"Wake up!!!" When I open my eyes, my face is inches from Alpina's. I jerk upward, bonking my head into hers. I grumble something taht sounds like "mm hm" and slide out of bed. I had hoped to escape a lecture, but no such luck.
"How could you have gone to sleep when we were a mere seventy five minutes from the Capitol? We have a tight schedule to attend to! You have five minutes to make yourself presentable. Now chop-chop!" she says, and literally stares at me while I get dressed and brush my teeth and hair.
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I clutch the wolf-shaped charm on my necklace, the one thing I was allowed to keep wearing, as Fortunia, the head of my prep-team, rips a sheet of hot wax off my leg.
"Nice job, sweetie! Only twenty four more!" she trills. Her high-pitched voice is giving me a headache.
The other woman, Pomona, trims my hair while the man, Quintus, cuts and paints my fingernails. I've been sitting in the Ramake Center for an hour, being waxed, painted, and trimmed.
"If only you took better care of this hair," says Quintus. To be honest, my hair was the last thing on my mind the last twenty four hours. But when I look in the mirror, my hair is oily and tangled.
Twenty four sheets of hot wax, tow bottles of nail polish and a lot of lotion later, I find myself in a small dining room. The door slides open and a man, maybe thirty, walks in.
"Hi, I'm Charon. I'll be your stylist," he says. Something in his voice tells me he'd rather walk on hot coals than be my stylist. Great.
"So," I say. "You don't like me."
"Ding, ding, ding. See, since Josie, no one respects me. Now eat some lunch while I go find some colored contact lenses," he says. He presses a button and a table appears, holding a steaming plate of food. On the plate is a bird smaller than a turkey, maybe quail. There are three different types of vegetables on the sides. I dig in. The food is indescribably good, but it's the last thing I'm thinking of. For one, usually people compliment my blue-green eyes. But for some reason this Charon guy thinks they're ugly or something. He comes back, carrying a box labeled 'ice blue'. I'm guessing it contains the contact lenses.
"Here are your lenses. I picked light blue," Charon explains. He walks over, sits down, and grabs to small transparent circles. He tells me to open my eyes wide and be completely still. He puts one on his finger and pokes my eye, then does the other. I look in the mirror, and I see a girl with silky black-brown hair and icy blue eyes. It takes me about five minutes to realize that I'm looking at myself. Not that I'm stunned or anything. The lenses make my eyesight blurry.
"Much better," says Charon. Yeah right.
"I can't see in these," I complain. Charon looks at me like I have just spoken to him in a foreign language.
"Too bad for you!" Charon exclaims, then he walks out to get my costume. I sit down. Charon didn't seem nice, but that's normal. Usually the stylists are just as self-absorbed as Charon. He said something about Josie, what was it again? That no one respected him? Before I can come to a conclusion, Charon comes in, holding a sheet of chain mail and four strings of small lightbulbs.
"What is my chariot costume? A knight or a Christmas tree?" I ask, and Charon glares at me. He dresses me in the chain mail gown and puts the lights around my neck, wrists and ankles and makes a crown around my head. Charon grabs a small remote and presses a button. The bulbs flicker to life.
"There," he says.
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I stand next to Rowan, who is wearing a boys' version of my costume. Our chariot is silver, pulled by gray horses. The District Two chariot begins to pull out, and Charon flicks our lights on. Our horses begin to move forward. As soon as we get outside, I know something is wrong. Thunder rumbles and dark clouds have gathered overhead.
My instincts were correct. s we reach the City Circle, rain begins to pour. I look at Rowan, and his lights start spewing sparks. Mine do to. My arms, legs, and neck begin to feel like they have been set on fire. I smell burning hair. I crumple to the chariot floor, sure that Rowan's scared, pale face is the last thing I'll ever see.
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