rising from the ashes || a hunger games story

chapter seven

willow's pov

today are the interviews. yesterday the tributes were being trained by their mentors for the interviews. i spent a few hours with effie for presentation while will spent the same amount of time with haymitch for impressions. then we switched.

effie had me walk in heels and worked on my posture and all that. i was grateful when my time with effie was over because my whole body was aching. my time with haymtich was stressful. we went through a whole bunch of ways i can come across the day of the interview.

flirty, sexy, friendly, rebellious. i hated absolutely everything. friendly was just too nice, i can't be flirty, sexy made me uncomfortable, and i'm just not rebellious. at least not the type of rebellious haymitch explained to me.

he ended up telling me to just figure it out. i don't know what i'm going to do today. the interviews is key to getting sponsors, i can screw myself over if the audience doesn't like this.

i'm meeting with my prep team and mason today so they can get me ready. meeting with my prep team, they did the same thing they did on the first day. i'm left in a room to wait for mason. he walks in and smiles at me. "so what am i wearing today?" i asked him. i see the coat hanger he's holding. the dress is being covered by the garment bag again.

he unzips the garment bag, revealing the dress. it has a big flowy skirt and i can tell that once i wear it, it's going to have a train behind it. the dress goes from a red at the bottom and to a light orange as it goes up. "am i going to be twirling?" i ask. he nods, "i'm not going to tell you what the fire is going to do this time. all im going to tell you is don't get scared."

i nod, confused. what would i get scared of? once i put on the dress, i meet with my prep team again so they can do my makeup, hair, and nails. i can feel one person tugging at my hair, someone painting my nails, and another working on my eyeshadow. i then feel a spray on my face. i squeeze my eyes and accidentally inhale some of the spray. i start coughing and i end up tasting some of the spray.

i cover the are where the spray is coming from and feel the cold spray hit my hand. "give her a break, don't suffocate her," i hear mason's say. the spray stops and i breathe heavily. im finally able to open my eyes. reed stands in front of me, impatiently. "give me a warning next time," i say.

once everything is done, i stand up from the chair they put me in. i see the three of them step back like they're admiring their creation. reed is in the middle, sapphire is on his right (my left) and dawn is on his left (my right). "what?" i say, laughing a little. mason walks in between reed and sapphire and looks at me. "you look great," he says. "let's go do the finishing touches on that dress," he says, taking my hand.

i'm taken backstage where there's absolute chaos. prep teams, stylists, mentors, and escorts are running around trying to figure out where their things are. im taken away from the chaos and into a room i haven't been in before. it's not as bland as the room i was in to meet mason. the room is all wood, a mirror sits in the back and if you stand in front of the mirror, you can see the television behind you. the couch would be on your right if you face the mirror.

there's a small stage-like surface where the mirror is. "step up on there." mason says. i step up and look down at my nails. they're completely black and there's a fire design painted on each nail besides my ring finger. on my ring finger, it's red, orange, and yellow blended together. on the nails with the fire design, there's silver dots above it that look like ashes. on my ring finger, the silver dots are all over my nail instead of in just one section.

i look at myself in the mirror. my hair was parted to the right side and a braid goes down the section of where the sides of my hair meet. the rest of my hair is down and natural. my eyelid is covered in gold eyeshadow. above that, there's a line of dark red and it goes out creating a wing and then right under my eye. the dark red blends into an orange and then a yellow.