Author's note: Okay, so here goes the summary! This is an OC story, 100% of the time from Marina Valli's POV. With an exception in chapter 76 or so, but that's a LONG way away. She (Marina) is a semi-merchant girl living in District Twelve, and the rest you learn throughout this chapter, for the most part. Katniss and Peeta have gotten back from the 74th Annual Hunger Games, and now they are off at the Victory Tour. This story as a whole is what I personally (and from what I gather, others agree) should have happened instead of another Hunger Games with Katniss and Peeta as members. I've worked really hard on this, and it's taken me a while, but right now it is about halfway done, I just haven't posted that all. I'd REALLY appreciate feedback, however if all you're going to say is you think Katniss' offer (you'll see later) is OOC, I know that already, so unless you have a better idea, I don't need feedback on that particular aspect.
Sorry, this is getting pretty rambly, I know, but I also need to inform anyone reading this that this is my first story, so if it's not exactly what you're used to, I apologize, because this was written on another site in a format closer to that.
"Rhino Rina!" Someone shouts behind me, and I grimace, ducking my head down, clutching my book closer to my chest, and beginning to walk faster.
The rain is only now starting to come down. Just my luck. It's as if it was waiting for school to let out, just to catch me in its wet rage. I pull my leather jacket open, and stuff the book inside, to protect it from the wetness.
"Why going so fast, Rhino?" Another voice laughs behind me. "Is there an all-you-can-eat-banquet somewhere?"
I ignore their taunts as best as I can, but after a particularly daring boy calls out something about my mother, I spin on my heels, and walking backwards, give them the finger. They just laugh at my receding back after I turn back around, but at least now I feel a slight satisfaction.
I stew inside as I stalk the rest of the way through town back towards my house. Every day. Every single day, the same thing. School itself is fine. But after school, if I were to stay back with a teacher to inquire about a lesson- forget about it. The teasing starts up again.
They're all just jealous, I reassure myself, not very successfully. Jealous that I have food and they don't. Well, not like there's much else to be jealous of about me. Short, fat, friendless me. I'm 16, as of a month ago, but that doesn't change the fact that they all still treat me like I'm in elementary school. Just because none of them can eat shouldn't mean I can't.
I'm not a Seam kid. Never have been, never will be. No, I live in a house above a thrift shop, right across from the bakery. I like that bakery, always smelling so nice, and the beautiful cakes decorating the windows... I stop myself before I can finish the thought. My mother says I shouldn't think about food unless it's mealtime. It's not good for me, because then I'll get hungry. Instead, I turn my attention to the next thing I think of.
Peeta Mellark's family runs the bakery. I feel so bad for him- having to go through the horrors of the Games like he did. It's nice he has Katniss, though. Gale would swear to anyone who'd listen that it was fake, they were doing it for the cameras, but I think at least Peeta was being truthful. Katniss on the other hand... well, she's Katniss. Hard to decipher. Thinking of the pair of them, and how distant they've seemed since the camera crews cleared out, I almost trip over a branch in the road. My arms fly out to catch myself, and I end up catching my body just before my face was to land in a puddle. The effort is exhausting, and I flop forwards, my body disregarding the success of catching myself.
I get a face full of mud, and choke and splutter on the dirty water on top. I push myself up quickly, pushing the long black ponytail, now dripping wet, out of my face. Wiping the water out of my eyes, I sit up, and find to my dismay, the book has fallen out of the waterproof niche of my jacket.
Grabbing the soggy history record, I just glare at the offending book, before throwing it down the street in frustration. Nothing ever goes right for me. I pick myself up with a huff of anger and start off down Main Street again, not caring about how wet I get anymore. I walk past the History book, leaving it to be washed away in the rain. I can just pay for another one next week anyway.
I reach the thrift store run by one of Greasy Sae's sons, Parker, and push the door open, setting the small bell above it tinkling. Parker's been really good to our family. He doesn't have one of his own, other than siblings and his mother. Apparently him and my father were close in school, so we're kind of like his adopted family. He goes somewhere else to sleep every night anyway, so he had no problem renting out the top of his store to us. We're practically one of the merchant families, now. Parker enters from the back of the store, rubbing his hands on a dirty apron, and just raises an eyebrow at me.
