Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Always On My Mind
"Sprint! Jog! SPRINT! SPRINT! SPRINT!"
So help her, if Madge hears Coach Oberst's harsh voice bark sprint one more time she was going to run straight out the gym door, to her car, and home to catch up on her soap operas. Forget her athletic credit hour, this was inhumane.
"I can't feel my legs," Delly wheezes. Her face is beet red, Madge is pretty sure she's only one day of cardio away from having a mini stroke.
"If Cartwright doesn't pick her butt up and move it, that'll be another two minutes,ladies!"
The group let out a collective groan, gave the now tearful Delly filthy looks.
"Come on Delly. One more minute," Madge urges her.
Katniss, who actually likes the short running exercises, comes back at them from the opposite direction, looking a little annoyed. The only reason she wouldn't want another two minutes would be it would make her late to her after school job.
Chesney Shumard, winded and pale, shakes her head, hisses, "That girl isn't normal."
Madge huffs. Katniss is nice enough, she's been Madge's partner in several classes, but she's not exactly friendly. Madge is quiet, a little shy and slow to warm to new people, but Katniss' quiet is different. It's more the 'talk to me and you'll spend the rest of your life eating through a straw' kind of quiet. She has little patience for her classmates, which is easy to sympathize with, but unlike Madge, she doesn't seem to find the humor in the absurdity of her high school hell.
Instead of feeding into Chesney's sniping, Madge just shrugs and gives Delly another encouraging wave of her hand.
The timer is ticking down, almost to thirty seconds, when the door leading in from the track and field opens and the off-season boys spill in, sweaty, stinky, and in many cases, shirtless.
Pressley, one of Chesney's tagalongs, makes a noise, somewhere between a delighted scream and a squeal of horror, at the sight.
"Hawthorne has his shirt off," she rasps, her eyes fixed on the emerging group.
Madge doesn't care, really, she doesn't. Gale Hawthorne seems to hate her, because she lives in town, has good grades, is 'perfect'…if only he knew. He has some kind of affliction, though, where he takes his shirt off at the drop of a hat, so him naked from the waist up isn't an uncommon occurrence. She's certain that if he so much as got a drop of ketchup on one of the ratty shirts he wears he'd just rip it off rather than try and clean it like a normal person.
Still, his hair is wild from his run, he's actually glistening.He doesn't look like the hot mess most of the girls do. Really, it would be a crime not to look.
Unfortunately, Pressley has little to no foot-eye coordination, trips over her own toes, sprawling out on the overly varnished gym floor, and taking most of the other girls down with her.
They all land in a heap, a nasty mish mash of sweat and Bath and Body Works spray, right in front of the incoming boys.
Coach Oberst is a mess, tears of laughter are leaking out her eyes, "God, what a bunch of hormonal gussies."
She's in such a good mood, watching her charges endure physical injuries always brightens her disposition, she lets them out early.
Katniss, one of only a handful not in the pile up, rolls her eyes at them before heading to the lockers, she has better things to do than check on her stupid classmates.
Madge pushes a whining Chesney off her leg and tries to push herself up. She sees someone striding toward her, it takes a second, but she realizes it's Gale. Probably going to kick her.
Before he can reach her though, someone hauls her up, back onto her feet.
"Upsy daisy, Madge."
Peeta is behind her. Once she's regained her balance, he turns to Chesney, offering her a hand. Madge glances back, sees Gale giving Peeta a dark look, probably upset he hadn't gotten the chance to stomp on Madge's hand, something she's certain he'd dearly love to do.
Turning back to Peeta, Madge grins, "My knight in shining spandex."
He bows a little.
Madge runs off to change, get out of her disgusting gym clothes and comb her tangled mess of hair. When she emerges, still a little sticky from the torture of Coach Oberst, Peeta is waiting, leaning against the opposite wall in his warm up sweats.
"Don't you have a match today?"
He nods, "Yeah, but we don't leave until three, so I figured I'd come and check on you. Make sure you weren't concussed."
His arm swings around her shoulder. They check her locker, retrieve her homework and toss in the books she doesn't need, then Peeta walks her out to her car.
"You gonna be okay driving?"
She rolls her eyes. Normally he drives her, not that she can't, she just isn't fond of driving, and he lives close, and she pays for gas so she isn't a total mooch. "I think I can handle it."
"Well," he gives her his most parental look, "text me when you get home."
"Yes, mother."
He laughs, stuffs his hands into his jacket and looks around, chewing his lip.
"So…Katniss didn't fall today."
This again.
He had some weird crush on Katniss Everdeen. Why, Madge wasn't sure. Not that Katniss wasn't pretty, she was, and Peeta was Peeta. He was also the epitome of sweetness, held doors and offered to walk old ladies across the street, it just didn't match up with Katniss' consistently dour mood.
Madge wanted Peeta to be happy, she just wasn't sure Katniss could do that, despite what Peeta himself believed.
Madge snorts, "Peeta, she doesn't see boys, she just sees large humans."
Actually, Chesney was convinced Katniss wasn't even aware she was female until they put her in girls athletics.
Peeta laughs, shakes his head, "Well, maybe she'll notice this large human someday."
Madge laughs, "If that helps you sleep at night, Peeta."
With a grin, he nods, "It does." He checks his phone, "Gotta go."
Tapping her shoulder, he jogs off, back up to the school to meet up with the rest of the wrestling team.
