ʗɧɑǷƮɛƦ 11 - Ʈɧɛ ɪɳʈɛƦѵɪɛωʂ T he whole room re-erupted into applause and cheering, even Haymich, who knew just as well as me that this high score of 11 could be dangerous when I'm in the arena. But the 11 meant sponsors, and sponsors meant food or matches or just something. Something good. I looked at Peeta who looked just as shocked as me. "Well done." He said, his face pouring with pride all of a sudden for me. He pulled me in for a quick hug, and I hugged him back tightly. We'd both done well, even if my score was a way of the Gamemakers getting a slight revenge on me. At least I didn't look weak. At least Katniss might feel a little proud of me. She would definitely be in shock right now. After the mandatory hugs all round for Peeta and I from our mentors and stylists, we were allowed to go to sleep. I was relieved, I'd only just realised how sleepy I felt. This day hadn't been as busy as the others, but the energy that it took to feel so nervous was getting to me. I walked groggily back to my room, said goodnight to Peeta and another well done and peeled off all my clothes until I was just in my undergarments. I felt so sleepy, I crawled into bed just like that. I hugged the beautifully soft duvet, pretending that I was hugging Buttercup and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke up to the shrill sound of Effie, once again telling me that it was going to be a "Big, big, big day!" She left my room once she was content I was fully awake and told me I had half an hour to get ready for breakfast and we'd talk about today's goings on during breakfast. I rolled over sleepily and looked at the clock. The clock read 7am. I moaned and dug my head into the pillow. I could stay here in this beautiful huge bed all day long if Buttercup, Katniss, Gale, my mother and maybe even Rue and Peeta were here with me. That would be the best day ever. With everybody I love in one room. If only that was possible now. I dragged myself up with a lot of force and practically crawled over to the shower. I clambered in and lazily pressed a button on the panel. The smell of fresh paint leaked from the showerhead this time and woke me up. Eurgh, god, I thought why would anybody want to shower in the smell of paint? I quickly changed it, pressing the first row and the fourth button along. This time, the smell of strawberries leaked out of the head. It was luxurious. It awoke another memory that was deep inside my brain, a memory of the one summer three years when Katniss, Gale and I went strawberry picking in the summer. It was a stiflingly hot day, and the strawberries were perfectly ripe. We ate a feast of them, and yet there were still bucketful's left of them to sell at the Hob. This was the first day I went into the Hob. I didn't like the Hob, it scared me slightly due to some of the strange people that would be in there sometimes, but that day in the Hob everybody in the hob was in such great moods from the lovely weather outside. We sold all the strawberries that day. I finished up in the shower quickly remembering that I had only half of an hour to be fully ready for breakfast. I stepped out and let the blow of hot air from the panel beneath me dry my body and my hair. I looked in my wardrobe for today's clothes and I chose a dress that was cream coloured and has tiny roses all over it. I matched it with a black belt and black flat shoes and my token bracelet. I kissed the bracelet before plaiting my hair into another Katniss style braid. I knew what today was and I needed every piece of Katniss I could get. Today was the televised interviews with Caesar Flickerman before we entered the Games. I sat in the dining room and Effie and all of the stylists were the only ones here. I was greeted by "good morning"s from everybody on the table. It was torture looking at the food in front of me, not being able to eat it until everybody was at the table. Luckily, it was only a few minutes before Peeta and Haymich walked in together. "Sorry we're late." Peeta said gruffly. Obviously he hadn't got a great night's sleep. "Oh you're not, it's fine. We've only been here a few minutes." Said the woman who was Peeta's stylist for the Tributes Parade. I still hadn't learnt her name. Everybody began tucking into the food straight away. I took a huge portion once again. It couldn't hurt adding a few pounds before the Games. I'd need all the extra fat on my body for the Games - if I got past the first twelve hours, that was. There was a lot more talk at the table this morning, everybody was still excited over District 12s first high scoring tributes for almost 10 years. "Right!" Effie said, halfway through the breakfast. "Today is your tribute interviews and you're going to spend a four hours each with Haymich and me today training for them." Oh fabulous. Four hours with Effie. Haymich, not so bad now he was sober. But Effie? Her voice for ten minutes was about as much as I could handle, let alone four hours of her. "Peeta, you spend your first four hours with Haymich talking about what you're going to say. Prim, you spend yours with me working on posture and body language." Oh great. Even better. I'd only been awake about forty-five minutes and I had to spend the next four hours with the woman's who's personality drilled right into me. I'm not normally a person who dislikes people, but something about Effie gave me a bad feeling. After breakfast, Effie lead me