"Don't ask," I say, dejectedly starting for the door that leads to the stairwell up to my home.
The sign hanging there hasn't changed, unsurprisingly. Do not enter, for employees only. While I'm not an employee, I know that this isn't even meant for them, and ignoring it, I start up the stairwell, taking them two at a time.
As I reach the landing, I stop, panting slightly. The stairs are tall. Or, maybe they are. I can't remember a time where that climb hasn't winded me though, so does it make a difference? I just like telling myself the stairs are only tall.
I slide the small brass key into the rusted lock, and as usual, it takes a few tugs to get the door to open for good. I slam it closed behind me, and relish in the heat of the air around me. Our house is heated. We don't have any huts like in the Seam, this is a building. A real nice building, too. My father works in the mines- he has for a long time. But it's because of how good he is with birds, and trains the canaries who go in to test bad air, that he's been promoted to where he is now. I wouldn't doubt he actually owns parts of those mines. Not that I ever ask. I don't care all that much. Father isn't always that nice to me.
My father isn't home now. He doesn't get home until late at night. My mother, though is usually home about now. She actually works with Katniss' mother, helping her get the medicines and things she needs, as well as tending to the patients. It's only since Katniss got back from the Games, about 6 months ago, that her mother started accepting help. Apparently my mother had known her as a child, because even though she wasn't the first to offer, she's the only one who got accepted.
As a result, like when I skip school and go to work to help her with her job, I've gotten to know the Everdeens much better. Prim, the younger sister is absolutely adorable. She's the sweetest thing I've ever met- and completely innocent. Her and that cat are entertaining to watch- to say the least, and she absolutely loves the thing to death. Sometimes, I get pangs of gut-wrenching guilt over that cat- nobody loves me like that. Stupid, isn't it? To be jealous over a cat?
Katniss' mother is a dear. When she's in healing-mode, you'd better clear out, but off-duty, she's really a nice person. Of course I feel for her, for the loss of her husband those years ago, although I can't really relate. I think if my dad died I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Not even through money. My mother has everything set up so that if he dies in a mining accident, she'd just take over the shipping part of his job.
Katniss herself doesn't talk much. She's usually either not there while my mother's working, or else out hunting. When she is, she certainly doesn't make any attempts to socialize with me. And I accept that, it's not like she invited me over her house, her big, beautiful house in the Victor's Village. No, I'm just there with my mother, working on sick people in her kitchen. Yes, decidedly creepy. I understand her aversion.
I look down, and am startled to find a chilled plate, with cold cake sitting on my lap, and a fork of the stuff halfway to my mouth. I freeze, shocked, and think hard about how I got here. I'd been thinking as I came in. Was it really possible my body had instinctively gone over to the fridge, taken this out, and sat myself down to eat it?
The fork falls from my hands, hitting the plate with a clink, before dropping onto the couch, bouncing a little, and then onto the old tiled floor with another, louder clatter. I stood, letting the still-cold plate slide off my lap, and onto the floor. The rest of the cake was crushed underneath the glass, but I disregarded it, stepping over the mess, as if in a trance.
My feet pulled me directly towards my parents' room, where I knew a full-length mirror sat, in a corner. This couldn't be happening. Not to me. Not here, in this District, of all places. Where I'd grown up just like everyone else. A merchant kid, in essence, but not overfed by any means. And then my father got that promotion.
I was locked in my own gaze, once the mirror was in sight. My gray eyes, just like most of the Seam kids', were normal. A little wide, because I was so startled. I hesitated to look down at my body, to confirm my fears. Instead, I observed the black hair hanging in a long, dark curtain around my face. The ponytail had come out somewhere between the puddle and entering this room, allowing my foot-long locks to drip sullenly beside my face.
