Butter [Jacynth / Delroy]

Did enjoying parts of the capitol make him a hypocrite?

Inside his apartment there’d been heated floors and toilet seats, a jacuzzi tub, and every flavor of ice cream he could’ve imagined all at his disposal. Luxury after luxury for a boy that’d grown up in a tin roofed house with a wood burning stove with parents that took his clothes and stitched patches on patches for his siblings to wear when the time came. It felt dirty to take any enjoyment out of his time there, especially when he’d made such a big deal about wanting to rattle the cage and talk about revolution.

But it sure seemed hard to be a revolutionary when you could live the life you’d always dreamed of having (for a little while).

He’d spent the last night up in his bed watching television wrapped up in soft cotton sheets with air conditioning full blast. Not because it was particularly warm, but because of how good it felt to have the cool breeze controlled by his fingertips. All the while he had the blankets wrapped around him like he was wearing a fashionable set of shawls over his shoulder. He’d meant to get an early night’s sleep, but stayed glued to the tv, obsessed with all the pull of over-the-top reality television (ads wtih Bay running between shows) where everyone seemed to shout over one another.

He’d gotten up with a headache but discovered that the capitol had perfected what they called energy drinks for those who chose life oversleep. A single drink from a neon colored can had Delroy bouncing back and forth, ready to take on the whole world. Another couple of them and he felt as though he might be able to take down all of the careers himself.

When he got out of the elevator on the first floor, he made a bee line not for the training floor, but one of the holo-rooms at the end of the hall.

Delroy spent the better part of the morning reading up all the history he could access (whatever hadn’t been forbidden, and what skirted such a definition), pulling up photos and diving down rabbit holes with abandon. He spent a good amount of time looking over the old arenas. Looking at when they started using force fields, and what the usual size of an actual arena was. The typical topography that showed up most frequently, and what he might plan for in the eighty-sixth.

That is, until he saw the girl from eight (?) on the other side of the holo-screen in the hall. Del was mostly curious because she’d been related to Ike, and he’d spent long enough memorizing the kids of the eighty-second to have a passing curiosity. That and she hadn’t looked half bad in her reaping video, even if she had volunteered.

At least he thought it was the girl from eight.  How much had he really been paying attention was up for debate, considering it was truly the girl from four.

He waved away the screen he’d been using, and instead started to draw out a message in black letters across the white background on the screen to get the girl’s attention:

HEY. WHAT’S UP?!!!

Smooth.