to the sofa. Haymich and Peeta were going to sit on the roof to practise his interview training. I didn't even know this place had a roof, let alone that you could go on it. Surely that wasn't a great idea. What if tributes tried to jump off the roof in an attempt to not go into the Games? The next four hours went by painfully. My sitting posture was wrong in about one hundred different ways. All I could think throughout the whole interview was: Why does this matter so much? The Capitol people won't care if I'm sitting the smallest bit off. But obviously to Effie, it was of the uttermost importance. When she finally told me it was lunchtime, I couldn't help but give a sigh of relief. She didn't notice, thank God, as that would have been against her A* manner rules. Effie and manners. It was like Peeta and bread. Katniss and hunting. Me and… healing. I shovelled down lunch and Haymich led me to the roof. We sat on the edge. I was a little nervous, but Haymich told me that there was a force field that would stop me from falling. Or jumping. Ahh. I thought. No tribute could jump off and kill themselves with this force field. The Capitol really did think of everything. This part of the afternoon was easy. After Haymich had established I was neither a funny interviewee, a smart interviewee or a mysterious interviewee we decided to go for the sweet and innocent sort of interviewee, with a hint of sympathy I would use against the audience when I talked about my sister and the reapings. Haymich made me feel rather confident about my interview and this was the least scared I'd been out of all the things I'd had to go through in the week. We still had an hour or so left, so I decided to tell Haymich about the alliance I had made at training. "So, I think I have an ally." "Who?" Haymich asked. "The little girl from 11 called Rue." I said proudly. I was happy to have her as an ally. In a way, if we weren't going into the Games, I'd be excited to have her a friend. She was so lovely. I couldn't wait to see her and talk to her again, even though when I did get to do both those things, we'd be running away from our deaths. Haymich shrugged. "She seems alright. You'll make a sweet team for the audience." I didn't know what he meant by this. I supposed he meant because we both are quiet young. Well, she is definitely young. I'm 15, but I still look around 12 years old. We sat in silence for the rest of the hour we had left. It was a comfortable silence as we both lay on the roof, enjoying the rare peace and quiet we got. I wanted to ask Haymich about his time in the Games and how he won, but I couldn't muster up the courage yet. I didn't know anything about Haymich's Games, and for all I knew he could be upset about talking his time in the arena. After the hour passed, we met Effie and Peeta downstairs. Peeta looked exhausted. It made me smile. Peeta was good at making me smile lately. He reminded me of home so much and he was such a nice guy. We were rushed into another car again and taken to a different place that we had not yet been. "This is where you'll have your interviews tonight. The stylists are already here and they're ready to start work on you again. Haymich and I will be in the audience the whole time throughout your interview. We will meet you afterwards. Good luck!" she tinkled. Within minutes of Effie and Haymich's departure, Peeta and I's team of stylists picked us up and escorted us to the rooms that we were going to be spending the next few hours of beauty themed torture in. "Good luck." Peeta mouthed as his team began talking about what to do with his golden locks of hair. I gave a big grin back in return and my stylists took me away too. They began by putting me in a thin robe and sitting me on a very comfy leather chair. They cut off a centimetre of my blonde hair and then put a sticky foam all over it. "This is going to change the colour of your hair." Cinna told me calmly. "But don't worry, we're just putting a shade lighter of blonde in it, nothing dramatic. It will make it look shiny and new." While the foam was sitting in my hair, they shaped my nails. They put a clear liquid over them and then began to draw little pieces of fire on the tips. "Why are you painting fire?" I asked. "Because of your outfit the other night. Since the Tributes Parade, everybody has been nicknaming you 'The Angel on Fire'." The stylist explained. I suppose that was good. If I had a nickname, it showed I had some sort of popularity out there in the Capitol. Once they were finished with my nails, they washed off the sticky foam on my hair and cut the ends of. They dried my hair afterwards and showed me what it looked like. It was just a shade lighter like Cinna had told me, and it did look shiny and new. These stylists really knew what they were doing. My hair looked really nice. Cinna then began to make my hair curly. He told me he was using heat to make it stay curly until I next showered. The whole concept of this baffled me, but once he had finished curling my hair, it did look lovely still. I was so impressed with Cinna's work, I couldn't wait to see what he was dressing me in for tonight. I didn't have to wait long for me to find out what he was going to make me wear. Before he showed me, he put on a very thin layer of make up over my face to bring out my features but so you could still recognise that it was me. After he had done this, he lead me