I had surprisingly full lips, for a District 12 girl. Most of us had thin, wide mouths, that while didn't do much for appearances, were good for kissing. Mine on the other hand, were fuller, and less wide. My nose was smaller than the District girls' noses as well, with a sloping bridge, rather than an arc. I was technically half merchant, half Seam. My father was a merchant kid growing up.
Turning my attention further downwards, I blinded myself mentally and examined the clothes I had worn to school. Worn jeans, a little tight, wide on bottom, and above that I still had the leather jacket -previously my mother's- and a collared short sleeved shirt. Removing the imagined disability, and -probably for the first time in months-, allowed myself to look at my body. Really look at it.
I was... fat. Really, really fat. I hadn't even noticed it before. I'd been denying it, denying what the people at school said about me, denying that the stairs were harder to climb every time I tried, and denying that the curves I had were all rolls of fat, dripping off me like honey. The shock of the moment was preventing me from moving, even to curl into a ball on the ground, and just die there. I knew I'd weighed over 150 lbs. for a while now. Known it, and done nothing about it. But I was used to the growth spurt sucking the weight right back off me- accumulation hadn't been part of the equation until recently.
Frozen in place still, all I could think about was how this wasn't happening. How it couldn't have been happening. Not to me. Not me, who was born and raised a District Twelve, poor just like all those other kids, and skinny like them as well, until my father got that promotion.
A month can do a lot for a person, and a lot more for a person's body.
I found that out the hard way- although it was only hard for my body. My mind, meanwhile, was absolutely soaring with happiness. I told my mother I'd wanted to take some time off to work on my weight. At first, she had just stared at me. I wondered what was going through her head. Then she just beamed, and hugged me, and said I could take all the time off I needed, that I didn't need school anyway. Nothing there was as important.
The school curriculum consisted of Capitol-based teachings, and coal research for those of us who would eventually go to work in the mines. I had no use for learning about the Capitol, or the coal-based information, because I would be taking over my father's business as soon as I turned 21, or he died. Whichever came sooner. And right now, school was more of a torture than help to me, and my mother and I both agreed my time was better spent pulling myself out of the metaphorical rut I was currently in.
So, she told the school I was deathly ill, and I might return once I was feeling better. They inquired about where she was going to get medical help from, and she'd said Katniss' mother was treating me. We only let them in on the secret- the Everdeens and my parents were the only ones who knew I was thinning up, instead of dying of some strange illness.
As a result, I couldn't exactly leave the house. As a compromise between not leaving and not being caught, I left only during school hours, and I tucked my long black hair back in another leather coat, but a hooded one, provided by my mother. I carefully avoided busy streets like Main Street, often just crawling under the fence, and lifting rocks in the copse of trees right beside it, further down the way.
Katniss' mother gave me some herbs to help the hunger pangs, and Prim even offered to come train with me, but I declined that last offer politely. When Katniss got back from her Victory Tour, and heard about my plan, she actually came to my door, one rainy day, and asked to speak to me.
Tying my hair back up in a ponytail high above my head, I glanced at myself in the mirror in my mother's room. I was definitely improving. The folds of fat hanging off my midriff a month previously were now gone, replaced by a large muffin-top on my torso, and my thighs were shrinking gradually. My upper arms were losing a little of their usual flab as well, from the rock-lifting I'd been doing. Primitive, yes, but in District Twelve, workout machines weren't exactly easy to come by.
I left the room and went to the door, gripping the knob tightly. My mother had called only minutes before, saying Katniss was here, and she wanted to see me. I had wondered why briefly, but then I decided it didn't much matter. Katniss, the one who'd won the Hunger Games, wanted to see me. It was dreamlike, to say the least, even though improbable. I knew she had an aversion of me. The fact that I came and went in her house from time to time, and had always had enough to eat, if not as much as people in the Capitol.
Turning the knob slowly, I peer out, and see the girl herself sitting with my mother, on our couch, apparently sipping tea. Her ebony hair is done back in its trademark braid, which has become increasingly popular since her victory in the Games. I marvel at how she had suceeded in that feat- she was only a year older than me. She'd been my age when she had been forced into the Games.
