Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
Inside we’re told to strip, which is easy from the waist down but undoable above the belt with our cuffed hands. Peacekeepers come around and cut away our shirts with knives. If anyone objects, they laugh and say it’s all the same to the incinerator. It hurts watching them slice through Ma’s careful stitches. I remember her painstakingly laying out those handkerchiefs to make every inch of material count. Now it sits in shreds at my feet.
A Peacekeeper taps his knifepoint against my flint striker. “This your token?”
My token? Then I remember that tributes are allowed to take one item from home into the arena with them, as long as it’s not a weapon. My flint striker could be viewed as an unfair advantage, but I’m not giving them any help with that.
“Yes, it’s a necklace,” I say.
The Peacekeeper rubs the metal between his fingers and admits grudgingly, “It’s nice. They’ll take it later for evaluation.” I nod. Even if they examine it, they might not recognize its potential. Here, where there are ample matches and lighters and no one needs a spark to make a fire.
We’re marched into a large, open room with blue tiles on the floor and showerheads spaced around the walls. I’m no prude – I’ve skinny-dipped plenty out at the lake with Burdock – but I’m not used to standing around naked eyeballing twenty-three other guys. At first, I just stare at a drain on the floor, then I realize there’s no better place to size up the competition, so I do. The half dozen Careers look like they spend their spare time posing for statues. Another dozen of us might stand a chance if we’re handy with an ax. And the remaining half dozen are pitiful, all hollow rib cages and matchstick bones.
Panache, who I recognize from the train, struts around thrusting his privates at people and grunting, much to the amusement of the other Careers. He makes the mistake of trying this on one of the District 11 tributes and winds up with a swift kick in the gut. Panache’s about to retaliate when the showerheads come to life, soaking us with scalding water.
We all dodge around, trying to evade the streams. Things go from bad to worse when the water’s replaced by a noxious soapy spray that triggers my gag reflex and burns my eyes like pepper dust. The water returns, but this time we’re fighting for it as we try to get the soap off. When the showers turn to drips, I still feel covered in a stinging slime from head to toe.
A towel might help, but instead a blast of hot air follows, which adds to the misery and bakes the slime into my skin, making it itch like crazy. Whatever fight any of us had in us has been squelched. We’re just a scratching, sniveling bunch of kids with runny eyes and spiked hair. Back in the locker room, we’re each given a sheet of crepe paper to wrap around ourselves for modesty’s sake and directed back to our district areas in the gym.
I hope Louella has been spared this, but when I see her braids sticking out like a broken weather vane, I know she’s been through the wringer, too. It must have been agony for Maysilee, with all those welts. We’re each directed to a table, ordered to sit, and this time, like the Careers’, our cuffs are fastened to chains.
That’s all I see of the other tributes for a while, as the Peacekeepers shut off my cubicle with the white curtains. A girl with puffballs of magenta hair and a guy with metal apples studding his cheeks approach nervously. Neither of them looks much older than me.
“Hi, Haymitch,” says the girl breathlessly. “I’m Proserpina, and this is Vitus. We’re your prep team, and we’re here to make you gorgeous!”
“Yes! Yes!” says Vitus. “Gorgeous, but fierce!” He bares his teeth and growls. “To scare the others off!”
“And get you lots of sponsors!” Proserpina’s voice drops to a whisper. “We can’t send you things, of course, since we’re part of your team. But my great-aunt already said she’ll sponsor you. And not just to help my grade.”
Her grade? “You’re students? At this school?”
“Oh, no, we’re
University students, not Academy. I mean, we’re not seniors or anything,” says Vitus. “They all wanted better districts.”
“But we really like you. You’re cute!” Proserpina assures me. “And anyway, we have two more years to move up.”
So, my team consists of Drusilla, who hates me, a mentor rooting for another tribute, a couple of underclassmen, and . . . “Who’s my stylist?”
Their faces fall and they exchange a look. “District Twelve got Magno Stift again,” admits Vitus. “But he is NOT as bad as they say.”
I groan. Magno Stift’s the guy who’s been assigned to the District 12 tributes for as long as I can remember. And yes, he’s every bit as bad as they say. While the other stylists do new costumes each year for the parade and interviews that happen before the Games, he seems to have a limitless supply of the same crappy coal miner overalls in an array of sizes.
“He’s promised a shining new look for the Quarter Quell!” Proserpina reassures me.
“Which is good, because nobody’s going to sponsor you in that old stuff,” says Vitus.
“And we shouldn’t have any accidents today, because they’ve banned live-reptile fashion backstage,” adds Proserpina. “Not just Magno’s – everybody’s. Although he’s the only one who really wears it.”
“Last year his belt buckle fell off and bit Drusilla,” Vitus whispers. “It was this really angry turtle. And she got so mad she bit him back. Magno, not the turtle. And we saw the whole thing but we’re not supposed to talk about it, even though everybody -“
“Well, we won’t have a repeat of that!” interjects Proserpina, shooting him a look. “Shall we start with your body hair? All the bugs gone?”
So that’s what the chemicals were. Insecticides. If I was going to be around long enough to worry about long-term effects, I might get angry.
“Wait!” yelps Vitus. “We need to do the before shots!”
Proserpina produces a tiny camera and they photograph me from head to toe. “That was a close one. We’d probably get an incomplete without the before shots.”
The prep team shaves off all my visible body hair with electric razors. I don’t have much facial hair, but they decide to take that off as well. I feel like a skinned squirrel, raw and exposed. Then they trim my nails, honoring my request to leave me enough to fight with because, as Proserpina says, “You might need your claws.” I wonder if she thinks of my nose as a snout, my hair as fur, my feet as paws.
Vitus adds a handful of goo to my porcupine hair and massages it until it’s no longer in danger of snapping off. He’s pretty good with the hair, actually, reclaiming my curls and eliminating the itch. I talk him into letting me rub some of the goo over my body, and I can finally stop scratching.
I’m obliging with the after shots, given that my prep team has been responsive to my requests and I could use a friend or two here in the Capitol. I’m rewarded with a new sheet of paper and a linty peppermint drop from Proserpina’s pocket that I’m not too proud to accept. It takes the insecticide taste from my mouth and reminds me of happier days. They run off then, because Proserpina’s sister wants to touch up her magenta hair pom-poms in case she ends up on camera, and Vitus promised his mother he’d help her decorate for her Hunger Games party tonight.
I’m relieved they’re gone and welcome my white-curtained privacy. Everything seems surreal, like a terrible fever dream that just keeps going. The chemical shower, my bizarre prep team, looking at my bald legs as I await a man who secures his pants with a live reptile.
My fingers find the snake head at my neck and trace the scales transforming into feathers and then the bird’s pointed beak. I travel back to an overcast day, deep in the woods, a patch of trees we call ours, arms around Lenore Dove, night falling, neither of us caring. On a nearby branch perches a handsome blackbird.
“That’s a raven. The bird from my name poem,” she says softly. “It’s the biggest songbird there is.”
“He’s an impressive fellow,” I observe.
“She is. She’s smart as a whip, too. Did you know they use logic to solve things?”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.