Madge gets in her car, has the key out and is building herself up for the drive home when her phone vibrates with an incoming message.
'Don't 4get the tulle in the home ec class need those swags finished asap:p'
Madge groans, why hadn't Delly reminded her earlier, when she had Peeta and his muscle to help? And couldn't she just spell 'forget'?
Cursing Delly and her ability to trick people into doing things they really didn't want to do, Madge gets out of her car and stomps back up to the school. She wasn't going to prom, she was only a sophomore, but somehow Delly had convinced her to help the flailing junior class out.
"They just can't get their act together," she'd given Madge her most dramatic sigh. "We have to give the seniors a good sendoff!"
Why, exactly, Madge owed the seniors anything, she didn't know, but Delly and her sighing and begging had worn her down. She was such a pushover. Now she was stuck making swags and decorating for the ungrateful jerks. They wouldn't even appreciate it.
She expects a few rolls of tulle, maybe a bolt, but what she gets is seven.
How many swags does she expect her to make? How does she even make swags? She thought it was just tacked up. Apparently she was wrong. Or Delly was.
These would just barely fit in her car, and only if she rolled the windows in the backseat down.
Unhappily, Madge begins dragging a couple of them. She doesn't even care if she messes up the end.
She's made it out of the room, down the hall, to the breezeway between the buildings when something catches on the bolt under her right arm. Irritated, she doesn't have time for snags, she turns and finds Gale, his foot holding the tulle to the ground.
"Having a little bit of trouble there, All-Star?"
She jerks the bolt, hoping he'll lose his balance and fall on his smug face, but he just stays in place, smirking at her.
"Some boyfriend you got there. Didn't even help you with these big, bulky fabrics."
Madge closes her eyes. What is he talking about?
Without thinking, she's tired and sticky and she just wants to go home, she sighs, "Yeah, well, Devon Sawa and I broke up. We couldn't handle the age difference."
He tilts his head, a bit like a dog trying to figure out where a ball went. Clearly he's missed her reference.
"Devon Sawa, you know, Casper…the friendly ghost?"
As in nonexistent.
Hadn't he gone to the same school as her? Been subjected to the same seven movies for inside recess as her? How did he not know this?
Granted, Madge's old babysitter had watched Casper so much they'd worn out the VHS, probably broke the tape on Casper and Kat's dance, so maybe she remembered it a little better than most.
Gale grunts, looks a little disgusted, "I meant Mellark."
Madge's nose scrunches up. Peeta? "Peeta isn't my boyfriend."
He's like a brother, or a cousin, or some combination of the two.
Peeta and she had been friends since preschool, field trip partners, best friends. He knew all the bitter details of Madge's family struggles and she knew about his parents' very ugly divorce. They leaned on each other.
But boyfriend? That would be creepy.
Gale crosses his arms, he has a shirt on, which is shocking in the warm afternoon, and laughs, "Right. You two are just real chummy."
She isn't sure why it matters to him, but she doesn't care, just huffs, gives the bolt another jerk, shaking him off before beginning her long walk to her car.
Suddenly, the weight, all from the wooden bolt inside the fluffy tulle, is lighter. She looks back and sees Gale hoisting the pair over his shoulders.
"What are you doing?"
He shrugs, "Helping."
He might trip her, laugh at her, but help her? She finds that highly unlikely.
Pulling the bolts from Madge's shoulders, he easily begins down the incline, to the parking lot.
"Where's your car?"
Confused and more than a little wary, but happy she may get off school property before the next week, Madge leads him to her car and opens the back door. She crawls through and cranks down the opposite window before backing back out and helping guide the two long bolts into the back seat.
"Parents didn't spring for them fancy new electric windows?"
Madge shoots him a dirty look. Despite what he may think, her family doesn't have all the money in the world. In fact they're consistently behind on payments because of her mother's addiction treatment eating into their funds. Her car was ancient and used, but cheap to buy and keep insurance on, especially since she didn't drive all that often.
"No, but they did let me change out the eight track for a newfangled tape deck."
Gale laughs, actually laughs. It's a shame he doesn't do it more often, she thinks, because he has a very nice one. Deep, rumbling, too pleasant. Her stomach does a flip and she curses it for its foolishness.
When he finally stops, he looks back up at the school, "How many more you got?"
###############################
Half an hour later they have all seven of Delly's tulle bolts in the back of Madge's junker car.
They're both sweaty, the afternoon sun is dying but still hot and bouncing off the new asphalt. Gale leans over and rubs his face in the bottom of his shirt, Madge's tries studiously not to look at his tanned, toned stomach, but again, it would almost be criminal not to at least peak at it.
When he straightens out, twisting to pop his back, Madge gives him a tight smile.
"Thanks."
He didn't have to help her, she isn't sure why he did actually, it was uncharacteristically nice of him.
Gale grunts, as was his custom, finally having used up his quota of words to use on her for the day, and turns to walk away. He's only taken a few steps, enough for Madge to open her driver's side door, when he turns back to her.
"So, you and Mellark," his hand is at his neck, rubbing at the back, "you two really aren't together?"
Madge fights the urge to roll her eyes. What does it matter to him?
"No."
He grunts for a final time, turns and heads toward the back of the school, maybe to the Ag barn. He probably parks back there, she thinks.
Madge decides to ignore his momentary fixation on her nonexistent love life and falls into her car.
She should've run out of the gym earlier. She could be catching up on her soaps already.