"Marina, darling!" My mother calls, having seen me peeking out from the doorway.
I step sheepishly out from behind the doorframe, straightening up and twirling the ponytail between my fingers behind me. I think I am blushing, but can't be certain. Katniss twists around to glance at me, and smiles reassuringly when she notices how nervous I must look. It isn't exactly reassuring, but I can see she meant it to be, and I relax a little. So I wasn't the only one not comfortable being here.
"You wanted to talk to me?" I ask, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly.
"You look good," she notes, ignoring my question. "I've... uh, I've seen you lifting rocks, out in the forest near the fence."
"Oh," I say stupidly.
"I wasn't spying or anything," she starts hastily, "I just... noticed it. And when my mother told me what you were doing, I just put two and two together..."
This conversation is going nowhere and fast, and she knows it.
"What I meant to say was... I was wondering if you wanted to get some training tips from me," Katniss finished, and then dropped off into silence.
The whole room freezes. My mother is still staring at Katniss, and so am I, and she just looks down, not liking the attention.
"I would love it," I breathed, shattering the silence.
"Oh," She says, looking up at me, clearly a little startled. "That's great! We can uh... start tomorrow?"
"Yeah," I manage to say, waking up a little further. "Tomorrow."
Another silence ensues, and Katniss just glances around awkwardly, before her gaze lands on our clock. "Oh! I have to go, I promised Prim I'd help her make goat cheese today. So I'll see you tomorrow, Marina," she says, standing and starting for the door.
"It's Rina," I mutter, but she's already out the door and it's swinging shut behind her.
I cross the room and pick up her teacup from the coffee table, taking it into the kitchen. She hasn't even touched it, so I drained the cup in one sip, before leaving the china in the sink. I find the taste dry and bitter- she didn't even ask for sugar. This is so unlike my mother- not offering, then demanding guests put sugar and milk in their tea.
"That was..." My mother starts, still not having moved from the couch. "That was nice of her."
"Yeah," I agree. "Really nice." Especially considering she doesn't really know me, and I can tell she doesn't like me in her house.
Hell doesn't even come close to describing the sickness that has come over me since I've realized what Katniss' offer really means. I've been up vomiting nearly all night with nervousness- she actually wants to train with me. I will actually be training with someone who is a District hero, in essence, and who has been on national television two times, for over three weeks on both occasions. Katniss Everdeen offered to train with me.
And as if that hadn't been mind-blowing enough, her mother had called later, -one of the benefits of having a phone in the Victor's Village- and asked if I wanted to stay over at their house, rather than risking the travel to the Victor's Village every morning and evening.
Then I realized another thing. She really meant to go through with this. And now Mrs. Everdeen was offering to let me stay in their house indefinitely so we could train every day, all day? This was quickly becoming a lot more than I'd anticipated when I had agreed to Katniss' offer.
So, here I sat, over the toilet bowl, losing my dinner, lunch, and hell, maybe my breakfast was making an appearance as well.
"Honey?" My mother's voice calls through the bathroom door. "Are you alright?"
I freeze, my hands still gripping the toilet lid, and hardly breathing. I was hoping she wouldn't be up. "Yeah?" I say, hoping the sound of my voice will be enough to make her leave.
"Honey, I know you're nervous about training with Katniss," she starts, and I hear a small creak as she leans back against the door, getting comfortable. "But you shouldn't be this nervous, I mean, this is a good thing, right?"
I sigh, before standing, and wiping my hands off on a towel beside me. The appearance of my mother has cleared the anxiety I'm having- the fact that she's just as nervous as I am, except her for me, somehow calms me. "Yeah mom, it's a good thing," I agree, flushing the toilet to drown out her response. "I'm going to go to bed now. Good night."
The words are final, and she grasps that I don't want to talk about it at the moment. She bids me goodnight as well, before I hear her bare feet padding back down the hallway, into her own room. Although I'm tired, I know if I were to try right now, I wouldn't be able to fall asleep. I'm much too nervous for the coming day to even bother. Instead I cross my room, opposite the bathroom, and go over to my window.
