T R A I N S T A T I O N "Is that how you impress girls? By standing out here for hours, sweating, with a rose in your hand, just to get rejected?"
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CORIOLANUS STOOD ON THE empty train platform, awaiting his tribute's arrival, a long-stemmed white rose balanced carefully between his thumb and index finger.
It had been Tigris's idea to bring her a gift. She had arrived home very late on the night of the reaping, but he had waited up to consult with her, to tell her of his humiliations and fears. She refused to let the conversation spin into despair. He would get a prize; he would have to! And have a brilliant university career.
At Fabricia's reaping party, Tigris said, everyone was nuts about Lucy Gray Baird. His tribute had "star quality," her friends had declared as they drunkenly slurped their posca. The cousins agreed that he needed to make a good first impression on the girl so that she would be willing to work with him.
He should treat her not as a condemned prisoner, but as a guest. Coriolanus had decided to greet her early at the train station. It would give him a jump on the assignment, as well as an opportunity to win her trust.
"Imagine how terrified she must be, Coryo," Tigris had said. "How alone she must feel. If it was me, anything you could do to make me feel like you cared about me would go a long way. No, more than that. Like I was of value. Take her something, even a token, that lets her know you value her."
Two days had passed since the reaping. The city had held on to the oppressive heat, and even though it was just past dawn, the train station was beginning to bake. Coriolanus felt conspicuous on the wide, deserted platform, but he couldn't risk missing her train.
The only information he could get out of his downstairs neighbour, Gamemaker-in-Training Remus Dolittle, was that it was supposed to arrive Wednesday.
Remus had recently graduated from the University, and his family had pulled in every favour they had to get him the position, which paid just enough and provided a stepping-stone to the future. Coriolanus could have inquired through the Academy, but he didn't know if greeting the train would be frowned upon. No rules had been laid out, per se, but he thought most of his classmates would wait to meet their tributes at a session overseen by the Academy the following day.
An hour passed, then two, and still no train of any kind appeared. The sun beat down through the glass panes of the station ceiling. Perspiration trickled down his back, and the rose, so majestic that morning, began to bend in resignation. He wondered if the whole idea was ill-conceived and if he would get no thanks for greeting her in this way.
Another girl, a typical girl, would be impressed, but there was nothing typical about Valeria Lauder. In fact, something was intimidating about a girl who could pull off such a brazen performance on the heels of the mayor's assault. And that, just after she had dropped a venomous snake down another girl's dress.
