The Train
I look around in amazement. All the districts, especially the last few like district 12, work so hard to get food, and sometimes go to bed hungry. But here, on the train, there is enough food for one person for a day. And it's not bland bread or anything. It's a delicious feast.
Blossom starts giving a tour of the train. She shows me and Henry our rooms, and then the place where we'll eat. Seeder then asks us if we would like to train together or separately. I think that's a little obvious.
"We'll train together," I reply. I'm still looking around in awe.
"All right," Seeder says. "We'll talk about your strategies over dinner. Right now, I bet you two want to look around your rooms."
Henry looks at me. I nod. We go to our rooms, and I stop in the doorway. The room has a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and many other things. I can't believe the capital keeps all this from us. They have enough to spare.
After I look around, I walk back into the main part of the train. Already, Blossom and Seeder are eating, and beckon me to come sit with them.
"Take what you like," Blossom says in between bites.
I look at the table and see dishes upon dishes of food. I look up when I hear the door open, and see Henry standing there. He looks so small standing there. I get up and go over to him.
"Look at all this!" I say, trying to sound happy. "All this food, just for us."
Henry looks at me and says something that breaks my heart. "I don't get why they give all this to us. It's like they're trying to make us all happy and relaxed before we go and die for their entertainment."
Then we go sit down. Seeder looks at us as if he expects us to say something. We all sit there in awkward silence, until Blossom breaks it.
"So..." she starts. "How do you like the food?"
I look down at my plate, and am surprised to see how much I've eaten. "It's good, although I don't see why you don't share it with all the districts," I say boldly. "It seems as if there's enough to go around." I stare at Blossom, challenging her to say otherwise.
"Oh," she says carefully. "We would, but, there really isn't enough to go around. The people in the capital need their energy, and we can't give the people in the districts too much," she says. "After all, they went against us, so we can't reward that."
I look at her angrily. "The people in the capital need energy? The people in the districts need energy! We're the ones who work all day, and barely get any food at night, barely any sleep!" I yell. "Only to wake up again to another day of hard work!" Before Blossom can answer, I get up and leave.
I peek behind my shoulder as I close the door to see Henry sitting there in discomfort, before getting up and following me.
Once he's behind the door with me, he says, "That was unexpected."
"Yeah, well, I just find it infuriating that they keep all this from us," I answer. I pause before saying, "Do you wanna come to my room?"
Henry looks at me and just shrugs. "Sure," he says.
We go into my room and plop onto my bed. We sit there in silence before Henry blurts out, "Why did we get picked? Why not someone else? Why us?"
I look at him sadly. "I guess we just got unlucky," I say.
"I know we did," Henry says. "You said we wouldn't get picked," he continues, looking up at me. "You lied."
I know he doesn't mean what he's saying. That he just is trying to find something to blame for what's happening. But it still hurts to hear him say that. "I know I did," I respond. "I was just guessing when I said that neither you nor Lucy would get picked. It seemed unlikely because your names were only in there once, and so many other people's names were in there way more than yours. And," I continue, "you and Lucy just happened to be picked."
Then he says something I don't expect. "Sophie," he says hesitantly. "Promise me something. Promise me that you won't do anything stupid tomorrow, or any other day like you did today."
I look at him in surprise. "Of course I won't," I say, taking his hands. "You know I won't."
"But I don't know that," he says, which shocks me most of all. "You did something stupid today."
"What?" I say, confused. "What did I do?"
He looks at me as if I'm missing something obvious. "You spoke up to Blossom," he says. "I admire you for doing that," he adds before I can continue, "but we need all the time we can get with Torin to talk, and you lost us some time tonight. Now we only have one more day to talk without being super stressed. The rest we'll be busy focusing on training."
I look at him in despair. I know he's right, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. Looking at him now, his serious face, and his weary expression, makes me realize that he's grown up so much in just the last 12 hours. I can't even imagine how much he'll change in the coming days. "I'm sorry," I say. "Tomorrow I'll make sure we talk with Torin a lot about our strategy."
"Okay," Henry replies, getting up.
"Wait," I say, grabbing his arm. "Where are you going?" I ask.
"Back to my room," he says, pulling his arm away.
"Why? You can stay here," I say.
"Because I need to get some rest for the busy days ahead of us, and so do you," he says, leaving.
I stare at the door for a while after he left. "Wow," I think. "I should really start thinking more like him. To other people it would probably seem like he's the older one. I need to get my game on..."
With that, I change into some pajamas they provided us, and go to sleep.
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