Chapter One

You never know when you'll meet the person with whom you'll spend the rest of your life. For me it was when I was in the second grade.

In second grade I found myself starting at a private school. Being that it was the 90s we wore these awful sailor shirts and navy pants for uniforms. My blonde hair was cut short, the result of a bad attempt to cut my own hair.

That year I was in a grade two and three split class. My older cousin Gale was in grade three that year. Not that it mattered because he did his best to ignore me. He only hung out with his friends and wouldn't acknowledge his cousin who was a girl. After all I was younger and since I was a girl I had cooties. Fraternizing with me was an absolute no. He surrounded himself with grade three boys like Brutus, Gloss, and Marvel, as well as two identical blonde haired, blue eyed twins named Peeta and Rye.

That is where I first met Peeta Mellark.

…:::…

After grade two and three our classes were split and I wouldn't think about Peeta Mellark again for years to come.

…:::…

I heard that his parents got divorced shortly after. But I knew nothing else of his life.

At the end of grade five I begged my mom to home school me. I had no friends at school. No one liked me. Apparently I was mean.

I wouldn't see him again till grade six.

Gale, who lived next door, had his birthday party that year. Peeta and Rye were invited of course.

That day I spent with Madge, our other next-door neighbor. That day I developed a crush on Peeta Mellark. Foolishly I told Madge who screamed it to the neighborhood and I was mortified. Not that anyone heard her; no one was close enough to understand her hollering. But still my cheeks flamed red and I scolded her profusely.

Within days I had forgotten Peeta Mellark and my feelings for him once more.

…:::…

As I grew older my hair darkened to a dirty blonde and then to brown. My mother said hers had done the same as she grew up. Except hers remained a dirty blonde. I was born with black hair which had lightened to a nearly bleach blonde but was now darkening again to a nice mahogany brown. Mom says it is a strange family trait.

The next time I saw him was grade nine. He started coming around our youth group once again. He and Rye quickly fell in with my group of friends but I still never got to know Peeta Mellark. We were distant friends at best. My good friend at the time, Clove, began dating Rye Mellark. It seemed to work at first. But soon they fell in to bickering constantly and only they couldn't see how dysfunctional their relationship was.

At the time I was too enamored with a boy named Cato. My foolish young mind thought I had it all. That I had found the one. I was fifteen and I thought I knew what love was. However I couldn't have been more wrong. Cato didn't value any of my opinions. If I didn't agree with him he brushed me off completely. He didn't like my personality and was always hinting, very subtly, that I should change. As well he had a crippling self-esteem issue that he seemed to expect me to fix. It was crushing me but I didn't know how to get out.

In grade ten Peeta and I connected. It was during a youth event, on the bus home to be exact. The seat next to him was the only one available so I took it. Clove and Glimmer were the girls I thought of as my best friends—how foolish I was. They always excluded me just as they did tonight. There was no room to sit with them on their bus seat. So I took the empty seat.

Peeta and I got too talking. The conversation quickly turned from simple small talk to truly deep conversation. He listened as I told him how I felt so inadequate. How Glimmer and Clove made me feel as if I couldn't be trusted with their secrets. That is why they always chose to whisper just the two of them. High school was such a petty time.

We exchanged phone numbers that night and from then on we would text constantly. Quickly we became best friends. He told me about the pain he still felt from his parents divorce. I told him about my father's drinking. He told me that he secretly cuts himself. This shocked me because I had always thought of Peeta as an extraordinarily happy person. I told him of my anger and how my family fought often. He told me about how he struggled to try and separate his identity from Rye's. Apparently being identical twins leads people to think of you as the same person. I told him about my relationship with Cato, which was increasingly toxic.

We didn't always talk about such heavy things. We talked about our favorite things. We found out we had a lot in common. He told me about his love for building models and painting them. Which surprised me because he had such large hands, ones that I wouldn't peg for being steady enough for such precision. We talked about everything. I realized quickly that we had become best friends.


A/N: I get married one week from today! In honor of my upcoming marriage I thought I'd throw up another short story. I hope you like it! There will be a few more chapters that I'll post over the next little while.

Read and review! Let me know what you think!