it couldn’t be as beautiful if it weren’t real, if it was just a mirage created by the people who were plotting for our deaths. “They’re very skilled, I suppose.” I murmured.

A hologram spread itself over the sky to show the faces of all those who had died. Terra’s face was the first to spread itself across the inky black sky, and I cringed as I saw her familiar face. The next face to flash across the sky was the boy from 3, and I felt my stomach sink as my worst fears were confirmed; Ingrid was still alive, still burning with the desire to kill me herself. They skipped to both tributes from District 5, the girl from 6, the girl from 8, the boy from 9 and the boy from 12.

I was reminded of the blood on Adri’s blade earlier, and I found myself asking, “Who did you get?” I tried to make my voice tone cool and uninterested, but I could hear some of my burning curiosity peek through.

Adri paused. “It’s not important.” He said.

“If it’s not important then you won’t mind answering it.” I sat up and fixed him with my best persuasive glare, which was still pretty pathetic.

“3, 6, 9 and 12.” He replied, speaking quickly as if he hoped I wouldn’t hear him if he said them too fast.

I stared at him blankly for a moment. “You killed four people? That’s half of all the tributes who died today!” I wasn’t accusing him of anything, I was just trying to wrap my head around the reality of it.

“I had no choice, Winnie. They were the ones who tried to attack me. I was just trying to collect some weapons and grab you. I wasn’t looking to pick any fights, but they seemed determined to pick me off.” Adri said. He rolled onto his side and stared up at me with his large blue eyes, and he looked almost apologetic, like a dog who had done something wrong and was crawling back with his tail between his legs.

“You don’t have to justify it to me or anything. Why are you so apologetic?” I murmured, trying not to remember the faces of the four tributes he’d killed, though the memory of him wiping the blood from his blade was replaying itself over and over in my head.

He frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” He admitted. There was another silence that lasted several minutes before Adri broke it with a heavy sigh. “You should get some sleep. I’ll wake you up in a few hours for your watch shift.” He leaned over and tied my arms back up, and my short taste of freedom was suddenly over.

I wanted to protest, feeling a little uneasy with the idea of sleeping near him – especially now that my arms were tied again -- but I realized that it was a silly fear. I’d already been tied up around him all afternoon, plus I’d been unconscious for a large part of the day. Surely he wouldn’t kill me in my sleep tonight if he’d already had so many golden opportunities to do it earlier. So, I nodded and curled up in the dirt and tried to fall asleep despite the fact that I was just a few feet away from a murderer – and despite the fact that I would probably be a murderer myself within the next few days.