Just a Game

Chapter Four

Interview day. This should be easy. Just go up on stage, talk to Caesar Flickerman, go off, and then wait. No biggie. But then again, I suck at talking in front of people. A few thousand people should just about cause me to freeze up.

I'm put into a simple blck suit. Clove is wearing a orange dress. She looks really nice. I wonder what they did to make her look like that...

Anyway, Brutus told me to play up my ruthless angle. He knows what I can do, and tells me to use that to my advantage. That's good, nice and easy. The words should flow naturally.

Glimmer is up first, wearing a see-through gold gown. I tried not to stare at her. Sure, she was hot, but she had this aura around her basically saying, "Get away from me, freak."

Next is Marvel, acting arrogant and stupid. Just like him. Then it's Clove's turn. She acts sweet, yet tough. My turn is next.

Caesar welcomes me on stage. I can hear the audience cheering and I wave to them nonchalantly. Ruthless and arrogant. I keep chanting that in my head.

I shake Caesar's hand. His dark blue hair was kind of distracting. Not as bad as last year's red hair, at least.

"So, Cato," Caesar says. "How are you liking the Capitol?"

"I like the food," I blurt, considering that there wasn't really anything else to say. "It is much better than the food back home."

"The food," he says thoughtfully. "It does show."

I laugh along with the audience. I know it's true because I've probably gained ten pounds of muscle and fat since I got here.

"I heard you got an impressive score of ten in training." Caesar changes the subject, thankfully. "What did you show them?"

"Everything that I got," I say, crossing my legs.

Caesar raises a blue eyebrow. "But of course, you can't say what happened in your training. You probably knocked over a few dummies just by looking at them. They were terrified, weren't they?"

I laugh, even though I'm not sure what he meant. "Yeah, that's my strategy: hope that people fall over every time I come close to them," I say sarcastically.

Caesar and the some of the audience laugh. In no time at all, my three minutes are up, and the buzzer sounds. I stand up and shake hands with Caesar, he says, "Cato Hadley, everybody!" The audience cheers and claps. I walk off the stage to see everyone waiting for me.

"You both did great," Rolt compliments, patting us both on the back.

"Better go to sleep now, tomorrow's going to be a long day." Brutus leads us both up the stairs, and back to our rooms.

Half an hour later, all of the tributes had done their interviews. They're broadcasted on all the television sets. Ours come on, and starts off with Glimmer's interview. Each interview is just as boring as the next, but a few stand out. There's a girl from District 5 who reminded me of a fox, especially because of her red hair.

District 11 both have interesting tributes as well. Thresh, this huge guy, probably a little bigger than me, was silent for pretty much the entire interview. He grunted a lot, and never cracked a smile. Then there's the little girl who stole my knife. She sounded sweet, like Glimmer and Clove had, but hers didn't sound forced.

Both tributes from District 12 stood out in my mind as well. The girl was so giggly. She spun around in her dress, giggling obnoxiously, and twirling around. The guy, though, seemed just like the dough that he baked with. Soft, and easy to break apart. He claimed that he was absolutely in love with this girl from home. Of course, the only reason he would bring that up was if his love was his district partner, as he revealed to the audience's astonishment