into a room next door. The dress was hanging on a mannequin. It shocked me how plain it looked. It was crystal white and had no straps. It was body tight until it reached a little above the knees in which it flared outwards in different shades of orange, red and yellow. Fire. "Do you like it?" Cinna asked. "It's nice." I told him, but it was clear you could see I was slightly disappointed. "Don't worry. That's not it." Cinna laughed lightly, reading my facial expression. I got changed into the dress and found that it fit perfectly but I was still a little disappointed. It looked good on me, I must admit. The white made my skin look less pale and my blonde curls went past my shoulders. "You look beautiful." Cinna told me. "Just… one more thing. Swirl around." "What?" I said, confused. "Just, turn around and keep turning. Twirl." I began to twirl like Cinna had told me, when I felt a familiar tingling sensation on my legs, the same one that I got with the synthetic fire at the Parade. I looked down at my legs as I twirled still and saw that my lower legs were engulfed in flames. I twirled my way over the mirror and kept on twirling and twirling until I got a good look at the dress. It looked amazing. Cinna grabbed my shoulders to stop me swirling and when I finally stopped, nausea hit. I sat down in a chair on the far corner of the room, looking down at my dress which didn't even look any different even after the fake flames. After a few minutes of letting the nausea pass, Cinna decided it was time we meet with Peeta and Portia. Portia must be Peeta's stylist of whom I didn't know the name of. We walked out of the room I was getting styled in to see Peeta and Portia waiting for us outside. Peeta was wearing a white suit, as if to match my white dress, trimmed with red at the edges of his outfit. His blonde hair was slicked back and he looked very classy. Cinna and Portia exchanged compliments about each other's tributes outfit before we were led down the interview waiting room. All of the other tributes were already here with their mentors and stylists. In the waiting room was a large screen where the other tributes would get to watch the interviews while they waited and small black chairs where we would all sit and wait for the buzzer that signalled it was our turn. Haymich nodded in approval towards the stylists when he saw us and Effie squealed. "This is going to be fantastic!" Effie squeaked. I walked over to the seats and took one that was second to the end. Peeta sat on the one next to me at the end while the mentors and stylists talked about tonight. It was exactly fifteen minutes before the interview show was going to start. Other tributes were beginning to sit down too, including Rue, who took the seat next to me. She was wearing a short puffy blue dress and a tiara. Her hair was in her normal frizzy style, but it looked very cute. She looked even younger than 12 in her outfit. Why would the stylists dress her like that? They must be going for the sweet innocent tribute style, for sure. "Hello." I said, greeting her with a smile. "Hello, Prim." She said. "Your dress looks nice. So does your hair." "Thank you. So does yours," I told her, even though I didn't really like her dress because it made her look so innocent and weaker compared to the rest of the tributes right now. "Are you nervous?" I asked. "No. Well, I am a little, but this is nothing compared to what might happen tomorrow." She said. She was right. This was nothing compared to tomorrow. This was basically heaven compared to tomorrow. "Speaking of tomorrow, Prim, we need a plan." "A plan?" "Yeah. Because we are allies. We need a way to stick together and make sure we're together from the very start." She said. "I was thinking that tomorrow at the Cornucopia, I will run towards the nearest item to me while you run towards the trees to try and hide yourself. I'm a fast runner, so I will catch up with you and we'll stick together from there on." I nodded. I hadn't even thought of this – how could I forget about that? All I'd really thought about was how scary the Games were going to be, while she was coming up with plans on how to get through the Games and meet with me. She was so, so clever. "What if things go wrong and we don't meet up?" I asked. "If I don't manage to catch up with you, then I'll probably be hiding in a tree somewhere. If you can, try and climb a tree and stay there unless I can't find you soon, but I'm good with trees and I'm pretty quick so I should find you quickly." She said. Boy, I thought, she has really thought of everything. "But if something happens at the Cornucopia… then I guess that's what will happen." I knew what she meant. She meant if someone died at the Cornucopia when the Games started. I sighed and nodded to her. "Yeah, okay. That's good. Thanks for thinking of all the plans. I'm not very good at that." I said. "It doesn't matter. I like it," she said, with a huge smile on her face. I thought for the thousandth time about how lovely this girl was. She then turned away to talk to her stylist and Tresh, so I looked back at Peeta. He had been listening this whole time, I completely forgot. I still hadn't told him I had made an alliance with Rue, but I hadn't really had a chance to tell him yet. He raised an eyebrow and gave me a cheeky smile, but didn't have a chance to say anything because the Capitol anthem had begun to play. The show was