Only Chapter One, there will be much more, trust me. Chapter Two will be coming sometime this week. ALL credit goes to the brilliant Suzanne Collins. I do not own the Hunger Games. I am just a girl with no life who writes fanfictions about the love of my life, Peeta Mellark.
She's sick. Awfully sick. Starving. She'll die soon if someone doesn't help her. When she walks by sometimes outside of the bakery, her ribs stick out of her tattered clothes. Her bony legs limp with every step she takes. Her cheekbones are sunken in, revealing wide, empty sockets needing to be stuffed with food. I realize I cannot wait any longer. Next time I see her, I need to help her. Whatever it takes, I will make sure there is enough food on the table for the only girl I have ever, and will ever, love. I will make sure that Katniss Everdeen will not starve. And I will take whatever beating comes with it.
The bread must be burned. My mother will whip me senselessly for it, I am sure. I'm willing to take that, and whatever other punishment will certainly come my way.
There she is. On the cobblestone ground of the square, right outside of the bakery. She tries to pull herself up from the ground, but with each attempt, her already fragile body becomes weaker and weaker. The cycle goes on. She falls, then her head is slightly lifted, but just as soon as it is lifted up, it falls down once again. Everything in me wants to run out and help her, and I'm pushing against the bakery door with all of my might. My arms hurl at it full speed, but it won't budge, no matter how hard I push. I'm screaming now. My voice gets louder and louder and louder with every word I bellow, more pain in each sentence I sputter out. Tears are pouring like a waterfall out of my eyes. I feel constrained and useless. It's killing me that I cannot help her. She's beyond my reach no matter how far I extend my arm. Katniss Everdeen is dying in front of me and there is nothing I can do about it. Nothing.
"Peeta!" a soothing voice cries overtop of me, and I feel a gentle hand relentlessly shaking my shoulder. "Peeta, wake up! You're having a nightmare! It's okay, Peeta, it's okay. I'm here. Katniss is fine. Calm down." I open my soft blue eyes to find my oldest, and favorite, brother, Joshua, looking down at me with a look like one I'd think a mother would look at her crying baby with when rocking him to sleep in her arms, any mother but my own, that is. I look around to make sure it was only a dream, and that Katniss Everdeen is still alive and still within my reach to rescue. I'm in the same light blue, badly painted room in my family's apartment above the bakery. I glance down, and I'm still laying on my same old, rickety bed, on my cheaply made, springy mattress, and around me are two identical ones. Outside the dusty window there lies the sickening district in which we live, the same horrid sight I've had the displeasure of viewing every single day for the past 11 years of my life I pull of my sheets, which are sticky with cold sweat and damp with tears, both of which were a result of my phantasm.
"Thanks, Josh." I say to my brother with half a smile. I almost ask him how he knew my nightmare was about Katniss, then I figured I must've been crying her name in my sleep. Great. Now my whole family knows my undying love for a girl I've never even been able to work up the nerve to talk to.