The Boy from One

Chapter Eight: Private session

There's a knock on my door again and Gloss enters. As usual, he sits down on my bed without waiting for an invitation. 

"Ok, Marvel," he says, getting to the point as usual, "For your private session with the Gamemakers, I want you to show off your skill with the spear." I nod, the spear is my specialist weapon after all. 

"Now being pretty decent with the spear will guarantee you an 8, but we want higher than that. You need to do something special and you have, at most, fifteen minutes to do that. You said you can throw a maximum of ten spears per minute?" 

I nod but then protest, "They don't have 150 spears Gloss!"

"No, " he agrees, then he thinks, "How's your agility?"

"Not good, "I admit, "I can't do flips or anything like that."

"Can you throw a spear accurately behind you?"

I give it some thought, "Yes, " I say, "but not as fast as throwing them forward."

Gloss thinks for a minute, "Ok, he says, here's the plan. You're up first because the male tribute goes first. You'll the one they remember and you need to make a good impression. You need to entertain them. Don't just stay throwing spears at one target, move around. Do various distances and different shaped targets, like an archery target or a dummy. Understood?"

I nod. Gloss gets up to leave, "Good luck Marvel. You'll be great." 

***

"Marvel Blade, " an electronic voice says. I get up from my seat in the dining room, smile at the others with Marina giving me at thumbs up, and walk into the training room. 

The Head Gamemaker nods at me to begin. I walk confidently over to the spear section. Thankfully, it's clear I won't run out because there's a huge stack of them. I grab 10 and walk over to where the dummies are. 

I make sure I'm at an angle from where I can easily hit all the dummies from the distance where I'm standing. And then I begin to throw as fast as I can. 

The first 5 dummies and targets, I manage to hit in the centre. But with the others, I begin to loose steam because of the speed I'm throwing at and some of the others are slightly off-centre. I take a risk with the last two to impress the Gamemakers and hold one in each hand and throw at the same target. Thankfully, they both hit, and I'm relieved because this isn't something I've practiced before-even if one ended up hitting the head of the dummy rather than the chest, where I was aiming. But hopefully the Gamemakers will think it's intentional. 

I keep this up for 10 more minutes, trying to do closer shots (which as I predicted, are embarrassingly worse than my longer distance though they still hit the target)  and my arms begin to ache-I've never sustained spear-throwing for this long before. I remember what Gloss said about doing the backwards one. 

I make sure I'm aligned with the target, turn my back to it and throw the spear with all my might. There's an embarrassing clatter as the spear hits the floor. Great there goes that 10 I was hoping for. 

There's a cough from the Head Gamemaker and he says, "Thank you, Marvel. That will be all."

Chagrined, I walk out the door and back to the District One floor, and head to my room. I'm annoyed with myself-the higher my score, the more sponsors I will probably get. And I don't want Cato thinking I'm the weak link in the alliance. Gloss comes in without knocking and asks me how it went and I apologetically recount my mistakes. 

Gloss shrugs, "Well, like I said, you're guaranteed an 8 and although, we really want a 10 to get sponsors, it means the other tributes might under-estimate you in the arena. You took a risk in the session. That won't happen in the arena. You'll stick to what you know."