“Welcome, Tributes!” President Sue raises her hands above her head, let them glide down to her lectern and let them rest there while she continues her speech. Her mouth moves forward to the microphone watching the 24 teens in front of her. She smiles and a cold shiver runs through my body. Instead of President Sylvester, people call her President Sue. People always think of her as nice and loving with great plans for Panem’s future but I never saw anything like that. Her eyes spoke 100000 of tales of murders and cruelty, no matter how much she smiled at the camera her eyes were always colder than ice, holes filled with emotionless desires and targets, I think.

I don’t listen anymore to her speech, what happened in the past of Panem and why I and others have to be sacrificed year after year and how proud our districts are of us. All bullshit.

If they are so proud, why is my- are the families crying at home? My hands form fists at the thought and the smile I had before for the people in the Capitol dissappears at the sight of Panem’s President. She waves at us and dismisses us to the Trainings Center.

The chariots begin to move again and all the tributes vanishs into the Trainings Center. We step out the chariot. I give Tina my hand while she she steps down the little stairs so she won’t lose her balance in her stunning dress . Mercedes, Mike, Rachel, Brittany and Jeff are already waiting for us.

“You looked fantastic!” Says Rachel to us clapping her hands as if we just did much more than to blow kisses and wave at people while trying to hold our balance.
I smirk at her knowingly. Mercedes lays her arms around me in a tight embrace. “They loved you,” she whispers in my left ear. I can’t stop the dopey grin that’s forming on my face at the thought how thouthends of people shouted and cried my name to get just a bit of my attention.

“Yes,” I answer her.

We are going to the elevators, Brittany and Mercedes link their arms with me on the way and while they chatter like 2 wild geese I try to listen to Mike, Tina and Jeff behind me. Jeff is mostly silent and Tina only nodds to everything that Mike says, while Mike makes a drivelling idiot of himself with sweet talk and wooing about how beautiful and gracious she looks.

Oh, he got it bad, I think. Again, I feel sorry for him if Tina won’t survive.
In front of the elevator we meet other tributes and their teams. Mostly every team is silent at the moment still stunned about the experience of the opening ceremony. I try to sort every tribute to their district and what their names was but most of them I can’t even remember. There are Jesse and Quinn again from District 6, the boy from District 5 whose name I can’t remember but talked to me and the girl tribute, Dave Karofsky and Lauren Zizes from District 2, I remember their full names because I am most afraid of these two. Then there a the two tributes from District 3-

“Out of my way!” I hear someone shouting behind me. I turn around and see the two tributes from District 1. “Don’t touch me, dead meat,” the girl says. I look at her in disbelieve. Did she just said 'dead meat'? “What are you looking at?” She asks me while she trys to push past me.

“Nothing,” I tell her quietly.

“Good,” she smirks and steps in front of one of he elevator doors. “Because you and everyone else will die, you know? Don’t get your hopes high up. My father is rich and will sponsor all his money to get me back alive.”

Some of the tributes laugh at her. She sends everyone of them death stares. I am not laughing, my face is blank because, who knows? Everything is possible in the arena and money will sure help her.

She looks at me again to see if I laughed at her, too. She smiles at my expressionless gaze and mumbles, “I like you. Maybe I will let you live a bit longer, alliances and that stuff,” before cutting the line and getting with her team in the elevator.

At my left side pass Azimio, he mutters, “You are so dead,” in the girl tribute’s direction. I try to remember her name.

“Something wit ‘S’,” I mumble to myself.

“You mean Sugar?” I look to the side that was vacant 1 minute back and find the male District 5 tribute talking to me again.

I am not answering but he continues chatting. “My name is Blaine,” he introduces himself. I only nod once. “…And you are Kurt, right?” Again, I don’t answer. I try to get a bit of distance between us and move to Mercedes side and take her hand. Blaine who followed me, looks at mine and Mercedes intertwined hands for a moment. “Are you mute?” He asks me with a worried expression. I look at Mercedes pleadingly and roll my eyes.

“He isn’t,” she answers for me with a full teath smile.

“And why won’t he answer me?” Blaine turns to Mercedes after realizing that he have better chances getting my answers out of her.

“Because he don’t want to. He never talks if he feels like the person isn't worth it.” She gives the tribute- Blaine- a small charming and somehow 'knowing' smirk. “I think you can sympathize why he don’t feel like talking.”