My light is off along with the electricity for the moment, so I have no inhibitions about opening my curtains tonight. There shouldn't even be many people out, but the lack of human contact other than my parents and the Everdeens is starting to go to my head. Not like I ever had many friends before, but it's still unusual, even for me, to be contained like so for this long.
The streetlights are off, as usual, because we rarely get power. Since Katniss' victory, and then briefly after the Victory Tour, it had been coming on more often, but it soon fell back into the same disrepair of before the Games, with only a few hours of power a day. Most of the shopkeepers light their stores with candles, at night, so if there are any people out and about, the wares are visible. The street is slick from the rain earlier in the evening, and the light coming from Parker's shop below me bounces off the wet pavement, making the rocks in the road light up, dancing and glittering like jewels.
I can make out a lone figure across the street, leaning against the side of the bakery. I wonder what the baker's wife would say if she saw this man loitering like so- she wasn't one to deal with fools, that much I knew. I liked buying pastries and bread while the baker was in the building, not his wife, more often than not.
The man seems to be just standing there, unmoving, and I briefly wonder if he's died of cold or hunger, propped up there. The thought flees my mind as quickly as it came. Nobody would dare die on the side of Mrs. Mellark's bakery, oh no. They might find themselves brought alive by her just to be murdered all over again. The thought makes me chuckle, and I freeze, careful to not make a noise again, in case my mother were to hear.
After a few seconds I decide she's really asleep, and look back out the window. The man is gone suddenly, and I peer in both directions, searching for him. He's only just started walking, and I see him coming towards Parker's shop. I freeze again, wondering if he'd seen me, while I was listening to see if my mother was awake. Dispelling the thought quickly calms my nerves a little, but the scene is frozen in my mind.
I can't help but think the man had in fact seen me peering out my window at him, and was coming to inquire about me at that very second. However, I also have an overactive imagination at times, and I'm prone to making up secret backstories for people I see in the street, going about normal business. Going against my gut instinct, I pulled away from the window, going over to my twin-sized bed, and curling up in it, pulling the covers quickly over myself.
I shiver despite the warmth they offer- I'll not likely soon forget that man. The stories playing through my mind won't allow it, and even if they would, I think I've been just a little to rattled tonight to even consider a good night's sleep. The best I can do is try, and hope I get decent rest for tomorrow's surely vicious training.
Notes have started coming from my classes, this morning. I suppose after a month of being "almost dead," the teachers start thinking you won't get better, and it would be a brilliant idea to have all your classes send you "get well" cards.
Naturally, none of them make me feel any better. There are those nice kids, who are always kind to people, but kindness only goes so far for, who have written the sweetest cards. Asking me how I'm doing, wishing me the best, and hoping for my health. The generic, poorly written cards might have made me feel a little better, if I had actually been dying.
Then there were those kids who I never really knew, and just pulled whatever they could think of off the top of their heads and wrote it down. I accept this. I would be the same way, in their situation. They don't know me. Then again, I don't think any of them really do. As far as these kids know, I'm the fat girl in the hallway. They don't mean it, but they write that they hope I get better as well.
And lastly, and most horribly, the cards from those boys who tease me as I leave every day. The girls who whisper about me while I'm still in the room. I don't even open the card, if I know it's from someone who doesn't like me. I just take them out from the others, rip the envelopes as if I'd opened them, and put them on the bottom. I have no need to be called Rhino. Not now.
I'm only about three quarters of the way through the cards when I get one that really sticks with me. One that sounds sincere. It's from a girl I don't even know, who's 13. Her name is Rosabelle Cartwright, apparently. I know the Cartwrights, vaguely. They run the tailor-shoe shop in town. Since the father is the tailor, and the mother makes shoes, they just combined the two. Their mother, Antha, has to be the only Seam-born woman living in the merchant's section I know, other than my mother. She's a little on the large side, like me, because she's married to one of the merchants.
