take a bite / andromache & august

My arms are aching so much from my first session of learning how to swing a sword that I’ve morbidly begun to imagine how easy it would be for other people to kill me. Maybe a good plan would be to avoid eye contact at all costs, just so the others won’t have the advantage of seeing the fear and uncertainty behind my eyes when they come swinging at me. Dead giveaway, literally.

In the same way that thinking about not breathing makes you immediately do it, I somehow manage to lock eyes with the terrifyingly beautiful girl from One within seconds of forming my new rule. She’s dripping with sweat, but her hair still looks perfect, long and flowy red like some land-dwelling mermaid. My eyes jump nervously down to the floor and back. She’s still looking at me. And I’m looking at her. Frozen in the tractor beam of her gaze.

”Hey, Seven!”

My hand twitches at my side, curling inward almost to ask, who, me?

”Get over here. I wanna see what you’re made of.”

I kind of hate the way my feet start walking me over there as soon as she says this. Let’s call it curiosity and not blind obedience for the sake of my dignity. Unconsciously, my spine stiffens up, chest puffing as I approach her, not that it makes me any taller. I’m a firm 5’9”, stopped growing last year.

Up close, the sweat glistens on her flawless pale skin. The two of us might as well be from different worlds; one with money and free time, and the other with manual labor and, I don’t know, generally just doing one’s best. She probably has years of practice in whatever she’s about to ask me to do. I like to think I bring something to the table, too, but as I stand here being sized up by her, I can feel my best pep-talking points escaping me like air hissing out of a balloon.

I decide to stare firmly back at her from beneath my eyebrows. ”What do you mean? Like, you want to spar?” Well, okay. I look around, taking mental stock of how many people I’m about to embarrass myself in front of. Most of the other tributes seem pretty busy, but there are at least a solid five.

But hey, who knows. Maybe I’ll surprise us all.

My new sneakers squeak against the floor as I widen my stance, raising my fists. I’ve never been in a fight before. Nobody ever wanted to fight me in school. Now I’m kinda wishing I would have made more people mad so I’d have more practice by now.

”Ladies first,” I grunt.

There is something unsettling about the way she smiles at her own flat joke, like she’s not smiling at all. Baring her teeth, more like. And I could be wrong, but it’s almost like her eyes are looking more through me than at me.

Years ago, before the problem got so bad the district officials stepped in, rabid animals would occasionally show up on our porch. Racoons, cats, dogs. All vibrating with this same intense energy, frothing at the mouth with that empty-eyed gaze, sniffing for something to take a bite out of. It didn’t mean they were hungry. They couldn’t drink, either. I always wondered, what were they looking for?

But it only just occurred to me that maybe they wanted to bite for the sake of it. Leave their mark before the disease dried them up.

These careers give me deja vu.

”This how you want to play it? You don’t have an axe or something?” Andromache drawls.

She’s fast, but I’m ready for her swing– because I thought a fistfight was what she meant, anyway. I watch as her fist flies past my face with the full force of her hips. Though I’ve never been taught anything like this, I realize that’s how a punch is actually supposed to look. The sheer decisive force of it is enough to tell me it would have hurt, had it actually connected.

”I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say simply, still standing with my feet spaced apart, fists at the ready like nothing has happened. Then her joke dawns on me. I seriously hadn’t caught it. ”Oh! You mean because I’m from Seven? Ha! You think we’re still chopping down trees by hand? What kind of trash are they talking about us in One?”

People are watching us now, looking for cheap entertainment. I just want this to be over with–it wasn’t my idea. My idea was to keep my head down, learn as much as I could. But now that they’re looking, I can’t step down like a fool.

And what better way to learn than by doing?

”Be careful who you make jokes about. Wouldn’t want to make any enemies this early,” I say with a smirk, leaning into the first punch I’ve ever thrown at a living person.