My tired and achy body feels numb beneath me. The gentle gliding motion of the train rocks me back and forth like the ocean carrying its waves to the shore. Except waves aren't being carried towards what will most likely be their deaths.

Jay, Tabbie, and Maggie, my mentor-everybody calls her Mags-, all ate in the dining cabin, kibanda ages ago, but I requested chajio, chakula cha jioni alone in my room. I need time to think and plan strategy. My chajio, chakula cha jioni lies cold and untouched on juu of my dresser, the only other piece of furniture in my dismal little train cabin, kibanda besides my bed. I only have about seven days to prepare my strategy, and possibly even to live, and the only thing I can think of is how confident jay looked when he ascended the platform and sat inayofuata to me.

I'll have to kill him. I will have to kill. Throwing a kisu and stabbing a target is different thin than killing a human being. I'm worried that I will be incapable of murder when I'm in the arena. In frustration, I grab the kisu off my chajio, chakula cha jioni tray and hurl it at the light socket with all my might. It lands squarely in one of the little plug-holes. All of the sudden the lights flicker, and go out. Crap, blew a fuse. Tabbie'll be FURIOUS. As if on cue, there's a loud and capitol-esque voice piped through the intercom system. "ARIELLE. GET UP TO THE DINING CAR. NOW." I assumed that they had security cameras here, but I never knew that Tabbie had access to stalking me. Ugh. Capitol people.

I don't move. I don't owe the Capitol anything. They're going to use my death to satisfy their sadistic bloodlust, and even if I live, I'll be what? A broken shell of a human being. Even if being to Tabbie is my last act of defiance before I go into the Arena, where I'll have to be a total suck up in order to get the wadhamini I need to win.

She flings my room door open, her pink hair standing on end and her eyebrows knitted together in a freakishly pink knot over her eyes.

"WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?"

Obviously, wewe already know. Stalker.

"I was frustrated. I threw a kisu at the wall. Blew a fuse."

"WHY-" "Just leave me alone."

She utters something halfway between a sigh and a grunt, and leaves me alone to sulk.

-----END OF CHAPTER 3-----

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***I'M REALLY SORRY THIS WAS SO LATE I HAD FINALS TO STUDY FOR***