just beginning to start. Caesar gave his usual welcome speech before inviting District 1's boy tribute, Marvel, onto the stage. They talked about how good he was with knives and how excited he was the for the Games and how great his score was in the sessions. The next three tributes went like this too. It bored me. I began thinking over in my head what I was going to say. I asked myself possible questions that Caesar could ask in my head while other tributes were interviewed. Rue was on stage by the time I'd woken from my thoughts. Caesar began by complimenting her on her great score for such a young girl and asking her what she was good at. "I'm very fast, and much cleverer than people may think!" she said with a big smile on her face, but a pure innocence in her voice. The audience were eating it up, there were coo's and clapping going all round. She left the stage when the buzzer buzzed again. I stood up, feeling the nerves hit me as Rue greeted me with a big smile as she came off stage. "Now, you may know her as the Angel on Fire. But we know her as the lovely Primrose Everdeen!" Caesar boomed. The audience began to clap wildly as I walked gingerly on the stage. The claps got louder when I sat down in the seat next to him, and there were even a few woos. "Now. Now." Caesar said in his loud voice to get the audience to calm down. "Primrose. I think we were all very impressed by your entrance in the Parade the other day." "Well, it's all down to my wonderful stylist," I said to Caesar, putting a huge fake beam on my face. I looked for Cinna in the crowd and saw him smirk. "I bet it is! But those flames really did suit you! Don't you think?" he asked the audience. They responded in even louder clapping and cheering. "Well, that's good, because I'm wearing them tonight." I told him. "Shall I show you?" The cheering was crazy loud, louder than with the other tributes. I began to twirl around and the flames at the bottom half me began to engulf my legs once again. I knew how amazing it must of looked, because the cheering got so loud that I thought the roof might fall in. "Wow! That is amazing. Truly amazing. Thank you for that." Caesar said. His voice was softening. I knew what was coming. He was going to mention what had happened at the reaping with Katniss. Katniss. She would be watching this. Seeing me with my flames, talking new words that she could hear for the first time in a week. "So, Prim." Here it comes. "I think we were all very moved when you went in even when your sister volunteered for you. Tell us a little bit about her." I looked straight into the camera. I knew she'd be going crazy at the screen right now. I could feel tears brimming on the edge of my eyes, but I fought them off. "She's the most amazing person I've ever met." The audience began cooing and awwing for me. "I bet she is." Said Caesar. All of a sudden, the buzzer went off and it was the end of my interview. "Primrose Everdeen." Caesar boomed in his regular voice. He shook my hand and I walked off stage. My legs were trembling. Effie and Haymich greeted me when I came off stage. Effie pulled me in for a hug and I reluctantly hugged back. "That was good!" "Well done, sweetheart." Said Haymich, patting my shoulder. We all stopped talking when Caesar introduced Peeta to the Capitol audience. I moved over to the television screen and watched. "So, Peeta! How are you finding the Capitol? And don't say with a map." Caesar began laughing and so did the audience. "Well, it's really nice." He replied. "But there are so many different things." "Oh, like what?" Caesar questioned. "Well, for one, the showers here are weird." "Showers. We have different showers." Caesar said, looking slightly perplexed which caused the audience to begin laughing again. "Tell me Caesar, do I smell like roses?" Peeta asked. Ah. He was going for the funny boy interviewee. Caesar leaned in, giving that funny face again that made me audience laugh. "Do I? Do I smell like roses?" Caesar asked. Peeta leaned in, taking a big whiff and then laughing. "Well, you certainly smell better than I do!" "Well I've lived here longer!" Caesar chuckled. The audience began to erupt into a lot of laughter, when Caesar quietened his voice as he did when he going to ask sort of personal questions. "So, Peeta. Is there a special girl back home?" I took a deep breath. Yes. YES. I was screaming in my head, knowing that it was Katniss. "No. No there isn't," Peeta replied with a vague smile. "Oh come on, Peeta." Caesar persisted. "A good-looking guy like you. There has to be a special girl." "Well, there is one girl, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know my name." Peeta told him. My heart began to drop to the floor knowing that he was talking about my wonderful sister. He was practically declaring his love for her on television, even if she didn't know it was about her. The audience began their familiar chorus of awwing. "Aw Peeta. Well I'll tell you what. You go out there and you win this thing, and then she'll defiantly know who you are." "I… I don't know if winning's going to help me." He stammered. "Why ever not?" Caesar said. He looked genuinely confused and the audience were hanging onto ever single word that was being said now. There was complete silence. My breathing was heavy as my eyes were clasped on the screen. "Because I'm pretty sure that she'd rather have her sister return home than me."