Their older daughter, Delly, has dirty-blonde hair, and always smiling. She's got the same body problems as I do, I think. Since she lives in the merchant section too, apparently her parents make enough money to feed her. She's got to be the single-nicest person on earth, though, don't get me wrong. Her card was a nice one as well. It just didn't make as much of an impression on me.
I know they have two sons. The first is younger than Delly, but older than Rosabelle. I've seen him around school. He has Delly's semi-blonde hair as well. I don't actually know much about him, though. Except that I think he's a year younger than me. Then there's the older one, Matrix. God, he's a pushover. He doesn't go to school anymore- he's 18 now.
Apparently just before Katniss left for the Victory Tour, she'd had Capitol doctors examining her, to make sure she was healthy. Matrix had gone and done something stupid, and one of the doctors saw him as well. It must have been something really big and really stupid, because nobody knew exactly why one of the Capitol doctors would see a District Twelve boy.
They said he wasn't right in the head. Called him "a danger to himself and others," and after that, they let him drop out of school. He hasn't been slotted to work in the mines yet, either. Other kids, once they graduate high school, go into the mines for certain, unless they have another job. Not Matrix. He just wanders around the Hob, selling animals that nobody has any idea where he's picked up. I suppose, though, with all day to yourself, you might pick up something to do like hunting.
He's a snark, though. Always had been in school, and is in the Hob. I see him there from time to time, when I sneak out to lift rocks. He's always acting so superior to everyone else. Even though he's the same skinny, underfed boy as the rest of the kids here. Somehow, his mental issues make him "special". I can't help but despise him for it. That and the fact that he doesn't have to work, doesn't have to go to school.
So I suppose Rosabelle must be his and that brother and Delly's little sister. I've seen her before, she does look about 13. Although while Delly and the other boy got the blonde hair and pale complexion of her father, Rosabelle's got the same black hair and gray eyes as the rest of the Seam kids, as does Matrix. His is just greased up with what I can only assume is animal fat.
Rosabelle seems nice enough, regardless. Her 18 year old, mental brother on the other hand, I can hardly hold against her. The card is sweet. She says she hopes I get better, and that my family is handling everything alright. Perhaps she could send me a basket of fruit sometime, would I like that? And if I need anything, her and her family will be open to help me. I can sense the sincerity in her words- she wasn't faking like the kids from my classes.
I decide right then it's safe to write back to this girl. To tell her that I'm not dying, but her card has touched me, and I feel I can trust her with my secret. I'm honestly sick of only talking to my parents and Mrs. Everdeen. Although, I could hardly know now what trouble this might get me into.
I write back to Rosabelle almost instantly, and I've only just sealed the envelope -clean, and not sooted like most of the class letters I'd received- when there comes a knock on the door. I leave the envelope on the counter in the kitchen, where my mother's almost certain to see it. She's gone already, off to work with Mrs. Everdeen, so I'm not sure who could be at my door.
Just as a precaution, I wrap a heavy scarf around my neck, and crack the door open only an inch, so I can see who is knocking before they can see me. Through the crack I can see it's a feminine face, eyeing me curiously, with gray eyes, and ebony hair.
"Katniss!" I say, a little taken-off-guard by her appearance. I'd expected to go to her house, rather than have her bring me.
Ripping off the scarf, I throw it behind me carelessly, not bother to watch where it lands. I open the door for her, and she steps in, nodding a greeting. "You ready?" she asks, getting right to the point. I suppose that's for the better. Neither of us seem to be all that great at socializing.
"Yes. Are we going to the Victor's Village?" I ask, grabbing my hooded leather coat from the couch.
"No, not directly," she says mysteriously. "I want to show you something first."
"Ok," I say, partially confused, but I pull my hood, and allow her to lead me out.
It's a long walk. And the fact that summer is approaching and I'm wearing a leather coat isn't helping much. Sweat is dripping off me in sheets by the time we reach an area on the fence where she's clearly familiar- she pulls up a little of the chain link at the bottom, and slips underneath. I just watch her for a moment, wondering if she's waiting for me to follow, but she just keeps walking.