Blaine nodds with a vacant gaze then leans towards me. “You look really, really good District 7,” he tells me quietly into my ear. I gasp. Shit. “And when you smile like I saw on the TV screens even more.” No matter how much I try not to, I blush slightly, avoiding his eyes when he tries to read my face.

The next elevator is mine, I decide. I push him aside, ignoring his attempt or whatever that was and tag Mercedes along with me. The others follow and Rachel pushs the button for the 7th floor. Through the crystal clear elevator doors and floor I observe Blaine watching me, I conclude, maybe his eyes are on one of the persons beside me but I doubt that though, I hold my gaze on him until he is smaller than an ant.

The doors open and for the first time I see the huge apartment. The whole floor is for Tina and me and our team. Rachel begins to talk and explain everything, what where is and what we have to do and our whole schedule and many more without even breathing. I begin to walk around, taking in the details of the spatial arrangment and wonder which my room is because I would really just like to be alone and rest.

“I need to rest and freshen up,” I tell them.

“But I am not finished-” begins Rachel.

“Please,” I interrupt her.

With thin tight pressed lips she points at a door. “That’s your room. Dinner is at 6.”
Without a word I bolt into my room leaving everyone behind. I lock the door. There is no need to talk to Mercedes now.

The whole room is blue and metallic. There is a couch with a table, a kingsize bed with blue silver bedding, an extra room that must be my personal bathroom, I miss the TV, I always imagined to have everything here and now I am disappointed that the Capitol won't even give us a TV. I  go over to my bed and jump on it directly landing on my face. I turn on my side and look for a lamp on the nightstand. Instead I find something like a really huge remote control. I take it  and press randomly some buttons. The curtains part automatically and present enourmos windows, somewhere from the walls starts playing music, my blanket begins to heat, a TV comes out of a wall and shows the recap of the Opening Ceremony and shows Lauren looking straight into the camera not even blinking or smiling.

"Okay, what did I press?" I ask myself. In the next scene they show Blaine without even looking I find the button to shut off the TV. Everything is now silent around me. I can't hear the others from outside, maybe they killed Rachel or she died because of the lack of oxygen BECAUSE she couldn't shut up.

I feel tired and my arms and legs begin to hurt but I sit up and try to walk to the bathroom. Everything is white here except for the mirror and... I love it. There isn't any other way to say it, I just really love it. I never had something like this before, I never saw something like this before. The whole city is like that but the bathroom is the first thing that makes me finally feel it. The Capitol is like another world. It doesn't give me a feeling of home and nothing is familiar for me but that's exactly what I like. I feel like I dreamed of this and didn't even know it before that I wanted this, that I desire to live such a lifestyle. I never wanted to live a life like my father or Finn, going in to the woods everyday and devour the rest of my life to a job as lumberjack or carpenter or you could say I never want to work with lumber. I am the best student at my school but I am small and thin, the most guys in our district looks like Finn tall, heavy, more muscle than brain but my cleverness won't bring me any money where I live.

Now that I can see what other people can do, they can wear what they want, they can do what they want, they can be what they want, I am certainly sure that I never ever want to work with lumbs. Never!

I take my time to further discover this room and feel myself drawn to the shower and it's million options. Instead of randomly pushing buttons I try to discover carefully what magic powers my new toy got.

I press the top button and the shower begins to work. Down from it are options how and where the water will spray at you, red and blue buttons for hotter and colder, '+' and '-' for more or less water, different patterns for rose scent, lemon soup, bubble bath, mud bath, mountain quell, lavender scent and many more. I am so fascinated by this that I can't resist and decide to take a shower for real.

We have a shower at home too but the water is almost freezing, so normally I prefer a warm bath more. I set the water on a luke warm temperature with different fruit scents.

"Heaven," I sigh contently after stripping off my clothes and stepping in on the wet tiles.

Just warming up, no thinking, no worries, just being and relaxing, I step out after a whole hour in the shower playing with the buttons.

I find a bathrobe, put in on and go back to my bedroom.

The warm shower gave me the rest, I am in a huge and desperate need of sleep and flow to my bed.

I sink down, cover myself under the blankets and greet the immediate sleep with a small sigh.