bugspray / d'arcy

D'Arcy feels eyes on her everywhere she goes. Eyes as she enters the cold training center. Stares as she moves station to station. Looks while she sits at the table eating her food. She cannot help but feel that she has an invisible audience watching her every move, focused for whatever reason on what the runt of the pack might be able to provide, judging whether or not she may be able to fend for herself.

She had a hard time understanding it. Why? What made her so special that the eyes had to be on her? After all, she was young and tiny and fragile and nothing to be concerned about. D'Arcy had already seen so many tributes better equipped for what lay only a few days ahead. Expert strikes with deadly weapons, boys and girls setting traps that she would never be able to tell existed if she hadn't seen them set. Camouflage that blends seamlessly into a variety of landscapes. Of course there had been stares for these tributes all the same (D'Arcy included), but it seemed in D'Arcy's opinion that they had all done things worth the audience. What had D'Arcy done to lose a spot in the background, to be shoved out under the lights of center stage?

Only one thought had ever come to mind, and it never made D'Arcy feel any good. Perhaps it was about what she hadn't done, rather than what she had. Maybe the other tributes were still waiting expectantly for the twelve year old to show them something that made her worth their trouble. Maybe some just pitied her for her seeming lack of any life-taking talents. D'Arcy thought that maybe this would be worse than the idea that she had done something to gather all of this attention.

She caught the sense of being watched once again as she sat listening to the trainer run through the various medicinal uses of plants that could be encountered in the arena. She fought as always to ignore the feeling, focusing hard on the words and letting the information soak in. It lingered on her, however, perhaps a little longer than some of the other times she'd sensed herself as the focus of someone's attention. She decided to risk out a glance, to see if she could find where the eyes were coming from.

She finds her answer as her set of eyes meet another. The other set looks away, down towards the sharp needle in her hands. The girl's cheeks flush as she continues her own training, eyes deliberately not looking back. Maybe if it had been earlier in the day, before D'Arcy had to ignore countless stares from countless others, she would've been able to look back to the trainer and continue listening, forgetting all about this onlooker. But it had been a long day, and D'Arcy was tired of pretending she couldn't see the stares. This time she excused herself from the trainer for a moment, stood up, and dared to walk towards the older tribute. She needed to know why. She needed to understand what exactly was going on.

"Hey, I saw you looking at me," She began as she arrived, ignoring the fast beating of her shy heart as she willed herself on. The girl looked back over at her once again. "Everyone keeps looking at me here. Why? Did I do something?" She didn't care if her question seemed childish or blunt or rude to ask. She considered for a brief second that it seemed a bit self-centered. But she swore she had noticed the pattern, and she was tired of feeling like she was standing outside of a secret about her, kept out of her reach.