I sigh quietly, before ducking under the hole as well, but freeze as my jacket catches on one of the protruding wires. I tug at it with my left hand, unable to reach the awkward spot, halfway up my back, with my better hand. It rips free, and I flinch, but keep crawling, until I'm safely on the other side of the fence.
Looking back, I see about an inch of the leather has torn off, and remains stuck to the fence. I take the offending wire in my hands and carefully, so carefully, tug the little bit of leather off, until it's resting in my palm. I stow it in the pocket and stand, and see Katniss watching me approvingly.
"That's good," she said. "Not leaving traces of your presence. We might make a hunter out of you yet."
I was about to tell her I had no intentions of becoming a hunter, but just shut my mouth. My muffin-top stomach proved that I didn't have to hunt to survive, like some people. As she kept walking, I wondered why she was bothering with me at all. It would be more productive to teach the hungry Seam kids to hunt. Although, since she had won, nobody was quite as hungry as they had been.
As we neared the woods, the Meadow fading behind us one step at a time, I slowed, to wipe the sweat off my face nervously. "Are we going in there?" I asked hesitantly, and she just nodded, her braid bobbing up and down with the movements.
I had to run to catch up with her, and I barely reached her side before she took the first step into the woods, surprisingly silently. I took my own hesitant first step, and a few leaves crackled beneath the worn rubber toe of my boot. She was moving again already, and I increased my pace to follow behind her.
We had to have been walking for at least a half an hour by the time she slowed down, and it was another five minutes before she completely stopped.
I caught up, panting, and crashed to the ground without warning, to catch my breath. She sat down with me, surprisingly, and crossed her legs, waiting for me to get a hold of my pulse. It took a few minutes, but finally my body had calmed down enough to allow me to breathe normally. Only then did Katniss start speaking again.
"You want to thin out," she says matter-of-factly, getting right to the point again. "So you want me to train you."
Well no, I hadn't wanted her to train me, she offered. But okay, we can pretend I asked her.
"There's more to getting fit than working out, though. When your mother got me tea last night, I saw your refrigerator." I saw her shake her head a little, as if the idea of a refrigerator still made her uncomfortable. "There's not a single healthy thing in there. You need to eat more plants and meat. Less bread."
I just nod. I know this already. I just haven't had time to go about doing it, because I can hardly just waltz out to Rooba's butchery and order some meat. I'm supposed to be dying. As for plants, well they don't exactly sell fresh vegetables along the street either.
"So I'm going to teach you about edible plants." Katniss finishes.
"You- what?" I gasp, completely startled. "Really?"
"Yes, I figured, why not? You can use that to get healthier, and in case something were to happen to the few people who still know this kind of thing..." she trails off.
I know she means Gale, Peeta, her mother, and herself. Prim is too young to know those kinds of things, and I suppose other than her, it is just the four of them. This revelation makes me frown a little, and even with all my practice smiling, hiding my despair from the teachers and my parents, I can't conceal the displeasure on my face. So she had an ulterior motive for wanting to train me. Pass on the knowledge.
It's not that I'm not grateful for the information about the plants. I am. Really. But knowing she's mostly doing this to pass on information, not because she likes me, is a little disappointing.
I can see in her face, she's noticed my displeasure. I mask it quickly, and pretend nothing's happened. The damage is done though, she is now looking down at the leaf-strewn ground as if hoping she could melt into it, never to be seen again. I can't help but feel a little bad for her, even though the anger is still raging inside me.
"What's this?" I ask suddenly, pointing at a small sprig of green sticking out of the ground beside me. The leaves are a bright green, and slightly jagged on the edge. Rather than being smoothed out like basil leaves, the only kind I know, the surface of this leaf is bumpy, like an old person's skin gets after so long.
"That's mint," she says, looking up, clearly grateful for an excuse to leave the previous conversation in the past.
"Mint," I repeat. "Right. We have mint tea, sometimes. I should have known that."
"That one is basil," she says, gesturing to a patch of darker green, smooth leaves beside her.
"That one I do know," I grin, and much to my surprise, she grins back.
"Good."
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